* recommended
bf--read
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--Really, this bit of anti-religious, anti-male, anti-anti in SF drag--puhleese. This is a strong indication to me that the list of 1,000 has a great many that can be missed.
In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
The Drowned World by JG Ballard
Crash by JG Ballard It's pretty clear by the inclusion of Paul Auster and this work, in particular, that the list-makers are incapable of distinguishing SFF and surrealism. Surrealism is NOT SFF and should not be confused with it.
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 H.G. Wells revisited, interesting
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
*Vathek by William Beckford
*The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester Required reading along with The Demolished Man.
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 BulgakovSFF? Hardly, but then where does one put it?
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 A real romp, andnot nearly as bad as you might expect from early pulp fiction. Seems like damning with faint praise, but this book is a lot of fun and great for a brain-break.
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs--Well, I read at it, does that count?
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 DanielewskiPlease--what a mess of a post-modernist morass--unreadable, incomprehensible, and worst of all dull.
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--Weird, wild, and wonderful in ways that defy description.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Red Shift by Alan Garner
Neuromancer by William Gibson--I'm not as impressed with this as many are. Didn't much care for it when it was brand new, and haven't grown fonder with time. Far prefer the writing of Bruce Sterling in the same genre.
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Lord of the Flies by William GoldingSFF, hardly. Allegory, fable, satire, cautionary tale, caustic view of society, but SFF?
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Light by M John Harrison
*The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne SFF--it seems someone is not paying much attention.
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein
*Dune by Frank L Herbert
*The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse--SFF? Again, surrealism and uncategorizable gets dumped into SFF.
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--Perhaps an all-time favorite--certainly one of the finest haunted house novels (or is it) ever.
**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--Not sure I care for the message; however, it was strong then and remains strong
*Solaris by Stanislaw Lem--Weird, but not nearly so wonderful as the Russian movie made from same. Lem's socialism ocassionally obscures his powerful vision.
Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
*The Monk by Matthew Lewis--Classic Gothic stuff--and I mean way over the top. What Gothic was meant to be (on opium).
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 McCarthyThey're making a movie from this?
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--SFF? I guess it falls in the realm of dark fantasy, but somehow--oh, I don't know.
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 PalahniukAgain inability to distinguish surrealism from SFF
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--One of the books that set the conventions of the Gothic and one most thoroughly skewered by Northanger Abbey
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--Ho hum, if they had just ignored it, it would have gone away into a well-deserved academic obscurity. Read Midnight's Children instead.
The Female Man by Joanna Russ--Never write occassional poetry or politically inspired fiction
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 StephensonThe end is a little soft, but you have to love a hero named Hiro Protagonist
*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--This is actually a really good choice for Vonnegut--I'm surprised it didn't include the more politcal Slaughterhouse 5
*The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole--The Granddaddy of the Gothic
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--If you're going to read Virginia Woolf, don't start here. The myth of Teresias retold.
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
We by Yevgeny ZamyatinBack in my dystopian phase--Ayn Rand's Anthem, Bradbury's Fahrenheit451, Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, this was a stand-out. But I don't remember it much now. Will have to revisit
On the one hand, slipping 30 or so books into one slot with "The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett" is cheating.
On the other hand, if you read one Discworld book, you'll read 'em all.