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Here are my nominations for the top ten books of science fiction of all time....................

http://bookstove.com/science-fiction/top-10-science-fiction-books-of-all-time

Brave New World

The Sirens of Titan

The Foundation Trilogy

Stranger In a Strange Land

Lord of Light

The Time Machine

Martian Time-Slip

The War of the Worlds

The Chrysalids

Glory Road

Body of Glass

Green Brain

The Kraken Wakes

Greybeard

The Left Hand of Darkness

The Dispossessed

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Slaughterhouse 5

Out of the Silent Planet

The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul

kitty

Dune & Fahrenheit 451 would also be on my list.

A Canticle For Leibowitz - Miller, Jr.

The Dreaming Jewels - Sturgeon

Gateway (Heechee Saga - Book One) - Pohl

Just these quickly noted. There would be many more to add to the list.

'The Far Arena'

'"Canticle etc"

"Have Spacesuit etc"

Canna believe no-one has mentioned

"Earth Abides"

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

"Alien"

"Robinson Crusoe on Mars" (an oldie but a goodie)

"Starman Jones" (his description of 'Baker's Corners is enough to make one scream in sheer terror and look for a backpack....)

"The Terminal Man"

and a really brilliant one whose name I wish I could remember - if anyone can identify it please do so - it was set on a dying earth hundreds or thousands of years in the future and the characters were a human who was helping some weird mutant find his 'soul' which left a luminous trail, in one scene the plant life on land was battling the plantlife at the edge of the sea for resources....

Yar, there have been a rash of self-serving one-time posters on the threads and that bugs me…I hate to see them nourished by innocent (in that they don’t readily think ill intentions of others) or gullible, or both, forumites; although, I suppose that chimeybliss33 could be innocent too but the thumbs are pointing daily more downward.  The way so many folks are steered to the general threads to post inquiries for books also bugs me, but the posters are by and large innocent of guile since they are misdirected by ABE who, I hear, doesn’t think it important enough to address.

Since there are sufficient other posters here now to legitimize the thread…I’ll join in…a little.

My tastes in scifi change over the years so it is difficult for me to posit a top ten.  I will just give a book that ought to be in a top ten for scifi, and one for fantasy.

Curiously, the original poster and I are the only ones to mention Ender’s Game by Card.  Orson has a finely developed sense of political realities and inter- and intra-personal relationships that spill over quite convincingly into this story.  I mentally cheered and wept with the story onlookers at the battle climax.

For fantasy, I really enjoyed The Mists of Avalon by Bradley.  She gave an amazing retelling of the Arthurian legend from a women’s point of view…a command performance I thought. 

Cheers.

"Ender's Game" is surely in the top ten. In our bookstore, whenever a mother comes in and says she has a middle school or teenage boy who won't read, we send her home with a copy. Never got a complaint but have gotten a lot of "Thank you's."

I'd also include Zenna Henderson's, "Pilgrimage" the Book of the People" and Nevil Shute's "On the Beach" (and I would expect many of you to not consider it in this genre).