The 22 Greatest Science Fiction Novels of All Time

Sixty years of the genre in one list: the ones assigned in school sit next to the ones that were dismissed as pulp on release. Argue it out.

1. 1
   Nineteen Eighty-Four

   George Orwell's 1949 vision of total surveillance that gave the language Big Brother, doublethink and Room 101.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Ender's Game

   Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel about a child trained through war games to command a fleet.
   881pts
3. 3
   Solaris

   Stanisław Lem's 1961 novel about an ocean-planet that answers human contact with the contents of their memories.
   852pts
4. 4
   Stranger in a Strange Land

   Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 novel about a human raised on Mars returning to an Earth he does not understand.
   852pts
5. 5
   The Dispossessed

   Le Guin's 1974 study of an anarchist moon and the capitalist world it orbits.
   809pts
6. 6
   A Canticle for Leibowitz

   Walter M. Miller Jr.'s 1959 chronicle of monks preserving knowledge across a post-nuclear dark age.
   809pts
7. 7
   Snow Crash

   Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel that popularised the term metaverse and its pizza-delivering hacker hero.
   787pts
8. 8
   Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

   Philip K. Dick's 1968 bounty-hunter novel about telling humans from replicants, later filmed as Blade Runner.
   787pts
9. 9
   The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

   Douglas Adams's 1979 comedy of an Earthman hitching across a galaxy where the answer is 42.
   713pts
10. 10
    Fahrenheit 451

    Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel about a fireman whose job is to burn books.
    713pts
11. 11
    Neuromancer

    William Gibson's 1984 debut that named cyberspace and launched cyberpunk.
    629pts
12. 12
    Frankenstein

    Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, widely treated as the first work of science fiction.
    629pts
13. 13
    Foundation

    Isaac Asimov's 1951 saga of psychohistory, in which mathematics predicts the fall of a galactic empire.
    533pts
14. 14
    The Martian

    Andy Weir's 2011 survival novel about an astronaut stranded on Mars with potatoes and duct tape.
    532pts
15. 15
    The Forever War

    Joe Haldeman's 1974 novel in which relativity turns an interstellar war into centuries of homecoming.
    532pts
16. 16
    The Left Hand of Darkness

    Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 novel set on a frozen world whose inhabitants have no fixed gender.
    420pts
17. 17
    Slaughterhouse-Five

    Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel about a man unstuck in time and the firebombing of Dresden.
    420pts
18. 18
    The Three-Body Problem

    Liu Cixin's 2008 first contact novel, the first translated work to win the Hugo for Best Novel.
    286pts
19. 19
    The War of the Worlds

    H. G. Wells's 1898 invasion novel that set the template for alien attack stories.
    286pts
20. 20
    Dune

    Frank Herbert's 1965 desert epic, winner of the first Nebula Award and co-winner of the Hugo, and the best-selling science fiction novel ever written.
    286pts
21. 21
    Rendezvous with Rama

    Arthur C. Clarke's 1973 novel about an alien cylinder passing through the solar system and leaving without explanation.
    0pts
22. 22
    Hyperion

    Dan Simmons's 1989 Canterbury Tales in space, seven pilgrims travelling toward a creature called the Shrike.
    0pts

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