As “statistically established” by Peter Sykes. As usual, have bolded the ones I’ve read (79 of 100) and linked to reviews if I’ve written one, with brief comment if I haven’t written a review elsewhere:
1 Frank Herbert, Dune 1965
2 Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game [S1] 1985
3 Isaac Asimov, Foundation 1951 – grand historical sweep
4 William Gibson, Neuromancer 1984
5 Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness 1969
6 Robert A Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land 1961 – start of the swinging sixties
7 Larry Niven, Ringworld 1970
8 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949 – dystopian classic
9 Robert A Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 1966 – more revolution
10 Dan Simmons, Hyperion 1989 – great stuff, Chaucer sort of retold
11 Frederik Pohl, Gateway 1977
12 Walter M Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz 1959 – maybe the greatest sf and religion novel
13 Joe Haldeman, The Forever War 1974
14 Arthur C Clarke, Childhood’s End 1954 – the next step in human evolution
15 Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed 1974
16 David Brin, Startide Rising 1983
17 Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man 1953
18 Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 1979 – still hilarious despite my reservations about his other work
19 Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles 1950 – wonderful landscape of another planet
20 Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer 1980 – dense and eerie
21 Ben Bova, [ed] The Best of the Nebulas 1989
22 Arthur C Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama 1973
23 Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination 1956 – bizarre but gripping
24 John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar 1969 – didn’t like this
25 Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human 1953 – also next step in human evolution
26 Isaac Asimov, I, Robot 1950 – I’ve grown out of this one, I’m afraid
27 Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light 1967 – Zelazny’s best single work
28 Robert A Heinlein, Starship Troopers 1959 – not quite as fascist as it is reputed to be
29 Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle 1962 – alternate history without the whimsy
30 Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 1954 – another chilling dystopia
31 Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead 1986
32 Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon 1966
33 H G Wells, The Time Machine 1895 – political fantasy disguised as time travel
34 Harlan Ellison, [ed] Dangerous Visions 1967 – great anthology
35 Niven & Pournelle, The Mote in God’s Eye 1975 – best from this collaboration, though over-rated here
36 Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars 1992 – first of grand political series where the planet is the story
37 Clifford Simak, Way Station 1963
38 H G Wells, The War of the Worlds 1898 – first great invasion-of-earth story
39 David Brin, The Uplift War 1987 – great world-setting in this series, though sadly later volumes have bloated rather than illuminated
40 Gregory Benford, Timescape 1980 – environmental sf disguised as time travel (paradox never quite resolved)
41 Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep 1991 – great stuff, esp the aliens
42 Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968 – the basis of Blade Runner but a great book on its own merits
43 Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves 1972
44 Connie Willis, Doomsday Book 1992
45 Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash 1992 – fantastic cyberpunk, still Stephenson’s best
46 Philip Jose Farmer, To Your Scattered Bodies Go 1971 – first and best of the Riverworld series
47 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World 1932 – another classic of an over-technologised and despiritualised future
48 Arthur C Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 – great book though greater film
49 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein 1818 – oddly, a really bad book, but carried along by the central idea
50 C J Cherryh, Downbelow Station 1981
51 Hal Clement, Mission of Gravity 1953 – superb extreme planetary environment
52 Gardner Dozois, [ed] The Year’s Best Science Fiction 1984 – unbolded as I’ve only got the last half dozen or so of this excellent series, and certainly haven’t read the very first
53 Robert Silverberg, Dying Inside 1972 – telepath loses his powers; heavy metaphors
54 John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids 1951 – everyone goes blind and we are attacked by walking poisonous plants – superb
55 Greg Bear, Blood Music 1985 (earlier version)
56 Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel 1954 – desperate attempt to mix detective and sf genres
57 Anthony A Burgess, Clockwork Orange 1962
58 James Blish, A Case of Conscience 1958 – the other great sf and religion novel
59 Pohl & Kornbluth, The Space Merchants 1953
60 Clifford Simak, City 1952
61 Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates 1983 – great timetravel novel
62 George R Stewart, Earth Abides 1949 – death of humanity
63 Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five 1969 – time-twisted rather than time-travelling
64 Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 1870 – supertechnology (ie submarine) in private hands
65 Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars 1912
66 Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar 1991 – the most celebrated of her Vorkosigan series but I prefer some of the later ones
67 Isaac Asimov, (et al) [eds] Hugo Winners/New Hugo Winners 1962 etc – classic collections
68 Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age 1995 – Stephenson’s other great book, before cryptography completely went to his head
69 Arthur C Clarke, The City and the Stars 1956 – superb far future stuff
70 Philip K Dick, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch 1964 – typically bizarre
71 Joan D Vinge, The Snow Queen 1980
72 Philip K Dick, Ubik 1969 – bizarre and sinister
73 Brian Aldiss, Helliconia Spring 1982 – first and best of the trilogy
74 James Blish, Earthman, Come Home 1955 – at least I think I’ve only read the first in this series, but it was a long time ago
75 Poul Anderson, Tau Zero 1970
76 E E ‘Doc’ Smith, Grey Lensman 1951
77 Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan 1959 – funnier than Slaughterhouse Five, perhaps better
78 Frederik Pohl, Man Plus 1976 – man gets to Mars but at what sacrifice?
79 Robert A Heinlein, The Door Into Summer 1956
80 Harlan Ellison, [ed] Again, Dangerous Visions 1972 – second volume of classic collection
81 Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men 1930
82 Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth 1864 – actually only a few miles down, typical rollicking fun
83 Thomas M Disch, Camp Concentration 1968
84 C J Cherryh, Cyteen: The Betrayal 1988
85 Michael Bishop, No Enemy But Time 1982
86 Arthur C Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise 1979
87 Joanna Russ, The Female Man 1975
88 Robert A Heinlein, Double Star 1956
89 Vonda N McIntyre, Dreamsnake 1978
90 Robert A Heinlein, Time Enough For Love 1973 – one of the silly ones, with brain transplants
91 Robert A Heinlein, The Puppet Masters 1951 – great alien invasion story with nudity
92 Robert A Heinlein, The Past Through Tomorrow 1967 – superb future history even if dodgy politics
93 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale 1985 – male-dominated dystopia
94 Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle 1963 – his best book, a Cold War parable
95 Robert Silverberg, [ed] Science Fiction Hall of Fame 1 1970 – stories all look familiar but they’ve all been collected many times
96 John Varley, Titan 1979 – not really so great
97 Samuel R Delany, Babel-17 1966
98 Edgar Pangborn, A Mirror for Observers 1954
99 David Brin, The Postman 1985 – not quite as bad as the film
100 Robert A Heinlein, Have Space-Suit – Will Travel 1958 – one of his best juvenile novels
Interesting to see how many Heinlein novels come up here. I was struck that Ken MacLeod, who should know, suggests in his essay in the Cambridge Science Fiction Companion that all political sf should be considered as a response to Heinlein. He has a point.
[Later edit: since making this post, I have read:
The Demolished Man
Way Station
Downbelow Station
The Door Into Summer
Cyteen]
I only ever count the fiction categories! (With due respect to your own past successes.)