50 Years of Sci-Fi/Fantasy

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.


  1. The God’s Themselves, by Isaac Asimov
  2. Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
  3. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
  4. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
  5. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm
  6. Gateway, by Frederik Pohl
  7. A Scanner Darkly, by Phillip K. Dick
  8. A Spell for Chameleon, by Piers Anthony
  9. Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler
  10. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
  11. The Gunslinger, by Stephen King
  12. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
  13. The Color of Magic, by Terry Pratchett
  14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
  15. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
  16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
  17. Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones
  18. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
  19. The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan
  20. Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
  21. Wizard’s First Rule, by Terry Goodkind
  22. Assassin’s Apprentice, by Robin Hobb
  23. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
  24. A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin
  25. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling
  26. Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson
  27. Storm Front, by Jim Butcher
  28. Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Coifer
  29. Bones of the Earth, by Michael Swanwick
  30. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
  31. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
  32. The Lightening Thief, by Rick Riordan
  33. Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer
  34. City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
  35. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
  36. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
  37. The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
  38. The Martian, by Andy Weir
  39. Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman
  40. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
  41. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers
  42. Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor
  43. The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin
  44. Shadowshaper, by Daniel Jose Older
  45. All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
  46. The Changling, by Victor LaValle
  47. Circe, by Madeline Miller
  48. Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik
  49. Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
  50. 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.