The Day of the Triffids

Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham - everyone goes blind and a bunch of sentient plants start eating people. one of the first science fiction books I ever read, and the one that introduced me to post apocalyptic fiction. Giant plants might sound silly, but its no more silly than walking corpses. And in fact the walking dead and 28 days later owe a lot to this book. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke - beautifully inventive fantasy novel about two magicians bringing magic back to Britain during the Napoleonic wars. Fab read. Gateway - Frederick Pohl - pulp sf at its best. Humans discover a hollowed out asteroid worth ftl ships preprogrammed with unknown destinations. Prospectors pack as much food as they can and hit 'launch' in the hopes that they'll discover something valuable and not land on a star or starve to death. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman - more great pulp sci-fi about the first interstellar war. Old man's war by John Scalzi is very similar and almost as good. Most things by Iain (m) banks. Crow Road, Wasp Factory, The Bridge, Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons, Player of Games etc. Song of stone was awful though, they're not all winners

Big science fiction fan 1. Revelation Space 2. Hyperion 3. The Postman 4. The Day of the Triffids 5. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postman [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)

As well as definitive books, you need a carefully graded way of proceeding through them - plus a very good index. As David Palmer pointed out in his novel Emergence, one would have to devise a 'system to locate specifics in such huge collection. Useless otherwise; researcher could spend most of life looking for data instead of using.' Other critical books should include philosophy and science: it took a long time to build a technological civilization, and the Scientific Method is the cornerstone of this. (And yet even now, much of the world is still mired superstition/religion.) More crucial lessons from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids: 'The most valuable part of our flying start is knowledge. That's the short cut to save us starting where our ancestors did. We've got it all there in books if we take the trouble to find out about it...…

depends on the subgenre :) Superhuman: Slan by A.E. Van Vogt More Than Human by Theodore STurgeon Odd John by Olaf Stapledon Post Apocalyptic: The Day of The Triffids by John Whyndham Earth Abides by George R. Stewart A Canticle for Lebowitz by...don't remember Space Opera/Adventure: any of The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks The Reality Dysfunction series by ...don't remember Hyperion series by Dan Simmons To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer Dystopian: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin <---highly overlooked, predates 1984 and Brave New World But the Absolute Best would be anything by: Stanislaw Lem (Cyberiad, Futurological Congress, Solaris) Alfred Bester (The STars my Destination, The Demolished Man) or Samuel R. Delany (Babel-17, Dhalgren, Trtion, Nova) oh and Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light and This Immortal are both great. Some of Philip K. Dick's stuff is great, but everyone recommends him. :) almost forgot John Brunner, check out Steel Beach, The Sheep Look Up, and Stand on Zanzibar.