Best Selling Science Fiction Books
“Best selling!”
Simple, two words that mean a lot to every writer. Because to a writer, “best selling” does not represent monetary benefits, but it directly points to the large readership the book enjoys, thereby allowing millions of minds to connect with a beautiful thought/idea that the writer expresses via his/her sci-fi book. It is in this regard that the author likes to hear “best selling science fiction book” so often and from people who matter.
But before it is announced to be a best seller by people who matter, it is important to understand what qualifies the science fiction book to be the one that matters in the scifi genre.
So what is it that makes a book matter to the readers who matter?
Good question, isn't it?
To answer this question we will have to examine the best selling science fiction books of all time. While I am working on compiling the list of best selling science fiction books of all time, you may want to look at my old blog post that deals with similar topic. Almost similar, if not exactly the same:
The New York Times Best Sellers List
It deals more with explaining the metrics that The New York Times uses to assign the tag of best seller to a science fiction, or any book for that matter. So, if you have read the blog post, you should have a fair idea as to what qualifies a book to be a bestseller.
With that knowledge in mind, let me share the list of best selling science fiction books of all time.
List of best selling science fiction books:
29 of the best selling science fiction books everyone should read
The best sci-fi books of all time
Bestselling science fiction books of all time
List of best selling science fiction books
100 best selling science fiction books
20 of the best science fiction books of all time
Best science fiction books and novels
That was obvious and almost anticipated. Wasn't it in a way?
Because every science fiction novel is unique and will always find an audience to which it appeals. Although it may not carry a title like, “best seller” it will always find an unwavering patronage from readers who relate with the author's writing style, and every word with an inexplicable ease blends with the vocabulary and linguistic preferences of the reader. Therefore, it rightly becomes the best seller for that reader.
If you are wondering how this is possible that a book which lacks the hype and popularity quotient, still manages to impress a selected club of readers? Please refer to my another blog post titled: Best selling scifi books.
Now, do you still want to consider the long list of URLs I shared in this blog post, dedicated to listing the best selling science fiction books of all time, or you want to read a science fiction book or books and then decide yourself if it is a best seller for you?
If it is able to impress you as a reader and engage your imagination, then it surely has managed to impress you enough to be an ideal best seller, that never fails to captivate your imagination. And whether or not it features in any of the lists dedicated to best selling science fiction novels, for you it shall always be the best science fiction that you have ever read. And for a book, impressing the reader and influencing his/her thoughts in good ways, is a literary success that transcends beyond the commercial success, because sometimes commercially successful sci-fi books appeal to both the masses and classes; but a well written science fiction novel that bears a great concept and never lets the reader’s thought disconnect from the net of thoughts that the book casts on the reader’s mind, then this science fiction book specifically appeals to the classes.
For me the list of best selling science fiction novels always begins and ends with my list of best selling science fiction books:
Dune
The Time Machine
Frankenstein
The Martian
The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide
Not a huge and exhaustive list. And this list has not grown for quite some time now. Because the appeal and intrigue of these sci-fi books never fades, and somehow with a penchant of a master writer, these all time best selling science fiction novels always offer something to my scientifically inquisitive mind to feed on.
And whenever I read a book for the second time, it is like meeting an acquaintance who is now growing to be my best friend. And these best selling science fiction books, that exclusively comprise my list of scifi bestsellers, have a wine like effect on my enquiry driven mind, that finds the appeal of these books irresistible and always discovers something new to indulge myself in.
This wine is special, because it is not retained in the goblet of my stomach, but it is preserved in the goblet of my mind, where my mind allows it to age by means of contemplation, and then as it has aged, it flows through the pores in my body, like a stream of joy, that is ceaseless, and continues to amaze me for many days until I absorb the scientific thought fully.
Take for example the science fiction novel, The Time Machine. It got me interested in studying about time, light and space, and how they interact and behave in space. And no matter how many times I read this best selling science fiction novel, it renews my eagerness to know more and explore science in the realm of reality, where I toss it against walls of reasoning and logic. And often, these brave science fiction concepts withstand this deliberate collision against two main sets of reality i.e. Logic and Reasoning.
This is the wonder of a true best selling science fiction novel. And I always experience it in the sci-fi books that appeal to my mind and IQ alike. It is a mere coincidence and nothing else, that my list of best selling science fiction novels includes the sci-fi books which almost always feature in the bestselling list of science fiction novels.
Which only goes to prove one fact, “That I too like reading what most of you find interesting.”
And I am not wrong with this assumption. Because it is very rare that a science fiction reader would like something as brilliantly formulated as this extract from Mr. H. G. Wells' famous novel, The Time Machine.
An extract from one of the best selling science fiction novels, The Time Machine.
“That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilised man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?”
Doesn't it instigate you to reason and think if this is a plausible possibility at all?
Doesn't it want you to be this Time Traveler and travel ahead of time, and redefine its every quadrant?
Doesn’t it persuade you to refer to your high school chapter in Physics that was about time and light?
And isn't this the greatest wonder of all, when Mr. H. G. Wells says, “and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?” Don’t you find it motivating enough to examine it in your thoughts and drift along this new Time-Dimension?
I am certain you feel the surge of these queries bubbling within you and it keeps you glued to these thoughts and to Mr. H. G. Wells masterpiece of a sci-fi book. That for all good reasons is a revolution in science, in a way it is, because it sets human thoughts in motion, in a direction where only bold and well informed science fiction writers dare to tread, and as an aftermath of this revolution, many daring pursuers of science have already embarked on this grand journey to create “A Time Machine” where time achieves new dimensions in reality. And best selling science fiction writers like Mr. H. G. Wells take the credit of being these daring revolutionaries of change, who promote good and responsible scientific thinking.
This is why these science fiction novels almost always feature in everyone's personal list of best selling science fiction novels.
I believe there are a few science fiction books that appeal to all readers with an equal intensity. Hence, they become recipients of global appreciation, with endorsement from a global community of readers, who value quality over quantity. And science fiction novels like : The Time Machine, leads the reader on a trail of thoughts where nothing is askew, and every word is an attempt to germinate reality in the dimensions of fiction, where time and reality can be altered to follow the will of the writer. If a scientific thought only rides on the imagination of the writer, and is distanced from scientific reasoning, then it is more of a soft sci-fi, but when it explores a heavy weight scientific idea, then it is a hard sci-fi, where fiction is cast into every dimension of reality to check its validity.
Another exciting and gripping science fiction novel, that always makes it to the list of best selling science fiction books, is Ms. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Where Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss student of natural science, creates an artificial man from pieces of corpses. And the science fiction novel is a collage of emotions, social taboos, compulsive scientific urges, collision between science and religious beliefs, and the faith of a scientist in something that even challenges Gods, and I as a reader am left marooned on the island where nothing grows, just thoughts, ideas on the fertile ground of scientific thinking, to nurture what I call scientific wanderings through the maze of real versus unreal. Where the maze has two exit points: Reality and Fiction.
Once on this island, if you emerge from the gate of reality, I have no reason to believe that we can create SOMETHING like Frankenstein.
And it is often, when we indulge in serious due diligence of scientific proposals, that it is the gate of reality that greets us as the exit point.
But , in the case of Frankenstein, though a human, created by a human, I am referring to this creation as “SOMETHING.”
Yes, you guessed it, right!
Because it possessed every quality of a human being except one, it did not have a soul. And if you read the science fiction novel, you sympathise with his character because he suffers from an identity crisis and is withdrawn into a state of lamenting and deep forlorn. But at the same time, you do not pity the scientist, who believes in something with such a conviction that he created a “brand new man” from the dead corpses.
But every stitch mark on the body of the main character cries of pain, sorrow and discontent with life, where he is almost immortal now. Thus rendering his pain permanent and everlasting. When his emotional crisis peaks, the creation of the doctor, has no faith in humanity and chides the society as whole, for lack or representation of his breed, and for being the only one, in the crowded spaces and corners where only others abound, but none of his breed. And this was not a misery of his own making, but an affliction he suffered due to someone's premature scientific cross examination of a scientific idea.
And this indeed becomes the tragedy of the sci-fi novel, and also represents the culmination of scientific single mindedness, with a very sharp and clear message, that responsible science should precede every scientific endeavour, otherwise science will be the cause of our extinction and it will always end up creating monsters, who will always end up killing their own creator/s.
And in this best selling science fiction novel by Ms. Mary Shelley, the victim of his own creation, is the scientist Victor Frankenstein himself. With whom very few readers sympathise in the end, because he ardently pushed the limits to discover a scientific possibility in reality, but when he must have been marooned on the island of thought, it seems he exited from the gate of fiction, where the right approach would have been further investigation, and then re-assess the conduciveness of the idea. But Victor Frankenstein was so obsessed with his idea, that he not only put his life at risk, but posed a greater risk to the entire humankind.
This is one reason the scientist in most summaries of this science fiction novel is referred to as a lunatic, mad scientist; and never a maverick. At Least that would still have been decent. But he fails to receive this sympathy from anyone.
Scifi Novel Victor Frankenstein
What you feel about the enthusiastic and obsessed scientist Victor Frankenstein, I shall let you decide.
But for now I just wish to offer one piece of advice. Whenever your mind deals with a new scientific thought that germinates in your mind after reading any science fiction novel, allow yourself to visit this island of ideas and thoughts, and dare to pass through the maze, and then be honest, wight yourself, whether the gate you exited from was the one that belonged to Reality or Fiction.
If you do that, you will enjoy reading science fiction novels, and without having to know whether it is a best selling science fiction novel or not. Because what matters the most, is whether it is the kind of science fiction novel you enjoy reading. Rest all is insignificant and unnecessary.
Now coming to my own science fiction novel, They Loved in 2075, there is no protagonist like Victor Frankenstein, but there is a dreamer like time traveler, Saabir, who is on the mission to save the planet Earth from climate change, and prevent technology from hijacking human emotions and feelings, and replace them with synthetic feelings of love and emotion. And his main struggle lies in making his girlfriend feel more like a human being, who somehow fails to tell the difference between synthetic and organic human feelings.
They Loved in 2075, is a science fiction novel, where I have been marooned on the island for long, and at every attempt I exited from the gate of Reality, and that is what is the true essence and beauty of this science fiction novel, They Loved in 2075.
Because in 2075, your children or grandchildren could be Saabir, and your daughter or granddaughter could be the girl who has lost her ability to produce organic and human feelings.
After reading the science fiction novel, I shall let you decide, whether it has what it takes to be the best science fiction novel or not?
But via the science fiction novel, They Loved in 2075, I do not intend to sell a story, I want to tell a story that matters to us all, because 2075, shall be the reality and not an unseen future for our forthcoming generations.
As I conclude this blog post, I hope we shall meet on the island, pacing through the maze, to arrive at the gate of our destinies. And lay our claim on our dreams in reality, where anything is possible, as long as we take the time to exit from the gate of Reality while daring to pace through the maze!
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