This was a great idea for a top 10 list. My top 3 are Ender's Game, The Martian, and Pushing Ice. I'm surprised Neal Stephenson nor William Gibson even got a mention. Both of them have books in my top 10-15.
That’s a great top 3! 👍 Stevenson and Gibson were both in the Top 10s of some of the booktubers ,but neither one was in the top 3 so they got no points based on my system. Thanks!
Nice video! I can’t imagine any sci-fi book topping Dune for me. Solaris is a gem, and I agree that Flowers for Algernon could be widely recommended. While Ubik and Hitchhiker’s Guide both have some absurdist humor, I am with you on loving Ubik and not vibing with Hitchhiker’s Guide. Can’t wait to watch your Top 10 someday!
Thanks for the mention! I'm looking forward to seeing your list when you get round to it. I'm also hoping to make a new, longer list at some point, but I've got a lot more books I want to read first...
Really enjoyed this video, appreciated the hard work you must of put in just for the research itself, well done sir. I love top 10 lists and this was an interesting spin on it. Seems to me you have read plenty of science fiction to justify a list of your own, and you can always revisit and update/edit your list later on... just my 2cents and no pressure. Great editing and presentation btw.
@@TomOrange Thanks Three great choices Tom! In fairness, I have not read Tiamat’s Wrath; I stopped after book 3… I’ll have to go back to the Expense at some point. With Remembrance of the Earth’s Past trilogy my favorite one would be Dark Forest, but you can’t go wrong with any of them. 1984 is a classic 🙌
@@TheShadesofOrange My pleasure! I think in your video you had Blindsight as the number one choice, and that book gets mentioned quite often in lists like this one. But of course it’s all subjective. 😀
Very interesting! Glad you did the weighted ranking. Not sure half these books existed yet when I was really into sci-fi, so my list would be very different.
Great point! Looking at this top 10’s first publication dates and averaging them out, we get 1981; so yes the list is skewed towards more recent publications.
@@bookjack Yes. I’m afraid that is correct. 😂While The Left-hand of Darkness did make top 10 list a couple of times, your vote was the only point bearing one. I think it’s a brilliant book, reaching beyond SF.
Hey bart!! Wow thanks for the mention!! 😂 i too have been putting off making my top faves list - its a hard thing to commit to! Good thing it can change every year! Looking forward to your list when it comes out
I enjoyed the video. You put so much work into it! I only read 2 books from this top 10: Solaris and Project Hail Mary - loved them both. I also loved Flowers for Algernon. I can’t wait for your top 10.
Thanks for the video. My personal top three are: 1. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe 2. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card 3. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge I liked Hyperion, but I seem to be in a very small minority who didn’t love it. It’s always funny to see Dune consistently blow everything out of the water in polls, but although I enjoy the book and the series immensely, I am not tempted to put it in my top three.
Great video! So surprising to see Rendezvous with Rama not making it into the top-10. It's a quite short book, so the length should not scare people off. The writing style is quite approachable, so again, shouldn't be scaring people off. And the story is absolutely fantastic! Haven't read that much Sci-Fi but I rate it higher than Dune and Hyperion. Clarke blew it out of the park with that one, if you ask me.
The transcript of the video, summarized with chatgpt gives me this top 10 list of science fiction books that was compiled based on choices from various BookTubers, ranked from 1 to 10: Dune by Frank Herbert Hyperion by Dan Simmons Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge Blindsight by Peter Watts Ubik by Philip K. Dick 1984 by George Orwell Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky Solaris by Stanisław Lem Contact by Carl Sagan The speaker also mentioned some near-misses and personal favorites, like The Left Hand of Darkness, Flowers for Algernon, and Rendezvous with Rama, that didn’t quite make it into this top 10 list. (Note: next time you want to do something similar: don't look + listen to all those vids. Take the transcript, and ask an AI-tool to pick out the titles that are being mentioned. Just like I did with your vid.)
Hey Bart, thank you very much for mentioning me here, it's really appreciated. I don't think that I have read enough books in the genre to provide a definitive top 10 list so my approach was to create that video and then revisit it over the years to see how much it changes. Great video idea and I look forward to your list!
thanks for putting in all that work and calling it fun. i've read them all but Ender's Game and Contact. i won't quibble with the list because i have so much reading to do. i'm always amazed the Gap series never makes these lists and i think it's because Donaldson's villains are so utterly vile folks become actually revolted. (vile villains, get it?) the fact remains he is a master of intrigue and the Amnion are truly horrific.
@@stephenmorton8017 Thanks for watching. The only Donaldson I read was Lord Foul’s Bane, and that was at least 30 years ago… I’ve heard of the Gap Series, but did not get to it yet. I love a vile villain! 😂
@@bartsbookspace i read them as they were published and had to wait as each one was released. i just finished Mordant's Need. it's listed as fantasy but has elements of sci-fi within it. again, some vile villany. nothing is as it first seems. cheers until next time.
Interesting. Fiasco might be the only Lem I have not read. The Invincible is great, and I also really enjoyed City; in fact, I preferred it to Way Station.
Great Video! I hadn't read Dune when I made my list, but if I had Dune Messiah would of been near or at the top, so would of given some more points there!
@@BenjaminsBookclub Hi Benjamin. Thanks 😃 I must admit that while I read Dune twice, I have yet to continue the series… I’m planning to read Messiah and Children soon.
Pretty good list. I would have Hyperion at #1 and agree with Dune and Ender's Game being on the list. I would probably include books such as Replay by Ken Grimwood and Gateway by Pohl. Just some books I read early that stuck with me through the years and have stood up to re-reading. I read Blindsight but didn't really like it. I get the uniqueness of the aliens, just not a book for me. Same with Children of Time. I tried reading it but didn't finish. As for other Simmon's books I would recommend Carrion Comfort in the horror genre. Great take on the vampire story.
@@bartsbookspace The Terror is great, but I will say it's a bit too long. Nobody ever mentions his books Ilium and Olympos, which I thought were really excellent.
What a surprising list. Very glad to see Dick on there, my single alltime favourite SF author. Also nice to see Watts on there as he's underappreciated, but the shocker for me is that there's no Iain Banks. To me, one hasn't read SciFi without having bread something by Banks...
@@steved1135 Well said! So far, I’ve read Consider Phlebas and Player of Games; I loved them both. Ian M Banks is one of the reasons I’m holding off on putting together my own list of favorite sf books as I want to read more from the Culture Series first. I will be reading Use of Weapons soon. Thanks
@@bartsbookspace Nice. I accidentally discovered Banks' SF books after having read hiss first novel and was elated to find an author who was conceptually on the 'hard' SF side of things who yet never got caught up in technicalities too much. I never looked back.
Top 3. That is hard, I have around a top 20! Top 3, 2 by importance, 1 favorite? The World of Null A - A E van Vogt. Likely the main influence on Nineteen Eighty - Four and a lot more. Nineteen Eighty - Four by George Orwell [Eric Blair] Have Spacesuit Will Travel - RAH
@@ScienceFictionRetroactivis-j1w 1984 is amazing novel with a message that will still be relevant 100 years from now. RAH and the other hand is not aging as well in my opinion. I have Not read Have a Space Suit, but I did read Stranger in s Strange Land last year and just couldn’t get past all the preaching. The author inserts himself as one of the characters and 😬; it really put me off. AE Van Vogt is an author I want to get to. Thanks
@@bartsbookspace I agree wwith you on RAH. Here is my review of RAH: "I am still a very strong supporter of RAH's early works, with strict limitations. I still suggest many of his works. Under John W. Campbell Jr or Scribners guidelines through 1960, RAH produced multiple intelligent, rational, inventive, educational and now classic Science Fiction novels and short stories, and many are as good as it gets. There are several theories regarding his 1960 transformation to absurdity; illness, marital influence, or he was always this way, but editorial control over paychecks kept him on the "glory road" to success. Perhaps that success resulted in too much independence from editorship (RAH and Campbell clashes) and self-indulgences. Regardless of any of that, his catalog from 1938 through 1960 may be unequalled in young adult influence. RAH and a few other SF authors were a very large influence on me and my entire generation. He (and many others, parents, teachers, coaches, etc) shaped my concepts of right and wrong, philosophy, ideology, science, ethics and education. Unfortunately, nearly everything he wrote after 1960 was an embarrassing abomination and the opposite of what he taught prior to 1960, which is bizarre. The worst work of this era is hard to choose, but probably comes down to "Farnham's Freehold" or "Stranger in a Strangeland". "Farnham" being the most offensive, while many of the "Stranger" concepts were actually adopted by the Manson family. The Manson murders were a US national disgrace, and played a role in the demise of SF magazines in the 1970s. There was a larger problem in the mags beginning in the late 1960s - "moral ambiguity". Parents threw them in the trash. My way of dealing with the RAH issue is rather simplistic: I do not own or read anything by RAH after "Starship Troopers." I do have "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" with a cautionary note written in it. However, I think a careful reading of this novel also reveals strong concerns, besides poor writing style. I do not want to leave my descendants anything in my library that is embarrassing, or leads them towards the wrong path."
@@ScienceFictionRetroactivis-j1w That’s very helpful. I did not realize there was a shift in his writing. I’ll give a second chance to some of his early work. Thx
I appreciate the effort, but I must admit to being underwhelmed by this list. A lot more recent fiction and contemporary writing styles than I think is warranted. A top 10 list without Joanna Russ, John Wyndham, Walter Miller, Alfred Bester, Octavia Butler, Clifford Simak, Pohl and Kornbluth, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Brian Aldiss, Samuel Delaney, Joe Haldeman, Harlan Ellison, or Robert Silverberg?
I appreciate being included!
@@mikesbookreviews The list would not be “official” without MikeBookReviews! 😉
This was a great idea for a top 10 list. My top 3 are Ender's Game, The Martian, and Pushing Ice. I'm surprised Neal Stephenson nor William Gibson even got a mention. Both of them have books in my top 10-15.
That’s a great top 3! 👍
Stevenson and Gibson were both in the Top 10s of some of the booktubers ,but neither one was in the top 3 so they got no points based on my system.
Thanks!
Nice video! I can’t imagine any sci-fi book topping Dune for me. Solaris is a gem, and I agree that Flowers for Algernon could be widely recommended. While Ubik and Hitchhiker’s Guide both have some absurdist humor, I am with you on loving Ubik and not vibing with Hitchhiker’s Guide. Can’t wait to watch your Top 10 someday!
Thanks Johanna! 😀
Great list. Love to see your top ten too. Thanks Bart!
Thank you for watching and commenting! 😃
Thanks for the mention! I'm looking forward to seeing your list when you get round to it. I'm also hoping to make a new, longer list at some point, but I've got a lot more books I want to read first...
@@bookspin Thanks.
Always more books to read. It’s like one of those things that are certain in life. Taxes, death, never ending Tbr etc..
Really enjoyed this video, appreciated the hard work you must of put in just for the research itself, well done sir. I love top 10 lists and this was an interesting spin on it. Seems to me you have read plenty of science fiction to justify a list of your own, and you can always revisit and update/edit your list later on... just my 2cents and no pressure. Great editing and presentation btw.
@@michaelzwierzynski728 Thanks for watching, commenting, and the vote of confidence!
It means a lot. 🙌
Im looking forward to your list whenever you get around to it! My top three is
Death's End
Tiamat's Wrath
1984
@@TomOrange Thanks
Three great choices Tom!
In fairness, I have not read Tiamat’s Wrath; I stopped after book 3… I’ll have to go back to the Expense at some point.
With Remembrance of the Earth’s Past trilogy my favorite one would be Dark Forest, but you can’t go wrong with any of them.
1984 is a classic 🙌
Thanks for including me. I feel like I'm a total outlier 😅
@@TheShadesofOrange My pleasure! I think in your video you had Blindsight as the number one choice, and that book gets mentioned quite often in lists like this one. But of course it’s all subjective. 😀
Hey @TheShadesofOrange I love your content!
@@greywaren621 👍 One of the Best!
Very interesting! Glad you did the weighted ranking. Not sure half these books existed yet when I was really into sci-fi, so my list would be very different.
Great point! Looking at this top 10’s first publication dates and averaging them out, we get 1981; so yes the list is skewed towards more recent publications.
Great video. I have a feeling Left Hand of Darkness only had 3 points from being my favorite 😅
Waiting for your own top 10 video now
@@bookjack Yes. I’m afraid that is correct. 😂While The Left-hand of Darkness did make top 10 list a couple of times, your vote was the only point bearing one. I think it’s a brilliant book, reaching beyond SF.
Hey bart!! Wow thanks for the mention!! 😂 i too have been putting off making my top faves list - its a hard thing to commit to! Good thing it can change every year! Looking forward to your list when it comes out
Thanks! Whenever I start to think of doing a top 10, I feel like I need to read a few more books… 😂
@@bartsbookspace haha i dont think that ever goes away….
Got to four minutes. When HHGTTG was out, so was I. But keep up the good work, your analysis is excellent.
@@Btain Thank you!
I enjoyed the video. You put so much work into it! I only read 2 books from this top 10: Solaris and Project Hail Mary - loved them both. I also loved Flowers for Algernon. I can’t wait for your top 10.
Thanks! ❤️
ruclips.net/video/KhCC1aCvNx8/видео.htmlsi=hkdREXOF09OS44bO
Permutation City was robbed haha
@@WordsinTime Yes… 😂 your points were unfortunately, the only ones awarded to Permutation City.
Thanks for the video. My personal top three are:
1. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
2. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
3. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
I liked Hyperion, but I seem to be in a very small minority who didn’t love it. It’s always funny to see Dune consistently blow everything out of the water in polls, but although I enjoy the book and the series immensely, I am not tempted to put it in my top three.
@@mr.w9222 Thank You.
I have yet to read Book of the New Sun.
It’s such an intimidating? read; I definitely want to get to it next year.
Great video! So surprising to see Rendezvous with Rama not making it into the top-10. It's a quite short book, so the length should not scare people off. The writing style is quite approachable, so again, shouldn't be scaring people off. And the story is absolutely fantastic!
Haven't read that much Sci-Fi but I rate it higher than Dune and Hyperion. Clarke blew it out of the park with that one, if you ask me.
I remember loving Rendezvous with Rama as well. But it has been a long time. I can’t wait to reread it.
Thanks for the shout-out! I'm shocked that any of my top 3 made the list, TBH. But if it's gonna be any, I'm glad it was Ubik. Great video
@@rammelbroadcasting Thanks!
Well, technically, you also got Dune, although your exact pick was Dune Messiah, so I’m not sure if that counts. 😃
The transcript of the video, summarized with chatgpt gives me this top 10 list of science fiction books that was compiled based on choices from various BookTubers, ranked from 1 to 10:
Dune by Frank Herbert
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Blindsight by Peter Watts
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
1984 by George Orwell
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Solaris by Stanisław Lem
Contact by Carl Sagan
The speaker also mentioned some near-misses and personal favorites, like The Left Hand of Darkness, Flowers for Algernon, and Rendezvous with Rama, that didn’t quite make it into this top 10 list.
(Note: next time you want to do something similar: don't look + listen to all those vids. Take the transcript, and ask an AI-tool to pick out the titles that are being mentioned. Just like I did with your vid.)
Thanks. That’s a great tip for streamlining the process, but, I enjoyed watching all the videos.
👍
Hey Bart, thank you very much for mentioning me here, it's really appreciated. I don't think that I have read enough books in the genre to provide a definitive top 10 list so my approach was to create that video and then revisit it over the years to see how much it changes. Great video idea and I look forward to your list!
Thanks! That is a good approach. Any Top 10 list will inevitably change overtime.
thanks for putting in all that work and calling it fun. i've read them all but Ender's Game and Contact. i won't quibble with the list because i have so much reading to do.
i'm always amazed the Gap series never makes these lists and i think it's because Donaldson's villains are so utterly vile folks become actually revolted. (vile villains, get it?) the fact remains he is a master of intrigue and the Amnion are truly horrific.
@@stephenmorton8017 Thanks for watching.
The only Donaldson I read was Lord Foul’s Bane, and that was at least 30 years ago…
I’ve heard of the Gap Series, but did not get to it yet. I love a vile villain! 😂
@@bartsbookspace i read them as they were published and had to wait as each one was released. i just finished Mordant's Need. it's listed as fantasy but has elements of sci-fi within it. again, some vile villany. nothing is as it first seems.
cheers until next time.
The book that influenced me the most was A Snail on a Slope.
As for Lem, I prefer Fiasco or The Invincible.
I love City by Simak, so rich in ideas.
Interesting. Fiasco might be the only Lem I have not read. The Invincible is great, and I also really enjoyed City; in fact, I preferred it to Way Station.
Great Video! I hadn't read Dune when I made my list, but if I had Dune Messiah would of been near or at the top, so would of given some more points there!
@@BenjaminsBookclub Hi Benjamin. Thanks 😃
I must admit that while I read Dune twice, I have yet to continue the series… I’m planning to read Messiah and Children soon.
Pretty good list. I would have Hyperion at #1 and agree with Dune and Ender's Game being on the list. I would probably include books such as Replay by Ken Grimwood and Gateway by Pohl. Just some books I read early that stuck with me through the years and have stood up to re-reading. I read Blindsight but didn't really like it. I get the uniqueness of the aliens, just not a book for me. Same with Children of Time. I tried reading it but didn't finish. As for other Simmon's books I would recommend Carrion Comfort in the horror genre. Great take on the vampire story.
@@6stringstandard136 Gateway is on my list, as is Simmons’ Carrion Comfort; although first I want to read The Terror.
@@bartsbookspace The Terror is great, but I will say it's a bit too long. Nobody ever mentions his books Ilium and Olympos, which I thought were really excellent.
What a surprising list. Very glad to see Dick on there, my single alltime favourite SF author. Also nice to see Watts on there as he's underappreciated, but the shocker for me is that there's no Iain Banks. To me, one hasn't read SciFi without having bread something by Banks...
@@steved1135 Well said! So far, I’ve read Consider Phlebas and Player of Games; I loved them both. Ian M Banks is one of the reasons I’m holding off on putting together my own list of favorite sf books as I want to read more from the Culture Series first. I will be reading Use of Weapons soon. Thanks
@@bartsbookspace Nice. I accidentally discovered Banks' SF books after having read hiss first novel and was elated to find an author who was conceptually on the 'hard' SF side of things who yet never got caught up in technicalities too much. I never looked back.
Top 3. That is hard, I have around a top 20! Top 3, 2 by importance, 1 favorite?
The World of Null A - A E van Vogt. Likely the main influence on Nineteen Eighty - Four and a lot more.
Nineteen Eighty - Four by George Orwell [Eric Blair]
Have Spacesuit Will Travel - RAH
@@ScienceFictionRetroactivis-j1w 1984 is amazing novel with a message that will still be relevant 100 years from now.
RAH and the other hand is not aging as well in my opinion. I have Not read Have a Space Suit, but I did read Stranger in s Strange Land last year and just couldn’t get past all the preaching. The author inserts himself as one of the characters and 😬; it really put me off.
AE Van Vogt is an author I want to get to.
Thanks
@@bartsbookspace I agree wwith you on RAH. Here is my review of RAH:
"I am still a very strong supporter of RAH's early works, with strict limitations. I still suggest many of his works.
Under John W. Campbell Jr or Scribners guidelines through 1960, RAH produced multiple intelligent, rational, inventive, educational and now classic Science Fiction novels and short stories, and many are as good as it gets.
There are several theories regarding his 1960 transformation to absurdity; illness, marital influence, or he was always this way, but editorial control over paychecks kept him on the "glory road" to success. Perhaps that success resulted in too much independence from editorship (RAH and Campbell clashes) and self-indulgences.
Regardless of any of that, his catalog from 1938 through 1960 may be unequalled in young adult influence. RAH and a few other SF authors were a very large influence on me and my entire generation. He (and many others, parents, teachers, coaches, etc) shaped my concepts of right and wrong, philosophy, ideology, science, ethics and education.
Unfortunately, nearly everything he wrote after 1960 was an embarrassing abomination and the opposite of what he taught prior to 1960, which is bizarre. The worst work of this era is hard to choose, but probably comes down to "Farnham's Freehold" or "Stranger in a Strangeland". "Farnham" being the most offensive, while many of the "Stranger" concepts were actually adopted by the Manson family. The Manson murders were a US national disgrace, and played a role in the demise of SF magazines in the 1970s. There was a larger problem in the mags beginning in the late 1960s - "moral ambiguity". Parents threw them in the trash.
My way of dealing with the RAH issue is rather simplistic: I do not own or read anything by RAH after "Starship Troopers." I do have "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" with a cautionary note written in it. However, I think a careful reading of this novel also reveals strong concerns, besides poor writing style. I do not want to leave my descendants anything in my library that is embarrassing, or leads them towards the wrong path."
@@ScienceFictionRetroactivis-j1w That’s very helpful. I did not realize there was a shift in his writing. I’ll give a second chance to some of his early work. Thx
Can you please give review on “Earth in trouble” by Nss ramakrishna?
I appreciate the effort, but I must admit to being underwhelmed by this list. A lot more recent fiction and contemporary writing styles than I think is warranted. A top 10 list without Joanna Russ, John Wyndham, Walter Miller, Alfred Bester, Octavia Butler, Clifford Simak, Pohl and Kornbluth, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Brian Aldiss, Samuel Delaney, Joe Haldeman, Harlan Ellison, or Robert Silverberg?
@@danieladams5495 Those were the top choices based on said booktubers picks.
Btw I would add Ian M Banks to your list. 👍
@@bartsbookspace Yes, definitely. It was just a quick off the top of my head list!
Skrode
I came here to see the top 10 list by book tubers and instead you are talking about books that did not make it to the list - clickbait