4.29 avg rating — 1,621,791 ratings

"Brilliant despite itself."

3.99 avg rating — 119,177 ratings

"Read only once, nearly forty years ago, but has stayed with me ever since. That must be worth something."

4.10 avg rating — 219,473 ratings

"The book that comes closest to my ideal of what good science fiction should be."

4.18 avg rating — 335,796 ratings

"My introduction to science fiction, read when I was ten years old."

4.12 avg rating — 173,258 ratings

"Clarke was one of my strongest intellectual influences as a boy. This book, like all his early ones, was full of seriously mind-bending stuff for a child to read."

4.15 avg rating — 2,412,538 ratings

"Science fiction despite itself. Amazingly suspenseful."

3.94 avg rating — 34,028 ratings

"The best post-apocalypse novel I've read."

4.07 avg rating — 36,341 ratings

"Introduced me to a range of concepts that were very disturbing – and eye-opening – to a twelve-year old boy."

4.17 avg rating — 75,509 ratings

"This, too, like LeGuin's book but in a very different way, approaches my ideal of good science fiction."

4.28 avg rating — 80,473 ratings

"I love the culture. All Banks's Culture novels are favourites of mine."

3.94 avg rating — 9,430 ratings

"Breathtakingly beautiful and imaginative world-building."

4.24 avg rating — 4,705 ratings

"Perhaps the most literarily ambitious of all science-fiction novels. Certainly one of the most difficult, dense and rewarding of repeated perusal."

3.83 avg rating — 16,965 ratings

"Recursive obsession has never made such good SF."

4.27 avg rating — 297,659 ratings

"A thoroughgoing professional shows off the range of his abilities and produces a fantastic work of SF. The sequels were mostly rubbish, though."

3.84 avg rating — 17,017 ratings

"Another post-apocalyptic favourite, though in this case you get the feeling that a new and more thrilling world may come after Armageddon."