Mary Shelley
Frankenstein is, by most serious accounts (Brian Aldiss's included), the first true science fiction novel: the fantastic event generated by science rather than the supernatural, with the moral bill presented in full.
Scientific Romance
The pre-Gernsback British and European tradition of speculative adventure: Verne's voyages and Wells's time machines, before anyone thought to call it science fiction.
The authors (4)
Olaf Stapledon
The genre's great cosmological visionary.
Jules Verne
With Wells, one of the twin founders of modern science fiction.
H. G. Wells
The single most influential science fiction writer who ever lived.
Essential books, oldest first (12)
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Widely regarded as the first science fiction novel.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
A cornerstone of the lost-world subgenre, influencing Doyle, Burroughs and a century of hollow-earth tales.
From the Earth to the Moon
The founding text of spaceflight fiction, cited as inspiration by rocketry pioneers Tsiolkovsky, Goddard and Oberth.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
Verne's masterpiece and home of his greatest character.
The Time Machine
Effectively invented time travel as a fictional device and the far-future vision as a literary mode.
The Island of Doctor Moreau
A founding text of biological SF and uplift fiction, echoing through Cordwainer Smith, David Brin and modern bio-horror.
The Invisible Man
The definitive treatment of invisibility and a keystone of the mad-scientist tradition.
The War of the Worlds
The template for every alien invasion story since.
Last and First Men
The most ambitious future history ever attempted, directly inspiring Clarke, Lem and Baxter, and establishing deep time as science fiction's playground.
Star Maker
Routinely cited (by Clarke, Lessing and Borges among others) as the most visionary SF novel ever written.
Out of the Silent Planet
The great theological riposte within early SF — proof the genre could argue with itself at planetary scale — and the seed of the Ransom trilogy, whose finale That Hideous Strength fed directly…
The Time Ships
Winner of the BSFA, Philip K.