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Top 50 Science Fiction Books on Goodreads
-Ray Bradbury
Don't pack up your dinosaurs, fellow sci-fi readers. You're among friends here.
When we set out to uncover the top science fiction books on Goodreads, our journey—searching through hundreds of books and thousands of ratings and reviews—was a spacewalk down memory lane, from revisiting the sci-fi heroes we grew up with, like young brainiac Ender and hapless (and homeless) Arthur Dent, to returning to beloved worlds created by Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Octavia Butler, and many more.
The bar needed to be high. Every book on our list has at least a four-star average rating from Goodreads members. Unfortunately, this means that dinosaur king himself Michael Crichton failed to make the cut, along with other big names in the genre like Kim Stanley Robinson, William Gibson, and H.G. Wells. But while some classics may be missing, recent favorites from Emily St. John Mandel, Nnedi Okorafor, and Pierce Brown round out the list.
Without further ado, let's boldly go where many readers have gone before. Tell us how many of the top 50 sci-fi books you've read in the comments!
How many have you read? Tell us in the comments!
Check out complete coverage of Sci-Fi & Fantasy Week:
The New Frontier of Science Fiction
The Most Anticipated Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Top 50 Science Fiction Books on Goodreads
Check out complete coverage of Sci-Fi & Fantasy Week:
The New Frontier of Science Fiction
The Most Anticipated Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Top 50 Science Fiction Books on Goodreads
Comments Showing 51-100 of 934 (934 new)
message 51:
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Donna
(new)
Aug 20, 2018 09:15AM
I've read 21 of the 50, and found a couple more I would like to read. I also thank GoodReads for giving SF it's on list. If you like alien worlds, rockets, and space opera - it does NOT mean you like vampires, witches, and werewolves!
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30 read with one currently reading... I was a bit astonished by that, but then I’m old... LolGood list, although I agree with others that there a few glaring omissions... still, fun to delve back through and remember some of these great stories...
It is an interesting list, while not exactly the top 50 I’d pick there are some very good titles listed here. I’ve been reading Sci-Fi since back in the 60’s and as such witnessed firsthand much of the “golden age”, well before science fiction was combined with fantasy as a genre. Of the books listed I have read the following:1984, 2001, Ancillary Sword, Binti, Cat’s Cradle, Childhoods End, Contact, Dune, Ender’s Game, Foundation (well the entire trilogy), Hyperion, I, Robot, Slaughter-House-Five, Snow Crash, Starship Troopers, The Diamond Age, The Disposed, The Forever War, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Martian, The Martian Chronicles, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Mode in Gods Eye, an Wool.
So roughly half of the 50 books listed. Humm, I guess I need to get busy reading. LOL
11, with several more on the "need to read" list. One notable omission is "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller. One of the all time great mashups of post-apocalyptic and medieval fiction.
17. Like Candace, above, I think counting Dune, Messiah, Children of, God Emperor of, Heretics, and Chapterhouse as one book is perhaps a bit harsh. same with the (somewhat briefer) Old Man's War.
I have read 13 on this list, and will now target the remaining 37.
I'm always in favor of any list of "classics" in literature, music or anything else because it invariably ignites a debate as to relative merit but also introduces old classics to new readers. I'm in favor of GR doing this as well with one caveat mentioned by Fabi as well as several others: if you leave a significant number of the acknowledged classics off the list, your list remains merely an early draft or a list of "kind of, sort of" classics. Ersatz is the German term for it. There are lots of Top 50 lists compiled by SF writers and we wouldn't mind at all if you borrowed from them to get started.
I've read 4 which is pretty good considering this is not my most loved genre.
Have only read 8 of these. Have lot to read.
Science fiction is my go-to read since forever. I've read 39 of these. Glad to see some current offerings in the mix.
15 for sure ... and a couple more long long time ago, not sure about...
Bimugdha wrote: "Paul wrote: "Dune is one of the best books ever."please give me a reading order of the DUNE series :("
Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse Dune.
I've read 27 of these books. Dune was my favorite. There are a lot of SF books not on this list that are much better than some of these over-rated selections. Just my opinion. Have a great day my fellow bookworms!
I've read 22 of these over the last 4 years, and another 10 in the years before that. Need to reread or read for the first time the res on this list!
I've read 13 of these, with The Sparrow being my favorite.
I've only read 4 of these so far, but many more are on my TBR!
N.E.C.C. wrote: "Only 6. The Martian and Ready Player One among my favourites."Both great... good choices!
I've read 10 with a few want to reads-too bad "A Canticle for Liebowitz" didn't make it either
I have read 12 on this list, but most when I was a teenager. I added a couple to my list that looked good.
Anyone want to recommend one of the lesser known books from the list?
Paul wrote: "Dune is one of the best books ever."I know! It's one of my absolute favorites. Especially the multicast audiobook edition.
I've read 27. Of the rest, I'm most intrigued by "The Three-Body Problem" so it's now on my Want-to-Read list.
Read half the list, I guess if you hang around long enough.....
I have read seven from this list. Blake Crouch is a new favorite.
35, with a couple I want to read and a couple I have never finished.
Bimugdha wrote: "Paul wrote: "Dune is one of the best books ever."please give me a reading order of the DUNE series :("
I'd recommend reading Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune. Then you can stop. If you want to continue, the other 3 books are good, but are different story lines and very different from the first 3.
Adam wrote: "I've read three. 11/22/63, Dark Matter and Ready Player One. All three I HIGHLY recommend. I can't wait to get into the others on this list!" I've read the EXACT same three and agree with your recommendation!
Rich wrote: "Anyone want to recommend one of the lesser known books from the list?"I'd recommend all of them. However, for the classics, "Foundation" is, well, foundational. (As is "I, Robot".) For the moderns, I'd pick Station 11.
I've read 6 of these: -The Martian Chronicles
-The Martian
-Red Rising
-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
-Ready Player One
-Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Honestly, only ones I thoroughly enjoyed were the Martian and Ready Player One. DADoES wasn't terrible, either. I read that one for a book club. But the Martian Chronicles? Forced on me by school. It was terrible. Red Rising was terrible. I don't understand the vast fandom for Hitchhiker's Guide, which I found passable but kind of forgettable. I'm wondering if that means the ones on this list that are on my TBR aren't very good, either :\
Rich wrote: "Anyone want to recommend one of the lesser known books from the list?"That’s a great question and really hard, as I’m not sure how we’d all define lesser known... but I would agree that while Dune, Hyperion and Hitch-hikers Guide are all great (as are The Martian and Ready Player One- the books, not the movies, people! Lol) , they’re pretty well known. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is perhaps less so and is wonderful...that would be my recommendation.
I've read 16 from your list and missing some that did not make your list. I haven't liked all 16 but they're memorable. I might have read another one but can't remember so didn't mark it; I obviously didn't like it. I want to read Cloud Atlas and The Martian but they're down on my list of other books waiting.
23 from the list; a couple others I can't remember if I read
Not one Jack Chalker book on this list. Read Midnight At The Well of Souls... bet you can't read just one.
I have read 8 that are on this list. The ones I want to read is at least twice that. I so want to read classics and works from new authors.I will be reading until my last breath.
I dislike the label Sci-Fi and don't like Science Fiction lumped in with Fantasy. And I really hate how many places also toss in Horror -- an entirely different thing. Each genre has its own definition. Being a fan of one does not make one a fan of the other. I have limited fondness for fantasy and I've noticed that the fantasy I like has elements of science as well.
I've read 12, and another 7 are in my "gotta get around to reading these" stack. I've also got about 20 titles that I think should be in this list, including most of the H.G. Wells novels; Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land; several Asimov novels that I rank above I, Robot and Foundation; Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders (especially the early novels); and the original Battlestar Galactica novelizations (they retain a lot of depth of the story that NBC axed from what was actually filmed.)In some ways, it's nice to see this list, and in some ways it's depressing. I look at the lack of H.G. Wells and can't help wondering if the reason is in the same vein of that student posting on a question board a few years ago that wanted to know if there was a video of a Charles Dickens book (for an English assignment) to watch because late 19th-Century English was "too hard to read." (If today's students can't even handle 19th C writing, however are they going to understand the Constitution?)
I've read 30. Don't know what I would delete but my additions would be:A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.
Roadside Picnic, Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky
Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
