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 | 1,925 reads | |
| #2 |  Dune
| 4.29 | 3,393 reads | |
| #3 |  The Martian Chronicles
| 3.99 | 598 reads | |
| #4 |  The Fifth Season
| 4.34 | 1,203 reads | |
| #5 |  Kindred
| 4.36 | 518 reads | |
| #6 |  The Left Hand of Darkness
| 4.06 | 744 reads | |
| #7 |  Never Let Me Go
| 3.81 | 1,015 reads | |
| #8 |  Exhalation
| 4.27 | 492 reads | |
| #9 |  Station Eleven
| 4.08 | 1,211 reads | |
| #10 |  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
| 3.93 | 1,119 reads | |
| #11 |  The Three-Body Problem
| 3.94 | 1,903 reads | |
| #12 |  1984
| 4.21 | 4,762 reads | |
| #13 |  The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century
| 3.6 | 86 reads | |
| #14 |  Brave New World
| 3.88 | 2,255 reads | |
| #15 |  How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
| 3.23 | 125 reads | |
| #16 |  The Complete Robot
| 4.02 | 78 reads | |
| #17 |  Childhood's End
| 3.97 | 434 reads | |
| #18 |  Roadside Picnic
| 3.97 | 299 reads | |
| #19 |  The Sirens of Titan
| 4.01 | 348 reads | |
| #20 |  Shikasta (Canopus in Argos: Archives Series, Book 1): Re-colonised Planet 5
| 2.17 | 5 reads | |
| #21 |  Red Mars
| 3.72 | 325 reads | |
| #22 |  Hyperion
| 4.26 | 941 reads | |
| #23 |  Oryx and Crake
| 3.89 | 461 reads | |
| #24 |  Annihilation
| 3.72 | 1,065 reads | |
| #25 |  Ammonite
| 3.89 | 27 reads | |
| #26 |  Future Home of the Living God
| 3.57 | 53 reads | |
| #27 |  1Q84
| 3.66 | 468 reads | |
| #28 |  The Forever War
| 3.96 | 546 reads | |
| #29 |  Dhalgren
| 3.53 | 47 reads | |
| #30 |  In Ascension
| 3.62 | 42 reads | |
| #31 |  The Stand
| 4.17 | 993 reads | |
| #32 |  Ancillary Justice
| 3.99 | 638 reads | |
| #33 |  A Memory Called Empire
| 4.15 | 533 reads | |
| #34 |  The City & The City
| 3.97 | 325 reads | |
| #35 |  Radiance
| 3.33 | 57 reads | |
| #36 |  The Children of Men
| 3.35 | 107 reads | |
| #37 |  Engine Summer
| 3.25 | 9 reads | |
| #38 |  The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
| 4.14 | 939 reads | |
| #39 |  Zone One
| 3.31 | 72 reads | |
| #40 |  Project Hail Mary
| 4.45 | 2,627 reads | |
| #41 |  A Canticle for Leibowitz
| 3.94 | 352 reads | |
| #42 |  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
| 4.25 | 3,069 reads | |
| #43 |  The Sparrow
| 3.97 | 276 reads | |
| #44 |  The Stars My Destination
| 3.84 | 210 reads | |
| #45 |  Neuromancer
| 3.8 | 1,096 reads | |
| #46 |  The Mountain in the Sea
| 4.08 | 199 reads | |
| #47 |  An Unkindness of Ghosts
| 3.97 | 119 reads | |
| #48 |  The Body Scout
| 4.5 | 7 reads | |
| #49 |  The Time Machine
| 3.69 | 840 reads | |
| #50 |  A Wrinkle in Time
| 3.77 | 1,170 reads | |
| #51 |  The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
| 3.82 | 359 reads | |
| #52 |  A Clockwork Orange
| 3.93 | 813 reads | |
| #53 |  Solaris
| 3.82 | 378 reads | |
| #54 |  Children of Time
| 4.28 | 875 reads | |
| #55 |  Rosewater
| 3.79 | 121 reads | |
| #56 |  The Resisters
| 3.36 | 17 reads | |
| #57 |  This Is How You Lose the Time War
| 3.89 | 1,314 reads | |
| #58 |  Lord of Light
| 3.68 | 125 reads | |
| #59 |  The Claw of the Conciliator
| 4.04 | 82 reads | |
| #60 |  Excession
| 4.05 | 154 reads | |
| #61 |  Semiosis
| 3.85 | 99 reads | |
| #62 |  The Book of Phoenix
| 3.83 | 20 reads | |
| #63 |  What Mad Universe
| 3 | 3 reads | |
| #64 |  Sea of Rust
| 3.81 | 89 reads | |
| #65 |  Way Station
| 4.11 | 94 reads | |
| #66 |  Under the Skin
| 3.62 | 94 reads | |
| #67 |  Contact
| 4.08 | 332 reads | |
| #68 |  Star Maker
| 3.81 | 41 reads | |
| #69 |  Snow Crash
| 3.94 | 955 reads | |
| #70 |  Midnight Robber
| 4 | 16 reads | |
| #71 |  The Ten Percent Thief
| 4.17 | 8 reads | |
| #72 |  Beautyland
| 4.27 | 42 reads | |
| #73 |  Redshirts
| 3.83 | 594 reads | |
| #74 |  The Calculating Stars
| 4.05 | 302 reads | |
| #75 |  The Echo Wife
| 3.68 | 162 reads |