Time Magazine's Top 100 Novels

Time Magazine's list of the best 100 novels of all time.. of course, they never get science fiction right. They included Philip K. Dick's "Ubik" over his Hugo-winner "The Man in the High Castle". They neglected Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End", and Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness", and Heinlein's (admittedly inferior but popular) "Stranger in a Strange Land", which usually makes lists. Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange", which is in the top 40 of the Library Association top 100 list, did make the list, rightly so.

The complete Time Magazine list

Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy

Top Science Fiction and Fantasy
[ss = short stories; a number (1) denotes position in a series]

These are my favorite books in all literature, especially at the top level, like the top 100 - several of these authors (Clarke, Card, Le Guin, Wolfe, Bester) should have Nobel prizes for literature, they are better than half those winners.

1. Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
2. The Claw of the Conciliator (2) by Gene Wolfe
3. Red Prophet (2) by Orson Scott Card
4. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
5. The Shadow of the Torturer (1) by Gene Wolfe
6. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
7. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
8. The Year of the Quiet Sun by Wilson Tucker
9. Ender's Game (1) by Orson Scott Card
10. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
11. A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg
12. Floating Worlds by Cecilia Holland
13. Seventh Son (1) by Orson Scott Card
14. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1) by Arthur C. Clarke
15. The Telling by Ursula K. le Guin
16. The Long, Loud Silence by Wilson Tucker
17. Starburst (ss) by Alfred Bester
18. Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
19. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
20. Gateway (1) by Frederick Pohl
21. SF Hall of Fame, Volume 1 (ss anthology)
22. In the Ocean of Night by Gregory Benford
23. Red Mars (1) by Kim S. Robinson
24. The Space Merchants by C.M. Kornbluth & F. Pohl
25. The Persistence of Vision (ss) by John Varley
26. Island of Dr. Death & Other Stories (ss) by Gene Wolfe
27. Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick
28. Jog Rummage by Grahame Wright (his only book, published posthumously)
29. SF Hall of Fame, Volume 2-B (ss anthology)
30. The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley
31. Hiero's Journey by Sterling E. Lanier
32. The Wind's Twelve Quarters (ss) by Ursula K. Le Guin
33. Missing Man by Katherine MacLean
34. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
35. Gate of Ivrel by C.J. Cherryh
36. Best of Fritz Leiber, The (ss) by Fritz Leiber
37. A Mirror For Observors by Edgar Pangborn
38. The Last Starship From Earth by John Boyd
39. The Haunted Stars by Edmund Hamilton
40. Fata Morgana by William Kotzwinkle
41. An Alien Heat (1) by Michael Moorcock
42. Titus Groan (1) Mervyn Peake
43. Green Mars (2) by Kim S. Robinson
44. A Few Last Words (ss) by James Sallis
45. Pavane by Keith Roberts
46. Healer’s War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
47. The Syndic by C.M. Kornbluth
48. Hyperion (1) by Dan Simmons
49. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
50. Sundog by B.N. Ball
51. To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1) by Philip José Farmer
52. Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore
53. Way Station by Clifford D. Simak
54. The Unconquered Country by Geoff Ryman
55. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
56. The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
57. Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch
58. Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward
59. The Man In the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
60. Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
61. Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin
62. Slan by A.E. Van Vogt
63. The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg
64. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
65. Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny
66. Mayflies by Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.
67. Macrolife by George Zebrowski
68. Startide Rising (1) by David Brin
69. Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant
70. Slow River by Nicola Griffeth
71. Several Perceptions by Angela Carter
72. Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock
73. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
74. Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
75. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
76. The Many-Coloured Land by Julian May
77. The Word For World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
78. Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon
79. The Fall of Hyperion (2) by Dan Simmons
80. Legends From the End of Time (4) (ss) by Michael Moorcock
81. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
82. Nightwings by Robert Silverberg
83. The Godmakers by Frank Herbert
84. The Sparrow (1) by Mary Doria Russell
85. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
86. The Martian Chronicles (ss)by Ray Bradbury
87. A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
88. Triplanetary (1) by E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith
89. The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke
90. Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard
91. The Fellowship of the Ring (1) by J.R.R. Tolkien
92. Timescape by Gregory Benford
93. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
94. The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
95. On the Beach by Nevil Shute
96. A Fire Upon the Deep (1) by Vernor Vinge
97. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (this became the movie "Blade Runner", a title bought from an unrelated novel)
98. San Diego Lightfoot Sue (ss) by Tom Reamy
99. Michaelmas by Algis Budrys
100. Double Star by Robert E. Heinlein
101. Involution Ocean by Bruce Sterling
102. Blind Voices by Tom Reamy
103. The Best of C.M. Kornbluth (ss) by C.M. Kornbluth
104. The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy
105. Nine Princes in Amber (1) by Roger Zelazny
106. Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith
107. Good Neighbors & Other Strangers (ss) by Edgar Pangborn
108. The Compass Rose (ss) by Ursula K. le Guin
109. The Hobbitt by J.R.R. Tolkien
110. E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet by William Kotzwinkle
111. Walkers On the Sky by David J. Lake
112. Living Way Out by Wyman Guin
113. Speaker for the Dead (2) by Orson Scott Card
114. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
115. Chronopolis (ss) by J.G. Ballard
116. Vermilion Sands (ss) by J.G. Ballard
117. City by Clifford D. Simak
118. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert E. Heinlein
119. The Voices of Time (ss) by J.G. Ballard
120. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (2) by Frederick Pohl
121. Little, Big by John Crowley
122. More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
123. Nine Hundred Grandmothers (ss) by R.A. Lafferty
124. The Dark Beyond the Stars by Frank M. Robinson
125. The Leeshore by Robert Reed
126. Children of God (2) by Mary Doria Russell

Series with titles making the list
Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker (aka Hatrack River) consists of: (1) Seventh Son (2) Red Prophet (3) Prentice Alvin (4) Alvin, Journeyman
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Series consists of: (1) Ender's Game (2) Speaker for the Dead (3) Xenocide

Gene Wolfe's Urth of the New Sun consists of: (1) The Shadow of the Torturer (2) The Claw of the Conciliator (3) The Sword of the Lictor (4) The Citadel of the Autarch

Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time consists of: (1) An Alien Heat (2) The Hollow Lands (3) The End of All Songs (4) Dancers at the End of Time (ss)

Dan Simmon's Hyperion consists of: (1) Hyperion (2) The Fall of Hyperion

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy is (1) Red Mars (2) Green Mars (3) Blue Mars

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy is (1) Titus Groan (2) Gormenghast (3) Titus Alone [PBS made an excellent mini-series of this, a 10-yr project of the producer's]

[I thought both Frank Herbert's Dune series, and J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy to be overrated, each is long and boring in comparison to the series above, each goes downhill after the beginning. Filmed versions are much better: Peter Jackson's Rings Trilogy, and the SF Channel's Dune mini-series are both excellent, more rewarding than the reading.]

Arthur C. Clarke was the greatest visionary - he wrote "2001" for Stanley Kubrick because he couldn't film "Childhood's End" with limited film technology of the time; he also co-created radar during WW2, and was the first to predict global telecom satellites. Gene Wolfe is perhaps the best writer stylistically (a true "writer's writer"), Ursula K. Le Guin probably the best overall and most humane novelist, Orson Scott Card (a former Shakespearean) is the best storyteller, and Alfred Bester was the most innovative, but alas, he wrote the least. Philip K. Dick's nightmarish vision of a bleak, violent police state future has unfortunately been the most prophetic. His stories became the films "Blade Runner" and "Minority Report". Anthony Burgess' now classic "A Clockwork Orange", was autobiographical, an exorcism of a true event that happened to him and his wife; later editions have a much-needed language glossary appendix, for all you malchicks and devotchkas, viddy it well, it's real horrorshow.

Top 100 Mainstream Fiction

Top Mainstream Fiction (ss = Short Stories)

1. The Magus by John Fowles
2. Women In Love by D.H. Lawrence
3. Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins
4. Mila 18 by Leon Uris
5. Steps by Jerzy Kosinski
6. The Confession of a Child of the Century by Thomas Rogers
7. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
8. Stop-Time by Frank Conroy
9. I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier
10. Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
11. Black Spring (ss) by Henry Miller
12. The Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad
13. In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash (ss) by Jean Shepherd (parts filmed as "A Christmas Story")
14. Mysteries by Knut Hamsen
15. Perfume by Patric Suskind
16. Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
17. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
18. Ourselves by Jonathan Strong
19. Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts (ss) by Donald Barthelme
20. Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, Pt. 1) by Henry Miller
21. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
22. Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry (filmed as "Hud")
23. All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers by Larry McMurtry
24. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
25. Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
26. The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
27. The Reader by Bernard Schlink
28. Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone (filmed as "Who'll Stop the Rain")
29. White Noise by Don DeLillo
30. Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon
31. Shane by Jack Schaeffer
32. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
33. Winged Pharoah by Joan Grant
34. The Shadowboxer by Noel Behn
35. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
36. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
37. Outcast of the Islands by Joseph Conrad
38. The Centaur by John Updike
39. The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
40. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston
41. Birdy by William Wharton
42. A Few Last Words (ss) by James Sallis
43. A History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield
44. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
45. Something of Value by Robert Ruark
46. Hunger by Knut Hamsen
47. The Wanderer (or the End of Youth) by Alain-Fournier
48. Seven Days in May by F. Knebel & C. W. Bailey
49. The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry
50. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
51. House of Incest by Anais Nin
52. Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
53. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
54. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
55. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
56. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
57. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
58. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
59. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
60. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
61. The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
62. Plexus (Rosy Crucifixion 2) by Henry Miller
63. Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories (ss) by Jean Shepherd
64. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
65. The Things They Carried (ss) by Tim O'Brien
66. Setting Free the Bears by John Irving
67. Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
68. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
69. Lost Horizon by James Hilton
70. Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella (filmed as "Field of Dreams")
71. Therese Raquin by Emile Zola
72. The Locked Room (3) by Paul Auster
73. The Murder of Roger Akroyd by Agatha Christie
74. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
75. A Confederate General from Big Sur by Richard Brautigan
76. The Bushwhacked Piano by Thomas McGuane
77. Tike and Five Stories (ss) by Jonathan Strong
78. Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne
79. Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
80. Delta of Venus (ss) by Anais Nin
81. Diva by Delacorta
82. Mutiny on the Bounty Nordoff & Hall
83. The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
84. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
85. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
86. Three Short Novels by Joseph Conrad
87. Fade by Robert Cormier
88. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
89. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
90. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
91. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
92. Scorpio Rising by R.G. Vliet
93. The Hunt For Red October by Tom Clancy
94. My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel
95. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
96. Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawar Jvabvala
97. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
98. Maggie Cassidy by Jack Kerouac
99. Death Will Have Her Eyes by James Sallis
100. Rock Springs by Richard Ford
101. The List of 7 by Mark Frost
102. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
103. Uhuru by Robert Ruark
104. Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson
105. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
106. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
107. City of Glass (New York Trilogy 1) by Paul Auster
108. Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihey
109. Running Dog by Don DeLillo
110. Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad
111. The Story of O by Pauline Réage
112. The Universal Baseball Assoc., J. Henry Waugh, proprieter by Robert Coover
113. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
114. Equilibrium by Tonino Guerra
115. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
116. The Siege of Salt Cove by Anthony Weller
117. Long Division by Anne Riophe
118. King Rat by James Clavell
119. Edisto by Padgett Powell
120. House of Pomegranates & Other Tales (ss) by Oscar Wilde
121. Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
122. Last Summer by Evan Hunter
123. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
124. Running Out by Christopher Brookhouse
125. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

My favorite novelists are (1) Larry McMurtry (2) Joseph Conrad (3) Henry Miller. Conrad is amazing, a Pole writing in English! McMurtry is without doubt America's greatest in history. Miller's sprawling stream-of-consciousness and uncensored language were decades ahead of the public and helped shape the 20th century's lifestyle. Jonathan Strong has written two of the best romances: Tike and Ourselves, both uncompromising, short, and honest. Knut Hamsen deserved his Nobel, Hemingway did NOT, and doesn't everyone wish Harper Lee had written more novels than just To Kill a Mockingbird?

PLAYS
The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler
Play It Again, Sam by Woody Allen
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

POETRY
The Back Country by Gary Snyder
Regarding Wave by Gary Snyder
Left Out in the Rain by Gary Snyder
Ariel by Sylvia Plath
Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire
Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Bratsk Station by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Selected Poems of Frederico Garcia Lorca
Collected Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, trans. by Kenneth Rexroth

Top 50 Non-Fiction Books

Top Non-Fiction Books
[This includes religion, essays, humor, philosophy, history, biography, etc.]

1. The Way of Life by Lao Tzu
2. The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley
3. The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts
4. We Were Soldiers Once, and Young by Moore & Galloway
5. Magpie Rising by Merrill Gilfallan
6. Buried Alive by Myra Friedman
7. The Way of the Initiate by Roy Eugene Davis
8. Metropolitan Life by Fran Leibowitz
9. The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
10. The Unexpected Universe by Loren Eiseley
11. Cosmic Consciousness by Richard M. Bucke
12. The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams
13. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
14. The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
15. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
16. The Diary of Che Guevara by Ernesto "Che" Guevara
17. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
18. The Golden Thread by Natalie Banks
19. The Master Game by Dr. Robert S. de Ropp
20. The Fifth Miracle by Paul Davies
21. The White Lantern by Evan S. Connell
22. The Politics of Experience by R.D. Laing
23. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
24. Rants by Dennis Miller
25. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
26. Questions and Answers by Manly P. Hall
27. Light Elements by Judith Stone
28. The Honeymooner's Companion by Donna McCronan
29. Song of God (Bhagavad-Gita) trans. By Prabhavananda & Isherwood
30. The Messianic Legacy by Baigent, Leigh, & Lincoln
31. Notes by Eleanor Coppola
32. The Psychic Healing Book by Amy Wallace
33. Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson
34. The Vatican Connection by Richard Hammer
35. Remember: Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass
36. The Killing Zone by Frederick Downs
37. The Mormon Murders by S. Naifeh, S. & G.W. Smith
38. The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton
39. Everything But Money by Sam Levinson
40. Lawrence of Arabia by Anthony Nutting
41. Morning of the Magicians by Pauwels & Bergier
42. Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
43. Ace of Spies by Robin Bruce Lockhart
44. The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
45. The Book of Lists #2 by I. Wallace, I & D. Wallechinsky
46. Dave Barry's Guide to Guys by Dave Barry
47. Crazy English by Richard Lederer
48. What the Dogs Have Taught Me by Merrill Markoe
49. Social Studies by Fran Lebowitz
50. The Magic of Believing by Claude M. Bristol
51. Write If You Get Work: Best of Bob & Ray by Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding
52. Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Angers
53. Veeck - As in Wreck by Bill Veeck & Ed Finn
54. What the Bible Really Says by Manfred Barthel
55. Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot by Al Franken

Loren Eiseley is an amazing writer, a scientist with appreciation of the mysterious and miraculous; read all of his books (Immense Journey is his first, a great place to start), including his biography, A Fox at the Edge of the Woods by Gale E. Christianson, which was his description of mankind, "having emerged from the wilderness, we are now separate from it, and actually fear it, like a fox at the edge of the woods."

All of Joseph Campbell's books and television series on PBS are worth experiencing, and they'll help you understand all religions and cultures, as well as myths and parables.

Bill Bryson is the funniest non-fiction writer, once you start, you'll read all of his, the three of his I've read all made this list (#13, 14, 33). He's an American who emigrated to England, where "they don't destroy everything from the past to build strip malls" (from Thunderbolt Kid, about growing up in the American midwest, similar to Jean Shepherd from another generation).

Alan Watts wrote The Wisdom of Insecurity near the end of his life to "clear up confusion caused by my other books"; it's a succinct philosophy of wisdom that everyone should read: "the only constant is change, if you become rooted in anything, it will eventually change..."

We Were Soldiers Once is the most harrowing war book I've ever read, and its far better than the Mel Gibson film based on it.

Introduction

I recently completed my 1000th book, since age 12 anyway, that's when I started logging them (no textbooks). I decided that it was time to get the best of them out on the net. I actually know two people who still read!

Lists posted to date

• Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Top 100 Mainstream Fiction
• Favorite Non-fiction

I'll also have some genre lists:

• Favorite Mystery
• Favorite Romance
• Favorite Biography
• Favorite War
• Favorite Humor

I've read more fiction than non-fiction, and only slightly more sf-fantasy than mainstream. Each type has its positives and negatives, but I'd have to agree with those who say that "science fiction is the new mythos", more imaginative and visionary than mainstream, and perhaps leading us forward into the next stage of evolution. Many Nobel-winning scientists say they read science fiction to get an idea of "what is possible", and even direct their current work accordingly.

If you can read this, the blog may be for you!

... William Lawrence "Jose" Sinclair, aka Jman ...

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