May is one of my favorite months! How can you not like a month that has Star Wars Day, Cartoonist’s Day, Free Comic Book Day and Towel Day in it? This month is made for the science fiction and fantasy lovers. So, we decided to celebrate by looking back over the last 50 years at some of our favorite science fiction and fantasy novels.
- The God’s Themselves, by Isaac Asimov
- Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
- The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
- Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm
- Gateway, by Frederik Pohl
- A Scanner Darkly, by Phillip K. Dick
- A Spell for Chameleon, by Piers Anthony
- Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
- The Gunslinger, by Stephen King
- The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
- The Color of Magic, by Terry Pratchett
- Neuromancer, by William Gibson
- Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
- The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
- Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones
- Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
- The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan
- Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
- Wizard’s First Rule, by Terry Goodkind
- Assassin’s Apprentice, by Robin Hobb
- Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
- A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling
- Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson
- Storm Front, by Jim Butcher
- Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Coifer
- Bones of the Earth, by Michael Swanwick
- Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
- Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Lightening Thief, by Rick Riordan
- Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer
- City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
- Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
- The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
- The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
- The Martian, by Andy Weir
- Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman
- Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
- The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers
- Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor
- The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin
- Shadowshaper, by Daniel Jose Older
- All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
- The Changling, by Victor LaValle
- Circe, by Madeline Miller
- Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik
- Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
- Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
We know there are so many other wonderful science fiction and fantasy novels, but we had to keep the list to fifty. Did we miss your favorites? Well, the good news is you can find all these books and more at your local HPB or HPB.com. You may find me there looking for Spinning Silver, Shadowshaper or a Jim Butcher book I haven’t read yet.
Happy reading, and May the 4th be with you.