Edgar Rice Burroughs
The father of planetary romance.
Science Fantasy
The deliberate blend: dying earths, dragon-riders with genetics, magic that might be technology and vice versa.
The authors (8)
Frank Herbert
Dune is the genre's Lord of the Rings: the proof that science fiction could carry ecology, theology and dynastic politics at epic scale.
Anne McCaffrey
The bridge between SF and fantasy readerships and the genre's great gateway author for young readers — particularly girls, whom the field had largely ignored.
Andre Norton
Quietly one of the most influential figures in the field: she trained the readership.
Robert Silverberg
The field's great professional, whose 1970s novels proved commercial SF writers could retool into literary ones.
Jack Vance
The genre's supreme stylist and a double founder: of the Dying Earth subgenre (Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is its godchild) and of anthropological planetary adventure.
Gene Wolfe
The genre's most acclaimed pure writer: the standard demonstration that SF can sustain — and reward — the closest reading literature allows.
Roger Zelazny
The New Wave's mythographer, who fused literary technique with pulp velocity and made it look effortless.
Essential books, oldest first (16)
A Princess of Mars
The founding text of planetary romance.
The Gods of Mars
Widely rated the best Barsoom novel, and a startlingly savage satire of organised religion for 1913 pulp fiction.
At the Earth's Core
The keystone hollow-earth adventure, launching a seven-book series (Tarzan eventually visits).
The Dying Earth
Founded the entire Dying Earth subgenre (Wolfe's New Sun is its direct heir), supplied D&D's magic system, and remains the genre's benchmark for style.
The Dragon Masters
Hugo winner for short fiction (1963), and a perfect single-sitting introduction to Vance's mirrored-civilisations mode.
Hothouse
Hugo winner in its original short-fiction form (1962).
Witch World
Hugo-nominated and the launch of one of fantasy's longest-running series; its portal-plus-science-fantasy formula anticipated half the genre's later crossovers.
Dune
Co-winner of the first Nebula, Hugo winner, and the bestselling SF novel of all time.
Lord of Light
Hugo winner (1968), perennial top-ten-of-all-time material, and the masterpiece of mythological SF.
Dragonflight
Built from the Hugo-winning 'Weyr Search' (the first fiction Hugo awarded a woman) and the Nebula-winning 'Dragonrider'; the founding novel of one of SF's best-loved series and the modern…
Nightwings
The opening novella won the Hugo (1969); the fix-up novel remains the loveliest doorway into Silverberg's great period.
Nine Princes in Amber
Launched fantasy's definitive parallel-worlds dynasty saga; the Amber books shaped role-playing's multiverse imagination and every squabbling immortal family since.
Children of Dune
The first SF hardcover bestseller in publishing history, completing the original trilogy and pivoting the series towards God Emperor of Dune's grand inhumanity.
The White Dragon
One of the first SF hardcovers ever to reach the New York Times bestseller list, announcing that the genre's readership had become a mass market — with a woman at the front of it.
Lord Valentine's Castle
Locus Award winner and Silverberg's triumphant return from retirement; Majipoor became one of the genre's great long-running settings, the bridge between planetary romance and big-canvas fantasy.
The Shadow of the Torturer
World Fantasy Award winner and the opening of the tetralogy regularly ranked the finest sustained work in SF — the genre's supreme rereader's text, with an academic literature to match.