Best science fiction novels by decade
Here’s an update to this list.
| Winner | Runner Ups | |||
| Decade | Author | Title | Author | Title |
| 2020s | Adrian Tchaikovsky | The Doors of Eden | Becky Chambers | The Galaxy, and the Ground Within |
| Marina J. Lostetter | Noumenon Ultra | |||
| Robert J. Sawyer | The Oppenheimer Alternative | |||
| John Scalzi | The Last Emperox | |||
| 2010s | Ann Leckie | Ancillary Justice | Becky Chambers | The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet |
| Matt Haig | The Humans | |||
| Will McIntosh | Soft Apocalypse | |||
| Adrian Tchaikovsky | Children of Time | |||
| 2000s | Stephen Baxter | Evolution | Ursula K. Le Guin | The Telling |
| Cixin Liu | The Three-Body Problem | |||
| Alastair Reynolds | House of Suns | |||
| Robert J. Sawyer | Hominids | |||
| John Scalzi | Old Man’s War | |||
| Karl Schroeder | Ventus | |||
| Neal Stephenson | Anathem | |||
| Connie Willis | Passage | |||
| Robert Charles Wilson | Spin | |||
| 1990s | Neal Stephenson | Snow Crash | Stephen Baxter | The Time Ships |
| Orson Scott Card | Pastwatch | |||
| Robert J. Sawyer | Starplex | |||
| Vernor Vinge | A Fire Upon the Deep | |||
| Robert Charles Wilson | Darwinia | |||
| 1980s | Joan Slonczewski | A Door Into Ocean | Iain M. Banks | The Player of Games |
| David Brin | The Uplift War | |||
| Orson Scott Card | Ender’s Game | |||
| Vonda N. McIntyre | Starfarers | |||
| Kim Stanley Robinson | The Wild Shore | |||
| Dan Simmons | Hyperion | |||
| Vernor Vinge | Marooned in Realtime | |||
| 1970s | Douglas Adams | The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | Isaac Asimov | The Gods Themselves |
| David Gerrold | The Man Who Folded Himself | |||
| Ursula K. Le Guin | The Dispossessed | |||
| Frederik Pohl | Gateway | |||
| 1960s | Ursula K. Le Guin | The Left Hand of Darkness | Philip K. Dick | The Man in the High Castle |
| Harry Harrison | The Stainless Steel Rat | |||
| Frank Herbert | Dune | |||
| Walter M. Miller, Jr. | A Canticle for Leibowitz | |||
| 1950s | Isaac Asimov | Foundation | Alfred Bester | The Demolished Man |
| Ray Bradbury | The Martian Chronicles | |||
| Arthur C. Clarke | The City and the Stars | |||
| Clifford D. Simak | City | |||
| 1940s | George Orwell | Nineteen Eighty-Four | L. Sprague de Camp | Lest Darkness Fall |
| 1930s | Aldous Huxley | Brave New World | ||