Top 50 Sci-Fi of the Last 50 Years

The Science Fiction Book Club celebrate their 50th anniversary by selecting “The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002”

1 The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2 The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3 Dune, Frank Herbert
4 Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5 A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6 Neuromancer, William Gibson
7 Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9 The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10 Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

The first ten are in order of importance, the remaining 40 in alphabetical order.

USA Today writes:

The top choice was obvious, says Andrew Wheeler, one of four editors to compile the list. ”In influence, The Lord of the Rings is head and shoulders above anything else. Tolkien set up all the rules on how to write a story like this.”

….Boosted by new movies of the first two parts of the trilogy, his book sales last year were topped only by Rowling and romance writer Nora Roberts. A biography by British scholar Tom Shippey dubbed him ”author of the century.” A readers’ survey by Amazon.com crowned his trilogy ”book of the millennium.”

Wheeler says editors ”split the difference between what’s best and what’s most popular. Books are important for different reasons.”

* No. 2, Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy, published in one volume in 1963, creates ”a universe of scope and depth unmatched in its day and only rarely since,” he says.

* No. 3, Frank Herbert’s Dune, ”brought new ecological insight into science fiction” in 1965, editor Ellen Asher says.

* No. 6, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the newest book in the top 10, ”ignited a literary movement, the cyberpunks” in 1984, Wheeler says, ”and launched a million impressionable readers headlong into the world of computers.”

Do you agree with this assessment?