The Esquire 75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time
Since time immemorial, mankind has been looking up at the stars and dreaming, but it was only centuries ago that we started turning those dreams into fiction. And what remarkable dreams they are—dreams of distant worlds, unearthly creatures, parallel universes, artificial intelligence, and so much more. Today, we call those dreams science fiction.
Science fiction’s earliest inklings began in the mid-1600s, when Johannes Kepler and Francis Godwin wrote pioneering stories about voyages to the moon. Some scholars argue that science fiction as we now understand it was truly born in 1818, when Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, the first novel of its kind whose events are explained by science, not mysticism or miracles. Now, two centuries later, sci-fi is a sprawling and lucrative multimedia genre with countless subgenres, such as dystopian fiction, postapocalyptic fiction, and climate fiction, to name just a few. It’s also remarkably porous, allowing for some overlap with genres like fantasy and horror.
Sci-fi brings out the best in our imaginations and evokes a sense of wonder, but it also inspires a spirit of questioning. Through the enduring themes of sci-fi, we can examine the zeitgeist’s cultural context and ethical questions. Our favorite works in the genre make good on this promise, meditating on everything from identity to oppression to morality. As the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing said, “Science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.”
Over two years ago, we published a version of this list featuring 50 books. But why stop at 50? Now, as part of our latest Summer Fiction Week, we’ve cast a wider net and expanded the list to 75 titles. Choosing the 75 best science fiction books of all time wasn’t easy, so to get the job done, we had to establish some guardrails. Though we assessed single installments as representatives of their series, we limited the list to one book per author. We also emphasized books that brought something new and innovative to the genre—to borrow a great sci-fi turn of phrase, books that “boldly go where no one has gone before.”
Now, in ranked order, here are the best science fiction books of all time.
| #1 |  Frankenstein
| 3.85 | 2,111 reads | |
| #2 |  Dune
| 4.29 | 3,704 reads | |
| #3 |  The Martian Chronicles
| 3.99 | 651 reads | |
| #4 |  The Fifth Season
| 4.34 | 1,292 reads | |
| #5 |  Kindred
| 4.36 | 539 reads | |
| #6 |  The Left Hand of Darkness
| 4.06 | 836 reads | |
| #7 |  Never Let Me Go
| 3.82 | 1,132 reads | |
| #8 |  Exhalation
| 4.29 | 562 reads | |
| #9 |  Station Eleven
| 4.08 | 1,287 reads | |
| #10 |  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
| 3.94 | 1,229 reads | |
| #11 |  The Three-Body Problem
| 3.94 | 2,109 reads | |
| #12 |  1984
| 4.21 | 5,220 reads | |
| #13 |  The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century
| 3.57 | 93 reads | |
| #14 |  Brave New World
| 3.88 | 2,471 reads | |
| #15 |  How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
| 3.25 | 135 reads | |
| #16 |  The Complete Robot
| 4.07 | 87 reads | |
| #17 |  Childhood's End
| 3.98 | 472 reads | |
| #18 |  Roadside Picnic
| 4 | 355 reads | |
| #19 |  The Sirens of Titan
| 4.01 | 383 reads | |
| #20 |  Shikasta (Canopus in Argos: Archives Series, Book 1): Re-colonised Planet 5
| 2.17 | 5 reads | |
| #21 |  Red Mars
| 3.76 | 368 reads | |
| #22 |  Hyperion
| 4.26 | 1,038 reads | |
| #23 |  Oryx and Crake
| 3.87 | 504 reads | |
| #24 |  Annihilation
| 3.72 | 1,169 reads | |
| #25 |  Ammonite
| 3.89 | 29 reads | |
| #26 |  Future Home of the Living God
| 3.53 | 58 reads | |
| #27 |  1Q84
| 3.68 | 514 reads | |
| #28 |  The Forever War
| 3.96 | 604 reads | |
| #29 |  Dhalgren
| 3.56 | 50 reads | |
| #30 |  In Ascension
| 3.68 | 50 reads | |
| #31 |  The Stand
| 4.15 | 1,079 reads | |
| #32 |  Ancillary Justice
| 3.99 | 693 reads | |
| #33 |  A Memory Called Empire
| 4.16 | 572 reads | |
| #34 |  The City & The City
| 3.97 | 354 reads | |
| #35 |  Radiance
| 3.33 | 57 reads | |
| #36 |  The Children of Men
| 3.33 | 114 reads | |
| #37 |  Engine Summer
| 3.25 | 10 reads | |
| #38 |  The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
| 4.15 | 1,010 reads | |
| #39 |  Zone One
| 3.35 | 77 reads | |
| #40 |  Project Hail Mary
| 4.46 | 2,909 reads | |
| #41 |  A Canticle for Leibowitz
| 3.94 | 386 reads | |
| #42 |  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
| 4.24 | 3,356 reads | |
| #43 |  The Sparrow
| 3.97 | 291 reads | |
| #44 |  The Stars My Destination
| 3.88 | 239 reads | |
| #45 |  Neuromancer
| 3.81 | 1,227 reads | |
| #46 |  The Mountain in the Sea
| 4.06 | 221 reads | |
| #47 |  An Unkindness of Ghosts
| 3.96 | 128 reads | |
| #48 |  The Body Scout
| 4.5 | 7 reads | |
| #49 |  The Time Machine
| 3.7 | 964 reads | |
| #50 |  A Wrinkle in Time
| 3.75 | 1,262 reads | |
| #51 |  The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
| 3.85 | 383 reads | |
| #52 |  A Clockwork Orange
| 3.93 | 880 reads | |
| #53 |  Solaris
| 3.83 | 423 reads | |
| #54 |  Children of Time
| 4.27 | 978 reads | |
| #55 |  Rosewater
| 3.81 | 128 reads | |
| #56 |  The Resisters
| 3.36 | 17 reads | |
| #57 |  This Is How You Lose the Time War
| 3.89 | 1,406 reads | |
| #58 |  Lord of Light
| 3.76 | 139 reads | |
| #59 |  The Claw of the Conciliator
| 4.02 | 90 reads | |
| #60 |  Excession
| 4.02 | 170 reads | |
| #61 |  Semiosis
| 3.85 | 112 reads | |
| #62 |  The Book of Phoenix
| 3.76 | 22 reads | |
| #63 |  What Mad Universe
| 3 | 3 reads | |
| #64 |  Sea of Rust
| 3.81 | 94 reads | |
| #65 |  Way Station
| 4.08 | 102 reads | |
| #66 |  Under the Skin
| 3.61 | 98 reads | |
| #67 |  Contact
| 4.06 | 353 reads | |
| #68 |  Star Maker
| 3.85 | 45 reads | |
| #69 |  Snow Crash
| 3.96 | 1,051 reads | |
| #70 |  Midnight Robber
| 3.93 | 17 reads | |
| #71 |  The Ten Percent Thief
| 4.17 | 8 reads | |
| #72 |  Beautyland
| 4.19 | 51 reads | |
| #73 |  Redshirts
| 3.83 | 637 reads | |
| #74 |  The Calculating Stars
| 4.05 | 314 reads | |
| #75 |  The Echo Wife
| 3.7 | 170 reads |