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That is an incendiary-sounding headline, so at the risk of getting defensive too quickly, let’s get some things in line and explain it. If you’re skimming and scrolling already, then you’re a lost cause, and you’re already not reading, so whatever. That’s funny. You find an article about books and you don’t read any of it. Anyway… sci-fi books better than Dune? Really? No! Well, probably no. Dune is a fantastic book, and even if you don’t love it for whatever reason, you can likely, at the very least, admire what it’s done for science fiction, as a genre.
If you go on Goodreads, it has an impressive average rating, at 4.29/5, but there are a few well-known sci-fi books that have higher ratings, and some of them are below. That’s the metric. It’s to do with average ratings on Goodreads. It’s not a guarantee, by any means, that everyone on Goodreads feels these sci-fi books are better than the original Dune, but for whatever reason (or reasons, maybe sometimes some potentially understandable ones), they are rated higher. Do with that what you will, and please don’t shoot the messenger.
7
‘Ender’s Game’ (1985)
You’re probably better off pretending Ender’s Game is one of those books that hasn’t received some kind of adaptation, since there aren’t a whole heap of positive things that can be said about the movie of the same name that came out in 2013. But hey, the book’s the book, and having the source material feel superior isn’t exactly uncommon. The reception on Goodreads reflects that, because it’s got a 4.31/5 on there.
Also, Ender’s Game has more than 1.5 million ratings, and something you find when it comes to books with tons of ratings is that the average rating can be a bit lower than expected. Like, certain heavy-hitters like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Fahrenheit 451, and Slaughterhouse-Five don’t rank as highly as Dune, maybe because some people rating it feel those books are overrated. And sure, maybe some people on Goodreads still find Ender’s Game and Dune overrated, but probably not as many.
6
‘Project Hail Mary’ (2021)
Apologies in advance to anyone who’s not a huge Andy Weir fan, but the people of Goodreads are, at least when it comes to two of his books. The first of those two books worth mentioning is Project Hail Mary, which is about an astronaut on a spacecraft on his own, and he doesn’t entirely remember how he got there. But he slowly learns, as does the reader, and his mission out in space turns out to be a high-stakes one, to say the least.
At the time of writing, it has nearly 2 million ratings on Goodreads, and the average rating is at a 4.51/5.
That might make Project Hail Mary sound quite intense, but it’s also very entertaining, since it does some interesting things structurally while ultimately being quite hard to fault as far as pacing is concerned. At the time of writing, it has nearly 2 million ratings on Goodreads, and the average rating is at a 4.51/5. It cannot claim to have the cultural legacy or significance of Dune, by any means, but hey, people who’ve read it have generally seemed to really love it, so that’s worth something.
5
‘The Stand’ (1978/1990)
The Stand falls a little short of being the highest-rated Stephen King book on Goodreads, but then again, it’s second only to The Green Mile, and that definitely counts for something when you’re looking at an author with as many published novels as King. Regarding The Stand specifically, it’s a bit of a blend of genres, though one of them is possibly science fiction, or at least that’s one of the genres it belongs to on Goodreads, so there you go, and here The Stand is.
Maybe it’s easy to define as a dark fantasy book, sure. It’s got the whole end of the world thing going for it, which is post-apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic books are generally sci-fi, but the conflict here does, before too long, lean into some pretty intense supernatural/horror territory. The Stand is frightening, then, in many ways, but that’s also to be expected with King. Look, it’s a long book (especially the uncut version from 1990). It’s hard to summarize. But it is immense, and it is very much deserving of a 4.35/5 rating, which is what it’s sitting at on Goodreads currently.
4
‘The Hunger Games’ (2008)
This one might seem alarming, and once more, it has to be stressed that the messenger shouldn’t be shot, but the first The Hunger Games book is beloved in general, and particularly so on Goodreads. It sits at 4.36/5 on there, so here it sits at #4 here, within this particular ranking. It struck a chord. People dug it. And it does have a higher rating than some books in long-running young adult series of this rough generation… certainly more than Twilight, though a little shy of the rating for the first Harry Potter book.
Sure, they’re works of fantasy, so all that’s a bit of a tangent, but The Hunger Games (2008) is/was iconic. Not perfect, but something that got people more interested in reading, and that’s generally worth celebrating. There are more challenging dystopian and/or sci-fi novels than this one, but if you read this when younger and it got you interested in reading more of the stuff that it might’ve been influenced by, that’s undeniably a good thing.
3
‘The Martian’ (2011)
Somehow, Andy Weir returned. Returned in this ranking. He didn’t technically return with The Martian, since this one came out before Project Hail Mary and also before the one novel of his that doesn’t have that much love on Goodreads (2017’s Artemis, which sits at a 3.67/5 rating). It’s worth highlighting some of the similarities with Project Hail Mary and The Martian, though, because the latter is also largely about one guy having to do quite a lot on his own.
Sure, that’s not a perfect description of Project Hail Mary, given some of the things that are revealed as it goes along, and The Martian has a bit more going on than just one man trying to stay alive in space, yet the similarities are there. It’s not hard to see how these two novels were written by the same person, but Weir does this kind of science fiction well, and so The Martian sitting at 4.42/5 on Goodreads feels pretty deserved. It is an easy-to-like book, after all.
2
’11/22/63′ (2011)
Okay, when The Stand was mentioned before as having the second-highest rating of a Stephen King book, it’s a little more complicated, since 11/22/63 also sits at a 4.35/5. It’s more of a science fiction novel, for what that’s worth, since the premise involves time travel and the plot concerns someone going back in time to try to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, hoping that getting to the bottom of said event and stopping it will positively impact everything that happens after the titular date.
Complications do ensue, and also, the method of time traveling is far from convenient, since the protagonist can only go back to 1958, and has to navigate life in the past while waiting for the inevitable. Stephen King gets a whole lot of tension out of the high-concept premise here, with the start of 11/22/63 being great, the ending being one of the author’s best, and then everything in between also being amazing. If anything, 4.35/5 could be a tad low for something this good.
1
‘Watchmen’ (1987)
There is a lot in Watchmen, both by the standards of a graphic novel and any kind of non-graphic (so normal?) novel, which makes it worth putting here. It’s got a dystopian sort of thing going for it as well, and even if it’s not set in the future like a good many works of science fiction, it’s got an alternate history setting, and that alternate history has developed quite differently, as far as technology and science are concerned.
It makes for something worth rereading and analyzing, and Watchmen is also the kind of thing you can appreciate if you don’t read a lot of superhero-related stuff, but then it becomes more rewarding the more you do know (it helps with appreciating how good it is as a deconstruction). It lives up to the hype, in other words, and so the 4.39/5 rating for the compilation of all 12 volumes on Goodreads definitely makes sense.
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Jeremy Urquhart
Almontather Rassoul
