What is the best fantasy/sci-fi book to read? Also, what are the number one books to read in one's lifetime?

Question

Please include the author. :)

Answer 1

Everyone has their own preferences. My personal favourites are:
1. The Dragonriders of Pern trilogy - Anne McCaffrey
2. The Well of Souls series - Jack L. Chalker
3. When HARLIE Was One - David Gerrold
4. The Legend of Drizzt series - R.A. Salvatore

Answer 2

Sci-fi:

Methuselah's Children, Time Enough For Love, The Door Into Summer, Stranger In a Strange Land, Farnham's Freehold, Orphans of the Sky - Robert A. Heinlein

To Open the Sky, Up the Line, To Live Again, Dying Inside, Tower of Glass, Hawksbill Station, The Book of Skulls, The Stochastic Man - Robert Silverberg

Moon Children - Jack Williamson

The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

Fantastic Voyage - Isaac Asimov

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Jack Finney

Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

Coma, Outbreak - Robin Cook

Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke

The First Immortal - James L. Halperin

Answer 3

In the Fantacy/sci-fi world I would suggest:

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

The Hobbit and the Lord Of the Rings trillogy by J.R.R. Tolkin

The Foundation serises by Issac Assomov

Dune by Frank Herbert

And on the lighter side any of the Disk World books by Terry Pratchet

Answer 4

My personal favorites, Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heilein (the movie sucked), 1984 by George Orwell, Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, and last but not least The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams(once again, the movie sucked) I sometimes wonder if the idiots in Holleywood even bother reading the book before they make the movie.

Answer 5

Fantasy, Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind
Sci-fi, Foundation (the whole series) by Isaac Asimov
Maybe the new term is SF, but it's been called sci-fi since it's invention.

Answer 6

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Perelandra (also published as Voyage to Venus), That Hideous Strength, Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker's Guide Series by Douglas Adams
just to name a few......

Answer 7

Cry to heaven by Anne Rice....Spartacus by Howard Fast(outlawed during the Mccarthy era).....The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, who also wrote the Three Musketeers & The man in the iron mask.....The Thornbirds by Colleen McCullough...brilliant book.....The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (An amazing classic) & The Good Earth by Pearl Buck, lastly A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by betty Smith.
There, many classics and page turners for you!!! I have read all of these and in some cases multiple times!!! I really hope that this helps you!!! Spartacus will blow your mind. It had to be released in England as the McCarthy era had Howard fast black balled when it was written.
I hope that you read Cry to heaven by Anne Rice...it is NOT about vampires, but about the Italian Castrati, thus it is truth intermixed with fiction, rather historical fiction....
Happy reading!!!!! I gave y usome of my top faves here!!
Thanks,
Lioncourt

Answer 8

the entire Percy Jackson & The Olympians sequence I pay attention is robust. The starvation video games via Suzanne Collins existence As We Knew It via Susan Beth Pfeffer Jeremy Fink and the which skill of existence via Wendy Mass Scott Westerfeld & Meg Cabot have an excellent sort of different stuff too. -On form of a diverse be conscious, I study some books via Ellen Hopkins that have been rather ordinary and robust reads. (Crank, Glass, Burned) wish I helped! :)

Answer 9

A good sci-fi book would be Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

Answer 10

Well fantasy and SF (please, not sci-fi) can both be broken down into many sub-genres depending on your preference. There's post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk, steampunk, epic fantasy, modern fantasy, horror fantasy, etc. But here are a few staples that I think most SF and fantasy fans should at least examine:

The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, and Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep? (all by Philip K. Dick): Dick was a prolific SF author writing mainly between the fifties and the eighties. His work inspired such movies as Blade Runner, Pay Check, Minority Report, Total Recall, and A Scanner Darkly, but none of the films quite compare to the genius and biting wit of his novels and short fiction. Dick usually asked one of two questions in his work (if not both): what is human and what is reality? The Man in the High Castle imagines a world in which the Allies lost WWII and the United States is divided between Germany and Japan (much in the way German was divided into East and West Germany). It is a fascinating look particularly at the Japanese culture and the I Ching, and it questions reality in particular. A Scanner Darkly questions reality in a different way and is Dick's most prominent "drug" novel, exploring a fictional hallucinogen from the perspective of the cops trying to bust the drug ring and the junkies hooked on the dope. It's sad and poignant, and best read with the knowledge that Dick came of age in the sixties, heavily experimented with drugs himself, and lost many friends to drug use. Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep explores the nature of humanity in this inspiration for the movie Blade Runner. It's also one of Dick's may explorations of the nature of religion, particularly Christianity (here in the guise of the fictional Mercerism).

Idlewild by Nick Sagan: Following Dick's tradition, modern writer Nick Sagan explores the nature of reality in this cyberpunk novel where nothing is what it seems. The characters are engaging and the story interesting enough to keep you quickly turning pages. I found the sequel, Edenborn, less engaging, though.

Warchild, Burndive, and Cagebird by Karin Lowachee: In this unnamed series by up-and-comer Lowachee, we see a classic space opera that's entirely character-driven and beautifully crafted. Warchild, the first in the series, is particularly evocative, narrated by young Jos Musey, orphaned at eight years old. There are no good guys and few bad guys (but the one constant villain is so evil and so perverse, yet at the same time retains a humanity that makes him seem real and thus even more frightening). There are simply many shades of gray and increasingly convoluted ties of loyalty. The political overtones here heavily reflect our modern day situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well worth the read.

The Dark Glory War by Michael A Stackpole: It's the first in an epic fantasy series, and arguably the best of the bunch. The characters are vivid, the culture intricate and obviously well-thought out. One of the more original and better written epic fantasies of the last ten years.

The Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: Again, the first in an epic fantasy series. Martin's series, though, is immense in scope and ambition. There are over twenty or so main characters, each taking turns narrating one chapter at a time from a third-person viewpoint. In this way, the lines between hero and villain are crossed and often non-existent. It creates a very human perspective and a sense of reality in a genre where the fantastic can displace all else. Very engaging, but also time consuming. With so many interconnected plots, you have to pay close attention so as not to miss little details.

Nightwatch by Sergei Lutyanenko: This is import from Russia, recently translated into English. Set in modern day Moscow, it imagines a city where people with magical abilities, called the Others, are strictly divided as good and evil: the Light and Dark Ones. But despite their divisions, the two sides have more in common with each other than they like to believe, and just who's doing good and who's doing evil is up for debate.

I could continue, but hopefully the above is a good starting point for some of the best SF and fantasy out there. As for how many books it's possible to read in a lifetime...that's up to you. Stephen King says he reads well over eighty each year. Me, I try to content myself with between fifty and sixty. So read as much as you can, you'll never run out of material.