Eric Heideman's Top Ten Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

1. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1818).
   The Motherlode of both science fiction & horror. Occasional early nineteenth-centuryisms drag it down for three pages, but on balance it remains unsurpassed. And what's not to love about The Monster? (Okay, he killed a kid. He killed a lot of innocent people. But society is to blame.) Week before last I subbed at South High School, & there was an English teacher's door with a life-size poster of Karloff as The Monster with the logo, "The most famous character in English literature." 'Nuff said! (Though I'd say he's a tie with Sherlock Holmes.)

2. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (lived 1809-1849).
   He didn't--quite--invent the detective story--and the short story--but close enough. He wrote the best-remembered poems in American literature. He made a significant contribution to early science fiction. He contributed as much as any writer, Freud & Jung included, to our understanding of abnormal psychology. And he remains the central figure in horror fiction. He (and Mary Shelley, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and H.G. Wells, and Tolkien) is the air we breathe.

3. Seven Science Fiction Novels by H.G. Wells. This compendium includes a couple of novels I haven't gotten to yet, but I will jump up and down for the first five: The Time Machine (1895); The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896); The Invisible Man (1897); The War of the Worlds (1898); & The First Man in the Moon (1901). Poe is horror. Conan Doyle is detective fiction. Tolkien is fantasy. And Wells is science fiction.

4. The Wizard of Oz & its 13 sequels (1900-1919) by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919).
   If you love the Judy Garland movie, read the 14 books. Imagination. Warmth. Joy.

5. Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber (magazine version 1943; expanded novel version 1953).
   The thing in my life in which I take greatest pride is that I had the opportunity to speak with Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) several times. I have called him, in print, "The most versatile fantasist of the twentieth century," though I suppose it comes down to a haggle between him and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). Leiber was Master of All Trades, science fiction (he invented the multiple-viewpoint disaster novel), fantasy (he coined the term "sword and sorcery") , and horror (he, more than anyone else, invented dark urban fantasy, and is the proper bridge between H.P. Lovecraft & Stephen King), and hybrids of the above (see, especially, his novella Ship of Shadows). I've read dozens of his stories and he's never, once, disappointed me. That said, my fave of his is Conjure Wife, a delicious exploration of academic infighting, and a loving tribute to powerful, intelligent women.

6. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954-1956).
   I entirely agree with all of the good things other members of this list have said about this three-volume novel (and its prequel, The Hobbit, 1937). It is the central fantasy novel of the twentieth century. If you haven't read it, do.

7. The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, edited by Paul Williams (six volumes so far, 1994-1999).
   Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) Is the finest short story writer our field has produced. If, by jumping up and down screaming for the past 27 years, &l the next however many years I have left, I induce ten people who otherwise would not have read the short stories of Theodore Sturgeon to read THE SHORT STORIES OF THEODORE STURGEON, I will not have lived in vain. This edition collects his stories in order of composition (as best can be determined), along with appendices containing letters from Sturgeon to his Mom & his pals discussing his stories as he writes 'em. This allows us to trace him from a callow youth to the finest short story writer (in the world) of the second half of the twentieth century. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

8. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959).
   The definitive haunted house novel, by a writer (1919-1965) who was both the Erma Bombeck of her day, & a High Master of psychological made. The novel was faithfully adapted by Robert Wise as The Haunting (1963), easily the best ghost movie ever made.

9. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1962).
   PKD, whose Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep inspired the finest science fiction film, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982; Director's Cut, 1992) is at his most accessible in High Castle, a novel in which the Axis Powers won World War II, in which several complex characters do good not through acts of High Heroism but through acts of common human decency.

10. China Mountain Zhang (1992) by Maureen F. McHugh (1959-).
    There's been a lot of wonderful stuff in recent years (I'd like, in particular, to be able to endorse Red Mars & Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson). But of all the relatively recent books in our field, the one I love most is Zhang, a "You Are There" novel about daily life in the 22nd century, thoughtful, insightful, painful, warm.