Guardian Newspaper, 1000 novels everyone must read
science fiction awards database
"Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels - no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems - from any decade and in any language." The SF titles -- each title selected by a different expert -- include 20 (of 124 total) associational mainstream, or historical precursor, titles not mentioned by any other source compiled here. Experts include SF writers Eric Brown, Keith Brooke, and Jon Courtenay Grimwood. The SF/fantasy selections are posted in three parts: part one, part two, and part three. Titles are listed below.
Ranked: No
Titles Cited: 124
Publication: Guardian, 2009
Ranked: No
Titles Cited: 124
Publication: Guardian, 2009
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Pan, 1979)
- Brian W. Aldiss, Non-Stop (Faber and Faber, 1958)
- Isaac Asimov, Foundation (Gnome, 1951)
- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2000)
- Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things (Viking , 1987)
- Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas (Macmillan, 1987)
- Iain M. Banks, The Wasp Factory (Macmillan, 1984)
- Clive Barker, Weaveworld (Simon & Schuster, 1987)
- Nicola Barker, Darkmans (Fourth Estate, 2007)
- Stephen Baxter, The Time Ships (HarperCollins, 1995)
- Greg Bear, Darwin's Radio (HarperCollins, 1999)
- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (NAL/Signet, 1957)
- Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls (Delacorte Abyss, 1992)
- Algis Budrys, Rogue Moon (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1960)
- Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (Harper & Row, 1967; France 1967)
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race (William Blackwood, 1871)
- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (Heinemann , 1962)
- Anthony Burgess, The End of the World News (Hutchinson, 1982)
- Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars (McClurg, 1917)
- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (Olympia Press , 1959)
- Octavia E. Butler, Kindred (Doubleday, 1979)
- Samuel Butler, Erewhon, or Over the Range (Trübner and Co, 1872)
- Italo Calvino, Baron in the Trees (Collins, 1959; Italy 1957)
- Ramsey Campbell, The Influence (Macmillan, 1988)
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Macmillan, 1865)
- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (Macmillan, 1871)
- Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (Chatto & Windus , 1984)
- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Random House, 2000)
- G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (Arrowsmith, 1908)
- Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End (Ballantine, 1953)
- Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Bloomsbury, 2004)
- Michael G. Coney, Hello Summer, Goodbye (Gollancz, 1975)
- Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma (HarperCollins/Flamingo, 1998)
- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (Pantheon, 2000)
- Marie Darrieusecq, Pig Tales (New Press, 1997)
- Samuel R. Delany, The Einstein Intersection (Ace, 1967)
- Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Doubleday, 1968)
- Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (Putnam, 1962)
- Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989)
- Michel Faber, Under the Skin (Canongate Books, 2000)
- John Fowles, The Magus (Little, Brown, 1965)
- Neil Gaiman, American Gods (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2001)
- Alan Garner, Red Shift (Collins, 1973)
- William Gibson, Neuromancer (Ace Special, 1984)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (The Forerunner, 1915)
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies (Faber and Faber, 1954)
- Joe Haldeman, The Forever War (St. Martin's, 1974)
- M. John Harrison, Light (Gollancz, 2002)
- Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (Putnam, 1961)
- Frank Herbert, Dune (Chilton, 1965)
- Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969; Switzerland 1943)
- Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (Jonathan Cape, 1980)
- James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner ([unknown], 1824)
- Michel Houellebecq, Atomized (William Heinemann, 2000; France 1998)
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Chatto & Windus, 1932)
- Kazuo Ishiguro, The Unconsoled (Faber and Faber, 1995)
- Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (Viking, 1959)
- Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (Heinemann, 1898)
- P. D. James, The Children of Men (Faber and Faber , 1992)
- Richard Jefferies, After London; or, Wild England (Cassell, 1885)
- Gwyneth Jones, Bold as Love (Gollancz, 2001)
- Franz Kafka, The Trial (Gollancz, 1937; Germany 1925)
- Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966)
- Stephen King, The Shining (Doubleday , 1977)
- Marghanita Laski, The Victorian Chaise-longue (Cresset, 1953)
- J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Uncle Silas (Richard Bentley, 1864)
- Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (Walker, 1970; Poland 1961)
- Doris Lessing, The Memoirs of a Survivor (Octagon, 1974)
- David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus (Methuen , 1920)
- Ken MacLeod, The Night Sessions (Orbit, 2008)
- Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black (Holt, 2005)
- Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1954)
- Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer (Hurst, Robinson, 1820)
- Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy (Picador, 1992)
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Knopf, 2006)
- Jed Mercurio, Ascent (Simon & Schuster, 2007)
- China Miéville, The Scar (Macmillan, 2002)
- Andrew Miller, Ingenious Pain (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997)
- Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (Lippincott, 1959)
- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (Sceptre, 2004)
- Michael Moorcock, Mother London (Secker & Warburg, 1988)
- William Morris, News from Nowhere, or An Epoch of Rest (Roberts Brothers, 1890)
- Toni Morrison, Beloved (Knopf, 1987)
- Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Knopf, 1997; Japan 1994-5)
- Vladimir Nabakov, Ada or Ador (McGraw Hill, 1969)
- Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife (MacAdam/Cage, 2003)
- Larry Niven, Ringworld (Ballantine, 1970)
- Jeff Noon, Vurt (Ringpull , 1993)
- Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman (MacGibbon & Kee, 1967)
- Ben Okri, The Famished Road (Jonathan Cape, 1991)
- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club (Henry Holt, 1996)
- Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey (T. Hookham Jr./Baldwin, Craddock & Joy, 1818)
- Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan (Eyre & Spottiswoode , 1946)
- John Cowper Powys, A Glastonbury Romance (The Bodley Head, 1932)
- Christopher Priest, The Prestige (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 1995)
- François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel (1534)
- Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (G.G. and J. Robinson, 1794)
- Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space (Gollancz, 2000)
- Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt (Bantam, 2002)
- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Bloomsbury, 1997)
- Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (Viking, 1989)
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince (Reynal and Hitchcock, 1943)
- José Saramago, Blindness (The Harvill Press, 1997; Portugal 1995)
- Will Self, How the Dead Live (Bloomsbury, 2000)
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Lackington Hughes, 1818)
- Dan Simmons, Hyperion (Doubleday Foundation, 1989)
- Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward (HarperCollins, 1994)
- Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (Methuen, 1937)
- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra, 1992)
- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (George Munro, 1886)
- Bram Stoker, Dracula (Constable , 1897)
- Rupert Thomson, The Insult (Knopf, 1996)
- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Webster , 1889)
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan (Dell, 1959)
- Robert Walser, Institute Benjamenta (Serpent's Tail, 1999; Germany 1909)
- Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes (Chatto & Windus, 1926)
- Sarah Waters, Affinity (Virago, 1999)
- H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (Henry Holt, 1895)
- H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (Heinemann, 1898)
- T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone (Collins, 1938)
- Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun (1980-1983)
- John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids (Doubleday, 1951)
- John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos (Michael Joseph, 1957)
- Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (Dutton, 1924)
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