Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

Science Fiction


Science Fiction is a genre of fiction that deals “with the impact of imagined innovations in science or technology, often in a futuristic setting or depicting space exploration.” (Wikipedia citation of Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionary Online, and MSN Encarta)

Within Science Fiction there are numerous subgenres. These can include, but are not limited to:

•Alien Invasion
•Alternate History (SF)
•Alternate/Parallel Universe
•Apocalyptic/Post-Apocalyptic
•Artificial Intelligence
•Colonization
•Cyberpunk
•Dying Earth
•Dystopia
•First Contact
•Galactic Empire
•Generation Ship
•Hard SF
•Human Development
•Immortality
•Light/Humorous SF
•Military SF
•Mind Uploading
•Mundane SF
•Mutants
•Mythic Fiction (SF)
•Nanotechnology
•Near-Future
•Pulp
•Robots/Androids
•Science-Fantasy
•Singularity
•Slipstream
•Soft SF
•Space Exploration
•Space Opera
•Steampunk
•Terraforming
•Theological
•Time Travel
•Uplift
•Utopia
•Virtual Reality
•Weird (SF)


This topic, Science Fiction, should contain any Boxall books considered Science Fiction despite the subgenre in which they may fall.
Remember -- only Boxall Books!!!

Bookshelf: Topic -- Science Fiction lists the 64 Boxall books currently tagged as Science Fiction.


For more information about Science Fiction and its subgenres:

Outline of Science Fiction (Wikipedia)

Worlds Without End -- A website about all things Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

Science Fiction – Boxall Bookshelf


• Adams, Douglas – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
• Adams, Douglas – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Adams, Douglas – The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul
• Asimov, Isaac – Foundation
• Asimov, Isaac – I, Robot
• Atwood, Margaret – The Handmaid’s Tale
• Atwood, Margaret – The Blind Assassin
• Ballard, J. G. -- The Atrocity Exhibition
• Ballard, J. G. -- Crash
• Ballard, J. G. – High-Rise
• Ballard, J. G. – The Drowned World
• Banks, Iain M. – The Player of Games
• Barker, Nicola – H(A)PPY
• Barth, John – Giles Goat-Boy
• Burgess, Anthony – A Clockwork Orange
• Burroughs, Edgar Rice – Tarzan of the Apes
• Burroughs, William S. – The Wild Boys
• Butler, Samuel -- Erewhon
• Capek, Karel – War with the Newts
• Clarke, Arthur C. – 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Coetzee, J. M. – Waiting for the Barbarians
• DeLillo, Don – White Noise
• Dick, Philip K. – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• Eggers, Dave – The Circle
• Faber, Michel – Under the Skin
• Gibson, William -- Neuromancer
• Heinlein, Robert – Stranger in a Strange Land
• Hesse, Hermann – The Glass Bead Game
• Huxley, Aldous – Brave New World
• Ishiguro, Kazuo – Never Let Me Go
• Junger, Ernse – The Glass Bees
• Le Guin, Ursula K. – The Dispossessed (Hainish Cycle, #6)
• Lem, Stanislaw -- Solaris
• Lessing, Doris – Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta
• London, Jack – The Iron Heel
• Lovecraft, H. P. – At the Mountains of Madness
• Mitchell, David – Cloud Atlas
• Moore, Alan -- Watchmen
• Morris, William – News from Nowhere and Other Writings
• Murakami, Haruki – IQ84
• Murakami, Haruki – Kafka on the Shore
• Murakami, Haruki – The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
• Nabokov, Vladimir – Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
• Orwell, George -- 1984
• Pelevin, Victor – The Life of Insects
• Pelevin, Victor – The Clay Machine Gun
• Pynchon, Thomas – Gravity’s Rainbow
• Roth, Philip – The Plot Against America
• Rushdie, Salman -- Grimus
• Sagan, Carl -- Contact
• Schatzing, Frank – The Swarm
• Shelley, Mary -- Frankenstein
• Stephenson, Neal -- Cryptonomicon
• Verne, Jules – Around the World in 80 Days
• Verne, Jules – Journey to the Center of the Earth
• Vonnegut Jr., Kurt – Breakfast of Champions
• Vonnegut Jr., Kurt – Slaughterhouse-Five
• Vonnegut Jr., Kurt – God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
• Vonnegut Jr., Kurt – Cat’s Cradle
• Wells, H. G. – War of the Worlds
• Wells, H. G. – The Time Machine
• Wells, H. G. – The Invisible Man
• Wells, H. G. – The Island of Dr. Moreau
• Wyndham, John -- Chocky
• Wyndham, John – The Day of the Triffids
• Wyndham, John – The Midwich Cuckoos
• Zamyatin, Yevgeny – WE


Contributors to this list (2004 to 2016)
Amy, Anna, Charity, Christine, Dean ,Denise, Ellinor, George P., J_BlueFlower, Kirsten, Lisa, Meghan, Niche, Nicola, Sarah, Timmy, and Winter.

(Special thanks to George P. who posted a fantastic list back in 2016!)

Great list!

The following books on the list are questionable. What do you think -- SF or not SF? Post your comments below.


Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Possible sub-genres: Magical Realism, Slipstream, and Mind Uploading

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Possible sub-genres: Magical Realism, Psychological, and Fantasy
Seems to be more fantasy than SF

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov
Possible sub-genres: Alternate History, Alternate/Parallel Worlds

The Life of Insects by Victor Pelevin and
The Clay Machine-Gun by Victor Pelevin
Seems more Magical Realism and Fantasy with Political Satire

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Possible sub-genres: Alternate History

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne isn't really SF either I'd see. It's more of an adventure story. As far as I remember they didn't use any new technologies and all the places they went to actually exist. What was novel was that they travelled around the world in such a short time.

Karen wrote: "The following books on the list are questionable. What do you think -- SF or not SF? Post your comments below.


Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Possible sub-genres:..."

I agree on the two Murakami books. I wouldn't call them SF either.
I haven't read the other questionable books so I can't tell.

I wouldn't call any of these Sci-Fi, actually, mostly due to author intent and the sheer number of weird story elements. Sure, in Life of Insects the people are also insects, but the feel of the book is more that of allegory than of actual, you know, structured fantasy or science-fiction where the author consciously creates an alternate world.

I also wouldn't put Roth's The Plot Against America in the science-fiction rubric. The alternate history elements in it are practically nonexistent and somehow Roth manages to once more write the same story with Charles Lindbergh (yes, I don't like Roth, sue me).

To be science fiction or fantasy it's not enough to just "have something weird and slightly unrealistic or alternate happen to your story" because frankly, by that rubric the entirety of fiction is kind of alternate history, isn't it? It's always about people who are basically not real (except for writers like Roth who basically rewrite their own biography twenty times). Basically, for something to be science-fiction it has to have something new and/or different, and for that different - part of the setting, a thing, a state of being - to be a large part of the plot, not just a background psychedelic effect.

P.S. I'm willing to be convinced on the Murakamis. He actually outright produced sci-fi in 1Q84.

I agree that Ada or Ardor is not SF. Though it was some years ago that I read it, I didn't think of it as alternative at the time, I thought of it as an unconventional romance. Perhaps my memory is faltering? I looked at online bookstores to see how they classed it and they simply had it as 'classic literature', which wasn't helpful.

I haven't read the others yet, so can't comment on them.

Great list, but not sure why Ray Bradbury isn't included in it :)

Ellinor wrote: "Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne isn't really SF either I'd see. It's more of an adventure story. As far as I remember they didn't use any new technologie..."

That was my first impression also until I started researching Verne and his works. When you look at a lot of the articles and lesson plans, the book is described as both an adventure story and science fiction. Three technological breakthroughs occurred shortly before the book was written -- the first transcontinental railroad in America, the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent, and the Suez Canal -- which made an around-the-world-tour possible. So the book can be considered "near future" as Verne predicted the opening of the world to global tourism.

Fascinating article about Verne on Wikipedia which also includes a long list of writers and scientists who have acknowledged Verne's influence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_V...).

Armin wrote: "Great list, but not sure why Ray Bradbury isn't included in it :)"

Yes, Bradbury should be included in the Boxall list, especially Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. Unfortunately, he was left off the Boxall list.

Genia wrote: "I wouldn't call any of these Sci-Fi, actually, mostly due to author intent and the sheer number of weird story elements. Sure, in Life of Insects the people are also insects, but the feel of the bo..."

Certainly not the Science Fiction that most SF fans expect, but you have to consider the list which tends to focus on literary "classics." Many of the literary authors are experimenting with SF themes such as Ishiguro and Atwood. So the list contains some SF classics and some literary works with elements of SF.

Sure, agreed, but that's kind of my point. It needs more science-fiction of the kind fans would expect, because some of it was extremely impactful. Also, the Strugatskys should be on that list, they practically toppled Communism singlehandedly (I exaggerate, but still, sheesh).

Same goes for mystery the way mystery would be written, and horror, and romance - if we're talking about choosing the 1001 novels that somehow shaped or changed literature, then genres should be on it more than, to be honest, modern recipients of the Man-Booker prize.

Waiting for the Barbarians isn't Sci-fi at all.

An excellent quote from Doris Lessing's remarks at the beginning of
Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta:

"The old 'realistic' novel is being changed, too, because of influences from that genre loosely described as space fiction. Some people regret this. I was in the States, giving a talk, and the professor who was acting as chairwoman, and whose only fault was that perhaps she had fed too long on the pieties of academia, interrupted me with: 'If I had you in my class you'd never get away with that!' (Of course it is not everyone who finds this funny.) I had been saying that space fiction, with science fiction, makes up the most original branch of literature now; it is inventive and witty; it has already enlivened all kinds of writing; and that literary academics and pundits are much to blame for patronising or ignoring it -- while of course by their nature they can be expected to do no other. This view shows signs of becoming the stuff of orthodoxy."

Her entire remarks are worth reading. She goes on to praise science fiction/space fiction as "exploding out of nowhere, unexpectedly of course, as always happens when the human mind is being forced to expand: this time starwards, galaxy-wise, and who knows where next."

So as more and more literary authors are "breaking the bonds of the realistic novel," we have to be open to expanding what we consider science fiction/space fiction.

So for the questionable books I've read so far --


Both Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami are more Magical Realism than Science Fiction. The only reason to list Kafka on the Shore as SF would be because one of the characters says of events "if this were a book it would be Science Fiction."

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov is definitely Alternate/Parallel Worlds. The narrative is set in the late nineteenth century on Demonia (or Antiterra), an alternative/ parallel history of Earth. Demonia has the same geography and a largely similar history to that of Earth, but is crucially different at various points.

Karen wrote: "Armin wrote: "Great list, but not sure why Ray Bradbury isn't included in it :)"

Yes, Bradbury should be included in the Boxall list, especially Fahrenheit 451 and [book:The Martia..."

Yes I agree. Those two Bradbury books are much more important and better written than books like Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land which makes the cut.