The 15 Best Sci-Fi Books I've Ever Read

deepness in the sky is a big fat tome of space opera that like fire upon the deep is this big baroque complicated piece of world building it's just great it's just it's so good it's just so simply good

i consider this the highest possible benchmark of the genre i've never read anything that even comes close to scratching the science fiction itch in the way that this book does

short book punchy feels very modern despite the fact that it was written i think in the 50s or 60s and a great little package of misdirects and mysteries and surprises and i didn't see the ending coming

i included on this list because it is a book of science fiction art but it's all part of a cohesive narrative that he wrote about an expedition launched by multiple alien cultures to a far distant worlds the artwork is just incredible

i had not read it until recently and when i read it i was astonished by how completely radically different it is than by the hollywood treatment that it got it's a novel of the utmost literary merit that also is a benchmark in the science fiction genre

one of the most memorable one of the most complicated one of the most interesting and compelling and gripping science fiction books that i've ever read

so mid world is not a great book but it's one of the first books sci-fi books i read as a teenager that really gave me an appetite for the genre

i really don't like heinlein i've never read anything by him that i thought was particularly great starship troopers included

it's a culture clash novel and it's a political novel and i like it more than left hand of darkness it's not the most thrilling it is kind of boring as le guin is sorry but it's good

the dying earth was written in the 50s it is cited as gene wolf's primary influence in the book of the new son series it's just wild it's just it's such a rich world that he built and the prose is so good

forever war was an anti-war science fiction military science fiction written in the 70s that was a direct allegory for vietnam forever war is great of course it operates on that level of allegory but also it's just a great solid piece of military sci-fi

it's just like reading a communist pamphlet from the period with a science fiction plot overlaid on top of it which sounds really dreary but it's great

it's a first contact story it reads like a steven spielberg movie it's another big fat brick of a book i consider it space opera it's just such a well-oiled machine and it just sweeps you right through the whole book

i have mixed feelings about gene wolfe that are mostly positive i think this is probably pretty run-of-the-mill for gene wolf readers i do love gene wolfe but reading him i don't feel welcome i don't feel like i'm invited to the party

it feels like a modern piece of noir interstellar cyberpunk weirdness it's incredible it's about that long very brief

it was written in the late 1800s and doesn't feel like it at all it feels like a really solid cliche as it is timeless piece of science fiction great world building

this one i was blown away by it's just great it's just great it should be considered a classic