The 23 Best Sci-Fi Novels of the 1970s

Seventies science fiction swung between hard-physics starships, feminist utopias and paranoid drug-fuelled dystopias. Award sweepers share this shelf with cult paperbacks that still split readers down the middle.

1. 1
   The Dispossessed

   Le Guin's 1974 'ambiguous utopia' contrasting an anarchist moon with its capitalist twin planet, winner of the Hugo and Nebula.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Gateway

   Frederik Pohl's 1977 Hugo and Nebula winner about prospectors gambling their lives on abandoned alien ships.
   952pts
3. 3
   Woman on the Edge of Time

   Marge Piercy's 1976 novel about a woman in a psychiatric ward who contacts a utopian future.
   952pts
4. 4
   The Forever War

   Joe Haldeman's 1974 Hugo and Nebula winner about a soldier whose interstellar war is stretched across centuries by time dilation.
   734pts
5. 5
   The Lathe of Heaven

   Ursula K. Le Guin's 1971 novel about a man whose dreams rewrite reality and the psychiatrist who exploits them.
   734pts
6. 6
   Kindred

   Octavia E. Butler's 1979 novel about a Black woman pulled back in time to an antebellum Maryland plantation.
   659pts
7. 7
   Rendezvous with Rama

   Arthur C. Clarke's 1973 award sweeper about astronauts exploring a vast, silent alien cylinder passing through the solar system.
   659pts
8. 8
   Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

   Kate Wilhelm's 1976 Hugo winner about a clone society that emerges after civilisation collapses.
   659pts
9. 9
   Man Plus

   Frederik Pohl's 1976 Nebula winner about an astronaut surgically rebuilt to survive on Mars.
   571pts
10. 10
    Children of Dune

    Frank Herbert's 1976 third Dune novel, following Paul Atreides' twin children through Arrakis' transformation.
    467pts
11. 11
    A Scanner Darkly

    Philip K. Dick's 1977 novel about an undercover narcotics agent ordered to spy on himself.
    467pts
12. 12
    The Word for World Is Forest

    Le Guin's 1972 Hugo-winning short novel about colonists brutalising the peaceful natives of a forest planet.
    467pts
13. 13
    High-Rise

    J. G. Ballard's 1975 novel about a luxury tower block that descends into tribal savagery.
    467pts
14. 14
    Tau Zero

    Poul Anderson's 1970 hard-SF voyage of a starship that cannot stop accelerating toward the end of the universe.
    467pts
15. 15
    Dying Inside

    Robert Silverberg's 1972 portrait of a New York telepath slowly and painfully losing his gift.
    467pts
16. 16
    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    Douglas Adams' 1979 comic novel about Arthur Dent's journey across the galaxy after Earth is demolished.
    467pts
17. 17
    Ringworld

    Larry Niven's 1970 Hugo and Nebula winner about explorers stranded on a colossal artificial ring circling a distant star.
    343pts
18. 18
    Roadside Picnic

    Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's 1972 novel about stalkers raiding alien-visited Zones, the basis for Tarkovsky's Stalker.
    343pts
19. 19
    Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

    Philip K. Dick's 1974 novel about a TV star who wakes up in a police state where he no longer exists.
    343pts
20. 20
    The Shockwave Rider

    John Brunner's 1975 novel that imagined computer worms and a hacker on the run in a networked society.
    343pts
21. 21
    The Gods Themselves

    Isaac Asimov's 1972 Hugo and Nebula winner about an energy exchange with a parallel universe that threatens the Sun.
    343pts
22. 22
    The Female Man

    Joanna Russ's 1975 feminist landmark following four women from parallel worlds.
    0pts
23. 23
    Dhalgren

    Samuel R. Delany's dense 1975 cult novel set in a ruined American city where time and memory refuse to behave.
    0pts

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