For those of you unfamiliar with AbeBooks, it’s an online marketplace where you can buy new, used, rare, out-of-print books and cheap textbooks. Founded in 1996, they offer more than 140 million titles from booksellers from around the world.
Without further ado, here’s the “50 Essential Science Fiction Books” list. You’ll find the “Classic Adventure Stories” list a little further down the page Enjoy.
50 Essential Science Fiction Books
1. Acme Novelty Library No. 19 by Chris Ware (2008)
2. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (1959)
3. Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock (1969)
4. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)*
5. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller (1960)
6. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (1955)
7. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks (1987)
8. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (1999)
9. The Death of Grass or No Blade of Grass by John Christopher (1956)
10. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester (1953)
11. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick (1968)*
12. The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard (1962)
13. Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)*
14. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949)
15. Embassytown by China Mieville (2011)
16. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (1985)*
17. Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold (1988)
18. The Female Man by Joanna Russ (1975)
19. Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1951)
20. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
21. Hothouse by Brian Aldiss (1962)
22. Hyperion by Dan Simmons (1989)
23. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury (1951)
24. A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864)
25. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)
26. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (2007)
27. Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson (1967)*
28. The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett (1955)
29. Make Room! Make Room! By Harry Harrison (1966)
30. Man Plus by Frederick Pohl (1976)
31. Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement (1954)
32. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)*
33. Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster (1982)
34. Odd John by Olaf Stapledon (1935)
35. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (2005)
36. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (1993)
37. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (1972)*
38. Ribofunk by Paul Di Filippo (1996)
39. Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D. Simak (1953)
40. Ringworld by Larry Niven (1970)
41. Roadside Picnic/Tale of the Troika by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky (1972)
42. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut (1959)
43. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (1961)
44. The Stand by Stephen King (1978)*
45. Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (1959)
46. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (2005)
47. Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon (1960)
48. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (1898)
49. When Worlds Collide by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie (1933)
50. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962)
Classic Adventure Stories
1. Beau Geste by P.C. Wren (1924)
2. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)
3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
4. Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff (1954)
5. The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason (1902)
6. The Gun by C.S. Forester (1933)
7. Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier (1946)
8. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
9. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)
10. King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard (1885)
11. Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore (1869)
12. Lost in the Barrens by Farley Mowat (1956)
13. The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (1912)
14. Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner (1954)
15. The Prisoner of Zenda (1894)
16. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)
17. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)
18. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
19. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1870)*
20. The Wool-Pack by Cynthia Harnett (1951)
I pulled these lists off of the AbeBooks Web site and arranged them in alphabetical order by title. If you’d like to read Davies’ remarks about both lists, see the lists in their original order and read more about each book on these lists, visit www.abebooks.com/books/features/50-essential-science-fiction-books.shtml and www.abebooks.com/books/adventure-crusoe-kidnapped-forester-kipling/timeless-tales.shtml.
In the end, how many of the books mentioned above have you read? Which did you like or dislike? Which would you recommend and why? Which was your personal favorite? Which books do you think should have been on these lists but weren’t? Let us know in the comments section below.
* I marked the titles that I’ve read to date with an asterisk.
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