Tuesday, July 28, 2009

SciFi and Fantasy everyone must read

I was looking for reading lists because it's been years since I worked in a bookstore and I have no idea what's good or bad and what's out there, and I don't think I have a hundred books laying around that I haven't read yet, and I found this one from the Guardian, which is more than the allotted ones I'm to read, but a good place to start to find ones that come recommended. The ones I've read will be bolded, but I don't think there's many of them:


  • Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
  • Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
  • Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951) (tried to read this ages ago and it was... dry? Too difficult? I don't know, I was, like, eleven or twelve, and I know I didn't like it, and I haven't picked it up since.)
  • Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
  • Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
  • Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
  • J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
  • J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)
  • J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)
  • Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
  • Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
  • Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
  • Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
  • Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
  • Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
  • William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
  • Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
  • Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
  • Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
  • Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)
  • Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
  • Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
  • Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
  • Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
  • Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
  • William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
  • Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
  • Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
  • Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
  • Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
  • Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
  • Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
  • Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
  • Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
  • Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
  • Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
  • GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
  • Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
  • Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
  • Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
  • Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000) (this one comes very highly recommended from lots of friends)
  • Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
  • Samuel R Delany: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
  • Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
  • Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
  • Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
  • Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
  • Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
  • John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
  • Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
  • Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
  • William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
  • Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
  • William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
  • Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
  • M John Harrison: Light (2002)
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
  • Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
  • Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
  • Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
  • Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
  • James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
  • Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
  • Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
  • Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
  • Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
  • Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
  • PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
  • Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
  • Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
  • Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
  • Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
  • Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
  • Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
  • CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56) (Book 1 at least)
  • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
  • Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
  • Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)
  • Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
  • Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
  • MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)
  • David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
  • Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
  • Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
  • Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
  • Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
  • Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
  • Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
  • Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
  • Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
  • China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
  • Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
  • Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
  • David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
  • Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
  • William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
  • Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
  • Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
  • Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
  • Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)
  • Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
  • Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
  • Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
  • Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
  • George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
  • Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
  • Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
  • Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
  • Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
  • John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
  • Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) (A few of them)
  • Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
  • Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000) (Didn't like the feel or the tone of the first one, and haven't gone back to it.)
  • François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
  • Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
  • Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
  • Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
  • JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
  • Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
  • Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
  • Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
  • Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
  • José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
  • Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
  • Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
  • Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
  • Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
  • Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
  • Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
  • Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
  • Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
  • JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
  • JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
  • Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
  • Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
  • Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
  • Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
  • Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
  • Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
  • HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
  • HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
  • TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
  • Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
  • Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
  • Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
  • John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
  • John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
  • Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

  • You know, alot of the ones I have read, I don't remember that much of. Maybe I'll go back and try again...

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