The following are a list of my picks for Retrospeculative novel of the year, beginning in 1953, a totally arbitrary date, but it was the year that the first Hugo Award was presented.
I think that most of my picks are uncontroversial. Not all would be considered genre works (I include any novel with a ‘speculative’ element), and some are not, for lack of a better term, literate works (novels that may have been published in ‘weak’ years, or perhaps there was something about the novel that appealed to me in a significant, personal way). There have been a few years when I deliberated for a long time; I may have wanted to pick a certain novel, but I also wanted to include as many authors as possible.
At times, this list may lag, or precede, my Retrospeculative blog posts…
1953: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
1954: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
1955: Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein
1956: The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov
1957: Voss by Patrick White
1958: The Once and Future King by T.H. White
1959: The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
1960: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1961: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
1962: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
1963: Way Station by Clifford D. Simak
1964: GreyBeard by Brian Aldiss
1965: Dune by Frank Herbert
1966: Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
1967: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
1968: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
1969: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
1970: Ringworld by Larry Niven
1971: A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg
1972: Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg
1973: The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe by D.G. Compton
1974: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
1975: Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
1976: The Alteration by Kingsley Amis
1977: Gateway by Frederik Pohl
1978: Blind Voices by Tom Reamy
1979: Tales of Nevèrÿon by Samuel R. Delany
1980: The Book of the New Sun (The Shadow of the Torturer) by Gene Wolfe
1981: Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban
1982: Hitsuji o Meguru Bōken (A Wild Sheep Chase) by Haruki Murakami
1983: The Lyonesse Trilogy (Suldrun’s Garden) by Jack Vance
1984: Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany
1985: The Handmaiden’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
1986: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Süskind
1987: Watchmen, by Alan Moore (writer), Dave Gibbons (artist), and John Higgins (colorist)
1988: Cyteen, by C.J. Cherryh
1989: Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
1990: Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks
Retrospeculative 