top 10

[MainComputer]

Kaput - Nathan Jones (unpublished)

Automated Alice - Jeff Noon

Only Forward - Michael Marshall Smith

Weaveworld - Clive Barker

Hitchhikers Series - Douglas Adams

Neuromancer - William H Gibson

The Player of Games - Iain Banks

Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

(A bit off-course towards the end - but all required reading to get into my school.)

[Tinga]

There are lots of series for me

Anita Blake by Laurell Hamilton
Royal assassin
The liveship Traders
The god in the shadows Robin Hobb
Dark Tower by Stephen King
The wolves dance Mireille Calmel
And Anne Rice

[Brys]

1. Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake
2. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
3. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
4. Viriconium by M John Harrison
5. The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
6. Newford series by Charles de Lint
7. The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce
8. The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny
9. The Prince of Nothing series by R Scott Bakker
10. Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance

It's a rough list of my top 10, but they're always changing, and I could easily find 20 or more to go in there.

[Asp]

Great lists so far. Since the original post said science fiction or fantasy, I'll stick with science fiction. In order of them crossing my mind:

Foundation Trilogy - Asimov
Dangerous Visions - Ellison (editor)
Neuromancer series - William Gibson
Solaris - Lem
The Disposessed - Le Guine
Dune - Herbert
Uplift Wars series - Brin
Alone Against Tomorrow - Ellison
Welcome To The Monkey House or Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegutt
Time Enough for Love or Stranger In A Strange Land - Heinlein

As much as I love Varley, I really couldn't knock any of the one's on my list off in order to give him a place.

Tony

[DocFlamingo]

Scifi Books:

1) Frankenstine--Mary Shelly
2) 1984--George Orwell
3) Dune--Frank Herburt
4) War of the Worlds--H.G. Wells
5) Stranger in a Strange Lane--Robert A. Heinlin
6) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea--Jules vern
7) The Jesus Incident--Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom
8 ) 2001--Arthur C. Clark
9) Starship Troopers--Robert A. Heinlin
10) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep--Philip K. Dick (Bladerunner)


Scifi Films:

1) 2001
2)THX 1138
3) Bladerunner
4) Fantastic Planet
5) Metropolis
6) Rollerball (The origional and the origional only)
7) Zardoz (Yeh, I said it!)
8 ) Brazil
9) Dune (The Scifi channel/BBC verson, not the Dino DeLorentis piece of crap)
10) The Thing (John Carpenter version)

[samaulle_esun]

There are a lot of similarities in the lists, and I find myself disagreeing with only a few of the choices. Anyone new to reading adult sci-fi/fantasy, make sure you get something out of the lists because a good 2 3rds of the books out there in your local book store are terrible!

Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb
Harry Potter - J K Rowling
Liveship Traders - Robin Hobb
Time Enough for Love - Robert Heinlein
Interview with a Vampire - Anne Rice
Sword of Truth series - Terry Goodkind
Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
Redwall series - Brian Jacques
Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
(and one I'm reading at the moment) Out of Egypt - Anne Rice

I know this almost looks like a compiled list of bestsellers, but they really are the best books I've come to find or can recall at the moment.

I haven't read any earth shattering scifi yet besides a short story by Philip K Dick titled "the second variety." You must really try to get your hands on it!

[Llew]

Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb

*Looks down people's lists* Wow, didn't know so many people liked Hobb. Awesome.


Lemme see, for my list I'd have to do something like this:
Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb
Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zalazny (A very close tie for first here.)
Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Song of Albion Series - Steven Lawhead
Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
The Land that Time Forgot - Edgar Rice Burroughs
Enders Game - Orson Scott Card

That's only 8 I know, but I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

[LadyFlame]

Hmmmm.... Lady Flame's Top 10 books..??

Magic Ship Trilogy- Robin Hobb
The Wayfarer's Redemption Trilogy- Sara Douglass
The Death Gate Series- Weiss & Hickman
Song Of Ice and Fire Series- Georgie RR Martin

Of course there are several I adored....it's so hard to just come up with 'all time faves'...
I'll have to check out some of all your favorites!

[TheBlueBrewer]

In no particular order (except the first):

The Khaavren Romances - Steven Brust;

The Dark Tower - Steven King;

The Imagica - Clive Barker;

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman;

The Heir of Autumn - Giles Carwyn and Todd Fahnestock;

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss;

Magician - Raymond E. Feist;

Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone - Greg Keyes;

Coldfire Trilogy - C.S. Freidman;

The Integral Trees - Larry Niven.

[Asp Zelazny]

NPR wants to know what the "Best SF/Fantasy of All Time" is ....

They posted a write-in contest, and got more that 6000 different bests; so they are having a Pick Your 10 Favorites contest now. Some are predictable, some are purely crap (there's even an L Ron Hubbard entry, no doubt placed by his mindless minions [IMO, of course]), but there's a number of good choices there, and it's so hard to limit it to just 10.

They want to know by August 10th. I'll post the link, but only if you all vote only for the choices I picked.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138894873 ... n-20110804

[Asp Zelazny]

And here's the link to see what NPR-types thought were the best SF ever.
I'm disappointed in them: way too much old stuff there, and rather hackneyed, besides. Stuffy old dudes and dudettes, I guess.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843 ... n-20110811

In the same email, however, there was an interesting article about Terry Pratchett and his current situation:

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139262401 ... n-20110811

[The Master]

I agree with a lot of what is on that list if not the order in which it appears. Maybe I'm a stuffy old dude? I think you will always see a lot of the same things on these types of lists simply because books are considered classics of the genre for good reason.

Where it perhaps stumbles the most for me is that some of them are single novels, others are an entire series. Oddly, sometimes there is just the first book in a series listed. I think it a bit disingenuous to pit an entire trilogy (or more) against a single novel. Separate lists would have made more sense to me.