1. The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov
2. Ringworld by Larry Niven
3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
4. Dune by Frank Herbert
5. Michael Moorecock’s Multiverse
6. The Sprawl Trilogy by William Gibson
7. The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
8. Riverworld by Philip José Farmer
9. The Culture Cycle by Iain M. Banks
10. Lensman by Edward Elmer “Doc” Smith
11. Seafort Saga by David Feintuch
12. Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
13. The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson (These are in my tbr stack.)
14. Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell
15. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (I've read the first one and have another in the tbr stack.)
16. Barsoom by Edgar Rice Burroughs
17. Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
18 Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
19. The Odyssey Series by Arthur C. Clarke
I've read more than one of the ones in bold print. I'd gladly read any of them again except for the Pern books. I loved them back in the day, but they ruined dragons for me. I can't bring myself to read a book now if it has a dragon on the cover.
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So which one do you think is the best?
ReplyDeleteOh, I couldn't begin to pick. The ones of these I've read have been wonderful. I admit, though, that after 2001, the Odyssey series doesn't interest me. I'm reading the Culture series now (off and on), so that series interests me most at this point.
ReplyDeleteGood list, only complaint: no Philip K Dick in a greatest SF books post?
ReplyDeleteThe problem with series are that if they run too long you lose part of the story. When I read Foundation it was just a trilogy. As each subsequent book came out I would feel like I needed to go back and start over. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the trilogy but three was enough.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the first 3 Foundation books were enough. I feel the same way about the Thomas Covenant books. They got progressively worse after the 1st 3. I do have hope for the lengthening Culture series, since I continue to read good things about them as new ones come out.
ReplyDeleteI tend to completely ignore sequels not written by the author of the original series.
I'm not sure Dick wrote any sf series.
Since there is no single Edgar Rice Burroughs book entitled "Barsoom," I can only think that the list compiler believes that the John Carter books as a corpus are outstanding. I agree.
ReplyDeleteA Pal
Hey, Pal :) , The popcrunch link in the post takes you to he annotations, which have this to say: "Starting with Princess of Mars, and on for 11 novels and countless stories, the grand high king of pulp crafted the tales of Barsoom..."
ReplyDeleteyay for Edgar Rice Burroughs!
ReplyDelete