A few weeks ago, we asked dozens of authors about the speculative books they considered The Most Iconic SFF Books of the 21st Century. We loved their responses, from modern classics to translated works to graphic novels to hidden gems.
But of course, readers had opinions! What about this book? How could that author not be in the top 10? It’s part of what we love about this community: a group of people who share a love for science fiction, fantasy, and horror from thousands of different angles, and who feel passionate enough about declaring their love for those books to come together to debate them from across the globe. We anticipated that people might want an outlet for these thoughts outside of social media, so we opened a poll asking for your input. And readers, you delivered!
We received well over 500 responses in the short time the poll was open. While the selections below are just a slice of that enthusiasm, we hope they show the diversity and fervor of SFF fans. Maybe you spot some favorites here. Maybe you get a new stack of recommendations for your shelves. Maybe you just take a minute to think about what the word “iconic” means to you. Either way… we hope you enjoy.
Top 10 Most Iconic Speculative Fiction Books of the 21st Century — Chosen by You!
For some books, readers submitted additional commentary or explanations for their choice, which we have included with relevant attribution. Comments may have been edited for clarity.
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (164 votes)
“The triple Hugo win for the whole series speaks for itself.” —Anonymous
“A brilliant work of genre-blending within speculative fiction while providing a commentary on how a horrific global practice harms everyone to the point where the oppressed are willing to destroy the world to end it.” —Anonymous
“Obviously. Obviously! A sweeping science fantasy trilogy-opener about a world tearing itself apart with one apocalypse after another and the earthquake-controlling magic users who might be able to fix things… of course it’s iconic. It’s sort of an easy answer, but, like, that’s because it’s true.” —Kerensa
“My favorite thing about this book is its narrative trickery. My SECOND favorite thing is how one of its central relationships feels like an iteration of the relationship in Jemisin’s debut novel…It was, for me, a great example of how writers evolve while remaining true to what came before.” —Filip Hajdar Drnovšek
“There’s nothing I can say about this book that hasn’t already been said. It is absolutely brilliant, its multiple points of view culminating into something that had me almost stop breathing. It is undoubtedly the most iconic book of the 21st century, no matter which way I look at it.” —Ruardih
All Systems Red by Martha Wells (155 votes)
“This [is a] brilliant story about a robot who knows its creators and its species are too stupid to protect themselves.” —Anonymous
“She’s painted neurodivergency in an honest and compelling way.” —Anonymous
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (118 votes)
“Cool worldbuilding, engaging main character, and a stunning debut for a strong new voice.” —Anonymous
“Who knew that an AI hivemind on a quest to avenge the human she loved could be one of the most relatable heroines in fiction?” —Mary Kelly
“I think of this series as a sort of ‘sci-fi of manners.’ Although it deals with questions of empire, colonization, and assimilation, I feel like the heart of all those is ‘How do we treat others, and what do we owe them? What happens we stop accepting justifications for treating certain people better than others? What happens when we begin holding ourselves to a higher standard?’ In other words, you could say it’s a book about the responsibilities of living in a society. You could say it’s a book about love, and revenge, and drinking tea. Mostly, you could say it’s very good.” —Kerensa
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (118 votes)
“This book is everywhere. The vibes are perfect. It’s endlessly quotable.” —Anonymous
“Breaking boundaries at blazing speed, this weird (and in later volumes quite complex) series requires and deserves the full attention of the reader. I can’t wait for how Muir will close the series in the upcoming final book, but it is already a very impressive achievement.” —Anonymous
“Maybe now is the time to say that I’ve never been OVERLY fond of this book’s most popular tagline, ‘lesbian necromancers in space.’ First of all, Gideon isn’t a necromancer, and second of all, they’re only ‘in space’ for one chapter of shuttle travel. By that logic, any book set on A Planet (which… most of them are) could be books that are in space. But I’ll get off my soapbox now and say that this book is iconic because it has one of the most unique narrative voices I’ve ever read. Tamsyn Muir plays around with the written word and with tone in a way that I’ve barely seen anyone do—although I’d love to see more people try, even if they fail, because it’s so engaging. This book is delicious in its complexity and rereadability, and you have to admire it for how devoted almost every fan of it is.” —Kerensa
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (81 votes)
“Worldbuilding at its finest.” —Hezder Komduur
“The start of The Expanse is a modern masterpiece of science fiction that will become one of the must-read science fiction novels of the future, if it’s not there already.” —Anonymous
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (79 votes)
“The world can burn, but even in the flames, poetry can make our souls sing.” —Anonymous
“An epistolary romance that is pure poetry and a heady distillation of lesbian yearning. In the immortal words of Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood: ‘Just read it.'” —Anonymous
“Short and absolutely enthralling. I adore epistolary, and this is a story I come back to again and again.” —Specicube.bsky.social
The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (77 votes)
“Few authors even come close to laying the foundation for a new trend, but Chambers’ empathic science fiction series is quite important for the slow, character-focused cozy books we all enjoy so much.” —Anonymous
“Setting the standard for cozy space opera, and becoming one of my few ‘I’ll recommend this book to ANYONE at all interested in SF, maybe even those not.” —Anonymous
“A reinvigoration of the space opera genre, with its alien-filled universe still hospitable to up-and-coming species like homo sapients, if we’re willing to make some adjustments. Chambers’ works are often cited as canonical examples of ‘hopepunk’ SF.” —Rob Tomshany
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (62 votes)
“Trying to explain my love for this book is tricky because it usually comes down to attempting to neatly explain how I love the way it makes me feel as dumb as rocks. Usually I just say it fits in with my beloved subgenre of SFF lesbians in early career distress. There’s just something about how profoundly human but clinically foreign a position Mahit finds herself in, tangled into an inescapable web of politics as she does her best at her big-girl job.” —Ruaridh
“I had trouble not filling this form with just space operas. Martine is doing something by creating an empire that is NOT based on North Atlantic history…political thriller with high tech and galaxy-changing stakes.” —Anonymous
The Martian by Andy Weir (61 votes)
“A ripping yarn that breached containment and got us all thinking about the stars again.” —Anonymous
“Low-key science fiction made into a successful movie? Yeah, that’s iconic.” —Anonymous
“Iconic, to be able to research and write a book about going to Mars so well that when the movie got made, NASA came in to consult on it and didn’t really have to change much!” —Specicube.bsky.social
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (60 votes)
“An absolutely incredible alternative historical fiction of the history of England where magic used to exist… and now has returned. Susanna Clarke does the incredible by including historical references for this fictional world, including referencing fake books… an incredible piece of literature.” —JP Aguirre
“It reminds me a little of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, in that it has inspired many imitators—some of them amazing novels in their own right—but is still one of a kind. And of course John Uskglass is one of the great absent characters of literature.” —Filip Hajdar Drnovšek
As with our original list, we want to highlight as many titles as we possibly can! Below are a few niche lists of your favorites, from translated works and graphic storytelling to specific genres and authors that came up over and over again. The lists here are not comprehensive, but each noted entry received multiple votes.
Translated Works
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
The Employees by Olga Ravn
Heaven Official’s Blessing by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Short Fiction Collections
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? By N.K. Jemisin
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
Graphic Novels & Manga
Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto
Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata
Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya
Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa
Hawkeye by Matt Fraction & David Aja
Nimona by N.D. Stevenson
Saga by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
Through the Woods by E.M. Carroll
The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman & Tony Moore
The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie
Young Adult
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
Novellas
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk
Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente
Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
Romantasy
A Court of Thrones and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Fairies by Heather Fawcett
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson
Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell
Weird Fiction
17776 by Jon Bois
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
The Library At Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Vellum by Hal Duncan
Small Press & Self-Published Titles
Experimental Film by Gemma Files
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
Obsidian by Sienna Frost
The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor
Your Favorite Authors
Many authors received dozens of votes split across several books, meaning that no one book received a large enough majority to rank among the top 10. That being said, these authors were all extremely popular!
- Joe Abercrombie
- William Gibson
- Kameron Hurley
- R.F. Kuang
- Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant
- China Miéville
- David Mitchell
- Erin Morgenstern
- Naomi Novik
- Terry Pratchett
- Brandon Sanderson
- John Scalzi
- Neal Stephenson
- Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher
The Rules Said to Only Include Books From the 21st Century But You Really Wanted to Say Dune
Some rules are made to be broken! Here are some of the 20th-century titles you couldn’t help but vote for:
Dune by Frank Herbert
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
Some Fun Notes
- Over 850 authors and 1400 books were submitted
- Science fiction books vastly outweighed fantasy books
- Shoutout to the one person submitted “Chuck Tingle’s entire oeuvre” nine times and “Twilight by Stephenie Meyer” once
- The most popular sequel was Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
- The first book submitted was North Woods by Daniel Mason
- The last book submitted was The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
- The most recently published book to receive multiple votes was Metal From Heaven by august clarke
If your picks didn’t make the top ten, make sure to mention them in the comments below!
Metal From Heaven my beloved <3
OK, finally some love for what I like
Although how Adrian Tchaikovsky, Gareth Powell, Alastair Reynolds and Justine Robson don’t feature, escapes me 
No Ben Aaronovich or Charlie Stross either
Adrian Tchaikovsky is in the list of popular authors whose votes were split over all their different books!
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has been a favorite of mine for years! And I love when I find someone who hasn’t yet experienced it, so I can be the one to give them this book!!
love the list. my favorite “speculative fiction” book published in the 21st Century is Blindsight by Peter Watts
Petter Watts and Cory Doctorow seem to be egregious oversights.
Great, more additions to the “to-be-read” pile! :-) And thanks for printing my comment on Becky Chambers. It was also nice to see 17776 mentioned, I deliberately avoided voting for titles in the original list, but the ones I’m familiar with in the top 10 (everything but the Muir and Weir titles) hold up. The other ones I voted for were:
Spy X Family, Tatsuya Endo
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Bakery, T. Kingfisher
The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal
Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Redshirts, John Scalzi
The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross
Among Others, Jo Walton
Passage, Connie Willis
Of books by authors represented in the original list of iconic sf, the one I came closest to voting for was N. K. Jemisin’s The City Born Great. I also considered two non-fiction titles, Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman and Julie Phillips’s James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. And the one I’m kicking myself most for forgetting is Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin.
Finally, is there any chance we might see a googledocs spreadsheet of the voting for either the juried or the readers’ “iconic sf”?
Urgh, Baking not Bakery. And I should mention my favorite novella of the century, Rachel Swirsky’s “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window”, was never published in self-contained book form but it shows up in the Nebula showcase for 2012, “year’s best” anthologies from Strahan, Horton, and the team of Steve Berman and JoSelle Vanderhooft (the first of the “Heiresses of Russ” annual series), as well as Swirsky’s collection How the World Became Quiet: Myths of the Past, Present, and Future.
Mostly the titles I expected. Really interesting to compare to the list y’all did back in 2010. I think Strange and Norrell is the only overlap and it was much heavier on fantasy. That’s off the top of my head though as I can’t find those articles. Wish I could they were a big part of me diving into genera in college. Wish Kushiel’s dart was here but not surprised.
Only surprise absences are Too Like the Lightening and Goblin Emperor.
I am surprised the Martian made the list. Nothing against it, but I haven’t heard it talked about in a while.
Most interesting thing I think is happening, without seeing the data, is the degree to which one author having a stand out book or series helped. I’d be interested to see where Mistborn plus Stormlight would sit, or the combined 21 century Diskworld.
I think this is the article you are referring to: https://reactormag.com/best-sff-novels-of-the-decade-readers-poll-results/
I haven’t read a single one of these, which is crazy because I’ve read over a 100 books a year since 2018. I wouldn’t even consider this a real list of the top 10, not a single story from any of the dozens of incredibly popular online reading sites, that have led the rush of self-published authors. Those sites get over a million views/clicks/readers a week, and incredibly popular stories like Defiance of The Fall and Beware the Chicken have over a million sales via Amazon
You’re missing out, Avid, there are some amazing books listed here. Though you could probably say the same to me … off to find Defiance of The Fall and Beware the Chicken.
I think the traditional publishing sector and the online writing/reading you’re mentioning still have some fairly separated reading audiences. I’ve never heard of the two books you mention, and I’ve read or heard of almost all of the books on the list. Which is not to say you’re wrong at all! I just think it’s interesting to think about the ongoing separation of audiences and promotion.
You know what be awesome? If people would stop saying “iconic” to mean “favorite.”
Very few things are literally iconic, meaning that they have icons of them. They ALSO tend to be imperial assholes. So, another reason to just stop using that word.
It’s the same way people with no understanding of language say “curate” to mean “choose.”
On the other hand, though, spend a lot of time in academia and the number of people who don’t know the difference between “methodology” and “methods,” huunnnfff.
Respectfully, that’s not really what iconic means in curernt English usage. This is an accurate use of the word in its current usage, meaning “representative or exemplary”. You can dislike the authors and the books, but it’s not because they aren’t iconic.
I think it’s really telling just how many of these have queer elements. They’re not all stories focused on queer relationships, but a good number of them have at least some queer elements. I wonder if it’s a product of speculative fiction readers being more open-minded to the possibility of nontraditional relationships, if people feel it’s just a part of the genre, or there’s a different reason. This is even reflected in things like the Goodreads Choice Awards, where other categories might have only one story with queer elements, but the SF and Fantasy genres always have multiple to choose from. Anyway Nghi Vo owns my soul and I highly recommend Nicola Griffith to any lovers of historical fantasy and love rich prose.
Most probably because these are from the Reactor audience.
Nettle & Bone is not a novella. It’s more than 250 pages.
I think my favorite thing about this list is seeing so many authors from other cultures and other underrepresented voices! (Says the cis-het white guy writing a short story about a working class white guy in the near future).
Jonathan Howard, Johannes Cabal series.
I love these choices. I want to plug one more: Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning (and really all 4 Terra Ignota books). Really great world-building and one of the best problematic utopias of the 21st century.
I stopped reading when I saw Gideon the Ninth. That book is just a fun, cheesy action flick in book form and will stand the test of time about as well.
The Malazan Book of the Fallen series- Steven Erikson
YESSSS hype to see Experimental Film here — I always recommend it to people; especially non-Canadians. It’s such a perfect encapsulation of the frustrating things about Canadian culture, while also being a great horror romp. What more could one ask for??
more love for cassandra khaw please but thanks for further recommendations i missed the first time, always appreciated.
I’ve read seven of the top ten recommended books, and have Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell and Leviathan Wakes already on my TBR. (I’ve been trying to finish up a few series before I start a new one.) I’ve never heard of A Memory Called Empire, so I’m excited to add it to my TBR.
I’m not surprised at all that SF “vastly outweighed” fantasy in your nominations. To me, the term “speculative fiction” means speculating on our world and our universe, not a fantasy world that exists on its own plane. I wouldn’t even have considered nominating fantasy or romantasy for this.
There are some awesome books on this list… but did everyone just forget that A Storm of Swords came out this millennium?? Hard to imagine how it didn’t rate a single mention. I’ve never read anything that had so much payoff for all the setup work he had done. Regardless of whatever else has happened with the series since then, that book is an absolute masterpiece.
I am kinda shocked by the lack of China Mieville in the weird fiction category tbh
There seems to be a disconnect in that many of the books published by authors in the “Your Favorite Authors” did not actually appear in the iconic list. Yes there was place for only 10 but still….
It’s a pretty good list but I’d swap out Tamsyn Muir (which I like, but there are diminishing returns for the follow-on books) for Robert Jackson Bennett’s “Divine Cities” trilogy. Fifty years out people might be scratching their heads over the lack of representation for Rebecca Kuang.
I’m not sure I can completely get behind the whole premise of this kind of list, personally – though it is interesting to see what is being picked. My problem I do read alot of older stuff, and most of my favourites seem to be pre-1980, nevermind 2000 – but I don’t want to see it as a competition – particularly as I haven’t read enough more recent stuff.
I’ll just mention a few which I think are fantastic and don’t seem to be being mentioned here or by the authors (maybe) – The Wizard Knight, by Gene Wolfe, The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstein, Light by M. John Harrison.
I think that’s the whole point of this kind of list: letting us know what we are missing out on in more recent fiction.
I like to mention Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel, and Reset by Blake Crouch, and The Space between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson.
For Weir, i found Hail Mary even better than Martian, and although Kuang is mentioned as author, her novel Babel deserves explicit mentioning!
All excellent picks but I’d like to add a plea for Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki and The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune