My 10 Favorite Science Fiction Novels
By Robert W. Bly, Founder, ScienceFictionPrediction.com
- The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
- Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny.
- Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg.
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.
- The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov.
- Dune by Frank Herbert.
- The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
- A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter Miller
- Cities in Flight by James Blish
Due to a genetic mutation, a man travels back and forth in time randomly and uncontrollably, in much the same way Billy Pilgrim jumps through time in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. He meets a girl/woman at different times. They get to know each other, he confesses his condition, and they fall in love and get married, with unconventional and eventually tragic results.
Humans travel to another planet which they colonize. Using technology and through mutation, an elite group of these humans attains superhuman powers. They rule the planet and the natives as gods. The protagonist, a member of this group, rebels against them to free the planet from their rule.
As he approaches middle age, a telepath slowly begins to lose his powers and, in doing so, what made him unique.
Since he is a loner and kind of a gentle loser who has not accomplished much in life, the loss of his one unique power is particularly tragic to him and to the reader.
A scientists obsessed with uncovering the secret of life creates a patchwork body from parts of corpses and gives it life (why he just didn't reanimate one complete dead body instead of sewing the parts together is never explained).
The story of man's colonization of Mars and how it triggers the near-extinction (or possibly the total extinction) of the intelligent native Martians.
Scientists discover a parallel universe in another dimension. By exchanging matter between the universes through a process never made quite clear, the intelligent beings on each side (us here and the para-men on the other side) can seemingly create a limitless supply of free energy. But of course, the protagonist discovers a glitch in the process that may doom our universe to destruction. Can he convince the government to shut the process down in time?
A story of feudalism and survival on Dune, a harsh desert world with a dire shortage of water, which is so scarce that the population where suits that recycle their sweat into drinkable water.
A revenge novel in which the protagonist, left for dead after an attack, relentless pursues those who tried to kill him for revenge using his superhuman powers: he can teleport great distances (though many humans have the same ability) and has had neurosurgery to enhance his speed and reflexes.
A post-apocalyptic novel in which an order of monks preserves precious technical and scientific knowledge shunned by the surviving humans until humanity is ready to embrace this knowledge and rebuild society with it once again.
Humanity takes to the stars - not in rocket ships but by launching the major cities of Earth into outer space using powerful anti-gravity devices called spin dizzies - thus creating a galaxy-wide civilization of roaming space colonies.
