500 Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Books You Should Read Before You Die - Members' Version

[M. Robert Gibson]

Now that the list is over multiple pages, it's making it difficult to scan to see if a book has been suggested. I don't have access to the Google Docs page, so is there any someplace where a list could be created for easy reference? I thought maybe a Goodreads list, but all lists are public non Chrons would be able to vote on it

I did, however, find this list

Science Fiction and Fantasy Must Reads (3773 books)

3,775 books based on 4941 votes: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Dune by Frank Herbert, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Hobbit by J.R.R. T...

www.goodreads.com

Edit
I have since studied that list, and there are loads of duplicates and, as mentioned in the comments, several non sci-fi/fantasy books.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

Time for some early classics that should be read, if only to understand where the genres came from

139 Dracula - Bram Stoker

140 Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

141 The Time Machine - H G Wells

142 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne

143 Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Jules Verne

144 The Invisible Man - H G Wells

145 R.U.R. - Karel Čapek - (The one the introduced the world to Robots)

 

[nixie]

Now that the list is over multiple pages, it's making it difficult to scan to see if a book has been suggested. I don't have access to the Google Docs page, so is there any someplace where a list could be created for easy reference? I thought maybe a Goodreads list, but all lists are public non Chrons would be able to vote on it

I did, however, find this list

Science Fiction and Fantasy Must Reads (3773 books)

3,775 books based on 4941 votes: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Dune by Frank Herbert, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Hobbit by J.R.R. T...

www.goodreads.com

Edit
I have since studied that list, and there are loads of duplicates and, as mentioned in the comments, several non sci-fi/fantasy books.

I did start going through it but lost count and the duplicates started to annoy me.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Now that the list is over multiple pages, it's making it difficult to scan to see if a book has been suggested. I don't have access to the Google Docs page, so is there any someplace where a list could be created for easy reference? I thought maybe a Goodreads list, but all lists are public non Chrons would be able to vote on it

I did, however, find this list

Science Fiction and Fantasy Must Reads (3773 books)

3,775 books based on 4941 votes: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Dune by Frank Herbert, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Hobbit by J.R.R. T...

www.goodreads.com

Edit
I have since studied that list, and there are loads of duplicates and, as mentioned in the comments, several non sci-fi/fantasy books.

Just do a search --> this thread only.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

Just do a search --> this thread only.

Ah clever. I didn't know about that

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

Oh, can't believe I forgot

146 War of the Worlds - H G Wells

 

[svalbard]

147 Interview with a Vampire. - Anne Rice

148 Lion Of Macedon - David Gemmell

149 The Road - Cormac McCarthy

150 The Lions of Al Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay

151 Tigana -Guy Gavriel Kay

152 Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks

 

[Extollager]

A quick one or two-line summary, or a reason why you think they should be included on the list would also be helpful.

Is it okay, though, if we omit such comments if we think people using the list would probably not need them?

Speaking for myself, though, I wouldn't mind just such comments for some of the books published in the past 40 years or so. Quite a few of the authors since then are hardly more than names to me, e.g. Patrick Rothfuss, David Gemmell -- who are they?

 

[Trollheart]

Trollheart, would you be willing to amend your original posting to change "books" to "works"?

A great many of the best sf stories are short stories and novellas. I don't want to nominate some collection or anthology for the sake of the one or two stories that I really care about, where some of the other stories might leave me cold. For example, in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame volume on short stories (edited by Silverberg), I find several stories that, I suppose, almost everyone who has read widely in classic sf would say should be read -- but also one or more duds. For example, I have always disliked Lester del Rey's "Helen O'Loy."

Frankly, I doubt that there are 500 books in the sf, fantasy, and horror fields that everyone interested in those genres should read before he or she dies. But there might be 500 such stories -- short stories, novellas, novels.

My understanding is that we're not talking, here, about a bibliography of books we have liked, but about books (preferably -- stories) that "everyone" should read, or at least try. I suspect a lot of work that isn't all that good will get named if we go for five hundred books.

?

Sure. I have no problem doing that. Whatever, ah, works...

Just listing short stories would make it too heterogeneous, in my opinion. We should be able to list single-author collections of short stories, though.

I would agree with this.

Even if we don’t think everything in the book actually does need to be read? That’s my problem. There could be a book with Asimov’s “Nightfall” — a story one might well think everyone should read; but Asimov wrote a lot of stories hardly worth reading, too. And so on.

I think Lovecraft’s “Colour Out of Space” belongs in a list of stories “everyone” should read. But I would not recommend any collection of his stories for this kind of list. He wrote a lot that only Lovecraft fans need to bother with. Take it from me, someone who’s read it all.

As it's basically a recommendation list, I think you probably should work on the question as to whether it's worth picking up the book and spending time on it. Same as albums. You'd maybe recommend say Hotel California even if you didn't like or or two of the tracks (you heathen!) as it's worth listening to for the good stuff. Few collections are going to be perfect, so maybe the idea of whether at least fifty percent of it is good?

I have to say that one thing that puts me off lists like this one is the word "should." I don't like being told what I should read, especially when so many of the books on the list are books I either have no wish to read, or else started and did not finish.

I have no problem with a list of suggested or recommended books, but that "should" makes it sound like those who don't read them all have somehow failed. Which is nonsense. There are so many worthy books out there, SFFH books to suit a variety of tastes, that it seems ... I don't know ... a bit arrogant to tell people which books they ought to have been reading.

Ya, you're lucky. It began as "you MUST read"! That's just semantics really. As I said, it's recommendations, not orders. More "you should read these cos they're great" rather than "you should read these or you're dumb." I think it's a little silly to get so hung up on wording. Nobody's forcing anyone to read these books, and probably few here will ever read them all. It's just an idea to try to compile the books we all think are worth reading. The language is used with every list of this type - 100 albums you should hear before you die, 100 places you should visit before you die etc.

Now that the list is over multiple pages, it's making it difficult to scan to see if a book has been suggested. I don't have access to the Google Docs page, so is there any someplace where a list could be created for easy reference? I thought maybe a Goodreads list, but all lists are public non Chrons would be able to vote on it

I did, however, find this list

Science Fiction and Fantasy Must Reads (3773 books)

3,775 books based on 4941 votes: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Dune by Frank Herbert, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Hobbit by J.R.R. T...

www.goodreads.com

Edit
I have since studied that list, and there are loads of duplicates and, as mentioned in the comments, several non sci-fi/fantasy books.

It would have been so good if I could have kept editing the OP, but that doesn't happen here, so this was my only other alternative. If you can suggest something better I'm certainly down for it. My doc does not seem to be generally available and I have to keep authorising people to see it, so any help there certainly would be welcome.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Can we please stop posting until there's a consensus as to whether we list series as one or multiple books? Otherwise there's going to be a lot of extra correction work for me. Who votes single and who votes series?

 

[Extollager]

Single books, not series, please. This list is supposed to be a set of recommendations -- "These are books you owe it to yourself to try" (as I understand it) -- to people who have not read them.* But I can tell you this, if you recommend to me "the entire Discworld series" or whatever, I'm probably never going to bother. You need to do the work of telling me why I should get some one particular book and give it a try.

*Also, I know it has the function of assessing one's own reading: "How many of these have I read? A lot!" or whatever.

 

[Randy M.]

153.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson – arguably the greatest ghost story at novel length of the 20th century
154.
Beloved by Toni Morrison – a novel that makes my first assertion arguable
155.
The Red Tree by Caitlin Kiernan – psychologically astute portrait of a woman who may be going mad and the “bad place” that may be the cause of it; easily one of the most disturbing novels I’ve read in the 21st century
156.
The Drowning Girl by Caitlin Kiernan – the novel Kiernan published after The Red Tree and which takes many of the motifs and symbols of the former and turns them around: heat vs. cold, for instance
157.
The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle – a cornerstone of modern fantasy, the characters as important to the story as the milieu or the miracles
158.
The October Country by Ray Bradbury – the perfect collection for around Halloween
159.
The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles Finney – exemplar of fantasy as social satire
160.
At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft – HPL’s best s.f. story, in my opinion, almost surprisingly well-written given HPL’s tendencies (added because somebody had to)
161.
The Grin of the Dark by Ramsey Campbell – Lovecraftian novel almost unbearably suspenseful as it winds to its conclusion; a film critic tracing the history of a once famous silent comedian who was more than just a comedian
162.
The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll – part fictional memoir, part literary biography (of a fictional writer), part mystery, part fantasy, part horror (not blood’n’guts horror, though)
163.
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter – exemplary prose in short story form, retellings and re-weavings of famous fairy tales
164.
The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore – historical novel including werewolves
165.
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson – Lovecraft before Lovecraft; cosmic horror, a bit clunky in execution, but amazingly imaginative and immersive story-telling
166.
Night’s Black Agents by Fritz Leiber (later editions preferable) – perhaps the best example of how much Leiber’s short work directed the path of fantasy in mid-20th century America, from his Sword ’n’ Sorcery works to his contemporary fantasy
167.
Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith – one of the early series of stories detailing life near the end of the world as we know it, as the sun dies; gloriously imaginative Gothic fiction
168.
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers – powerful historical fantasy novel with vampires of a sort
169.
The Anubis Gate by Tim Powers – great historical fantasy action/adventure novel
170.
Ghost Story by Peter Straub – another novel that makes my first assertion arguable
171.
The War with the Newts by Karel Capek – an exemplar of s.f. as satire

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

On the subject of single books or series. Perhaps if the books were conceived as a trilogy, quadrology or whateverology, then only one entry, but if the books can stand on their own, then they are their own entry.
So, the Discworld books get their own entry, but A Song Of Ice And Fire just one entry.

 

[Trollheart]

I think I'm going to have to make an executive decision here, as nobody really seems to be voting on this, with the exception of maybe three people, all of whom have slightly different views. Like they say, my thread my rules so....

For the purposes of this list then: single books only per entry.

I will go back and renumber the list and let you know where we stand on that. In the light of this, then perhaps nixie or some other kind mod would rename the thread to, what, maybe "1000 Important Works of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror We Recommend" or somesuch (taking into account Teresa's dislike for the word "should" being used. Maybe "might like to read?" Whatever way you want to word it, whichever causes the least consternation. So in future, recommend one book per number please, even if you're reccing a trilogy or more. Thanks.

 

[Extollager]

How about “that you owe it to yourself to try”?

The idea would be that the recommender thinks the item deserves the attention of most people who are interested in Sffh, for intrinsic reasons. Thus we might not recommend something that, say, was a pretty dull work but did “predict” communications satellites or heart transplants or whatever.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

How about “that you owe it to yourself to try”?

That would be much better. And would probably encourage more people to actually try them. For many of us, being given arbitrary orders (outside of school) immediately sets up a resistance to doing whatever it is.

Trollheart, just because "should" is the way these lists are usually titled doesn't mean that has to happen here. We have had plenty of recommendation threads here in the past. None of them told people what they should be reading. (Much less what they MUST read.) You can say it is just semantics, but this is a reading and writing forum and words count.

 

[Trollheart]

I don't have any issues with the word, but I recognise others may, and if that's the case then change it to whatever everyone is most comfortable with. it's only a label, in the end, and the content, surely, is far more important than the title?

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

How about trilogies that have been published as a single volume?

 

[tachyon]

172. The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach, novel, SF, translated from German.

This book starts as a portrait of a family and zooms out slowly to encompass the entire universe, all the while never losing focus on humanity and society, and telling a bonkers story along the way. It's a masterpiece.

 

[Trollheart]

In that case I'd say treat them as one volume. So you're talking LOTR, Magician, that kind of thing?

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Yes. For example, I've listed Gormenghast and The Once and Future King. Not only have both of those been published as a single volume, but that's how I've read them.