Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Classics: 16 Genre-Defining Books

TL;DR: The best science fiction and fantasy classics run from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the voyages of Jules Verne to Begum Rokeya's feminist utopia, Tolkien's Middle-earth, and Le Guin's Earthsea. The older books are public domain and free to read; the twentieth-century landmarks are worth buying.

Why read the classics of speculative fiction?

Modern science fiction and fantasy stand on the shoulders of a surprisingly small group of books. Time travel, alien invasion, robots, lost worlds, secondary worlds with their own maps and languages: almost every idea you meet in a new release was first explored by one of the writers below.

Reading the originals is also just fun. Many are short, fast, and full of the sense of wonder that made people fall in love with the genre in the first place.

16 science fiction and fantasy classics

1. Frankenstein — Mary Shelley (1818)

Victor Frankenstein builds a living being and then abandons it. Often called the first science fiction novel, it is as much about loneliness and responsibility as it is about science. Public domain — see Frankenstein.

2. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll (1865)

A girl falls down a rabbit hole into a world where logic turns inside out. It remains one of the most influential fantasies ever written, for children and adults alike. Public domain — see Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

3. Journey to the Center of the Earth — Jules Verne

A professor, his nephew, and a guide descend through an Icelandic volcano into a hidden underground world. Verne's mix of science and adventure made him one of the founders of the genre. Public domain.

4. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas — Jules Verne

Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus take readers on a tour of the ocean depths. Nemo is one of literature's great mysterious figures. Public domain.

5. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

A respectable doctor finds a chemical way to release his darker self. It is short enough to read in an evening and its central idea has never gone away. Public domain — see Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

6. The King in Yellow — Robert W. Chambers (1895)

A collection of weird tales linked by a play that drives its readers mad. It influenced later horror and cosmic fiction writers and still feels unsettling. Public domain — see The King in Yellow.

7. The Time Machine — H. G. Wells (1895)

A Victorian inventor travels far into the future and finds humanity split into two very different species. Wells used the story to think about class and evolution. Public domain.

8. The War of the Worlds — H. G. Wells (1898)

Martians land in England and humanity is suddenly powerless. It is the blueprint for every alien invasion story since. Public domain.

9. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — L. Frank Baum (1900)

Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion follow the yellow brick road. An American fairy tale that launched a whole series. Public domain.

10. Sultana's Dream — Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905)

Written in English by a pioneering Bengali feminist, this short story imagines Ladyland, where women govern through science and invention while men are kept in seclusion. It reverses the purdah system of its time with sharp humour. It is one of the earliest works of feminist science fiction and can be read in under an hour. Public domain.

11. A Princess of Mars — Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)

John Carter is transported to Mars, known to its people as Barsoom, and finds himself in a world of warring cities and four-armed warriors. Pure planetary romance. Continue the series with Thuvia, Maid of Mars. Public domain.

12. Herland — Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)

Three male explorers discover an isolated society made up entirely of women. Read it alongside Sultana's Dream for two very different feminist utopias. Public domain.

13. The Hobbit — J. R. R. Tolkien (1937)

Bilbo Baggins is swept into a quest with thirteen dwarves and a wizard. It is the gateway to The Lord of the Rings and to modern fantasy as a whole. Under copyright — buy or borrow.

14. Foundation — Isaac Asimov

A mathematician predicts the fall of a galactic empire and plans to shorten the dark age that will follow. Asimov's big ideas and brisk storytelling make it a great entry point to classic science fiction. Under copyright — buy or borrow.

15. Dune — Frank Herbert (1965)

Politics, religion, and ecology on the desert planet Arrakis. It won both the Hugo Award and the first Nebula Award for Best Novel. Under copyright — buy or borrow.

16. A Wizard of Earthsea — Ursula K. Le Guin (1968)

A gifted young mage releases a shadow into the world and must face it. Le Guin's quiet, wise fantasy is the perfect contrast to epic battle stories, and her The Left Hand of Darkness is essential science fiction too. Under copyright — buy or borrow.

Free or paid at a glance

How to read these in FluttX

Open the Discover tab and search for Verne, Wells, Burroughs, or Shelley. Discover finds free public domain editions from Project Gutenberg, Open Library, and Standard Ebooks, and adds them straight to your library for offline reading. For Tolkien, Asimov, Herbert, and Le Guin, buy DRM-free EPUB or PDF editions where available and import them into FluttX.

A few things make genre reading more fun:

• Immersive mode strips away the interface so it is just you and the story, and a Reading Atmosphere adds ambient sound in the background.
• Highlights and notes help you track invented names and places across a long series.
• Library Tags and Collections keep a series like Barsoom together in order.

If you are reading with younger readers, see our list of the best children's books of all time, and for a wider view browse Top Classics.

The future started here

Start with The Time Machine or Sultana's Dream if you want something short, Frankenstein if you want something haunting, or A Princess of Mars if you just want adventure. These books imagined futures and worlds that still shape the stories we tell today, and many of them are only a download away.