The Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must ReadScience Fiction and Fantasy

Given by The Guardian

Other Names: 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read, Guardian 1000
149 Works 1,833,967 Books 36,201 Reviews 4.0
The Guardian is a UK newspaper which, with its sister Sunday paper The Observer, published this list as a set of supplements over a one-week period early in 2009. As described by the Guardian: show more "This list… includes only novels —no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems — from any decade in any language."

The list actually contains only 998 books. show less
Categories:
All, Comedy (149), Crime (147), Family and Self (146), Love (141), Science Fiction and Fantasy (149), State of the Nation (134), War and Travel (132)
Year Awarded:
2009
Work
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) by Douglas Adams
Non-Stop (1958) by Brian Aldiss
Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov
The Blind Assassin (2000) by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood
In the Country of Last Things (1987) by Paul Auster
Crash (1973) by J. G. Ballard
The Drowned World (1962) by J. G. Ballard
Millennium People (2003) by J. G. Ballard
The Wasp Factory (1984) by Iain Banks
Consider Phlebas (1987) by Iain M. Banks
Weaveworld (1987) by Clive Barker
Darkmans (2007) by Nicola Barker
The Time Ships (1995) by Stephen Baxter
Darwin's Radio (1999) by Greg Bear
Vathek (1786) by William Beckford
The Stars My Destination (1956) by Alfred Bester
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
Lost Souls (1992) by Poppy Z. Brite
Wieland (1798) by Charles Brockden Brown
Rogue Moon (1960) by Algis Budrys
The Master and Margarita (1966) by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Coming Race (1871) by Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton
A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess
The End of the World News (1982) by Anthony Burgess
A Princess of Mars (1912) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Naked Lunch (1962) by William S. Burroughs
Kindred (1979) by Octavia E. Butler
Erewhon (1872) by Samuel Butler
The Baron in the Trees (1957) by Italo Calvino
The Influence (1988) by Ramsey Campbell
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis Carroll
Nights at the Circus (1984) by Angela Carter
The Passion of New Eve (1977) by Angela Carter
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) by Michael Chabon
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908) by G.K. Chesterton
Childhood's End (1954) by Arthur C. Clarke
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2004) by Susanna Clarke
Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975) by Michael G. Coney
Girlfriend in a Coma (1998) by Douglas Coupland
House of Leaves (2000) by Mark Z. Danielewski
Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation (1996) by Marie Darrieussecq
The Einstein Intersection (1967) by Samuel R. Delany
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick
The Man in the High Castle (1962) by Philip K. Dick
Camp Concentration (1968) by Thomas M. Disch
Foucault's Pendulum (1988) by Umberto Eco
Under the Skin (2004) by Michel Faber
The Magus (1965) by John Fowles
American Gods {original} (2001) by Neil Gaiman
Red Shift (1973) by Alan Garner
Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson
Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding
The Forever War (1974) by Joe Haldeman
Light (2002) by M. John Harrison
The House of the Seven Gables (1851) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) by Robert A. Heinlein
Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert
The Glass Bead Game (1943) by Hermann Hesse
Riddley Walker (1980) by Russell Hoban
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) by James Hogg
The Elementary Particles (1998) by Michel Houellebecq
Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
The Unconsoled (1995) by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson
The Turn of the Screw (1898) by Henry James
The Children of Men (1992) by P. D. James
After London: Or, Wild England (1885) by Richard Jefferies
Bold as Love (2001) by Gwyneth Jones
The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka
Flowers for Algernon (1966) by Daniel Keyes
The Shining (1977) by Stephen King
The Victorian Chaise-Longue (1953) by Marghanita Laski
Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh (1864) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Earthsea Series
Solaris (1961) by Stanisław Lem
The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) by Doris Lessing
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950) by C. S. Lewis
The Monk (1796) by Matthew Lewis
A Voyage to Arcturus (1920) by David Lindsay
The Night Sessions (2008) by Ken MacLeod
Beyond Black (2005) by Hilary Mantel
I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson
Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Maturin
The Butcher Boy (1992) by Patrick McCabe
The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy
Ascent (2007) by Jed Mercurio
Ingenious Pain (1997) by Andrew Miller
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1955) by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Cloud Atlas: A Novel (2004) by David Mitchell
The Scar (2002) by China Miéville
Mother London (1988) by Michael Moorcock
Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison
News from Nowhere; or, An Epoch of Rest: Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance (1890) by William Morris
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995) by Haruki Murakami
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) by Vladimir Nabokov
The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger
Ringworld (1970) by Larry Niven
Vurt (1993) by Jeff Noon
The Third Policeman (1967) by Flann O'Brien
The Famished Road (1991) by Ben Okri
1984 (1949) by George Orwell
Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk
Nightmare Abbey (1818) by Thomas Love Peacock
Titus Groan (1946) by Mervyn Peake
The Space Merchants (1953) by Frederik Pohl
A Glastonbury Romance (1932) by John Cowper Powys
The Colour of Magic (1983) by Terry Pratchett
The Discworld Series
The Prestige (1995) by Christopher Priest
His Dark Materials (2000) by Philip Pullman
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532) by François Rabelais
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe
Revelation Space (2000) by Alastair Reynolds
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) by Kim Stanley Robinson
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1997) by J. K. Rowling
The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie
The Female Man (1975) by Joanna Russ
Air: Or, Have Not Have (2004) by Geoff Ryman
The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Blindness (1995) by José Saramago
How the Dead Live (2000) by Will Self
Frankenstein (2022) by Mary Shelley
Hyperion (1989) by Dan Simmons
Only Forward (1994) by Michael Marshall Smith
Star Maker (1937) by Olaf Stapledon
Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker
The Insult (1996) by Rupert Thomson
The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings (1954) by J. R. R. Tolkien
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain
The Sirens of Titan (1959) by Kurt Vonnegut
The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole
Jakob von Gunten (1909) by Robert Walser
Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman (1926) by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Affinity (1999) by Sarah Waters
The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells
The War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells
The Sword in the Stone (1938) by T. H. White
The Old Men at the Zoo (1961) by Angus Wilson
The Book of the New Sun (1980) by Gene Wolfe
Orlando: A Biography (1928) by Virginia Woolf
The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham
The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) by John Wyndham
We (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Descriptions

The Guardian is a UK newspaper which, with its sister Sunday paper The Observer, published this list as a set of supplements over a one-week period early in 2009. As described by the Guardian: "This list… includes only novels —no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems — from any decade in any language."

The list actually contains only 998 books.

(English, Member-written)

The list actually contains only 998 books: 149 Comedy, 147 Crime, 146 Family and self, 141 Love, 149 Science fiction and fantasy, 134 State of the nation, 132 War and travel.

(English, Technical/disambiguation notice)
URL: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

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