57 thoughts on “124 Sci Fi and Fantasy Novels Everyone Must Read! the Meme”

1. I read more of them then I thought I would’ve when I first started reading the list:

   17. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
   25. Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
   46. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
   49. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) [loved this book]
   63. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
   64. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
   71. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
   73. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
   84. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
   85. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995) [loved this book]
   87. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
   101. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
   106. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
   110. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
   111. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
   113. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)

2. I haven’t read all that many either, but I love how varied the list is! And there are lots and lots I plan on reading too.

3. there’s definitely some strange stuff he’s considering sci-fi/fantasy . . . “Beloved”???, “Lord of the Flies”??? I always considered those both more morality plays or social consciousness or something. I’m assuming he’s included “A Clockwork Orange” because at the time it was set in the future, but still, more of a social conciousness thing to me.

   I’m with Janet tho there were many on the list that i HAVE read and more that are floating around the house that i haven’t read YET. ^_^ There are quite a few that i consider classic there but no Jules Verne?

4. That was fun…both to read and to do. My pathetic results are here.

5. oh yeah, there are 39 that i HAVE read over the years and 15 that are floating around the house. Of course of the 39 that i’ve read several of them we soooo long ago and/or i didn’t care for them; that i’d be hard-pressed to give you a synopsis. ^_^

   A lot of the classic stuff i read in high school (and we won’t discuss how long ago that was, ^_^) and i gave up on Focalt’s Pendulum and A Canticle for Leibowitz several times. sigh, i have NO stamina, anyhoo, i’ll go away now

6. Yeah, weird list. I’ve read 14 books from the list and have another 9 of them on the bookcase, queued for reading (the neverending queue.) Interesting though. VERY interesting to see how many very recently written books make the cut.

7. I would also question the SF/Fantasy labels, but fun nonetheless! Have completed it on my blog too.

8. And my link now goes there…

9. I’ve posted my list.

10. What? You haven’t read Dune… or Ringworld… or Harry Potter!!! Boy, it’s a good thing you have all those challenges coming up!

    I also want to throw in my 2 cents for China Mieville’s New Crobuzon series, as well as the absolutely amazing Book of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe. Some good reading there.

11. I love these lists because one gets to complain about them and peruse them and measure yourself up against them and dismiss them all at once. Fun! However, a couple of quick questions:

    Why China Mieville’s THE SCAR instead of PERDIDO STREET STATION?

    Add M. John Harrison’s A STORM OF WINGS, Jack Vance’s THE DEMON PRINCES, and Ursual LeGuin’s THE LATHE OF HEAVEN! Also, perhaps Stephen King’s THE GUNSLINGER, and Guy Gavriel Kay’s THE FIONAVAR TAPESTRY?

12. Phil: I agree, part of the fun is looking at the list and saying, “What?, why that one?”. At least this list seems pretty eclectic as far as genre lists go. Nice to see novels from all over the time spectrum.

    Rusty: I just picked up a copy of Ringworld recently, hence its inclusion in the italicized list. And every year I promise myself I’m going to read Dune but have yet to do so. Never fear though, this will be the year! 😉 As far as Harry Potter…not gonna happen. Several people can tell you of my ‘popularity’ aversion to the little magical boy.

    I’ll be reading the New Sun books by Wolfe soon as I joined an online Gene Wolfe reading club as a way of motivating myself to get to them. I love Wolfe and still haven’t read these.

    Pussreboots: I’ll add it!

    Stormfilled: Yes, quite a bit of gothic and horror stuff in here for a sci fi, fantasy list. Ha! I’ll get your link up.

    Stacey: This may be my favorite of these kind of lists thus far simply because it is weird. The variety interests me a great deal.

    SG: 39?!?! You rock! Yep, an odd list as far as categorization goes, but maybe the folks at the Guardian are not as label conscious as the rest of us? Either way, fun list.

    Debi: I enjoyed it too. I’ll get your link up.

    Nymeth: There are several I do want to read as well, and not because they are on the list but simply because I’ve wanted to read them for a long time.

    Janet: You have read a lot. More than me! I’m looking forward to getting to Wind Up Bird Chronicle, eventually.

13. And oh – here’s the link to my blogpost.

14. I think I’ve read about three!

    Seriously? No Starship Troopers or Slaughterhouse 5?

15. Stuart: Don’t know what to say! The lack of any Tolkien on this list disturbs me as well.

    Phil: Gotcha, thanks.

16. Interesting list. Since when is Chesterton considered sci fi?

    I’ve read 10 of which 9 are all oldies

    Isaac Asimov: Foundation
    Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars
    William Golding: Lord of the Flies
    Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land
    Frank Herbert: Dune
    Larry Niven: Ringworld
    JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
    HG Wells: The War of the Worlds
    HG Wells: The Time Machine
    TH White: The Sword in the Stone

    Back in the day I read all of the dune series, all of burroughs and niven.

    Will have to expand my repertoire and add a sci fi challenge to go along with my other challenges. 🙂

17. Good news! Not!

    The list has been updated to 149 titles, making me even more under-read.

18. John: Oh great, that means I am more under-read as well.

    Robin: I have read several, but not all, of the Burroughs Mars books, but I plan on getting back to them someday. I am looking forward to getting into more Niven. I’ve really enjoyed everything that I’ve read of his so far and it is past time I get into the Ringworld stuff.

19. Argh! I really just hate lists like these. ” Must Reads ” blah! Who are they and what kind of criteria did they use to come up with the list? It’s weird I enjoy year end lists where everyone shares there reading accomplishments and the books they liked the best. Those kind of posts are so much fun in compaison to these kinds of must read lists. I realize that may seem like a small difference but it’s a big one to me. I will say I’ve read 11 of the books above. The lack of JRR Tolkien, George RR Martin, and Robert E Howard are inexcuseable to me and thus leads me to dismiss the silliness of the list above altogether.

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21. I’ve posted this one on my blog. 🙂

    It’s a slightly odd list. I haven’t read that many of them, but was surprised at the number I had read, considering the oddness of the list…

    Have to agree with Jeff, the lack of certain authors/works and the inclusion of others is rather curious, as is generally the case with these lists.

22. well, obviously I am out of this one lol.. I’ve read 2 ! Harry Potter and Dracula and part of Jonathan Strange.. if some of those are fantasy I’ve sure never heard of them.

23. I thought for sure I wouldn’t have read any of these so I was pretty happy knowing I’d read 11 from the list! I think I need to hang on to this list for when I’m thinking of what to read for the Once Upon a Time challenge 🙂

24. I’ve read 13. More than I thought I would. (Too bad movies don’t count…) You really should read Canticle for Leibowitz. It’s a brilliant book.

25. Fun exercise Carl. I have read more than I expected – 34. My post is here .

26. I was surprised by the list too. Not as Sci-fi I as I thought it was going to be. I’ve only read 10 of the books listed and I can think of 50 more sci-fi classics that should be on there rather then books like Lord of the Flies. Why is Ender’s Game not listed?

27. I was pretty surprised that you haven’t read Douglas Adams. Seems to me he would be right up your alley! I was also surprised by the list. Several of those books don’t really sound like they should be on the list, but I guess that is why I am not getting paid the big bucks to make the lists! I will have to count after and see where I stand!

28. Kailana: He probably would be but nope, never have tried his stuff. One reluctance I have is that, when the film came out, I later found out that the love interest in the film is not in the books and being the hopeless romantic that I am I was disappointed by that. But more than anything he is just one of many authors I have yet to get to.

    Carrie: I would imagine that Orson Scott Card’s more recent controversial statements is probably why he got the snub. I would have to think that this list is more political, and possibly more English leaning, than a more objective list would be.

    Moo: 34! That’s great. I’ll get your list posted.

    Melissa: I bought a really cool old paperback of Canticle at a bookstore that was going out of business last year and I do plan to get to it.

    Iliana: I was thinking the same thing, that there are fantasy books on this list that I would like to get to.

    Deslily: I thought for some reason you had read Frankenstein as well. Not sure why I thought that.

    Quixotic: It is curious..and the more I think of it the more I have to think there are very purposeful reason for leaving those people off that has nothing to do with the quality of their books. Rowling but no Tolkien? Come on now!

    Jeff: I was thinking about Howard, but then I think his best stuff is his Conan stuff, or at least his more well known, and none of them are novels, are they? Maybe novellas? That is why I would think he wouldn’t make this list. I just think these things are fun for what they are but I certainly don’t take any stock in them. It makes for interesting book discussion which is honestly the reason I like them so much, and like year end lists, they all generally give me reminders of books I would like to read. Not because some said they are ‘must reads’ so much as that they’ve been on my radar for a long time and I’ve forgotten about them.

29. no.. I read the Historian.

30. Me again. I was reading Debi’s version of this list and I noticed Flowers for Algernon, so I had to come back and see if you had read that book. You haven’t! You really should, and if you can find the movie, watch it! I really like that book! Anyway, I decided to count and I have read 13. I don’t feel unread by having that number, though, because there are many books on that list that don’t interest me in the slightest!

31. Oh, and, now I have to reread Douglas Adam’s because I apparently can’t remember the differences between the book and the movie anymore…

32. Wow, Carl. I’m not very well read in this genre either! Of course there are plenty of books I would have placed on this list that aren’t there, but to each his own.

    I am shocked you made it through middle and high school without being forced to read Lord of the Flies. I remember not liking it at all, and will never return to it. I am glad you plan on reading T. H. White, who has long been one of my favorite authors. I have very fond, clear memories, of reading Mistress Masham’s Repose at the age of twelve, and being transported in a wonderful new way that influenced my reading life greatly. Plus it had a map, which I find myself attracted to in books to this day.

    Edgar Rice Burroughs is another of my favorites and an author who greatly influenced my reading preferences at a young age. I regularly recommend the Mars series to young people, but find few takers. I had a student some years ago who loved to read – a rare thing in my field – and he got hooked on this series. I remember this as one of the high points in my career.

    Thanks – it was fun to look at this and remember books I read long ago and the effect they had on me at the time.

33. That is a highlight in my opinion, influencing someone in the next generation to pick up and fall in love with ERB’s Mars series. Very cool. I’ve read the first 3 (and have the 4th, Thuvia of Mars queued up) and I just loved them. So richly entertaining and filled with the kind of nostalgia and wonder that you just cannot put a value to.

    I managed to get through middle school and high school without reading a lot of the books that others seem to have read. That being said, I fell in love with Poe through middle school reading. Fell in love with Shakespeare through high school reading, and did some other great reading that still sticks with me today. Tale of Two Cities by Dickens! Wow! That was a great experience as a junior in high school.

34. I’m going to do this on my blog…I’ve read some, not nearly enough to qualify as well-read according to this list! – and like you, have some on my TBR pile. I’ll let you know when I’ve posted….thanks for giving this to us, Carl, it’s food for thought and maybe a rousing debate on how Dracula is considered sf! no way!!!

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36. PS through the link to SF signal link that you gave us (looking for the original list and post), I found BlackGate Publishing, and wow, it gives all kinds of posts and links to the SF and fantasy world, links to different genres with fantasy, books to read….yaay! thought you’d like to know that some of us would rather be online than doing boring things like Saturday chores…!! thanks for tempting me! I also have to say that the guy on SF Signal does say that he puts fantasy and sf together – like, if the author believed in angels, then it was sf. fantasy was only for what isn’t real. I still think this doesn’t answer Dracula, since no one including Stoker thought they were real or possible…so I still think it’s fantasy and not sf.

37. I didn’t find Dickens until I was 20, but then I dived in and read everything. I like literature from the era – Stendahl, Dumas, …ooops. Off subject – sorry.
    Have you read Spider Robinson? Have we talked about that before? I loved Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon.

38. I would encourage your readers to follow the link to the original article and read the list there because they have wonderful descriptions with the books. I loved this new list because it’s so varied and different. Many of the descriptions inspire me to track down copies of the book.

    I also liked that the list included literary novels of the fantastic. In fact, the list should be called The Best of Fantastic Literature, rather than SF & Fantasy.

    Here are the ones I’ve read:

    1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
    2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
    3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
    10. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
    11. Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)
    12. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
    17. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
    19. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
    20. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
    25. Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
    26. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
    28. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
    29. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953)
    31. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
    36. Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
    37. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
    38. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
    42. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
    44. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
    46. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
    47. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
    49. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
    50. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
    55. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
    63. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
    67. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
    76. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
    80. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
    81. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
    87. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
    88. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
    101. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
    107. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
    109. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
    113. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)
    114. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
    118. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
    119. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
    120. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
    122. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
    123. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
    124. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

39. Jim: It doesn’t surprise me at all that you have read so many of these. Had this list been truly a science fiction list I suspect you would have read many, many more! I started reading Ringworld this weekend.

    I too really like the variety of this list. I’m not really hung up on the title ‘science fiction and fantasy’ as we all know that this is something people get wrong more often than not. I think your idea of calling “Fantastic Literature” is right on target. This is a fun list, not because it is perfect or all-inclusive, but because of its variety.

    Qugrainne: I have not read Spider Robinson, though I do have the book Venerable Star that he wrote “with” Robert Heinlein on my shelf. I’ve read Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Story by Dickens along with some short stories. I don’t recall reading anything else. I count Tale as a favorite book though.

    Susan: Dracula isn’t real? Say it ain’t so!!! 😉 I think all of us would rather be online than doing Saturday chores. Or Sunday chores, or Monday chores…

    I cannot complain. Any list that has Dracula on it as a must read is an okay list by me!!!

40. For those of you who haven’t checked it out, the most updated list contains 149 novels which does address some of the previous errors, including rectifying the leaving out of Tolkien.

    You can see the latest list several places, but I’ll point you over to Maria’s post for the list.

41. I’ve read 22 (counting a couple of audiobooks).

    No “Screwtape Letters”? Or C.S. Lewis in general?

    Trivia: “Lolly Willowes” was the very first selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

42. Hmmm….Who made up this list anyway??? John Wyndham, but not The Chrysalids??? Kurt Vonnegut, but not Slaughterhouse-Five?? Not sure I like the choices!!

    That being said, I’m so completely UN-well read, that I’m afraid to post it!

43. my list herehttp://valentinasroom.blogspot.com/2009/01/must-read-sci-fi-and-fantasy-novels.html

    must be one of the worst…!!

44. Mine is Here!

45. My list will post up tomorrow and i’ve read 22 and own another 9 that i’ve not gotten to yet. I haven’t looked at the longer list but couldn’t believe tolkien wasn’t on the first list…isn’t The Guardian British?

46. i’m pretty light on that list too, just 18.

    as you say, they are very generous with what they include on that list!! anything that remotely approaches something resembling an imagination is plonked in this list.

    still, i guess it makes categorising things easier and the broader our beloved genres are allowed to become the better. ’cause if “good” writers can write sf then surely sf writers could be “good” too? 😉

47. My score is 37 based on books I’ve read, and I was pleased to see Only Forward getting a mention. I haven’t done this here but should we add half-points for favourite authors where the Guardian have listed the wrong book? I could then get an extra 2 points for Aldiss, Atwood, Coupland, Ishiguro.

    Also, I know there’s been plenty of comment on odd inclusions/exclusions but why Erewhon but no Gulliver?

48. And the movie of Flowers for Algernon is called “Charley”—enjoy…

49. Dana: Thanks!

    SF Gene: 37 is great! It would be interesting to look at favorite authors who are included but not ones favorite book. I certainly thought that of some of the people on this list.

    JP: I agree, anything that gets works like these out in front of people who haven’t read them is a good thing. I can add one more to my list since I just read Ringworld.

    Melanie: Yes, Tolkien not on the original list was a tragedy!

    Nymeth (and Melanie and Valentina): I’ll get your links added.

    Stephanie: Aw, fear not! Who can really say we are not well read? Especially as avid of readers as we are.

    Bob: I’m sort of surprised about Lewis as well. I am wondering if he is being considered unpopular now because of his religious beliefs?

50. I’ve done it too 🙂

51. I’ve only read 21 out of the 124 on this list. I’m not too well-read. 🙁

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53. I finally got around to doing this, link is here http://brideofthebookgod.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/a-meme-sci-fi-fantasy-novels-everyone-must-read/

54. Finally did it, here -> http://marineko.blogspot.com/2009/02/124-sci-fifantasy-must-reads.html

    13 out of 124. Pretty bad, but I have to admit that it’s more than I expected.

55. Catching up late as ever, my link is here: http://geraniumcatsbookshelf.blogspot.com/2009/03/what-do-you-mean-you-havent-read.html I made it to 66/124 but quibble about the choice of books (of course!) And goodness, I hadn’t noticed Lewis wasn’t there!

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57. Still on the top of my list for quite some years now… absolutely brilliant.

    15. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)

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