This list has been compiled by Guardian and is the must-read science and fantasy fiction! I want to work my way through this and read as many as I can (I haven’t read many up to now though):
1.The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
2.Non-Stop by Brian W Aldiss
3.Foundation by Isaac Asimov
4.The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
5.The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
6.In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
7.The Drowned World by JG Ballard
8.Crash by JG Ballard
9.Millennium People by JG Ballard
10.The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
11.Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
12.Weaveworld by Clive Barker
13.Darkmans by Nicola Barker
14.The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter
15.Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear
16.Vathek by William Beckford
17.The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
18.Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
19.Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite
20.Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown
21.Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
22.The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
23.The Coming Race by EGEL Bulwer-Lytton
24.A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
25.The End of the World News by Anthony Burgess
26.A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
27.Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
28.Kindred by Octavia Butler
29.Erewhon by Samuel Butler
30.The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
31.The Influence by Ramsey Campbell
32.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
33.Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
34.Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
35.The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
36.The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
37.The Man who was Thursday by GK Chesterton
38.Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke
39.Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
40.Hello Summer, Goodbye by Michael G Coney
41.Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
42.House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
43.Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq
44.The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R Delaney
45.Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
46.The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
47.Camp Concentration by Thomas M Disch
48.Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
49.Under the Skin by Michel Faber
50.The Magus by John Fowles
51.American Gods by Neil Gaiman
52.Red Shift by Alan Garner
53.Neuromancer by William Gibson
54.Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
55.Lord of the Flies by William Golding
56.The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
57.Light by M John Harrison
58.The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
59.Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein
60.Dune by Frank L Herbert
61.The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
62.Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
63.The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
64.Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
65.Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
66.The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
67.The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
68.The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
69.The Children of Men by PD James
70.After London; or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies
71.Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones
72.The Trial by Franz Kafka
73.Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
74.The Shining by Stephen King
75.The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski
76.Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
77.The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin
78.The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
79.Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
80.Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
81.The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
82.The Monk by Matthew Lewis
83.A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
84.The Night Sessions by Ken Macleod
85.Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
86.Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
87.I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
88.Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
89.The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
90.The Road by Cormac McCarthy
91.Ascent by Jed Mercurio
92.The Scar by China Mieville
93.Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
94.A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr
95.Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
96.Mother London by Michael Moorcock
97.News from Nowhere by William Morris
98.Beloved by Toni Morrison
99.The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
100.Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
101.The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
102.Ringworld by Larry Niven
103.Vurt by Jeff Noon
104.The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
105.The Famished Road by Ben Okri
106.Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
107.Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
108.Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
109.Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
110.The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth
111.A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
112.The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett
113.The Prestige by Christopher Priest
114.His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
115.Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
116.The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
117.Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
118.The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
119.Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling
120.Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
121.The Female Man by Joanna Russ
122.Air by Geoff Ryman
123.The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
124.Blindness by Jose Saramago
125.How the Dead Live by Will Self
126.Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
127.Hyperion by Dan Simmons
128.Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
129.Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
130.The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
131.Dracula by Bram Stoker
132.The Insult by Rupert Thomson
133.The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
134.The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
135.A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
136.Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
137.The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
138.Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser
139.Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
140.Affinity by Sarah Waters
141.The Time Machine by HG Wells
142.The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
143.The Sword in the Stone by TH White
144.The Old Men at the Zoo by Angus Wilson
145.The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
146.Orlando by Virginia Woolf
147.Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
148.The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
149.We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
20 out of 149
Ramblings of an Elfpire 