The Big Read - Science Fiction and Fantasy

Top 1000 Novels everyone Must read:


Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel. ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction )

There are 149 books in this category how many of them have you read? How many of them have you only started?



The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Non-Stop by Brian W Aldiss

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster

The Drowned World by JG Ballard

Crash by JG Ballard

Millennium People by JG Ballard

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks

Weaveworld by Clive Barker

Darkmans by Nicola Barker

The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter

Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear

Vathek by William Beckford

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite

Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown

Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

The Coming Race by EGEL Bulwer-Lytton

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

The End of the World News by Anthony Burgess

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Erewhon by Samuel Butler

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

The Influence by Ramsey Campbell

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

The Man who was Thursday by GK Chesterton

Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Hello Summer, Goodbye by Michael G Coney

Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq

The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R Delaney

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick

Camp Concentration by Thomas M Disch

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Under the Skin by Michel Faber

The Magus by John Fowles

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Red Shift by Alan Garner

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Light by M John Harrison

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein

Dune by Frank L Herbert

The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

Atomised by Michel Houellebecq

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The Children of Men by PD James

After London; or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies

Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

The Shining by Stephen King

The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski

Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing

The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis

The Monk by Matthew Lewis

A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay

The Night Sessions by Ken Macleod

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin

The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Ascent by Jed Mercurio

The Scar by China Mieville

Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Mother London by Michael Moorcock

News from Nowhere by William Morris

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Ringworld by Larry Niven

Vurt by Jeff Noon

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

The Famished Road by Ben Okri

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth

A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys

The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling

Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

The Female Man by Joanna Russ

Air by Geoff Ryman

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Blindness by Jose Saramago

How the Dead Live by Will Self

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The Insult by Rupert Thomson

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Affinity by Sarah Waters

The Time Machine by HG Wells

The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

The Sword in the Stone by TH White

The Old Men at the Zoo by Angus Wilson

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Okay I've read a handful from this list

Weaveworld by Clive Barker

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

The Time Machine by HG Wells

The Handmaid's Tale read in 2018 and I'm loving the series too.

These I started to read but haven't finished:


The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Dune by Frank L Herbert

The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett (I've read all the ones with Rincewind in)

The War of the Worlds by HG Wells


I own it but haven't read it yet (can watching the cartoon count? lol)

The Sword in the Stone by TH White