The 11 most Important Science Fiction Books

 

I thought I would make a list of the most important science fiction novels. But I had to define for myself what most important meant to me. These are works that were influential either to other works or to society. Or they were the first of their kind or the first variation of their kind. This list is entirely my opinion. There is nothing quantifiable that makes something more important than something else, so we are left with the imperfect analyses from imperfect humans. Also, I have not read every great science fiction book, so the list will be limited to what I have read.

  

Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly (1818)

Let’s start with the one that started it all. There were other speculative fiction stories before Frankenstein, some going all the way back to the Greeks, Romans, and Norsemen (Thor was not an invention by Marvel Comics). But I would argue that Frankenstein was the first truly modern science fiction novel. It really checks the boxes of modern science fiction. There is a real science element that is critical to the story. Even though the exact procedure for reanimating the dead is vague, it is done through science and not magic. It is also quite well written. If you have never read it, I think you will be surprised at the level of sophistication in the creature.

 

War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells (1898)

There are so many works of H.G Wells that could be on this list: The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau. But in my mind War of the Worlds was the most ground-breaking. Creatures from another world might not be friendly. They might be a horror. I think he was the first to portray microbes as a possible threat to a space-faring race.  It was one of the first stories to feature a planetary struggle for existence.

 

1984, George Orwell (1949)

The king of the dystopian novel. The very title became synonymous with the surveillance state (as did the term “Orwellian”). You don’t have to have read it to know what it means when someone makes an allusion to it. When leaders can manipulate facts to get people to believe what they want them to believe, no one is safe. Hmm, maybe time to read this one again. It was not the first dystopian story, but it inspired so many others. It is a masterpiece of misery.

 

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1953)

Another dystopian novel. Another state trying to control ideas. But this time the focus is on books. This is a society where banning books is to be celebrated. Where the term fireman has been twisted to its opposite meaning. Firemen are people who start fires (burning books). The loyal fireman Montag doesn’t understand what’s wrong with burning books until he steals one and starts reading. The fireman will never be the same. Societies that burn books are never remembered fondly by history.

 

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr. (1960)

This is an interesting piece of post-apocalyptic fiction. Thousands of years into the future. World War III has happened. Violent mobs tried to kill anyone and destroy anything that related to technology or science, like new age Luddites. Books were burned, and knowledge lost. Society has collapsed into a dark age. It is the Catholic church who pulls society back. Their devotion to a man named Leibowitz who had tried to preserve books and knowledge and gave them to the protection of the church. Hundreds of years after his death the church is considering making him a saint. This book does make you question the conclusions drawn by archeologists, as they can be humorously and spectacularly wrong.

 

The Man in the High Castle, Phillip K. Dick (1963)

Phillip K. Dick did not invent the subgenre of alternative history. But The Man in the High Castle is surely the first great novel in the alternate history realm. Many authors use time travel to create an alternate world where history is different from our history due to one fundamental historical change.  Dick never tells us why the history in this story has changed. We are just left to assume it must be an alternate universe. He opens up on a world where the Axis powers won the Second World War. He shows us his speculation on what living in America would be like if part of it were controlled by Imperial Japan and part of it were controlled by NAZI Germany. A fascinating speculation.

 

 Dune, Frank Herbert (1965)

The first book in the Dune series. This one has achieved legendary status even without the movies made from it. The most notable achievement of this work is the worldbuilding. Many have attempted worldbuilding on this scale, but few have done quite it as well. Family relationships, politics, social interactions, religious diversity, messianic legend, ecology. It is a complex blend of old and new, of technology and the complete absence of technology. I could have put Asimov’s Foundation here. It is a similar theme with similar epic proportions, but I think Dune just beats it out.

 

Make Room Make Room, Harry Harrison (1966)

Some books have a purpose beyond entertaining. As 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 gave us warnings of societies we didn’t want to fall into, so Make Room Make Room’s purpose was to illustrate the perils of overpopulation. Another dystopian story, but this one isn’t dystopian because the government is evil, rather we have made the world a nightmare with an unsustainable population. By the 1960’s scientists had started doing the math and realized that if we carried on with population growth as it existed, we would run out of resources by the end of the century. Harrison shows us the world of 1999 where that growth had gone unchecked. It does not have the shocking ending that the movie Soylent Green (based on this book) had, but it steeps us in a world of unrelenting misery. The world population of today is still too large, but perhaps because of works like Make Room make Room the terrible numbers from worst predictions never came to pass.

 

The Left hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)

Written at a time when gender roles were pretty firmly entrenched. Le Guin wrote a book about a people for whom gender was irrelevant. The people of one civilization change genders periodically, and so there can be no patriarchy or matriarchy or sexual motives responsible for their problems. But the book is more than just a gimmick. Le Guin was a superb writer. Diplomacy, politics and religion collide. Other science fiction writers have cited this as being influential on their own works.

 

Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson (1992)

Red Mars is the start of Robinson’s Mars Trilogy. It is the most scientifically accurate depiction of what terraforming a planet would entail. It doesn’t shy away from the ethical concerns about whether we should terraform a planet. It does give some kind of feel for what a monumental endeavor that would be and the time frame to do such an audacious thing. Layered on top of that are the many disparate personalities of the scientist and engineers involved. Some are motivated by a higher calling. Some are motivated by envy and lust (pride is in there too, but the other deadly sins are mostly absent).  This is another epic tale told on a grand scale.

 

 Neuromancer, William Gibson (1994)

This novel defined the cyberpunk genre. This is dystopian fiction, set in a very dark futuristic Japan. It was from this novel that the world learned of the term “cyberspace.” I am not going to tell you that I understood it all. Visualization of the technologies was a bit over my head. But it is easy to see the influence of this book on The Matrix movies, and many other things.

 

Many people will fault me for not having a particular book on this list and they will probably be right. I couldn’t put every important book on the list and deciding what is important is subjective. (Note: These are not my most favorite Science fiction books. That would be a different list.)

Star Liner