The 10 sci-fi/fantasy books that mean the most to me

[Impenitent]

I had forgotten this thread so I'm grateful you drew it to the top, Elengil. I reread it all, and I'm using it as a recommendation list.

I still have not completed my list; I'm up to 8. There are many contenders but I'm making a serious attempt at selecting the books that really packed a wallop, the ones that influenced my thinking, my interest and perspective on the world - my character, really.

I will get back to it.

Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Tapatalk

[Inanna]

I think I’m Almost done with my List...

[Inanna]

And reading back, I see I did post it!

[Beorhtnoth]

I began reading the replies, then realised other people’s choices might influence me.
So this is the list of the first 10 books that came to mind, which is as good an indicator as any of their importance at that moment.
In no particular order *

1 Brave New World
2 The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
3 Watership Down
4 Flowers For Algernon
5 The Forever War
6 The Stainless Steel Rat
7 The Saga of the Pliocene Exiles **
8 A Wizard of Earthsea
9 Day of the Triffids
10 Behold the Man

* Tolkien, if included, would top the list, and I've only included one book from each author except ** Julian May

[Impenitent]

Ooooh! Thank you Beorhtnoth! I still have 2 outstanding, plus numerous honourable mentions:

Already listed in a preceding post, in the chronological order in which I encountered them, not necessarily reflecting their influence or importance to me:
A Wrinkle in Time (L'Engle)
The Narnia books (CS Lewis), specifically The Magician's Nephew
Out of the Silent Planet (CS Lewis) and the other two in his space trilogy.
The Chrysalids (John Wyndham) - and also Day of the Triffids, but mostly the first
The Ship Who Sang (Anne McCaffrey)
The Hobbit, swiftly followed by Lord of the Rings
The Well at the World's End (William Morris)
Dune (Frank Herbert), and the two following in the original trilogy

Additional (including honourable mentions, not in any order):
Brave New World (Huxley)
Vorkosigan Saga (Huxley)
The Broken Earth series (NK Jemisin)
A Door Into Ocean (Joan Slonczewski)
Disc World (Terry Pratchett)
Eon and Eona *two separate titles (Alison Goodman)
The Expanse series (James SA Corey)
The Dispossessed & The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Le Guin)
Windhome (Kristin Landon) - I have read it only once, but it moved me deeply and I think I will read it again when the impact of her death does not permeate the reading. I don't know whether it is the book itself that has touched me so, or whether it is the knowledge that this has become Prim's magnum opus. Perhaps her next book may have overshadowed this one but we will never know.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[elengil]

wut? why??

[Inanna]

Prim.

I can’t re-read it either, Imp.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I can read the Hidden World trilogy but not Windhome. I'm not quite sure why.

[elengil]

[scirocco]

I’m surprised no-one’s mentioned Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber series (sometimes referred to as the Chronicles of Amber).

I honestly think that these books rival Tolkien for sheer inventive freshness at the time they came out. The magical motifs of the Trumps and the Pattern are those kind of strokes of imaginative genius on a par with that of the Ring.

I’ve owned my trashy pulp paperback copies since the ‘80’s and I re-read them every couple of years or so (after I stick the loose pages back in and sellotape the covers back on.)

So that’s my top 10!

[Jude]

Grrr. My library doesn't have them.

So is "My Name is Legion" the first in the series?

[Maria]

I picked up the Amber series used, not long after I got into audio books but have never actually read them. Maybe I should.....

[scirocco]

So is "My Name is Legion" the first in the series?

No, the first one is Nine Princes. I just happened to have My Name is Legion and This Immortal on the shelf next to them. Both are worth reading but the first four Amber novels proper (Nine Princes to The Hand of Oberon) are the pinnacle of Zelazny’s work.

Well worth buying secondhand - there must be millions of old copies around (if they haven’t all fallen apart).

[Alatar]

Doesn't look to be part of the series Jude:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Amber

[narya]

Hi, my name is Narya, and my life has become unmanageable. Well, where books are concerned. I've read about 200 books (some more than once) in the past 2 years since I retired and discovered Libby, and was able to partially slake my pent-up thirst for books. But every time someone mentions a great book to read, I add it to my to-read list, which now has over 400 books on it. I just can't keep up with my thirst!

There is no way I could trim my recommendation list down to 10 books. The Expanse series alone has 9 novels plus 8 novellas. And my tastes have changed over the years, so books I read and re-read in my younger days, I probably wouldn't pick up to read now. I have enjoyed fantasy and historic fiction in the past, but my favorites now are space operas with thoughtful dialog, vivid descriptions, and hard science. (Why yes, I do research rocket science on the internet for fun, doesn't everyone?) Also, I prefer audio books, which I can listen to while going about my day doing other things. That's how I can read an average of two books per week. But most of the older classics are not available in Libby in audio format. My eyeballs can't take more than about an hour per day of text reading. The other issue I have with older classics is how gender and race are handled. I grew up with all male (and white) heroes in most of my early speculative fiction reading because that was all there was available in the 60s and 70s. Even the few women authors (like Andre Norton) wrote true to the male-dominated genre of her time. Now there is far more diversity in speculative fiction, and I don't really want to go back to the old norms. Right now, I'm struggling to get through Delany's "Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand", written in 1984, and am coming to realize that for him (the author), women are the inscrutable aliens. Or, as he often calls them, b****s.

The best I can offer is a list of the speculative fiction authors I've read in the past two years and want to see more of, in no particular order:

1. Daniel Abraham (writes fantasy alone, and sci fi with Ty Franck under the pen name James S.A. Corey)
2. Cory Doctorow
3. Martha Wells
4. Becky Chambers
5. John Scalzi
6. Andy Weir
7. Nnedi Okorafor
8. NK Jemisin
9. Ann Leckie
10. Alfred Bester (very old school, but inspiration for later authors)
11. Katherine Addison
12. Charles Yu

[Impenitent]

Eight of those writers are also on my list; the other 4 I don't know but I'll rectify that.

[Snowdog]

The 10 sci-fi/fantasy books/book series that mean the most to me..... Hmm...

• Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Dune by Frank Herbert (1st 3 books)
• The Black Company Series by Glen Cook
• 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke
• The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
• The Foundation Trilogy by Issac Asimov
• Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
• 1984 by George Orwell
• War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Honorable mentions are The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. & Christopher Tolkien, and The Expanse Series by James S. A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). I have more of these to read, but I like it, and I liked the TV series as well.

[Alatar]

I'm going to go from memory, because I guess the ones I remember best are the ones that impacted me most. Not necessarily the BEST books I've read, but the ones that I remembered most fondly. LotR excepted of course.

Watership Down - Richard Adams
Duncton Wood - William Horwood
The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Stephen Donaldson
Dune - Frank Herbert
Wilt - Tom Sharpe (you had to be that age...)
The Guns of Navarone - Alistair Maclean
The Jeeves series - P.G. Wodehouse
The Farseer/Liveship/Tawny Man Series - Robin Hobb
The Saga of the Exiles - Julian May

Hmm. Its a pretty mixed bag isn't it?

So 11 years later I'm realising a bunch of these are not SciFi or Fantasy.

Even if we allow Watership Down and Duncton Wood as "Fantasy" which is a stretch, I can't explain away Wilt, Guns of Navarone or Jeeves.

If I was to go strictly SciFi and Fantasy I think we're looking more like this:

The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
The Silmarillion
The Foundation trilogy
The Expanse Series
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (First two, still haven't read the Final Chronicles)
Fitz and the Fool series (Assassins Trilogy, Liveship Traders, Rain Wilds, Tawny Man, Fitz and Fool)
Magician/Silverthorn/Darkness at Sethanon (Never read the later books)
Empire Trilogy (Magician series from the Kelewan POV)
Babylon 5 tie in novels PsiCorps Trilogy and Tecnomage Trilogy

[narya]

If anything, my book mania has gotten even more unmanageable in the year or so since I wrote that post above. I managed to read over 100 books in 2023, and 110 so far in 2024. I've joined 8 book clubs, which is both enriching (as they are choosing books I wouldn't have chosen) and frustrating (as my wanna-read list in Libby has grown to 784 books at last count).

More to add to my list of speculative authors that I've read this year, and would like to read more of. I've been leaning more towards hard sci fi and even cyber punk, but appreciate when there's space opera mixed in. In no particular order:
13. Walter Jon Williams
14. Ted Chiang
15. Daniel Suarez
16. Adrian Tchikovsky
17. Megan O'Keefe
18. Joe Haldeman
19. Mur Lafferty
20. Nick Harkaway
21. Ursula LeGuin
22. Richard Morgan