The List

The Logic behind the List: This list is really a combination of two things. First of all, after my seminar in Gender and Science Fiction, I was left with a list of texts that had come up a lot but we hadn’t gotten to read. Secondly, to get a feel for what’s happening in science fiction on the whole, I’ve included every Hugo Award-winning novel from 1980 on (eventually I’ll get farther back than that). The list is arranged alphabetically by author, and you can find links to my posts.

Isaac Asimov
The Foundation novels

Paulo Bacigalupi
The Wind-Up Girl

K. J. Bishop
The Etched City

• Magic and Metamorphosis

Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Mists of Avalon

• Pluralism and Feminism

David Brin
Sundiver

• Ideological State Apparatus on a Galactic Scale

Startide Rising

• The Politics of Dialect

The Uplift Wars

Lois McMaster Bujold
Barrayar
The Curse of Chalion

• The Traffic of Women
• Human Agency and the Rhetorical Quiver

Mirror Dance
Paladin of Souls

• The Crone

The Vor Game

Octavia E. Bulter
Lilith’s Brood
Parable of the Sower
Parable of the Talents

Pat Cadigan
Synners

Orson Scott Card
The Alvin Maker novels
Ender’s Game
Speaker for the Dead

Kristin Cashore
Graceling

• Evil Rhetors and Female Survivors

Fire

• Women, Beauty, Children, and Risk

Michael Chabon
The Yiddish Police Man’s Union

C. J. Cherryh
Cyteen
Downbelow Station

Susanna Clark
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Suzanne Collins
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Mockingjay

James S. A. Corey
Leviathan Awakes

• Knowledge Is Power

Samuel Delany
Dhalgren
Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand
Triton

Neil Gaiman
American Gods
The Graveyard Book

William Gibson
Count Zero
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Neuromancer

Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Herland

Joe Halderman
Forever Peace

Frank Herbert
The Dune novels

Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dispossessed
The Earthsea novels

• A Wizard of Earthsea – True Names, Wizard Schools, and Shadows
• The Tombs of Atuan – The Damsel in Distress
• The Farthest Shore – Platonists and Sophists…Again

The Left Hand of Darkness

• Introduction to Shifgrethor
• Nationalism and Communication

The Word for World Is Forest

• Military States, Translators, and Humans who Change Everything

China Mieville
The City and the City

• The Construction of National Identity

Embassytown
Perido Street Station

• Rape, Crime, Identity, and Social Constructions

The Scar

• Agency and the Lack Thereof

Larry Niven
Ringworld

Marge Piercy
Woman on the Edge of Time

• The Way Things Are
• The Way Things Could Be

Kim Stanley Robinson
Red Mars
Blue Mars
Green Mars

Veronica Roth
Divergent

• Critical Thinking Skills as Super Power

Insurgent
Allegiant

J. K. Rowling
The Harry Potter novels

Joanna Russ
The Female Man

Robert J. Sawyer
Hominid

Dan Simmons
Hyperion

Neal Stephenson
Anathem

• Those Evil Rhetoricians

The Diamond Age

James Tiptree, Jr.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever

Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen

• Mysticism and Science

Vernor Vinge
A Deepness in the Sky
A Fire Upon the Deep
Rainbow’s End

Kate Wilhelm
Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang

• Cloning, Socialism, and the Individual

Connie Willis
All Clear
Blackout
The Doomsday Book
To Say Nothing of the Dog

Robert Charles Wilson
Spin

Video Games
Captain Blood – Communicating with Aliens