"Best science fiction novel ever written" Topic

Earth Abides

Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
Gateway (Frederik Pohl)

I'm sure I'm forgetting some good ones.

Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy, or HGTTG if we're only doing single books.

The Forever War (Joe Haldeman), or…
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey.

Agree with Herk about Dragonflight, but then there's The Ice People by René Barjavel and The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham.

So many good books.

Rama Revealed by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

Childhoods End, Arthur C Clarke
Foundation, Isaac Asimov
The Positronic Man, Isaac Asimov

Frankenstein

If you want to go the military route, there's Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, Armor by John Steakley, Hammer's Slammers by David Drake, or the original Bolo by Keith Laumer.

I nominate "The Mote in God's Eye" by Pournelle and Niven.

Uh, aegis. The OP wrote "novel." The Drake and Laumer are short story collections. Pretty sure Forever War rates that way too. And if short story collections count, the winner is Heinlein's The Past through Tomorrow. (Honorable mention to the Library of America Lovecraft, Leigh Brackett's The Coming of the Terrans and Zelazny's Four for Tomorrow, which includes "The Furies," "The Doors of his Face, the Lamps of his Mouth" and "A Rose for Ecclesastes.")

For Novels--probably Schmitz' The Demon Breed, with honorable mention to A Canticle for Liebowitz, Starship Trooper, Tunnel in the Sky, Shards of Honor, Frankenstein and Drake's With the Lightnings.

And how did I miss Niven & Pournelle? Mote, of course. Lucifer's Hammer and Inferno are great books. But I think Oath of Fealty is the one they'll still read in a hundred years.

Frankenstein has has some sciency elements, but first, foremost, and overwhelmingly it is a Gothic novel. Include it in a literature class, and there is a lot to digest as Gothic Literature, and very little as SF Literature.

For my favourite not nominated yet:
2001 A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart.

Dune.

Lots of really good books out there, but Dune is the best novel qua novel.

I'll add The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

I am a reader of SciFi from wayback. They were cheap, easy to read and I did not care if they got stolen or tossed by my boss. Lol.
I liked stories where the characters lasted a few novels. What I read:
John Carter of Mars, GOR, Blade who travelled to alternate worlds, and a few others. A watched a lot of TV series as well.

So many good ones already mentioned.

+1 for Dragonflight. Loved that series.

Ringworld by Larry Niven

Easy. Hitchhikers Guide.

Next question…

Starship Troopers.

Let me toss Delaney's Ballad of Beta-2 into the mix.

A Canticle for Liebowitz, is one of my all-time favorites.

Also, a couple of Andre Norton "Juvenile SF" Sargasso of Space and the Time Traders.

Inquisitor (an old Games Workshop book).

If graphic novels count: Camelot 3000.

Also, The Mercenary, first in the Falkenberg's Legion series by Pournelle.

Starship Troopers

Y'all are forgetting the men who started it all:
Jules Verne
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Journey to the Center of the Earth
From the Earth to the Moon
Mysterious Island

HG Wells
The War of the Worlds
The First Men on the Moon
The Invisible Man
The Island of Doctor Moreau
Things to Come
The Time Machine

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is at its heart a science fiction novel— the creation of an artificial life form.

Robert Louis Stevenson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde

Edgar Rice Burroughs
A Princess of Mars

Arthur Conan Doyle
The Lost World

And then to the post WWII era:

Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451

Robert Heinlein
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
The Door Into Summer
Podkayne of Mars

H. Beam Piper
Space Viking
Little Fuzzy
Down Styphon

Poul Anderson
Tau Zero
The High Crusade

More recent
Vernor Vinge
A Fire in the Deep

Plus of course all the others previously mentioned.

Where to start…
Forever War Joe Haldeman
War of the Worlds H.G. Wells
Dune Frank Herbert
Day of the Triffids John Wyndham (British version it's longer)
The Expanse series James S.A. Corey (still working my through it)
Anything by William Gibson
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (all 5 parts) Douglas Adams

Bolo Series

Foundation Series

No one's mentioning Wyndham's The Midwich Cukoos or Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons." I'll grant you the Kornbluth's a short, but we can actually watch those two taking place.

miniMo, you're not thinking clearly. Yes, of course there are strong Gothic elements in Frankenstein, but about half the nominees are war or adventure stories. Should they be excluded because not all war or adventure stories are SF?

Parzival, have you actually read Jules Verne? Hats off to you!

That is the densest French I have ever tried (and failed) to crack. Dumas, Rostand, heck even Sartre are much more accessible.

The Stainless Steel Rat

and

HGTTG

Tai Zero is definitely THE "hard science fiction" book of all time.
No fantasy handwavium at all. No FTL, no magic swords, no time travel. 👍

So, having said that, I really like Old Man's War.

The sequels, not so much, but a writer has got to earn a living. 😄
The same can be said for the sequels to Ender's Game. In both cases, the original is the much better story. Sequels usually pander. May I respectfully add Dune too?
An OP can't gatekeep his post. All I said was "novel", so I'll leave it to the respondents.

Stars my destination

A quibble, Parzival. Beam Piper's book was Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. The RULES were "Down Styphon!"

You know, Bill, it would probably be helpful to sort this into a "Best SF NOVEL" and a "Best SF SERIES" poll. I count at about ten series "nominated" so far, and several simply weren't novels, or did their first and best work as short stories.

I can now divide this list into:

Books I have read that are really, really good
Books I really enjoyed then but would not enjoy now
Books I'm just not going to read (you know which ones I mean)
Books I really should read
Books I really should re-read
Books I marvel that no one has added to the list yet (Lathe of Heaven, 2001, Ringworld)

Perry Rodan is an *amazingly* successful sci fi series, but it's mostly known in German. I read and didn't enjoy the first book, so I won't be paying it any more attention, but that series has sold far, far more books than any of these. Some sources say it is the best selling book series of all time in any language.

But Dune is still the best written SF novel.

Parzival, have you actually read Jules Verne? Hats off to you!

That is the densest French I have ever tried (and failed) to crack. Dumas, Rostand, heck even Sartre are much more accessible.

Alas, only in translation. Any French work is beyond moi!

@robert
Correct you are! Yes, the novel is Lord Kalyan of Otherwhen… my brain must have snagged on to seeing the rules mentioned here. Oops!

" You know, Bill, it would probably be helpful to sort this into a "Best SF NOVEL" and a "Best SF SERIES" poll."

No. I proposed the Poll, deliberately leaving it open ended. It is what it is. If you want a different poll, start your own poll. 😄

I'd also include some classic children's literature, which features some exceptional Sci-Fi

A Wrinkle in Time
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
The Tripods Trilogy: The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, The Pool of Fire
The Twenty-One Balloons (Steampunk before steampunk was a thing.)

Also things that cross genres:
I Am Legend
Flowers for Algernon

If we're doing children's, both the "Mushroom Planet" books and the "Tom Swift Jr" volumes have to be included.

Remarkable the range, considering we're a long way from a random sample of SF readers. Except for Parzival's childhood, there are only about three books I'm not familiar with and maybe 8 I haven't read. But there are a good few I'd only read or re-read if I were well paid, and I'm sure several people feel that way about some of my nominations.

But there are a good few I'd only read or re-read if I were well paid, and I'm sure several people feel that way about some of my nominations.

Books are like favourite meals, mate, and everyone has different tastes. If everyone nominated the same few books I'd be worried.

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet certainly deserves a mention.
Tom Swift, yes— (I have a few of those)
Danny Dunn was also big when I was a kid. (One of my favorites, Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy predicted the creation of tiny surveillance drones! And that was in the ‘70s. It even dealt with the civil rights concerns we now face today.)

Lotta marvelous SciFi there. Remember reading some of them in those double books. Have to throw in the Rim Runner series by A Bertram Chandler.

It's almost impossible to pick one single novel out of many decades and different styles.

Im not so familiar with recent books, I tend to be more with films and TV, though in the past I read the "classics"..Asimov, Heinlein, Poul Anderson, AC Clarke etc
and of course the real oldies Wells and Verne
and the CS Lewis Perelandra series.
Terry Pratchett/Stephen Baxter Long Earth series is something more recent.

I don't read much sci-fi per se, but I like REH, Arthur Conan Doyle and ERB.

Books are like ice cream flavors; everyone likes different things. I thought Ender's Game was meh.

I like Lord Kalvan. I reread it again a few months ago.

Star Guard was good.

The first 1632 book by Flint was interesting.

I just picked up Space Vikings and Planet of the Apes from a used bookstore for 99 cents each.

What was the book that had a robot dressed like a Napoleonic French infantryman?

I'm a big fan of Ian M Banks "Culture" series, very imaginative and he was an excellent writer as well.

"What was the book that had a robot dressed like a Napoleonic French infantryman?"

The Napoleons of Eridanus--"Grognards" in the French original--by Pierre Boulle--author of Planet of the Apes.

The Naked Sun; Isaac Asimov
Martians, Go Home; Frederick Brown
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale; Phillip K. Dick

Enders game was a great short story….

The man In The High Castle
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Foundation/Foundation and Empire/Second Foundation
Dune
A Fire on the Deep
Ubik
Hothouse
Valis
The Island of Doctor Mareau
The War of the Worlds
Dying Inside
The last days of New Paris
The Disposessed

(this could be a long list by the way)

2001: A Space Odyssey
Gateway
The Word for World is Forest
Ringworld
At the Mountains of madness
A clockwork Orange
Lord of Light
the Drowned World
The Drought
The handmaids Tale
High Rise
The Death of Grass
Day of the Triffids
Midwich Cuckoos
The Gods Themselves
To your scattered bodies go
The fabulous riverboat
1984
Fahrenheit 451
Greybeard

….if time allows I will return to this topic, but first I must fight a duel…hopefully with less apocalypse novels and a few more recent books…

All 32 of them, probably more, they're all the best!

This poll will go on for months and months…