There sure are seventy-five of them

[primeideal]

 I glimpsed this list of "75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time" by Esquire magazine on Reddit (it was published two years ago as Top 50, since expanded). Then @hamsterwoman linked a meme version so now I have motivation to write it up, and wow do I have thoughts. If nothing else, bingo has been good for broad exposure/note-taking so I remember things!

 

Bold: I've read it

Italics: I haven't read this book but I've read something else by that writer

Indents/question marks: I /may/ have read this author but it was at an early age when I was blitzing through a lot of the classics and could not tell you a darn thing about it (there are several of these, I was hungry for SF as a youth but not the most retentive).

The Echo Wife, by Sarah Gailey
The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal I liked the complicated explorations of grief and Jewish identity, and the astrophysics flirting. Other parts were painfully didactic.
Redshirts, by John Scalzi (maybe Old Man's War?)
Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino
The Ten Percent Thief, by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson (Anathem)
Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon
Contact, by Carl Sagan It's been a while, but I was flipping through it recently, I remember enjoying the weird "layers" of the alien broadcast. I suspect some of the ending stuff would not hold up well.
Under the Skin, by Michel Faber (D)
Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak
Sea of Rust, by C. Robert Cargill
What Mad Universe, by Fredric Brown
The Book of Phoenix, by Nnedi Okorafor
Semiosis, by Sue Burke
Excession, by Iain M. Banks
The Claw of the Conciliator, by Gene Wolfe (not yet but I've heard very good things about Book of the New Sun, so it's next up!)
Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny (Nine Princes in Amber)
This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
The Resisters, by Gish Jen One of my early bingo reads. I love baseball so I think it's my job to support baseball-themed SFF, but this was definitely a case of "literary fiction author thinks they reinvented the wheel" and I was pretty surprised to find it on a top-however-many list.
Rosewater, by Tade Thompson
Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Elder Race, but I have heard good things about this one and it's on the list)
Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem (The Truth and Other Stories)

A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess (maybe???)

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein (nothing novel-length but short stories at least)
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle (read the whole series, formative, big fan)

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells (Morlocks? Eloi? Eloi are always in the crosswords.)

The Body Scout, by Lincoln Michel See note on "The Resisters.". TWO NICKELS.
An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon
The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler I liked the main plot, the B-plots didn't feel as integrated.
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams It's been a long time, but I definitely enjoyed it
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir very fun
Zone One, by Colson Whitehead
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers The alien worldbuilding was fun, other parts sanctimonious and underwhelming
Engine Summer, by John Crowley
The Children of Men, by P.D. James
Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente
The City & The City, by China Miéville
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine Less bleak than I expected, and the poetry was fun.
Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie

The Stand, by Stephen King (The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, but too long ago to retain much)

In Ascension, by Martin MacInnes
Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany (Empire Star/Babel-17)
The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
1Q84, by Haruki Murakami
Future Home of the Living God, by Louise Erdrich
Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith
Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer

Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood (maybe?)

Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson (The Ministry of the Future, siiiiiiiigh)
Shikasta, by Doris Lessing
The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut
Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke (plenty of short stories, also some novels but those are hazy)
The Complete Robot, by Isaac Asimov Been a while, but I also read "Foundation" back in the day. I semi-recently revisited the robot stories for canon review purposes but wound up not needing to write for it. The one about Stephen Byerley's mayoral campaign was my favorite that time through, although now it feels kinda "too soon" :/
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley Don't remember it well but part of a big hand-me-down-collection from my cousins. "I'm so glad I'm a Beta."
The Employees, by Olga Ravn
1984, by George Orwell English class in eighth grade(?) had some choices to choose among and I wound up with this. Important to recall that not all dystopias are top-down totalitarianisms. Also important to recall the power of language, controlled or free.
The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu Very good, appreciated the whole trilogy.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick Big fan of "Blade Runner," but too long ago to know if I retained anything here.

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel More litfic than SF. I'm not opposed to non-linear narratives, but the payoff needs to be worth the conceit, and I think litfic often fails at that.
Exhalation, by Ted Chiang Reading/technology/literature versus memory didn't resonate with me but maybe that's because I'm such a documenter.
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin "Changing Planes," I thiiink, again in a "pick what you want from this shelf" school context?

Kindred, by Octavia Butler
The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin

The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury Reread "Ylla/I'll Not Look For Wine" more recently, couldn't tell you about the others.

Dune, by Frank Herbert "Free will is impossible and we're just all gonna be sucked down the vortex of inevitability" why am I even reading this then, give me more of the Kynes family and their centuries-long worldbuilding plans.
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley I'm reading this right now! Some of the parallels are neat; on the other hand, some of the "as you know Bob"s and jumping to conclusions are eye-rollers.
In conclusion, I don't know how anyone does cut text on DW because the formatting is atrocious, and I will buy you as much peanuts, crackerjack, and soma cubes as you can get for ten cents.

Comments

[flo_nelja]

Yeah! Lots of books! It was nice to read your impressions.
And for the cut text can't you just add a < cut > text before ?

[primeideal]

When I do that it usually screws up the "div" and thinks I only want the first line under the cut. So then I have to go in and manually move them but that screws with the indents and stuff.

Thanks for reading! :D

[hamsterwoman]

There sure are seventy-five of them

Haha!

but this was definitely a case of "literary fiction author thinks they reinvented the wheel" and I was pretty surprised to find it on a top-however-many list.

I felt like a surprising number of books on this list were literary fiction authors doing sci-fi, which is not necessarily inherently bad, but not what I expect from lists like this!

The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal I liked the complicated explorations of grief and Jewish identity, and the astrophysics flirting. Other parts were painfully didactic.

I was impressed with the Jewish identity stuff, and like the alt history. Less didactic would definitely have been nice.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers The alien worldbuilding was fun, other parts sanctimonious and underwhelming

I've been disappointed that Becky Chambers seems to have chosen to lean into the sanctimoniousness rather than the fun alien worldbuilding in the most recent books. (I did like A Close and Common Orbit and Record of a Space-Born Few.)

[primeideal]

I felt like a surprising number of books on this list were literary fiction authors doing sci-fi, which is not necessarily inherently bad, but not what I expect from lists like this! Yeah, same. Like, a list of mostly top litfic that includes some SF, or a list of mostly "traditional" SF, are common things. But when there's a mashup like this it leads to conspiracy theories about how the sausage gets made. :P