1000 Novels Everyone Must Read

The Guardian is publishing lists of novels everyone should read, and here are their science fiction/fantasy selections:


Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
Brian W Aldiss - Non-Stop (1958)
Isaac Asimov - Foundation (1951)
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin (2000)
Paul Auster - In the Country of Lost Things (1987)
JG Ballard - The Drowned World (1962)
JG Ballard - Crash (1973)
JG 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)
Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination (1956)
Poppy Z Brite - Lost Souls (1992)
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)
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)
Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
GK Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
Arthur C Clarke - Childhood's End (1953)
Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel (2004)
Michael G Coney - Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
Douglas Copeland - Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
Mark Danielewski - House of Leaves (2000)
Marle Darrieussecq - Pig Tales (1996)
Samuel R Delaney - The Enstein Intersection (1967)
Philip K Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Philip K Dick - The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum (1968)
Michael 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)
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 Chase-longue (1953)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - Uncle Silas (1864)
Ursula Le Guin - The Earthsea series (1968-1990)
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris (1961)
Doris Lessing - Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
David Lindsay - A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
Ken McLeod - The Night Sessions (2008)
C S Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)
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)
Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club (1996)
Thomas Love Peacock - Nightmare Abbey (1818)
Mervyn Peake - Titus Groan (1946)
John Cowper Powys - A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
Terry Pratchett - The Discworld series (1983-)
Christopher Priest - The Prestige (1995)
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
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)
Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses (1988)
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)
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)
Gene Wolfe - The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
John Wyndham - Day of the Triffids (1951)
John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
Yevgeny Zamyatin - We (1924)


As many people have already pointed out, many of these titles are not SFF. But what the heck, right!?!


Every time lists like this one appear, I realize that I'm not as well-read as I'd like. In addition, I realize that many books that critics adore put me right to sleep and were a waste of my time. Still, I take heart from the fact that I agree with many of these selections. . .:-)