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
| 3.86 | 1,372 reads | |
| #2 |  Dune
| 4.28 | 2,382 reads | |
| #3 |  The Martian Chronicles
| 3.98 | 423 reads | |
| #4 |  The Fifth Season
| 4.33 | 887 reads | |
| #5 |  Kindred
| 4.31 | 367 reads | |
| #6 |  The Left Hand of Darkness
| 4.06 | 528 reads | |
| #7 |  Never Let Me Go
| 3.82 | 714 reads | |
| #8 |  Exhalation
| 4.25 | 366 reads | |
| #9 |  Station Eleven
| 4.1 | 882 reads | |
| #10 |  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
| 3.96 | 802 reads | |
| #11 |  The Three-Body Problem
| 3.91 | 1,323 reads | |
| #12 |  1984
| 4.2 | 3,344 reads | |
| #13 |  The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century
| 3.5 | 62 reads | |
| #14 |  Brave New World
| 3.89 | 1,609 reads | |
| #15 |  How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
| 3.32 | 86 reads | |
| #16 |  The Complete Robot
| 4.07 | 56 reads | |
| #17 |  Childhood's End
| 4.04 | 307 reads | |
| #18 |  Roadside Picnic
| 4.02 | 208 reads | |
| #19 |  The Sirens of Titan
| 3.95 | 248 reads | |
| #20 |  Shikasta
| 3 | 2 reads | |
| #21 |  Red Mars
| 3.75 | 230 reads | |
| #22 |  Hyperion
| 4.27 | 660 reads | |
| #23 |  Oryx and Crake
| 3.88 | 330 reads | |
| #24 |  Annihilation
| 3.66 | 752 reads | |
| #25 |  Ammonite
| 3.84 | 20 reads | |
| #26 |  Future Home of the Living God
| 3.67 | 32 reads | |
| #27 |  1Q84
| 3.69 | 318 reads | |
| #28 |  The Forever War
| 3.96 | 387 reads | |
| #29 |  Dhalgren
| 3.36 | 32 reads | |
| #30 |  In Ascension
| 3.46 | 27 reads | |
| #31 |  The Stand
| 4.15 | 702 reads | |
| #32 |  Ancillary Justice
| 4 | 455 reads | |
| #33 |  A Memory Called Empire
| 4.17 | 416 reads | |
| #34 |  The City & The City
| 3.97 | 212 reads | |
| #35 |  Radiance
| 3.27 | 50 reads | |
| #36 |  The Children of Men
| 3.32 | 76 reads | |
| #37 |  Engine Summer
| 3.67 | 3 reads | |
| #38 |  The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
| 4.13 | 683 reads | |
| #39 |  Zone One
| 3.38 | 48 reads | |
| #40 |  Project Hail Mary
| 4.44 | 1,783 reads | |
| #41 |  A Canticle for Leibowitz
| 3.94 | 240 reads | |
| #42 |  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
| 4.24 | 2,178 reads | |
| #43 |  The Sparrow
| 3.98 | 216 reads | |
| #44 |  The Stars My Destination
| 3.89 | 158 reads | |
| #45 |  Neuromancer
| 3.86 | 757 reads | |
| #46 |  The Mountain in the Sea
| 4.11 | 126 reads | |
| #47 |  An Unkindness of Ghosts
| 3.96 | 95 reads | |
| #48 |  The Body Scout
| 4.5 | 4 reads | |
| #49 |  The Time Machine
| 3.67 | 611 reads | |
| #50 |  A Wrinkle in Time
| 3.77 | 847 reads | |
| #51 |  The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
| 3.78 | 229 reads | |
| #52 |  A Clockwork Orange
| 3.9 | 559 reads | |
| #53 |  Solaris: The Definitive Edition
| 3.76 | 264 reads | |
| #54 |  Children of Time
| 4.29 | 623 reads | |
| #55 |  Rosewater
| 3.82 | 86 reads | |
| #56 |  The Resisters
| 3.5 | 8 reads | |
| #57 |  This Is How You Lose the Time War
| 3.88 | 951 reads | |
| #58 |  Lord of Light
| 3.76 | 81 reads | |
| #59 |  The Claw of the Conciliator
| 4.05 | 52 reads | |
| #60 |  Excession
| 4.03 | 98 reads | |
| #61 |  Semiosis
| 3.81 | 66 reads | |
| #62 |  The Book of Phoenix
| 3.89 | 11 reads | |
| #63 |  What Mad Universe
| 3 | 2 reads | |
| #64 |  Sea of Rust
| 3.64 | 44 reads | |
| #65 |  Way Station
| 4.14 | 71 reads | |
| #66 |  Under the Skin
| 3.64 | 67 reads | |
| #67 |  Contact
| 4.09 | 244 reads | |
| #68 |  Star Maker
| 3.71 | 29 reads | |
| #69 |  Snow Crash
| 3.94 | 685 reads | |
| #70 |  Midnight Robber
| 3.89 | 11 reads | |
| #71 |  The Ten Percent Thief
| 4.33 | 5 reads | |
| #72 |  Beautyland
| 4.24 | 18 reads | |
| #73 |  Redshirts
| 3.87 | 424 reads | |
| #74 |  The Calculating Stars
| 4.06 | 234 reads | |
| #75 |  The Echo Wife
| 3.67 | 134 reads |