A good starting point for this kind of exercise is the SF Masterworks series from Gollancz.

The Martian Chronicles by Bradbury

Jurassic Park by Crichton

For a thorough grounding in the field, you need to read some short stories, too. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964 is one good collection of "golden age" science fiction.

Flowers for Algernon - Keyes

I would definitely add Greg Egan's Diasporah, Stephen Baxter's Ring and Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others

Cyteen, by CJ Cherryh

The word for world is forest - Le Guin

No Silverberg, No Vance, No Zelazny?

Downward to Earth, Dying Inside, Time of Changes, The World Inside, Nightwings - Robert Silverberg

Planet of Adventure, Ports of Call, Alastor, Demon Princess - Jack Vance

Nova, Babel 17 - Samuel R. Delany

Lords of Light, I'm Legion, This Immortal- Roger Zelazny

Witch World - Andre Norton

The Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold

Cyteen, Downbelow Station - Cj. Cherryh.

Well you have missed the GOAT.

Iain Banks.

Either Use of Weapons - Excession - or Player of Games

Thé last time I compiled a list like this was about 25 years ago when one of my colleagues asked me for a list of SF must reads and I started putting together a list of 100 novels (with some short story collections). I hit one hundred and kept going up to two hundred and then realized I’d missed a few and my friend asked me to stop before I reached three hundred :). I think your list is missing a couple really notable fix ups, namely and to wit Simak’s « City » and Bradbury’s « The Martian Chronicles »-fix up’s are one of the distinguishing features of SF. On the novelly side of things, I’d include McHugh’s ‘China Mountain Zhiang’ and Butler’s ‘Xenogenesis’ and a couple Delanys, like ‘Triton’ and ‘Nova’ and maybe ‘Dhalgren’ (which has had a fair amount of influence or appeal outside of SF). Houellebecq’s ’The Possibilty of an Island’ or Eschbach’s ‘The Carpet Makers’, which is a faux fix up are worth consideration.

Samuel Delaney. Dhalgren if you want weird and difficult, Nova if you want traditional storytelling. 

Radix by A A Attanasio.  Very much like Dhalgren, would read right after. 

Another set of bookends I would read together: The Weapon Shops of Isher by Van Vogt and Orbitsville by Bob Shaw.  

Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick. 

The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson. 

Downward to the Earth by Silverberg. 

At the very least, I would add:

• Earth Abides — George R. Stewart
• We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
• Parable of the Sower — Octavia E. Butler
• Neuromancer — William Gibson
• True Names (novella) — Vernor Vinge
• Doomsday Book — Connie Willis
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
• The Space Merchants — Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth

Honestly, I kinda hate the idea of "must read".

While I absolutely do think there are some books that are seminal in understanding a genre, I object to the thought that they're somehow 'required' reading.

That said, you're missing H. Beam Piper. He seems to be less and less well known now, but he was extremely influential on the genre as a whole.

There's also a notable lack of John Brunner (Shockwave Rider, Stand on Zanzibar, etc), Samuel Delaney (Nova, Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand, etc), Robert Silverberg (Lord Valentine's Castle, Downward to the Earth, etc), and Rudy Rucker (Wetware tetralogy), C. J. Cherryh (Alliance - Union universe, and much more), Margaret Atwood (Handmaiden's Tale), Octavia Butler (Exogenesis series), James Tiptree Jr., Walter John Williams (Implied Spaces, etc.), John Varley (the Eight Worlds books, the Gaea Trilogy), and others. These authors absolutely need a place in any list off significant or influential works.

Andre Norton was also extremely influential, not just because of her stories, but also because she was a woman writing in a genre that was dominated by men at the time, like James Tiptree Jr.. Alan Dean Foster never really wrote anything very serious, but he is extremely prolific and has been a consistent name in the genre or a very long time. Both of these authors are more 'pulpy' but it's important to recognize the influence of inputs that aren't 'highbrow' alongside those that are more literary.

Roger Zelazny, Robert L. Forward, Fritz Leiber, Karl Schroeder, Ken MacLeod, Charles Stross, Iain M. Banks, Alistair Reynolds, and a lot more would go on my list of "people whose works are good to read to understand the genre".

Individual works such as Jonathan Lethem's Gun, with Occasional Music, Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers, etc. should also probably be included.

From an academic perspective, you can't beat Olaf Stapledon. Star Maker and Last and First Men should be on this list.

Lord of Light by Zelazny.

Short stories by Sheckley.

Goblin Reservation by Simak.

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury (and his short stories).

West of Eden by Harrison.

Malevil by Robert Merle.

It's a good list, but misses a lot from the most recent 25 years. I would add:

-Revelation Space- Reynolds

-The Player of Games or Use of Weapons- Banks

-Diaspora-Egan

-The City and the City-Mieville

-Accelerando-Stross

-All Systems Red-Wells

-A Memory Called Empire-Martine

-Leviathan Wakes-Corey

-The Martian-Weir

I would also add Zelazny's Lords of Light as part of your pre-2000 list.

Children of Time by Tchaikovsky.

• Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
• Grass - Sherri S. Tepper
• Heavy Time - C.J. Cherryh (or maybe Downbelow Station?)

+1 on the importance of short stories for a good understanding of the classic period.

I also question your definition of "classic" if you include something as recent as Spin (2005) on it. And if you want modern, too, then you really can do much better than sticking to this bunch of (near-exclusively) white dudes.

Hmmmm... That you don't have a single Iain M Banks on the list makes me question the list. 

I nominate 2 Banks books to be in the must read science fiction:  Use of Weapons - it's actually literature, like it should be used in writing classes to demonstrate unreliable narrator and non-linear storytelling both to excellent effect.  Excession - Banks brings Outside Context Problem to hilarious and thrilling life. Also, he coined the term. 

Snow Crash is NOT Stephenson's best work.  I would recommend replacing that with Anathem which I think is his masterwork. Or Cryptonomicon if you think Anathem is asking too much of the average reader - since it's ~800 pages 😬😂

Also, IMO, this list is HEAVILY male dominated - you only mentioned 2 women 🤦🏻‍♀️ - Shelley and LeGuin.  

There have been many, many important women science fiction writers who have put out very important works in the genre.  To name a few: Andre Norton  James Tiptree Jr (Alice Bradley) Marion Zimmer Bradley  Leigh Brackett Julian May Vonda N McIntyre  Tanith Lee Connie Willis  Joanna Russ Anne McCaffrey  Margaret Atwood  Octavia Butler  N.K. Jemisin  Nnedi Okorafor Yoon Ha Lee  Oodles more. These are just some of the best known thus most obvious ones. 

Also, there's way more Heinlein on the list than called for. He wasn't all that. 

No such thing as a must read. However you’re missing Kim Stanley Robinson

1984, Brave New World, Star Maker.

Flowers for Algernon seems like a pretty big miss

No Cherryh? Oh man.

2001 a space odyssey,

Death's end,

Foundation edge

My 2c.

Missing John Wyndham entirely.

I'd also add Harlon Ellison

Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Series - Nathan Lowell

The Aristillus Series - Travis J. I. Corcoran

The Integral Trees and its sequel The Smoke Ring - Larry Niven

Merchanter's Luck - C.J. Cherryh

The Faded Sun Trilogy - C.J. Cherryh

The Nomad Series - Karen Traviss

I would add the below I didn't see listed that often it at all

Blood music by bear

Flow my tears by dick

Valis by dick

ubik by dick

Maze of death dick

Inverted world by priest

The doomed city arkady

House of gold by rwizi

The light brigade by hurley

The palace is eternity by shaw

Hothouse aldiss

I'm quite the dickhead so maybe not all but they are classics imo

The Sparrow/Children of God. Hyperion Cantos and Illium.

There are a few heavy hitters missing.

George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four

Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451

Aldus Huxley - Brave New World

Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life

Kazuo Ishiguru - Klara and the Sun

Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon

Octavia Butler - Parable of the Sower

The Futurological Congress by Lem also. It’s much funnier than Solaris and is a hilarious Cold War satire

Missing Vonnegut

Don’t Bite the Sun/Drinking Sapphire Wine - Tanith Lee (These short books were collected as Biting the Sun. Read it after The Dispossessed for kicks.)

The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

The Island of Doctor Moreau - H.G. Wells

The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (I read this when it was first published and thought it was a bit silly. Surely there’s no cause for concern about Christian fascists…. Not in 1985! Reevaluating from a 2025 perspective though.)

The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang - Kate Wilhelm

Never Let Me Go, Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro

More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon

Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny

Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy

Dawn - Octavia Butler

The Fifth Season - N. K. Jemison

Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey

Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie

You have missed pretty much the entirety of the New Wave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wave_(science_fiction)

Where’s Octavia Butler

Personally I wouldn't include Ringworld. Yeah it was influential for the idea of the Ringworld concept, but I think genuinely everything else about this book was bad to terrible. It's also aged just terribly

Schismatrix, Sterling.

Scanners live in vain, Cordwainer smith

I love A Fire Upon The Deep but A Deepness In The Sky, the follow-up, is arguably the better book

Peter F. Hamilton: Commonwealth Saga (Pandora's Star, Judas Unchained)

Liu Cixin: Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy (important: those books are plot driven, not character driven, so the characters are a bit lacking, but the story is great)

Theodore Sturgeon: More Than Human

John Crowley: Engine Summer

Suggest: Joanna Russ, J.G. Ballard, Silverberg, Blish, Vonnegut, Tanith Lee, maybe Ana Kavan (Ice).

Could use some Jack Vance--I'd recommend Big Planet and To Live Forever. Fritz Leiber is more of a fantasy writer, but The Silver Eggheads should be on the list. Ken Macleod's Fall Revolution should be there. Accelerando by Charles Stross. Feminist science fiction seems a bit underrepresented--maybe The Female Man by Joanna Russ?

I would just ask you to think about only having Le Guin and Shelley representing the only Must Read women in SF. 

I would add Atwood to the list. Oryx and crake is amazing.

You might want to add some David Mitchell too.

This ignores literally every author of color and all but two women. Off the top of my head, some of the biggest absences are Octavia Butler (Earthseed is my favorite but there are others), Samuel Delany (Trouble on Triton, Babel-17, Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand, and Nova would be his biggest works), Vonda McIntyre (start with Dreamsnake), Lois McMaster Bujold (the Vorkosigan series), Cixin Liu (Remembrance of Earth’s Past), Eleanor Arnason (A Woman of the Iron People and Ring of Swords), Steven Barnes (Lion’s Blood), Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale and the Mad Adam Trilogy), Naomi Alderman (The Power), Ernest Hogan (High Aztec), George Schuyler (White No More), …

Good list, but add something from Ballard, Wyndham, Zelazny, Disch, Willhelm, Bradbury, van Vogt, Russ, Baxter, Delany, Silverberg, Banks, Bayley, Priest, Vonnegut, Roberts, Shaw, Vance. Oh and no must-read list is complete without Nineteen Eighty-Four.

What order are those in? it seems random to me.

Raptor Red. Paleo-fiction is rare, and paleo-xeno-fiction I think is even rarer? I can only think of the Mammoth books by Baxter otherwise. Red is also just incredibly well-written, about an interesting scientific thing (paleontology, the Mesozoic), and has unique aspects (I think Bakker self inserts himself as an albino pterosaur following the titular Utahraptor), which kinda ticks boxes for me in terms of Must Read sci-fi.

Saved, thanks. I have read about 10 of these.

Must read: Ringworld, Mote (And Gripping Hand), Canticle.

Cities in Flight, Blish.

The Chtorr series by David Gerrold

Hard to mention Niven/Pournelle and not also include H. Beam Piper who was quite influential on them --- his novella "Omnilingual" really should be a part of the middle school canon, lightly updated version at:

http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/omnilingual.html

The Dangerous Visions anthology is essential, as is Harlan Ellison’s Repent Harlequin or Jeffty is Five. I’d also add The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russel as a companion to Canticle for Leibowitz

Behold the man - Michael Moorcock. Sci-fi/theology brilliant interpretation of the greatest story ever told… Christ.

I've read a lot in your list, and personally would add "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which seems to straddle the range of old to new sci fi styles, with both big-ideas over long time scales, and intimate diverse-aware perspectives, and alien cultures, without pandering to political extremes.

A very good list, well done! I've read most of these and I will see there is one missing that is probably one of my top five. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, it's one of those books I've bought several times because I keep giving them away to my friends. Every one of them has loved it, and some don't even read science fiction.

Edit: I would also add the 3 Body Problem series

Mote in Gods eye Enders game

Has to be on any serious SF list, regardless whether u like the authors personally or not...

Three body problem by Cixin Liu

Great list! I think we have different cut off dates for “classic.” Maybe a little short on the New Wave. One thing to remember is how much of the best writing was in stories and novellas.

For Wolfe I’d try The Death of Dr. Island and Other Stories and Other Stories (not a typo)

Zelazny— Lord of Light , This Immortal, the collection A Rose for Ecclesiastes

Delaney— short stories particularly “Time Considered as a Helix”

Ellison— 2 or three of the best collections

James Tiptree Jr, various stories

Have you made your way through the early Hugo and Nebula award collections? The Hugo would eventually get highjacked by fan wars but up through the mid eighties its very reliable. The Nebula winners were always great back then.

haven't read the entirety of the comments, but i'd just like to say that even as a person who loved the mote in god's eye, i don't think ringworld is an especially good book, and wouldn't recommend others read it out of a sense of obligation to the genre. if you're really invested in including the centrality of awe-inspiring feats of technology, rendezvous with rama is a suitable classic substitute imo. honestly, i don't think i've read anything niven wrote by himself that justifies his position in The Canon.

i agree with at least one other person who noted the lack of cherryh, but think that downbelow station is probably more interesting to me than cyteen. i thoroughly enjoyed the latter, but i also found it kind of cumbersome, and there are far fewer books on refugee crises in science fiction than there are on the ethics of cloning. it's fertile subject matter and i wish more authors cared to explore it.

i think a case could be made for including dragon's egg, also, but i could see others disagreeing

The Diamond Age - Stephenson

Stand On Zanzibar - Brunner

Ubik - Dick

Caves of Steel - Asimov

Alas Babylon - Frank

The Peace War - Vinge

Nine Princes in Amber - Zelazny

Also, as a note, your list so far is really good... but I'd consider adding all of these, in a similar vein to your choices. If you want to know more about why, feel free to ask me if there's any you have questions about.

No Reynolds? 😱

Without many female or POC writers, and Mary Shelley dropped in like an afterthought? 

Where are Jemisen, Leckie, Chambers, Martine, Butler ? 

But there Heinlein?

Like yikes on bikes man

This list is almost exclusively white dudes. Diverse perspectives matter.

The list absolutely needs some Butler and Jenisen's "The Fifth Season" would be a good addition. It's only 10 years more recent than the most recent item on your list.

Personally, I’d pass on Niven and Card, not that their books weren’t influential, but they’re problematic enough I wouldn’t call them Must-Read.

There’s a dearth of female authors in this list; you could include Tiptree, McCaffery, Jemisin, Leckie, Vinge, Butler, just off the top of my head.

There’s also a lack of non-white authors here: the aforementioned Buter and Jemisin, Delaney, Barnes, Due, Okorafor, McKinney, Chiang, Liu… I could go on, and didn’t even mention Latinx or Indigenous authors.

I whole-heartedly agree with most of the list, but it could be more complete.

If you include short stories I'd like to suggest With the Night Mail and Easy as A.B.C both by Rudyard Kipling. True SF written in 1909 and 1912.

I think Brunner should be on there, perhaps with Shockwave Rider it predates Neuromancer by 9 years and I don't know why it gets ignored. Predicts and coins the term for computer worms.

I would put Iain Banks Excession on here, except you can't have excession be the first culture novel you read, so Consider Phlebas and Use of Weapons at a minimum have be read first.

I'd prefer Diamond Age by Stephenson over Snow Crash. Not that I like it better, but it's surely a more important book.

KSR's Red Mars.

Octavia Butler's Dawn, or the whole Xenogenesis series.

And then there's Zelazny :-)

come on you only have 3 girls on there.
Tiptree, Ann Leckie, Cherryh, Vonda McIntyre, Nicola Griffith, Kameron Hurley

You have way too much old stuff in here. Get rid of most of that heinlein, niven, pournelle, etc. Speaker for the dead has one good idea and card does not deserve two entries.

Add in nk jemison, nnedi Okafor, Martha Wells, Becky Chambers.

Cj cherryh's Pride of Chanur deserves a place. Bujolds' vorkosigan saga should be represented Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth is a blend of Sci fi and fantasy, but honestly better than a lot of those crusty 60s dudes.

Would you say you're a good academic? This list reads like you copied it from a Goodreads listicle. Contains no short stories and no authors who have sold fewer than ten million copies. You've picked the most recently-adapted, but not even the best, of Philip Dick.

Thanks for this

Slightly off track. But. Does anyone have a list like this for must read fantasy??

For short stories, I always recommend Hal Clement whose career started out in the golden age, and continued and stayed relevant into this century.

Try Music of Many Spheres: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/939760.Music_of_Many_Spheres

and read in reverse order, taking esp. note of "Raindrop", "The Mechanic", and "Halo".

Children of time

Legacy of Hereot by Niven, Pournelle, Baxter. No idea why this one isn't a movie by now, but it's a great "first human colony" novel. Maybe that's why it isn't a movie yet...lol

Wanted to pop back in and say that I think Ubik by Dick should be on this list too. Its influence can be felt in Neuromancer and Snow Crash.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds

Any of these have to do with some futuristic religious sect? Vague I know, but a while back I was reading about a book like that that sounded interesting but I have since lost the name/series.

Perhaps someone could shine a light and point me in the right direction?

I read a fair amount of sci fi and have only read 15 of the 40 there - maybe I’m not representative of this sub, but maybe list is too broad? Or maybe should have tiers. Like I love Enders Game, but don’t think it’s as vital as say Dune or Foundation or Rama

I would add the Cities in Flight series by Blish.

A Princess of Mars - Unquestionably one of the most important and influential sci-fi books ever written.

Galactic Patrol - Big influence on Star Wars.

Wolfe is absolutely fantastic. If Book of the New Sun feels a little intimidating at first I would definitely recommend reading Fifth Head of Cerberus since it feels more like Sci Fi than New Sun and is more digestible 

As a start, see my Science Fiction/Fantasy (General) Recommendations list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (thirty-five posts (eventually, again)), in particular the first post and the bolded threads.

City by Clifford Simak and Robert Forward's Cheela and Rocheworld series.

Nice list, a lot synched with what I read and liked. I personally liked PKD earlier on, and one that impacted me alot (whose name I could never remember) was the Game Players of Titan, but its not everyone's cup of tea.

Since no one's mentioned him, I also liked Benford, and started with his Timescape. I enjoyed the first couple of his Galactic Center saga, especially the first couple, starting with In the Ocean of Night. It shares a similar beginning to Bear's The Forge of God, and may be a spiritual ancestor to Liu's Dark Forest, which may be why I "enjoyed" them. Bear's Forge added "justice" as a theme. All may not be considered top 100, but as conceptual works with really hard sci-fi backing them, Benford was a good read.

Hammerfall was good by anderson, more of a apocalypse though .