Everybody and their brother is doing the "which Significant SF books have you read?" thing today, so I might as well play along. The list is below, and just because I'm lazy, I've opted to strike out the ones I haven't read, rather than bolding the ones I have. It's less typing that way.
There are two things about this that are sort of striking: First, that while I may be the only ScienceBlogs person who regularly attends SF conventions, and yet, I've read fewer of these books than most of the other people who have responded. Second, that there really aren't any books on the unread list that I feel all that bad about not reading. I have a copy of Dhalgren, and I read enough of it to know that I don't care to finish it, and I may get to Cities in Flight one of these days, but really, I'm just not going to lose any sleep over not having read Starship Troopers, when there's so much new stuff that I'm sure I'll like better.
Life is just too short, you know?
Anyway, the list:
- The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
- Dune, Frank Herbert
- Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
- A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
- Neuromancer, William Gibson
- Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
- The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
- The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
- A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
- The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar ShirasCities in Flight, James Blish- The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
- Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison- The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany- Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
- Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
- The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
- The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
- Gateway, Frederik Pohl
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson- Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
- The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
- Little, Big, John Crowley
- Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
- The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
- Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
- More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer SmithOn the Beach, Nevil Shute- Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
- Ringworld, Larry Niven
- Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
- The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
- Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
- Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner- The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein- Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
- The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory BenfordTo Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
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Why in the world is the Shannara book on this list? As on of the major LOTR ripoffs?
I guess they're being a bit loose with the "S" in SF if LotR/Silmarillion/Mists of Avalon and the like are on the list.
Right, after tracking down the original list, I see that it's SF/Fantasy. No worries, then.
You ought to read Timescape
You should consider reading Cordwainer Smith. His fiction is very unique. "Rediscovery of Man" is a collection of short stories, too; if you don't like the first few, no problem in not finishing.
This went around LiveJournal a few months ago; here's my list--with bonus criticisms of the list and requests for the most significant books since 2002.
You probably would either like or be infuriated by Timescape. One of the things I liked about was that, on top of a decent plot and sense-of-wonder, it had what seemed to me like a reasonable depiction of the life of an experimental physicist. Like your laboratory blogs, it made me excited and curious about experimental details.
I concur that Benford's "Timescpae" is probably the unread one on your list that you would most enjoy, though the "spindizzy" equation in Blish's "Cities in Flight" will give you a kick.
It seems wrong to me to baldly list "most significant" without taking dates into account. That's why I list, for each decade and each century categories and sublists:
Executive Summary of the Decade
Major Books of the Decade
Major Films of this Decade
Other Key Dates and Stories of this Decade
Major Writers Born this Decade
Major Writers Died this Decade
Hotlinks to other Timeline pages of SF Chronology
Where to Go for More: 51 Useful Reference Books
An example being for 1930-1940
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/timeline1940.html
If one is considering "influence" then it is useful to look and influence from Science Fiction to "mundane" literature and vice versa, and between Science Fiction and inventions and scientific discoveries of the same time, and between science fiction and geopolitical context. For that matter, between novels, films, television, and magazines.
Science Fiction is just too multidimensional to be squeezed into a linear list, in my humble opinion as someone who used to go to more than one science fiction convention per month on average, and who publishes science fiction criticism in academic venues.
"most significant" is always a touchy subject, but that list leaves out two of the books that have been "most significant" in my SF reading--Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler, and The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. Speaking of dystopian SF, I'd think 1984 should be somewhere in there...