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science fiction love objects: books

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for years students and friends have been asking me to recommend a reading list of science fiction books and films. for some reason i've been hesitant to do that. I haven't wanted to impose my taste on others. so i've decided to provide a list of the sf novels that had the biggest impact on my thinking and also gave me the most artistic pleasure. It's a snob list. i don't go in for pulp fiction much. there are books that i enjoyed a lot, or admired, that i didn't include because i either got hung up on the ideas or the writing. THE books ON THE LIST BELOW ARE THE ONES that i either have reread or hope to. it should go without saying that there are many books that i haven't read yet and would like to. some of them may end up on the list later -- and some of them i'll never get to, not for lack of wanting to. some others haven't been translated into english, so i haven't included them.

  1. A Case of Conscience (James Blish)

  2. Air, Have not Have (Geoff Ryman)

  3. Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie)

  4. The Black Cloud (Fred Hoyle)

  5. Blood Music (Greg Bear)

  6. The Book of the New Sun (Gene Wolfe)

  7. Bring the Jubilee (Ward More)

  8. Cat’s Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)

  9. Clay’s Ark (Octavia Butler)

  10. Crash (J.G. Ballard)

  11. The Day of the Oprichnik (Viktor Pelevin)

  12. The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin)

  13. Dr. Bloodmoney (Philip K. Dick)

  14. The Broken Earth (all three books in the trilogy) (N.K. Jemisin)

  15. Earth Abides (George R. Stewart)

  16. Embassytown (China Mieville)

  17. The Embedding (Ian Watson)

  18. The Female Man (Joanna Russ)

  19. The Forever War (Joe Haldeman)

  20. The Futurological Congress (Stanislaw Lem)

  21. A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge)

  22. Fools (Pat Cadigan)

  23. The Gas (Charles Platt)

  24. Hard to Be a God (Boris and Arkady Strugatksy)

  25. The Heart of a Dog (Mikhail Bulgakov)

  26. High Rise (J.G. Ballard)

  27. His Master’s Voice (Stanislaw Lem)

  28. The Invincible (Stanislaw Lem)

  29. Last and First Men (Olaf Stapledon)

  30. Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K. Le Guin)

  31. The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin)

  32. Lexicon (Max Barry)

  33. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick)

  34. A Maze of Death (Philip K. Dick)

  35. Miracle Visitors (Ian Watson)

  36. Monday Begins on Saturday (Boris and Arkady Strugatsky)

  37. Neuromancer (William Gibson)

  38. Non Stop (Brian Aldiss)

  39. Perdido Street Station (China Mieville)

  40. Pollen (Jeff Noon)

  41. Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)

  42. Riddley Walker (Rusell Hoban)

  43. Ring of Swords (Eleanor Arnason)

  44. Roadside Picnic (Boris and Arkady Strugatsky)

  45. Sarah Canary (Karen Joy Fowler)

  46. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick)

  47. The Scar (China Mieville)

  48. Shikasta (Doris Lessing)

  49. Sirius (Olaf Stapledon)

  50. Solaris (Stanislaw Lem)

  51. The Space Merchants (Frederick Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth)

  52. Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon)

  53. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester)

  54. Story of Your Life (Ted Chiang)

  55. The Time Machine (H.G. Wells)

  56. The Three Body problem (Liu Cixin)

  57. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (Philip K. Dick)

  58. Ubik (Philip K. Dick)

  59. Up The Walls of the World (James Tiptree Jr.)

  60. Vast (Linda Nagata)

  61. Vurt (Jeff Noon)

  62. The War with the Newts (Karel Capek)

  63. We (Evgeny Zamyatin)

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