The Hugo Winners for Best Novel - up to 1979

Explore the complete list of Hugo Award-winning novels up to 1979, featuring the best in science fiction and fantasy. Discover legendary titles that shaped the genre.

Dreamsnake Cover
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Dreamsnake

by Vonda N. McIntyre

Back in print, McIntyre's tender and compassionate adventure story--a Hugo and Nebula Award-winner and a New York Times bestseller. In a far-future, post-holocaust Earth, a young healer named Snake travels the world, healing the sick and injured with her companion, the alien dreamsnake. But she is being pursued. . . .
Gateway Cover
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Gateway

by Frederik Pohl

Gateway opened on all the wealth of the Universe...and on reaches of unimaginable horror. When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take! THE HEECHEE SAGA Book One: GATEWAY Book Two: BEYOND THE BLUE EVENT HORIZON Book Three: HEECHEE RENDEZVOUS Book Four: THE ANNALS OF THE HEECHEE
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Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang

by Kate Wilhelm

The story of an isolated post-holocaust community of clones who are determined to preserve civilization, Where Late the Sweet Bids Sang" is widely regarded as Wilhelm's finest work.
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The Forever War

by Joe W. Haldeman

Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand.
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The Dispossessed

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. he will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.
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Rendezvous With Rama

by Arthur Charles Clarke

During the twenty-second century, a space probe's investigation of a mysterious, cylindrical asteroid brings man into contact with an extra-galactic civilization
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The Gods Themselves

by Isaac Asimov

In the twenty-second century Earth obtains limitless, free energy from a source science little understands: an exchange between Earth and a parallel universe, using a process devised by the aliens. But even free energy has a price. The transference process itself will eventually lead to the destruction of the Earth's Sun—and of Earth itself. Only a few know the terrifying truth—an outcast Earth scientist, a rebellious alien inhabitant of a dying planet, a lunar-born human intuitionist who senses the imminent annihilation of the Sun. They know the truth—but who will listen? They have foreseen the cost of abundant energy—but who will believe? These few beings, human and alien, hold the key to Earth's survival.
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To Your Scattered Bodies Go

by Philip José Farmer

Richard Francis Burton attempts to fight his way out of the Riverworld in which he finds himself trapped after death.
Ringworld Cover
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Ringworld

by Larry Niven

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel Four travelers come to the ringworld. . . Louis Wu: human and old; bored with having lived too fully for far too many years. Seeking a challenge, and all too capable of handling it. Nessus: a trembling coward, a puppeteer with a built-in survival pattern of nonviolence. Except that this particular puppeteer is insane. Teela Brown: human; a wide-eyed youngster with no allegiances, no experience, no abilities. And all the luck in the world. Speaker-To-Animals: kzin; large, orange-furred, and carnivorous. And one of the most savage life-forms known in the galaxy. Why did these disparate individuals come together? How could they possibly function together? And where, in the name of anything sane, were they headed?
The Left Hand of Darkness Cover
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The Left Hand of Darkness

by Ursula K. Le Guin

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION—WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS Ursula K. Le Guin’s groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters... Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.
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Stand on Zanzibar

 

No summary available.
Lord of Light Cover
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Lord of Light

by Roger Zelazny

Earth is long since dead. On a colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rules their world as the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them: he who was once Siddhartha and is now Mahasamatman. Binder of Demons. Lord of Light.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress Cover
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The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

by Robert A. Heinlein

Science fiction-roman.
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This Immortal

by Roger Zelazny

Conrad Nomikos has a long, rich personal history that heÂżd rather not talk about. He has also been given a job that heÂżd rather not do. Escorting an alien grandee on a guided tour around the shattered remains of Earth after a catastrophic nuclear war is not something he relishes. Especially when it it rapidly becomes clear that he is at the centre of high-level intrigue that could determine the future of Earth itself. But Conrad Nomikos is a very special guy and heÂżs been around - for a very long time.
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The Wanderer

 

No summary available.
Way Station Cover
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Way Station

by Clifford D. Simak

Enoch Wallace survived the carnage of Gettysburg and lived through the rest of the Civil War to make it home to his parents' farm in south-west Wisconsin. But his mother was already dead and his father soon joined her in the tiny family cemetery. It was then that Enoch met the being he called Ulysses and the farm became a way station for space travellers. Now, nearly a hundred years later, the US government is taking an interest in the seemingly immortal Enoch, and the Galactic Council, which set up the way station is threatening to tear itself apart.
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The Man in the High Castle

by Philip K. Dick

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. the few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war--and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan. This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.
Stranger in a Strange Land Cover
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Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert Anson Heinlein

This is the epic saga of an earthling, Valentine Michael Smith, born and educated on Mars, who arrives on our planet with "psi" powers--telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and the ability to take control of the minds of others--and yet with complete innocence regarding the mores of man.
A Canticle for Leibowitz Cover
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A Canticle for Leibowitz

by Walter M. Miller (Jr.)

The winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel, Miller's bestselling work is a true landmark of 20th-century literature--a chilling and still-provocative look at a post-apocalyptic future.
Starship Troopers Cover
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Starship Troopers

by Robert Anson Heinlein

In a futuristic military adventure a recruit goes through the roughest boot camp in the universe and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry in what historians would come to call the First Interstellar War
A Case of Conscience Cover
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A Case of Conscience

by James Blish

Winner of the Hugo Award • The future of Earth will rely upon one man’s sense of right and wrong. . . . Father Ruiz-Sanchez is a dedicated man—a 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 heresy—and risk the futures of both worlds . . .
The Big Time Cover
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The Big Time

by Fritz Leiber

Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to recall exactly the same past from one day to the next? If you have, then you've had hints of the Change War. It's been going on for a billion years and it'll last another billion or so. And in the midst of the war is the Place, outside space and time, where Greta Forzane and the other Entertainers provide solace and R&R for tired time warriors.
Double Star Cover
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Double Star

by Robert Anson Heinlein

One minute, down and out actor Lorenzo Smythe was -- as usual -- in a bar, drinking away his troubles as he watched his career go down the tubes. Then a space pilot bought him a drink, and the next thing Smythe knew, he was shanghaied to Mars. Suddenly he found himself agreeing to the most difficult role of his career: impersonating an important politician who had been kidnapped. Peace with the Martians was at stake -- failure to pull off the act could result in interplanetary war. And Smythe's own life was on the line -- for if he wasn't assassinated, there was always the possibility that he might be trapped in his new role forever!
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The Demolished Man Cover
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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.