If you just copy and past all of the nominees and winners in all categories you come up with a word doc that is literally 50 plus pages. So I whittled the list down. The first hack took out all of the novellas, novelettes and short stories that I did not have some direct interest in, or had been recommended to read. For example, I kept in Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear because I enjoyed the movie starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. I kept in "Bicycle Repairman" by Bruce Sterling because the title intrigues me. I kept in "Ridge Running" by Kim Stanley Robinson because I enjoy his work. And I kept in “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison because it is a title that pops up from time to time outside of my list and it seems as if I should read it.
For the novels, I started with the entire list of all nominees and winners from both lists and then title by title plugged them into Wikipedia for a synopsis. If the premise sounded dull or uninteresting I deleted it. If I could find nothing about a work but the title sounded interesting I kept it on the list. If I could find nothing and the title sounds lame I took it off.
What is left is my master list. This is the list I will refer to when I am looking for new things to read. It is still a pretty massive list. There are 233 titles, two of which are either sequels of part of a series that were not nominated or awarded either.
I've also found that when I come across a work by an author that has won a Hugo or Nebula, but the work itself has not been nominated or won, I am still apt to read the book. The best example of this is Nancy Kress' Probability Moon. It was never nominated, nor has it won either award, but I bought it because of the "author of..." blurb on the cover. I was pleasantly surprised as I read the book.
I cut a lot of fantasy out of the list, not be cause I don't like fantasy literature, but because I don't like it as much as I like sci-fi. And with fantasy I really have to be interested in the book before I pick it up. I was in my 30s before I finally read The Lord of the Rings. I resisted for a long time.
Another factor that influences my reading choices is this: as I've gotten older, and more knowledgeable, more experienced and more opinionated I find that books I would have enjoyed in my younger years do not interest me, or specifically turn me off because I disagree with the subject matter.
I'm more cognizant of humanistic slants, anti-religious themes and blatant contradictions of my personal beliefs. Sometimes I can overlook those things, but sometimes I can't. In fiction I have more success in just plodding through a book and enjoying the story, but in non-fiction I have a much lower BS threshold.
For the purpose of my master list I am organizing the works by author. I tend to group books this way as I read. If I find a book I like I tend to want to read more of that particular author, especially if there are more works by the author on the list.
Having said that, what follows is a list of books I am recommending to myself, in hopes that I will find some enjoyable stories. I've done all of this work so I might as well share it with the blogosphere.
The Hugo and Nebula Master List:
Brian Aldiss
Helliconia Spring
Helliconia Winter
Chester Anderson
The Butterfly Kid
Poul Anderson
We Have Fed Our Seas (alt: The Enemy Stars)
The High Crusade
Tau Zero
There Will Be Time
The People of the Wind
Fire Time
Piers Anthony
Chthon
Macroscope
Catherine Asaro
The Last Hawk
Isaac Asimov
Pebble in the Sky
The Caves of Steel
The Gods Themselves
The Robots of Dawn
A. A. Attanasio
Radix
Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale
Paolo Bacigalupi
The Wind Up Girl
John Barnes
Orbital Resonance
Christopher Barzak
The Love We Share Without Knowing
T. J. Bass
Half Past Human
The Godwhale
Greg Bear
Queen of Angels
Moving Mars
Gregory Benford
Timescape
Great Sky River (sequel to In the Ocean of Night and Across the Sea of Suns)
Alfred Bester
The Demolished Man
Michael Bishop
A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire
James Blish
A Case of Conscience
David Brin
Earth
Brightness Reef
John Brunner
The Whole Man (alt: The Telepathist)
The Squares of the City
Stand on Zanzibar
The Jagged Orbit
The Sheep Look Up
Tobias Buckell
Ragamuffin
Algis Budrys
Who?
Rogue Moon
Hard Landing
Emma Bull
Bone Dance
Octavia E. Butler
Parable of the Sower
Parable of the Talents
Arthur Byron
Autumn Angels
Orson Scott Card
Seventh Son
Red Prophet
Prentice Alvin
Jeffrey A. Carver
Eternity's End
C. J. Cherryh
The Faded Sun: Kesrith
Cuckoo’s Egg
Cyteen
Arthur C. Clarke
A Fall of Moondust
The Fountains of Paradise
Hal Clement
Mission of Gravity
Star Light (sequel to Mission of Gravity)
John Crowley
Little, Big
Samuel R. Delany
Babel-17
The Einstein Intersection
Nova
Dhalgren
Triton
Philip K. Dick
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dr. Bloodmoney
Gordon R. Dickson
Dorsai! (alt: The Genetic General)
Thomas M. Disch
On Wings of Song
The Genocides
334
Cory Doctorow
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Little Brother
George Alec Effinger
“Schrödinger’s Kitten”
Harlan Ellison
“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”
“A Boy and His Dog”
Kelley Eskridge
Solitaire
Philip José Farmer
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Neil Gaiman
The Graveyard Book
Daniel F. Galouye
Dark Universe
David Gerrold
When Harlie Was One
The Man Who Folded Himself
“The Martian Child”
William Gibson
Count Zero
Virtual Light
William Gibson & Michael Swanwick
"Dogfight"
Kathleen Ann Goonan
Crescent City Rhapsody
Light Music
Joe Haldeman
Mindbridge
Forever Peace
Camouflage
"Tricentennial"
The Accidental Time Machine
Harry Harrison
Deathworld
Sense of Obligation (alt: Planet of the Damned)
Robert A. Heinlein
Double Star
Have Spacesuit – Will Travel
Glory Road
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Time Enough for Love
Friday
Job: A Comedy of Justice
Russell Hoban
Riddley Walker
John Kessel
Good News From Outer Space
Donald Kingsbury
Courtship Rite
Nancy Kress
Beggars in Spain
Beggars and Choosers (sequel to Beggars in Spain)
Geoffrey A. Landis
Mars Crossing
Ursula K. Le Guin
The Lathe of Heaven
The Dispossessed
Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea
The Other Wind
Fritz Leiber
Destiny Times Three
The Big Time
The Wanderer
Murray Leinster
The Pirates of Ersatz (alt: The Pirates of Zan)
Barry B. Longyear
Enemy Mine
R. A. MacAvoy
Tea with the Black Dragon
Katherine MacLean
The Missing Man
Ken MacLeod
The Sky Road
Cosmonaut Keep
The Cassini Division
George R. R. Martin
Dying of the Light
A Storm of Swords (3rd in series)
A Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings
Jack McDevitt
Seeker
Chindi
Polaris
Odyssey
Cauldron
Vonda N. McIntyre
Dreamsnake
Suzy McKee Charnas
The Vampire Tapestry
Lois McMaster Bujold
Falling Free
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas: A Novel
Elizabeth Moon
Remnant Population
Larry Niven
Protector
The Integral Trees
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Mote in God’s Eye
Inferno
Lucifer’s Hammer
Footfall
David R. Palmer
Emergence
Edgar Pangborn
Davy
Alexei Panshin
Rite of Passage
Paul Park
Celestis
Mark Phillips (aka: Randall Garrett and
Laurence M. Janifer)
That Sweet Little Old Lady (alt: Brain Twister)
H. Beam Piper
Little Fuzzy
Frederik Pohl
Man Plus
Gateway
Jem
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
Terry Pratchett
Going Postal
Making Money
Cherie Priest
Boneshaker
Christopher Priest
The Inverted World
Thomas Pynchon
Gravity's Rainbow
Tom Reamy
Blind Voices
Kim Stanley Robinson
“Ridge Running”
The Years of Rice and Salt
The Wild Shore
Joanna Russ
And Chaos Died
Eric Frank Russell
“Allamagoosa”
James H. Schmitz
The Witches of Karres
Bob Shaw
The Ragged Astronauts
Robert Sheckley
Time Killer (alt: Immortality, Inc.)
Lewis Shiner
Frontera
Robert Silverberg
Thorns
Up the Line
Tower of Glass
A Time of Changes
The Book of Skulls
Dying Inside
The Stochastic Man
Shadrach in the Furnace
Lord Valentine’s Castle
Clifford D. Simak
The Fisherman (alt: Time Is the Simplest Thing)
Here Gather the Stars (alt: Way Station)
The Goblin Reservation
A Choice of Gods
Project Pope
Cordwainer Smith
The Planet Buyer (alt: The Boy Who Bought Old Earth)
Edward E. Smith
Skylark DuQuesne
Norman Spinrad
Bug Jack Barron
Robert Stallman
The Orphan
Neal Stephenson
The Diamond Age
Cryptonomicon
Bruce Sterling
Islands in the Net
Holy Fire
“Bicycle Repairman”
Distraction
Bruce Sterling & Bill Gibson
The Difference Engine
Sean Stewart
Perfect Circle
Charles Stross
Singularity Sky
Theodore Sturgeon
More Than Human
Venus Plus X
Michael Swanwick
Stations of the Tide
Sheri S. Tepper
Grass
Walter Tevis
Mockingbird
Wilson Tucker
The Year of the Quiet Sun
George Turner
Drowning Towers
Harry Turtledove
How Few Remain
A. E. van Vogt
The World of Null-A
Jack Vance
The Dying Earth
Jeff VanderMeer
Finch
John Varley
Titan
Wizard
"Retrograde Summer"
Gore Vidal
Kalki
Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen
The Summer Queen (sequel to Snow Queen)
Vernor Vinge
A Deepness in the Sky
Rainbows End
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Sirens of Titan
Cat’s Cradle
Slaughterhouse-Five
Jo Walton
Farthing
James White
The Escape Orbit
Kate Wilhelm
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Juniper Time
Walter Jon Williams
Metropolitan (followed by City on Fire)
Connie Willis
To Say Nothing of the Dog
Passage
Robert Charles Wilson
Darwinia
Gene Wolfe
The Shadow of the Torturer (1st of four)
The Claw of the Conciliator (2nd of four)
The Sword of the Lictor (3rd of four)
The Citadel of the Autarch (4th of four, not a nominee or winner)
The Urth of the New Sun (5th of four)
Free Live Free
Roger Zelazny
…And Call Me Conrad (alt: This Immortal) (restored version, plus orig)
Lord of Light
Jack of Shadows
Doorways in the Sand
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