David Pringles Best 100 Science Fiction Novels (1-30)
Explore David Pringle's top 30 science fiction novels from his Best 100 list. Discover must-read classics and hidden gems in this curated selection of the finest sci-fi books.
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Earth Abides
by George Rippey Stewart
Returning from a field trip, Isherwood Williams discovers that a mysterious plague has destroyed human civilization during his absence and makes his way to San Francisco, where he finds a few survivors who build a small community, living like their pioneer ancestors. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.
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The Martian Chronicles
by Ray Bradbury
Man, was a a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in wave... Each wave different, and each wave stronger. The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury is a storyteller without peer, a poet of the possible, and, indisputably, one of America's most beloved authors. In a much celebrated literary career that has spanned six decades, he has produced an astonishing body of work: unforgettable novels, including Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes; essays, theatrical works, screenplays and teleplays; The Illustrated Mein, Dandelion Wine, The October Country, and numerous other superb short story collections. But of all the dazzling stars in the vast Bradbury universe, none shines more luminous than these masterful chronicles of Earth's settlement of the fourth world from the sun. Bradbury's Mars is a place of hope, dreams and metaphor-of crystal pillars and fossil seas-where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn -first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars ... and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage. In connected, chronological stories, a true grandmaster once again enthralls, delights and challenges us with his vision and his heart-starkly and stunningly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, our weakness, our folly, and our poignant humanity on a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.
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The Puppet Masters
by Robert Anson Heinlein
Earth was being invaded by aliens and the top security agencies were helpless: the aliens were controlling the mind of every person they encountered. So it was up to Sam Cavanaugh, secret agent for a powerful and deadly spy network, to find a way to stop them--which meant he had to be invaded himself!
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The Day of the Triffids
by John Wyndham
Explores the timeless tale of Earth's survival against alien forces (man-eating plants) and blinding meteor showers.
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Limbo
by Bernard Wolfe
After hiding on a remote island from the nuclear war, Dr. Martine explores the remains of the world
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The Demolished Man
by Alfred Bester
In 2301, a psychopathic business magnate comes up with the ultimate plan to eliminate his competition and destroy the order of society.
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Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a fireman, his job is to burn books, which are forbidden.
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Childhood's End
by Arthur C. Clarke
The inspiration for the Syfy miniseries. Childhoodâs End is one of the defining legacies of Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many other groundbreaking works. Since its publication in 1953, this prescient novel about first contact gone wrong has come to be regarded not only as a science fiction classic but as a literary thriller of the highest order. Spaceships have suddenly appeared in the skies above every city on the planet. Inside is an intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior alien race known as the Overlords. At first, their demands seem benevolent: unify Earth, eliminate poverty, end war. But at what cost? To those who resist, itâs clear that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. Has their arrival marked the end of humankind . . . or the beginning? Praise for Childhoodâs End âA first-rate tour de force.ââThe New York Times âFrighteningly logical, believable, and grimly prophetic . . . Clarke is a master.ââLos Angeles Times âThere has been nothing like it for years; partly for the actual invention, but partly because here we meet a modern author who understands that there may be things that have a higher claim on humanity than its own âsurvival.â ââC. S. Lewis âAs a science fiction writer, Clarke has all the essentials.ââJeremy Bernstein, The New Yorker
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The Paradox Men
by Charles L. Harness
The swordplay adventures of Alar the Thief, who is a subversive in a high-tech future with the identity problems of an amnesiac superman. First published in 1953. (Classics of modern science fiction ; v. 7).
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Bring the Jubilee
by Ward Moore
Moore's classic 1953 novel of alternate history, in which the Confederate States of America wins the Battle of Gettysburg, and eventually the "War of Southron Independence."
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The Space Merchants
by Frederik Pohl
Mitchell Courtenay, an advertising copywriter of the future is assigned to sway public support for the American colonization of Venus.
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Ring Around the Sun
by Clifford D. Simak
When inventors come up with cars, light bulbs, razor blades, and other items that never wear out or break down, the world's biggest industries begin to be squeezed out, and the planet is headed for economic collapse, when people suddenly begin to disappea
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More Than Human
by Theodore Sturgeon
In this genre-bending novelâamong the first to have launched sci-fi into the arena of literatureâone of the great imaginers of the twentieth century tells a story as mind-blowing as any controlled substance and as affecting as a glimpse into a stranger's soul. There's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts and make a man blow his brains out just by looking at him. There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles. There's Baby, who invented an antigravity engine while still in the cradle, and Gerry, who has everything it takes to run the world except for a conscience. Separately, they are talented freaks. Together, they compose a single organism that may represent the next step in evolution, and the final chapter in the history of the human race. As the protagonists of More Than Human struggle to find out who they are and whether they are meant to help humanity or destroy it, Theodore Sturgeon explores questions of power and morality, individuality and belonging, with suspense, pathos, and a lyricism rarely seen in science fiction. Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and International Fantasy Awards
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Mission of Gravity
by Hal Clement
Mesklin is a vast, inhospitable, disc-shaped planet, so cold that its oceans are liquid methane and its snows are frozen ammonia. It is a world spinning dizzyingly, a world where gravity can be a crushing 700 times greater than Earth's, a world too hostile for human explorers. But the planet holds secrets of inestimable value, and an unmanned probe that has crashed close to one of its poles must be recovered. Only the Mesklinites, the small creatures so bizarrely adapted to their harsh environment, can help. And so Barlennan, the resourceful and courageous captain of the Mesklinite ship Bree, sets out on an heroic and appalling journey into the terrible unknown. For him and his people, the prize to be gained is as great as that for mankind... Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity is universally regarded as one of the most important and best loved novels in the genre. The remarkable and sympathetic depiction of an alien species and the plausible and scientifically based realization of the strange world they inhabit make it a major landmark in the history of hard sf.
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A Mirror for Observers
by Edgar Pangborn
Winner of the 1954 Intenational Fantasy Award, which was won in 1957 by The Lord of The Rings. Pangborn also won in 2003 the Cordwainder smith Rediscovery Award.""From the 21st century, we look back at the 20th, and we find Edgar Pangborn, who was always there, with his sad, serene, contemplative gaze. But his was not a vision that ever really properly belonged to the SF of 1950, and he maybe never got his full due back then. Today, maybe, the time has come to read him with proper joy." - - John Clute"Edgar Pangborn was one of the greatest American science fiction writers, who established along with Bradbury, Sturgeon, Miller, and Cordwainer Smith a poetic, beautifully human style of science fiction. Pangborn's evocative landscapes and intense emotional situations combine to give all his novels a mysterious and powerful beauty. He was a true artist and bringing his work back into print in this way is a great moment for American literature." ?Kim Stanley Robinson
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The Inheritors
by William Golding
A small tribe of Neanderthals find themselves at odds with a tribe comprised of homo sapiens, whose superior intelligence and agility threatens their doom.
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The Stars My Destination
by Alfred Bester
In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men--and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive.
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The Door Into Summer
by Robert Anson Heinlein
"Not only America's premier writer of speculative fiction, but the greatest writer of such fiction in the world. He remains today as a sort of trademark for all that is finest in American imaginative fiction." --Stephen King Electronics engineer Dan Davis has finally made the invention of a lifetime: a household robot with extraordinary abilities, destined to dramatically change the landscape of everyday routine. Then, with wild success just within reach, Dan's greedy partner and greedier fiancée trick him into taking the long sleep--suspended animation for thirty years. They never imagine that the future time in which Dan will awaken has mastered time travel, giving him a way to get back to them--and at them . . . Once again, the author of Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers displays his genius. The Door in to Summer proves why Robert Heinlein's books have sold more than 50 million copies, winning countless awards, and earning him the title of Grand Master of Science Fiction. "Heinlein . . . has the ability to see technologies just around the bend. That, combined with his outstanding skill as a writer and engineer-inventor, produces books that are often years ahead of their time." --Philadelphia Inquirer "One of the grandmasters of science fiction." --The Wall Street Journal
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The Midwich Cuckoos
by John Wyndham
Classic science fiction. Midwich is a quiet English village. After a strange night, all the women find themselves pregnant. 10 yrs+
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Non-Stop
by Brian W. Aldiss
In the distant future of galactic empires, the people of the Greene-tribe are shocked when they discover that they are not the center of a world of their own making, in a new edition of the classic science fiction novel, first published in 1958.
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A Case of Conscience
by James Blish
Winner of the Hugo Award âą The future of Earth will rely upon one manâs sense of right and wrong. . . . Father Ruiz-Sanchez is a dedicated manâa priest who is also a scientist, and a scientist who is also a human being. He has found no insoluble conflicts in his beliefs or his ethics . . . until he is sent to Lithia. There he comes upon a race of aliens who are admirable in every way except for their total reliance on cold reason; they are incapable of faith or belief. Confronted with a profound scientific riddle and ethical quandary, Father Ruiz-Sanchez soon finds himself torn between the teachings of his faith, the teachings of his science, and the inner promptings of his humanity. There is only one solution: He must accept an ancient and unforgivable heresyâand risk the futures of both worlds . . .
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A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller
Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of twentieth-century literature -- a chilling and still-provocative look at a post-apocalyptic future. In a nightmarish ruined world slowly awakening to the light after sleeping in darkness, the infant rediscoveries of science are secretly nourished by cloistered monks dedicated to the study and preservation of the relics and writings of the blessed Saint Isaac Leibowitz. From here the story spans centuries of ignorance, violence, and barbarism, viewing through a sharp, satirical eye the relentless progression of a human race damned by its inherent humanness to recelebrate its grand foibles and repeat its grievous mistakes. Seriously funny, stunning, and tragic, eternally fresh, imaginative, and altogether remarkable, A Canticle for Leibowitz retains its ability to enthrall and amaze. It is now, as it always has been, a masterpiece.