Tier Ranking the 100 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books I Just Read

it's another short story Anthology that's a lot more dated there's not that much in here that's all that Innovative in the way that some of this stuff is but it does contain the machine stops by Ian Forster which is I think one the best dystopian material that I've read in science fiction

it's my favorite of these old hard SF Classics and haven't watched the movie since I was a kid it's good Clark wrote better Clark wrote more good than the other two of The Big Three

is not as good as everybody insists that it is to me I thought it was fine it gets really dull in the middle and it'll be great if you're if you are a Believer if you're a religious person

it's ya that is yian allegory I didn't read it when I was a kid so I don't have the Nostalgia Factor it fell a little flat for me I don't care about incorporating my shadow into my shadow work or whatever

the first and last stories are great the rest of it is filler and Dixon is very like 1950s suburb conservative which gets on my nerves

it's too Meandering and is written was written you can tell as part of a series so it just doesn't fully stand on its own leg so much but there's some great atmosphere and horror moments in it

another absolute stone cold stunner favorite horror book I gave this a perfect 10 it's one of my favorite books of all time

also beat here it's a Bizarro Space Opera about the sapier warf hypothesis in linguistics it's got the Delaney color all the like fireworks and weirdo stuff it does get confusing because it's Delaney

S tier mberg I think at this point is probably my favorite author in science fiction this is his most famous book

this is a contender for favorite fantasy with king of elfin's daughter it's a I described it as a hard fantasy it's a fantasy based on actual occult texts about the Cold War military industrial complex tapping a black magician to summon the Demons of Hell to destroy the world Incredible Book

I just did a video about this includes Earth of the new sun which I know is its own book but people argue it's not whatever it is an amazing feat it doesn't really work for me it left me behind at a bunch of points on purpose and that annoyed me it's a pasti of a number of influences that I do really love the sum total is not my favorite thing it's not bad but it's not like mind glowingly good

incredible I think this is my favorite book of short stories Anthology or collection this is a collection if you like Neuromancer read burning Chrome just amazing stuff

I love the cover I love the title it's really dated science fiction humor and the stories are weird kind of like bad weird like they don't really work that well and whatever I found this forgettable

the initial stories like first three stories are kind of annoying they're very meta self-referential fourth wall breaking and then it gets into some great world building SF stuff

would be S tier if the pros was a little bit more florid I've pray both praised and criticize Butler's proos style for being really simple and straightforward and I like I like a little Sparkle Dawn's amazing though very creepy disturbing book

it's as good as people say it is as good as I hoped it would be maybe even better the mercerism stuff I think detracts from it just a little bit people definitely disagree with me about that

it's a really hyper Bleak post-apocalyptic story about a family that all live together on a compound outside of a city in the Czech Republic I think it's supposed to be Prague super Bleak dark the writing style doesn't always work sometimes it does

amazing book it's a science fiction treatment of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conor it's about the legacy of colonialism and kind of a first Contact novel in some sense

interesting science fantasy but nothing really that novel or interesting happened in it

it was fun it was too operatic and the dialogue was pretty god-awful in parts and it felt rushed and it didn't live up to Dune in my mind there was a bunch of new age stuff shoehorned in there it's okay it's okay

yeah s tier tanith Lee might be among the very most underrated science fiction fantasy writers that I've come across amazing stuff if you like KD read this one

top half of it is a great like James Cameron movie and then it gets lost in its own sauce

amazing Colony on Mars penal colony on Mars everybody's sad terrible things happen great superb

I didn't really get the point I guess it was kind of a rehashing of the themes of the original Frankenstein without adding a whole lot and it felt like fanfiction to me B tier

I'll give it a d it's a Proto Space Opera very influential really dated it's not as dreary as some longer more bloated ones that followed it

it's a high fantasy set in hell and all the biology of Hell the Ecology of hell he writes hell as if it were an alien planet and an SF novel is great there's some stuff in there that's totally gross and pretty scary the character work is a little bit cardboard but great book

really long really dense sort of confusing but great I want to call it Space Opera but it's not it's like historical fantasy that is science fiction and set on an alien planet and there's great aliens in it's just kind of long and it's book one of three I haven't read the others

amazing like social horror novel

I think this was his final novel really forgettable it feels like some scraps from City but not as good

it is 100% pure just World building and thought experiment with essentially zero plot parts of it are really beautiful parts of it are just incredibly dull

iroot is clunky and dull and to it's all thought experiments or mostly thought experiments it gets into some World building at the end that I thought sort of redeemed it but I wasn't as smitten with it

absolute s tier

we are moving up in this world to S tier I like this more than nilia this is Smith at his absolute best sometimes he does step on rakee heads there's bits in here that do not age well at all but overall this is Smith flexing his muscles as one of the best pro stylists in all of Science Fiction

zelasney gets lost up his own ass on some level with all the mythology stuff that might irritate that will guaranteed irritate some zelas fans it wasn't for me

I was very Charmed by this more of a travel story adventure story than the book that I thought I was going to read great characters it ages quite well

gut-wrenching same as with Dawn if it were more aoral if it was less straightforward in the writing style it would be S tier heartbreaking stuff in there

it's more of a time travel thing in the far future interesting ideas just not quite as good as peace War

part of it is amazingly boring and redundant and turns a lot of people off the archaic writing style turns a lot of people off in terms of pure exuberance of World building and prean of World building for a book that was written in 1912 unreal

is a mixture of Mythology and high fantasy it's like a fantasy version of the thousand one Knights meets Jack Vance great another favorite fantasy book

super ass boring I barely remember anything it's not that it's like badly written it's just so generic and so boring I remember close to nothing about it

readit in one sitting it's high fantasy with a modern twist modern for the 1970s and very fun I was not like moved by it but one of the better pieces of fantasy that I've read

it's pretty dated pretty boring pretty slow the premise is poignant but I didn't really get on with it that well

it is demoted from a tier because of some subject matter that he decided to throw in there that is Swan Thomas Bernett Swan it's a surprisingly funny piece of Science Fiction comedy

all the crime stuff not that interesting but the connecting chapters of short stories set in this universe are amazing gorgeous the initial story is I think Contender for best short story I've ever read great book

definitely s tier I debated putting this in the top 15 I didn't I now question if I should have it's about horse betters and an alien Consciousness that comes to Earth and manipulates them into attempting to destroy the planet

Pandora's star is yeah there's one great chapter

it is a zany ass book it is hard core rightwing and if you can't find star of The Unborn then read past Master it's kind of the same book

it is dull it is boring

It's the final dying Earth book it's the worst dying Earth book it's the only one that's forgettable

it starts promisingly cyber Punk set in India if you can fill in the aesthetic details there in your mind you've pretty much Red River of gods it is way too long and hypersexualized in a very like 14-year-old way God on my nerves

just an amazing book it's my favorite science fiction book possibly my favorite book period of all time

sort of run-of-the-mill not all that groundbreaking kind of a little bit like downward to the Earth some interesting alien stuff some kind of Rye satire but ultimately kind of forgettable

I will give a c it is deathly boring to read but this is the source of a lot of stuff that followed it

we all know star of The Unborn is going to be S tier I've talked it Way Beyond the point of it being talked to death I will spare you this time s tier

really influential on a lot of stuff Dungeons and Dragons and so on and so forth really dark surprisingly dark

a tier genre Bender ambiguous story about four guys in college seeking immortality gets into some rough thematic territory it's not my favorite silverberg clearly there's another one up here higher on the list right here I think it's very good

B tier read too much like ya to me another book telling me that religious Orthodoxy is bad

Arthur C Clark's dying Earth story about the last human Colony being the self-regulating massive City ruled by AI great scene setting and Ambiance it's a little boring it's Arthur C Clark it's a little bit boring

it's the last book in a tetrology called The Sea of fertility by Yuki Mishima amazing book but I read it without having read the other books so I feel not totally qualified to render an opinion about it but Mishima is incredible

definite s tier I thought pretty long and hard about including this in that top 15 video but I didn't want you know duplicate authors that rule might be stupid if I weren't following that rule it would be in the top 15 another favorite dystopian book that I think is underrated

it's like Crystal world and that it is amazingly well written and memorable and just drags ass for a big chunk of it

Delaney is a tough go I think will be a tough go for a lot of readers it's a book about mythology among other things book about gender it's good but it's I mean it's a discombobulating experience as most Delany books are

I really did not like Fellowship of the Ring it took me literally about well not about it took me 35 years to finally finish it because I found it so incredibly dull

it's a left-wing distopian book about the Perils of individualism it's also crime fiction and pretty confusing at points I think it's great

it's a c es dystopian book about people getting lost in this game that may or may not be a rigged mechanism of social control

it's not as good as this one same author it is even weirder and more hamfisted and bizarre to the point where it was enjoyable but not competently written

the first of the three parts I think is azimov at his absolute best it's really funny really satirical it's about science and the power dynamics of being a professional scientist and then part two I thought was amazing world building and Alien biology

this is Jack Vance being a smug prick and writing a defense of Might makes right politics and a critique of liberalism which a bunch of these other books are but is just so self-satisfied and unconvincing in its arguments I really hated it but it's V so it's well written

definite a here a horror book that wound up doing something very different than what I expected I thought it was just a straightforward Haunted House story it is not I know that this is a super famous book even so I think a little bit underrated or like underhyped

a lot of people I would say most people think that this is better than this same author established a lot of horror tropes also I think might have had an influence on this which came afterwards Hodson wasn't a great writer but he was great at creating imagery that is really evocative and weird and that's the story here

it lives in the shadow of Solaris It Was Written I think right after Solaris treats with the same themes and it's not as good but there's some interesting commentary and character Dynamics about leadership in it that I think are great

definitely a tier if it was like more coherent more cohesive I think it would be S tier I go back and forth this might be my favorite Philip K dick novel I think it's great

Martian Chronicles is excellent it is a lot more cynical than I thought it would be I approve

it's my favorite Windom takes big bold philosophical positions at the end and develops those themes subtly over the course of the story that does get a little bit slow but I think this is Windam at his smartest and most mature and I really approve of it

it's a slim little Space Opera that goes to some crazy ass places I still remember it I still have it in my mind as a benchmark of like what Space Opera should be like

solid B techno Thriller great ideas it's veny some of it's a little clunky but it's it's good

probably the most disturbing book I've ever read but I read it in one sitting it's a book about the internet and how truth is communicated and not preserved on the internet and has extreme content in it I don't think I'll read another book that is crazier than that one mixed feelings about it but overall I think it's a truly amazing piece of fiction

one of the most obnoxious writing styles of any of these books very quippy very sitcom dialogue

I was pleasantly surprised to really like this book I really did not like Fellowship of the Ring it took me literally about well not about it took me 35 years to finally finish it because I found it so incredibly dull Two Towers it's much better

there's some great stuff in there the story that inspired alien is pretty amazing it's a fix up of serialized short stories that was really influential on stuff like alien and like Star Trek I was not that excited to read it

definite beat here it's a pissed off leguin which is interesting because she's usually so measured and stately this is her in the trenches in the blood and God's anti-colonialist book that is a lot like Avatar

although there's one story about a kid finding a shaman in the African bush and going on a Vision Quest that's incredible the rest of it is very whatever

the first Ballard short Story collection that I've that I've read familiar Ballard territory the first story is the one that I remember most clearly about a guy Manning a military Outpost after this agricultural incident creates enormous Birds the size of small airplanes good stuff

I don't read really any crime fiction at all the crime stuff in it I don't really care the H done it stuff I just I still don't care I cannot bring myself to care but all the characterization and the pros and the scene setting and stuff it's great

this goes up to S tier this might be my favorite fantasy book certainly favorite High fantasy book influenced everything Lord of the Rings elri just amazingly beautiful I really love it

little Nolla reminds me of dying Earth stuff it's about an aristocracy besieged by their alien slaves like it a lot

it's a hard science fiction time travel Space Opera if you just like straight down the middle sci-fi Space Opera stuff I think that it's above average in that category

the first viriconium book science fantasy I thought it would be weirder it was decent I don't think it's representative of M John Harrison's General thing

it's one of the biggest disappointments of this whole list I'm not reading the other two books I dislike this to the point where I it all of 100% of you could exhort me to read the following two books I still wouldn't because I dislike three body problems so much

it is super forgettable hard SF that reads like X-Men I think it was probably an influence on the X-Men it just washed right over me

a tier fun mind bendy reads like an action movie they were going to turn it into an action movie and it's just been trapped in production hell forever

another short story Anthology some great stuff in there's a leguin story about Schrodinger's Cat George Alec effinger story about a far like dying Earth future and there's a an Edgar Pang born story set in the DAV universe that's completely beautiful a lot of it is forgettable

that is a short story collection from the author of stars my destination and demolished man the stories get a little Samy but it's bester so the writing is really strong and there are some really high points

a not that talked about James blish book about first Contact that is blish so it's good there's only one blish book that I've read that I didn't think was that good we're getting to it but Vore is great is really reminiscent of Hemingway

I thought it would be more alien horror body horror but it's a book it's like a Coming of Age story sort of some teenagers lost on or like people in their early 20s lost on an alien ship and there are Holograms of them I don't know whatever

No Surprise is s tier just on its own merits it's an amazing sign s fiction novel it's also kind of an anti SF novel it's a critique of a lot of science fictional tropes and some pretty wild content in there both stylistically and politically I love it

it's religious SF first half is okay second half is God

is super standard short story stuff to apparently completely forgettable I remember nothing about it if you're into like the pul magazine stories then you'll you'll like it I guess

definite be here this is the source material for the thing if you like the thing the John Carpenter version read who goes there

definitely novel interesting things happened but Thomas ber at Swan has this pural streak this adolescent streak that kind of detracts from his fantasy