Without further ado... Top Ten Novels

[Violanthe]

It has been over four months in the making, but at long last our Top Ten SF Novels list is done! I'd like, once again, to thank everyone who contributed their votes, opinions, and feedback to this project. I hope you will find that the final list was worth your while. If you're willing to do it all again, then I hope you'll stop by and vote for our newest list, the Top Ten SF Characters.

Even if you didn't get a chance to vote for the Top Ten Novels, we still welcome your opinions. What do you think of the list? Do you find it an accurate representation of SF greats? What would you add? What would you take away? Who got unfairly ignored? What books were ranked too high? Do you find this list predictable? Does it contain any surprises?

Top Ten Speculative Fiction Novels (or Trilogies) of All Time

1. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

3. 1984 by George Orwell

4. Dune by Frank Herbert

5. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

6. The Book of New Sun by Gene Wolfe

6. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

8. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

9. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

10. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. ****

If you're interested to see further results (books ranked 11-80), as well as reader commentary on this Top Ten, please feel free to check out the full article.

 

[e.Blackstar]

If the Book of the New Sun is the one I think it is, I don't agree with it's ranking. I really didn't like the style, and quit not too far in.
And Hitchhikers' should be higher...

 

[DGoeij]

I'm suprised that the Foundation series was only a trilogy, I thought I read much more books about it.

And I'm glad to find a top ten containing several books I've read (numbers 1, 3,4,5 and 9). I usually score quite low in the 'literature' section in both english and my own language.

But I haven't read the others (I could almost fill a library with books I wish to read), so I find it hard to judge the list as a whole, although I guess HHGttG wouldn't score much higher in my personal SF list. Hilarious is not the same as good SF, IMHO.

 

[Gothmog]

The 'Foundation' series was originally written as a Trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation) but more stories were added later.

 

[Violanthe]

From what I've heard about Gene Wolfe, people either love his style or hate it. I guess we had a lot of his fans voting for this list.