NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction, Fantasy Books

Lots of inspiration for setting material from the NPR website -

More than 60,000 ballots were cast in our annual summer readers' poll. Here's a printable list of the top 100 winners. For even more great reads, check out the complete list of 237 finalists.

• 1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
• 2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
• 3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
• 4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
• 5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin
• 6. 1984, by George Orwell
• 7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
• 8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
• 9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
• 10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
• 11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
• 12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
• 13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
• 14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
• 15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
• 16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
• 17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
• 18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
• 19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
• 20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
• 21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
• 22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
• 23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King
• 24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
• 25. The Stand, by Stephen King
• 26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
• 27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
• 28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
• 29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
• 30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
• 31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
• 32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
• 33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
• 34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
• 35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
• 36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
• 37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne
• 38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys
• 39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells
• 40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
• 41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
• 42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• 43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
• 44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
• 45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
• 46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
• 47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White
• 48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
• 49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
• 50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
• 51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
• 52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
• 53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
• 54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
• 55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
• 56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
• 57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
• 58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
• 59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
• 60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
• 61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
• 62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
• 63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
• 64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
• 65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
• 66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
• 67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks
• 68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
• 69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
• 70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
• 71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
• 72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
• 73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore
• 74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
• 75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
• 76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
• 77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
• 78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
• 79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
• 80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
• 81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
• 82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
• 83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
• 84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
• 85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
• 86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
• 87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
• 88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
• 89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
• 90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
• 91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
• 92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
• 93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
• 94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
• 95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
• 96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
• 97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
• 98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
• 99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
• 100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

Sir Henry (Captain) Morgan's Ship Found?

Speaking of ships, it's not just the ones above the water that can help make a great setting.  When you want adventure, nothing cures what ails you like a pirate ship, and a sunken one can be fun too.  Recently, divers on an archeological survey near Panama City, Panama, took a one-dive-stab at locating some undersea treasure and nailed it.  Read more about it on Our Amazing Planet's website, then plunder the details for your game!

The Ghost Ships of Suisun Bay

A dumping ground for old ships awaiting the scrapheap need not be just a modern real world problem.  In your Medieval Fantasy setting you could have an equivalent setting feature.  Imagine a massive fleet after an epic invasion coming home to a huge shipyard, built to dock them all, then the monarchy goes bankrupt and mothballs the fleet.  Or, worse, a country's population is half-or-more wiped out by a plague, and suddenly there's just no need for a navy.  All sorts of possibilities!

Where's The Octopus?

A great part of any seting are the creatures that inhabit it.  Although a lot of gameplay might ignore undersea environments, there's no reason a Game Master cannot take examples from the real world oceans and transfer the traits of those creatures living there to land-dwelling monsters.  Take cephalopods, for instance . . .



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Comes the Darkness

With the power out for the fourth time in the last month, not surprising with the many violent storms we have had, I’ve been reflecting on just how dark it must get in many Medieval Fantasy settings for common folk.  It’s true enough that in a world where magic exists, and many items and spells can be used to create artificial light, sometimes as bright as daylight, anyone with enough access never need live in the dark.  But for most in the setting, those lowly masses without means, the darkness must be terrifying and a nightly occurrence.   Sure, often a fire can be struck but imagine a stormy night when no fire can be kindled.  Then the only light is the flash of electricity across the sky.  That sort of light brings it own terrors.

There's a book from 2005 by Historian A. Roger Ekirch called At Day's Close: Night in Times Past.  It attempts to present what life was like for Westerners prior to the advent of modern lighting.  It delves into the many dangers from simple stumbling and drowning to criminal activity such as robbery, poaching, and worse.  It is a must-read for any GM looking to enhance his descriptive abilities for setting presentation.

Medieval Castle Interiors

A quick way to gain inspiration for a setting is to do a Google image search.  It's important to use some specific but not too specific keywords.  One might get some great exterior shots of Medieval Castles with those keywords but to get some inside shots, which can help inspire encounters and RPing scenes within settings, add the word Interiors or the words Dining Hall or even Dungeon.  Setting influences gameplay at the encounter (and not strictly combat encounter) level.

A Game Master needs to think of himself as does the director of a film, looking for the right location and deciding how to shoot that location when the players are on the stage.  Of course, the players in this case have much more volition than do actors with a script.  A GM also needs to be prepared to pan the view with the choices made by the players.  Because of this mandate, a GM will often fall back on a battlemat or other style of overview map that gives a bird's-eye-view of a location.  If one is trying to keep players immersed in a game, this strategy can backfire.  It pulls back from a scene in a way that takes players out of the location and makes them think in terms of direction of the scene as a whole rather than from the perspective of their character.

Even if a GM is going to pull back in this manner as a way to plunge into combat, he should keep some descriptive elements available that imagine the setting location through the eyes of someone with boots on the ground.  Prior to play, or on the fly if the players are moving into areas that have yet to be fleshed out, it will serve the roleplaying aspects of any tabletop RPG if they take the time to think in terms of the five senses, and in particular the five senses of one or more of the player characters in the room.  Get the PCs in the scene, keep them in the scene, and then allow the scene to unfold based on player character actions.

Mythology Guide

If you have been stumped while developing your own setting, you could do far worse than to model some of your homebrew setting mythology on the classics.  There's a pretty good primer available on Greek and Roman mythology online at the Mythology Guide.  Certainly, you could just grab stuff wholesale or even file off the serial numbers by changing the names around a bit, but I would suggest reading through them and making some notes on whatever inspires you and using those notes as the basis for something even more your own.

As a Harryhausen fan, you know I love the tale of Jason and the Argonauts.  With not a lot of effort, one could take just the tale regard The Golden Fleece and turn it not only into the basis for an adventure but also to flesh out the locations as potential static encounters or ports of call for many gaming sessions.  Remember, for a truly dynamic setting, you can't just build a few encounters and funnel the game toward them.  What you really want to do to foster awe in your players is to have many places of wonder dotted around the map with some of the more likely destinations detailed more fully right away.  Then as you learn what hooks seem to be interesting your players, and it's fine to ask them more directly, fill in the less detailed locations based on what they tell you they would like to explore in the near future.  It's okay to wing it, to, to finish out an evening of gaming.  Just be sure that you spend some time between sessions really putting some polish on the most favored places so that the players never feel as if they are going beyond the borders of whatever map you present.  Players know, or should know, that a GM can't do everything at once.  They will be happy working with you provided you show them that the wating is worthwhile.