Sci-Fi's Top 100: 1-50

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49 From the Earth to The Moon (1865)

Approximately 65 years before the term science fiction was coined, Jules Verne was firing the imagination of readers with journeys to the center of the earth, trips to mysterious islands, and expeditions 20,000 leagues under the sea. Moon, arguably his most exhilarating novel, is also his most overtly sci-fi work, and marked a quantum leap for the genre. Mary Shelley may have ignited the science-fiction engine, but it was Verne who took it out for a spin.

50 Slaughterhouse Five (1969)

Poor Billy Pilgrim: unstuck in time, shuttling between the events of his life, from the WWII firebombing of Dresden to his luscious imprisonment on planet Tralfamadore with sex bomb Montana Wildhack. With this acclaimed novel (made into an underrated 1972 film), Kurt Vonnegut Jr. blurred the lines of sci-fi, memoir, and literature, breaking the uncertainties of postwar America into shiny, disconnected fragments. So it goes.

Originally posted Oct 16, 1998 Published in issue #454 Oct 16, 1998 Order article reprints

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