Hmm, I've read 33.

Do I really 'need' to read all the others?

Cloud Atlas is a must read? Really? I guess if you are new to the whole idea of SF concepts, sure, otherwise, not so much. I'm sure there are others on this list that fit into that category.

Posted by JP on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 1:12 PM

You are less under-read than I am!  I've read:

Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)

Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)

Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)

GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)

Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)

Stephen King: The Shining (1977)

Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)

Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)

Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)

Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

Not many, but I can say that I'm really happy with this list.  There wasn't a one that I didn't enjoy when I read them. 

Great to see an early Paul Auster on the list.  I 'discovered' him last year and am a big fan.

Posted by Carl Vincent on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 1:13 PM

I've read 45/124

my list is here @ http://www.martingehrke.com

Posted by Martin Gehrke on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 1:16 PM

Ahoy? Never read Princess of Mars?! You have a treat in store for you!

Here is the opening:

I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear today as I did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real death from which there is no resurrection. I do not know why I should fear death, I who have died twice and am still alive; but yet I have the same horror of it as you who have never died, and it is because of this terror of death, I believe, that I am so convinced of my mortality.

And because of this conviction I have determined to write down the story of the interesting periods of my life and of my death. I cannot explain the phenomena;I can only set down here in the words of an ordinary soldier of fortune a chronicle of the strange events that befell me during the ten years that my dead body lay undiscovered in an Arizona cave.

I have never told this story, nor shall mortal man see this manuscript until after I have passed over for eternity. I know that the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so I do not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the press, and held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the simple truths which some day science will substantiate. Possibly the suggestions which I gained upon Mars, and the knowledge which I can set down in this chronicle, will aid in an earlier understanding of the mysteries of our sister planet; mysteries to you, but no longer mysteries to me.

My name is John Carter.

Posted by John Wright on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 2:25 PM

I'm wondering if their list is finished because in the intro they sepecifically state that "you'll find Iain M Banks, <strong>Tolkien</strong> and Bram Stoker on our list of mind-expanding reads" yet Tolkien appears nowhere on the list.

So either they've not finished or else their editing is even worse than than some of their choices. (A must read SF/Fantasy/Horror list that excludes Tolkien, Le Guin, Bradbury, and Orwell, yet includes W. Burroughs, Radcliffe,  and Rushdie???? )

Posted by Dave Tackett on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 4:08 PM

I've only read 14.

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
2. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
3. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
4. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
5. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
6. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
7. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
8. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
9. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
10. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
11. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
12. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)
13. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
14. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997) )

However, I am a shameless bibliophile. I own 38. Yay for reading lists...

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
4. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
5. Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
6. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
7. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
8. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
9. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
10. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
11. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
12. Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
13. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
14. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
15. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
16. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
17. M John Harrison: Light (2002)
18. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
19. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
20. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
21. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
22. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
23. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
24. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
25. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
26. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)
27. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
28. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
29. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
30. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
31. José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
32. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
33. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
34. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
35. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
36. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
37. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
38. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

Posted by Patrick on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 4:20 PM

Oh, well, if we're talking biblipphiles, I own 67 of them.  To put that in perspective, I own 54% of them but only read 20%.  Yikes!

Posted by John D. on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 4:36 PM

Dave Tackett - yes, the list is finished, but there are some additional titles in sidebar articles. It's actually 149 titles in total. Tolkien appears in in a piece on Imaginary Worlds by Susanna Clarke. Le Guin also appears in the article.

Posted by Ian Sales on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 4:36 PM

Ian - Thank You!  That exponentially improves my opinion of the list.  (Though curmudgeon that I am, I'm still grumbling about Orwell's apparent absence/)

Posted by Dave Tackett on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 5:49 PM

Bradbury's absense is kind of startling. Verne didn't make the cut either, but he was French so I guess that's not surprising. Their choices are "interesting".

I've read 30, but I'm embarrassed by the fact that I've never even heard of 58 of the titles.

Read:

1.      Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

2.      Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)

3.      Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)

4.      Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)

5.      Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)

6.      Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)

7.      Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

8.      Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)

9.      Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

10.  Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)

11.  William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)

12.  William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)

13.  Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)

14.  Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)

15.  Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)

16.  Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)

17.  Stephen King: The Shining (1977)

18.  Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)

19.  Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)

20.  Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)

21.  Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)

22.  Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)

23.  Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)

24.  Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

25.  Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)

26.  HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)

27.  HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)

28.  TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)

29.  John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)

30.  John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

Posted by Mike on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 6:59 PM

My list:

http://sfgospel.typepad.com/sf_gospel/2009/01/the-guardians-science-fiction-fantasy-novels-everyone-must-read-the-meme.html

There are actually a bunch of SF/F novels that are under separate sub-headings and aren't on that master list. To wit:

"Imagined Worlds" (Why Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, which is also a series, isn't on this list instead of the other one is a mystery to me.)

CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)
JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- )
Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)

"Best dystopias":
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)

"Radical Reading":
Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)

"The Best of J.G. Ballard." I groaned a bit when I saw this, I haven't actually read any of the books they're citing, so maybe these are the non-pretentious ones. Heh. (I kid, really. I want to like Ballard, I really do. But he's on thin ice with me, given that I, y'know, like plots.)

The Drowned World (1962)
Crash (1973)
Millennium People (2003)

There's also a list of 10 novels that predicted the future, but this seems to be outside of the thousand-novel list, and a list of gothic novels, but I don't think any of them are fantasy or horror per se.

Posted by Gabriel Mckee on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 7:22 PM

Well, I have read 12 of those listed. I have read 10 other of the authors, though not the listed titles. The rest  are waiting.

But, yes, where is Bradbury. And Lewis and Dunsany?

Love & blessings

Richard

Posted by Richard Nova on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 7:22 PM

Thanks Ian and gabriel -- original list updated.  And now I'm even more under-read.  Sigh...

Posted by John D. on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 8:24 PM

I only did the original 124:

http://www.skyseastone.net/jvstin/unjvst/007798.html

Posted by Paul on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 8:40 PM

I had 26 on the list.  Lots of the "classics."  The only one I have read and detested was His Dark Materials.  Don't even get me started.

Here's the link to my post - http://www.scifijungle.com/2009/01/149-sci-fi-novels-everyone-must-read-or-so-they-say.html

Posted by Marianne on Thursday January 22, 2009 at 10:06 PM

Thanks for the list, I put my copy up at http://www.andthechain.ca/2009/01/fiction-fridays-vanity-list.html.

I got 44, mostly the older stuff, I am a big fan of Speculative Fiction Classics.

Thanks for the great blog too.

AC

Posted by AC on Friday January 23, 2009 at 3:47 PM

Well let's see..

Books I have read

On the shelf

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
   
2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
4. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
5. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
6. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
7. Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
8. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
9. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
10. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
11. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
12. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
13. Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
14. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
15. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
16. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
17. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
18. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
19. Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
20. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
21. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
22. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
23. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
24. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
25. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
26. PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
27. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
28. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
29. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
30. CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56) (Only the first one!)
31. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
32. Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)
33. Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
34. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
35. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
36. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
37. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)
38. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
39. George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
40. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
41. Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) (I have only read 'Guards! Guards!')
42. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
43. Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
44. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
45. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
    
46. Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
47. José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
48. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
49. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
50. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
51. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
52. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
53. JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
54. JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
55. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
56. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
58. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)

Out of the 57 that I own, I have read 39.

There's quite a few on the list I want to read at some point, and also quite a few books and authors I have never even heard about.

Good list though, although a few of my all-time favorite sf authors aren't on the list.

Posted by Dennis S. on Saturday January 24, 2009 at 12:05 AM

What a great idea for a meme. 79 of 149!

Weird list though - how did The Magus sneak on as sf/f? And do I get points deducted for Beloved and the Little Prince because I was forced to read them in high school?!

Weird absences too... I suspect many of the Guardian list-populators are trying to be obscure, possibly to the detriment of some genre classics.

Posted by Jared on Sunday January 25, 2009 at 5:20 AM

My take on the Guardian list is here, here, and here

My reaction is, of course, the reaction of a reactionary. They would not call me a curmudgeon if I did not curmudge from time to time!

The flatulence of elitism hangs about the list as sulfurous smog hangs about the Dark Tower, looming, proud and terrible in its strength, to overlook a burnt, wasted and waterless land where no bird sings, no starlight shines, and no thorn grows.

I note with a lofty lift of a supercilious eyebrow how few of the books occupy the intersection of my list and the Guardian's.

I would certainly add Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis, Slan by A.E. van Vogt, World of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt (with its sequel Pawns of Null-A), Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein, Harvest of Stars by Poul Anderson, The Mote in God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle, Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle, Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury (if you look up this book and read it, you will thank me), Emphyrio by Jack Vance, The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance, Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft, The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, The Night Land by William Hope Hodgeson, Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, Way Station by Clifford Simak, Norstilla by Cordwainer Smith, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, Little, Big by John Crowley, Nightwings by Robert Silverberg, The Worm Oroboros by E.R. Eddison.

Honorable mention: The City of Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith, the King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany, Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, Enders Game by Orson Scott Card, Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, To Crush the Moon by Wil McCarthy.

And then I would add The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle to the list a second time, in case you missed it the first time.

Posted by John C. Wright on Thursday January 29, 2009 at 12:24 PM

interesting lists, I would also recommend
"nSpace" by Dovin Melhee
completely out of the box sci fi novel

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/nspace/7534554

Posted by psyphi on Wednesday November 04, 2009 at 6:59 PM