Books by Greg Bear

Honorable mentions : Joe Haldeman, The Forever War ; Greg Bear, Eon ; Octavia Butler Xenogenesis trilogy ; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .  My dark horse pick might be Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things , or Audrey Niffennegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife , if that one counts as belonging to the genre.  High marks to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and The Stand , again if they count.  Any of these mentions could make the top ten without shame.

Science fiction has been treading water since the 1960s.  Since that time its most glorious achievements have been on the screen, not on the printed page.  There are some excellent individual books, such as Eon or Hyperion , but the genre is mostly retreads.  Nor do I think much of attempts to cross science fiction with "serious fiction," whether it is coming from Philip K. Dick or Doris Lessing.  Yes the idea is cool but the execution is usually quite flawed.