Now that I’m well on my way to watching the Top 250 movies on IMDb, I’m slowly turned my attention to fiction. My interest is mainly in the Fantasy & Science Fiction area. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any list like the IMDb Top 250, but there are a few awards that could take the place of the Oscars for books. That’s probably a good place to start.
The most popular awards in Science Fiction are the Hugo award and Nebula award, followed by the Philip K Dick award, John W. Campbell award, Arthur C Clarke award and other awards. I collated a list of all the awards (from LocusMag) into the spreadsheet below
Very few of these books have won multiple awards. None have won more than 3 on this list. Of these, only five have 3 awards:
Over 20 books have won two of these awards.
I haven’t read most of these books. The ones I have read are:
- The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov (which I loved)
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (which I loved)
- Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (which was OK)
- Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (which I didn’t like)
- Dune by Frank Herbert (which I didn’t like)
That’s about a 50% ratio, so I guess this list doesn’t quite very well work for me. Or at least, my taste doesn’t match the Award critics. But maybe you will find something interesting to read…
Hey Anand, Got most of these books. Let me know which ones you are interested in. I use http://www.geocities.com/area51/cavern/6113/top100.html as a reference for what books to read. Cheers, D.
Unfortunately, some good books disappear through the awards cracks. David Zindell’s “Neverness”, for example. But I _have_ read most of these and this seems like a great way for a SF-newbie to discover new fiction!
Hey Anand, Just realized that the email IDs are posted publicly when we comment. Would it be possible for you to do something about that? Cheers, D.