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Best Books
(If your favorite author is not on the above list, email us and we will add her/him if she/he receives enough votes)

Click to view our Best of Science Fiction Books & Movies
and Top All-Time 100 Films lists.

Click here to read ArtsForge's ongoing sci-fi Illustrated Novels: Dreamless, The Power of 10 and Xianu Override.
Also, join in writing other onging stories: The Journey, The Colony, Last of the Faeries, Lost in MindSpace and A Child's Smile.

List of Most Influential Books
Please submit your own choices to our growing list of the books that have influenced you the most.
Click on the links to purchase, read reviews, write your own reviews, etc.
Alphabetical Order by AUTHOR
a-e
g-m
n-z
Douglas Adams:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (entire series)

Richard Adams:
Watership Down

Mitch Albom:
Tuesdays with Morrie

Carol Anshaw:
Seven Moves

Richard Bach:
Illusions
Jonathon Livingston Seagull

Frederic Bastiat:
The Law

Peter S. Beagle:
The Last Unicorn
The Innkeeper's Song
A Fine and Private Place
Immortal Unicorn (stories)

Greg Bear:
Blood Music
Darwin's Radio
Eternity
Eon

Aimee Bender:
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
An Invisible Sign of My Own

Blanche McCrary Boyd:
Terminal Velocity

Ray Bradbury:
Dandelion Wine
The Illustrated Man
Fahrenheit 451

Marion Zimmer Bradley:
The Mists of Avalon
The Forest House
Lady of Avalon

Pearl S. Buck:
The Good Earth
The Child who Never Grew

William Burroughs:
Naked Lunch

Italio Calvino:
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Invisible Cities

Albert Camus:
The Plague
The Fall
The Myth of Sisyphus
The First Man
The Rebel

Orson Scott Card:
Ender's Game
Speaker For The Dead
Xenocide
Songmaster
Lost Boys
Alvin Maker Series
The Worthing Saga
Pastwatch

Arthur C. Clarke:
Childhood's End
2001: A Space Odyssey
2010, 2061, 3001
The Fountains of Paradise

Raymond Carver:
Where I'm Calling From (collected stories)

Joseph Conrad:
Heart of Darkness
Lord Jim

Stephen Covey:
7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Micheal Crichton:
Rising Sun
Sphere
Lost World

Fyodor Dostoevsky:
Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
The Idiot

Ralph Ellison:
Invisible Man

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Complete Essays

Micheal Ende:
The Neverending Story

Madeleine L'Engle:
Wrinkle in Time
A Wind in the Door
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Many Waters

William Faulkner:
As I Lay Dying
The Sound and the Fury
Light in August

F. Scott Fitzgerald:
The Great Gatsby

John Fowles:
The Magus
Daniel Martin
Mantissa

Shakti Gawain:
Creative Visualization
Living in the Light

William Gibson:
Neuromancer
Count Zero
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Virtual Light

Kahlil Gibran:
The Prophet

Arthur S. Golden:
Memoirs of a Geisha

William Golding:
Lord of the Flies

Ursala La Guin:
The Dispossessed
Left Hand of Darkness

Elizabeth Hand:
Walking the Moon

Nathaniel Hawthorne:
The Scarlet Letter
Novels & Selected Tales

Louise Hay:
You Can Heal Your Life

Friedrich Hayek:
The Constitution of Liberty

Robert Heinlein:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Stranger in a Strange Land
Starship Troopers

Joseph Heller:
Catch 22

Ernest Hemmingway:
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Old Man and the Sea

Frank Herbert:
Dune

Herman Hesse:
Siddhartha
Steppenwolf
Demian
Narcissus and Goldmund

Victor Hugo:
Les Miserables
Ninety-Three
Conversations With Eternity
Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Man Who Laughs

Aldous Huxley:
Brave New World

John Irving:
The World According to Garp
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Cider House Rules
Hotel New Hampshire

Denis Johnson:
Jesus' Son

James Joyce:
Portrait of an Artist
Ulysseys

Nikos Kazantsakis:
Zorba the Greek
The Last Temptation of Christ

Galway Kinnell:
The Book of Nightmares
Imperfect Thirst
One Who Has Lived a Long Time

Jerzy Kosinski:
The Painted Bird
Being There
Cockpit
Steps

Nancy Kress:
Beggars in Spain

Milan Kundera:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Laughable Loves (collected stories)

Jhumpa Lahiri:
Interpreter of Maladies (collected stories)

D.H. Lawrence:
Sons and Lovers
Women in Love

Jerome Lawrence/
Robert Lee:

Inherit the Wind
The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail

Harper Lee:
To Kill a Mockingbird

C. S. Lewis:
The Chronicles of Narnia
Space Trilogy
Till We Have Faces

Garcia Lorca:
Collected Poems

W. Sommerset Maugham
The Razor's Edge
Of Human Bondage
The Painted Veil
Summing Up

Herman Melville:
Moby Dick

Arthur Miller:
Death of a Salesman
The Crucible

Henry Miller:
Tropic of Capricorn
Tropic of Cancer
Black Spring
Sexus

Walter Miller, Jr.:
Canticle for Liebowitz

Toni Morrison:
Beloved
Songs of Solomon
Tar Baby


Alice Munro:
Selected Stories

Vladamir Nabokov:
Lolita

Katherine Neville:
The Eight

Anais Nin:
The Diary of Anais Nin
The Delta of Venus
A Literate Passion: Letters of Anais Nin & Arthur Miller

George Orwell:
1984
Animal Farm
Down & Out in Paris & London

Sylvia Plath:
The Bell Jar
The Journals

Richard Powers:
Galatia 2.2
Prisoner's Dilemma
Operation Wandering Soul
The Gold Bug Variations

Thomas Pynchon:
Gravity's Rainbow

Daniel Quinn:
Ishmael

Ayn Rand:
Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
We the Living
The Virtue of Selfishness

Erich Maria Remarque:
All Quiet on the Western Front
Three Comrades
The Road Back

Mary Renault:
The Mask of Apollo
The Last of the Wine
Fire from Heaven
The Charioteer

J. D. Salinger:
The Cather In The Rye
Franny and Zooey
Nine Stories

Michael Sanwick:
Jack Faust

Isaac Bashevis Singer:
The Slave
Satan in Goray
Meshuga

Jane Smiley:
Ordinary Love
Good Will

George H. Smith:
Atheism; The Case Against God

John Steinbeck:
The Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men
The Pearl
East of Eden
Cannery Row

Neil Stephenson:
Cryptonomicon
Snow Crash
The Diamond Age
Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller

Bruce Sterling:
Distraction\
Holy Fire
Schismatrix Plus
Heavy Weather

Tom Stoppard:
The Real Thing
Nigh & Day
Arcadia

Dylan Thomas:
Collected Poems

Herny David Thoreau:
Walden (annotated)

Hunter S. Thompson:
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

Ralph De Toledano:
The Apocrypha of Limbo

J.R.R. Tolkien:
Lord of the Rings
The Hobbit

Leo Tolstoy:
Anna Karienina
War and Peace
Resurrection

John Updike:
The Centaur
Rabbit, Run
Bech: A Book
S.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.:
Slaughterhouse Five
Cat's Cradle
Breakfast of Champions
Galapagos

Alice Walker:
The Color Purple
Possessing the Secret of Joy

Kate Wilhelm:
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Jeanette Winterson:
Written on the Body
GUT Extremities
The PowerBook
Oranges Are Not Only Fruit
The Passion
Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery

Walt Whitman:
Leaves of Grass

Also see our Best Science Fiction Literature Listings

Short Stories Collections:
The Best American Short Stories (intro: Garrison Keillor)
Best American Short Stories of the Century (ed: John Updike)
Future On Fire (edited by Orson Scott Card)
Best of Science Fiction 1, 2, 3 (edited by David G. Hartwell)

Interesting links:
Nobel Prize Winners
Pulitzer Prize Winners
Faulkner Awards
National Book Critics Circle Awards
WordForge and VisionForge
Cypress House Publishing

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