Reading list of the best books of science-fiction.

I have recently bought a couple of e-ink readers for the familly, and I wanted a list of books to load on them before going on vacations!

I was trying to remember science-fictions books that I loved reading when I was a kid, so that I would re-read some of them, and share these with my kids. I would like my own kids to read more SF. They don’t have the same taste though, and they read only in French.

Ideally, I would focus on the very bests books: renwoned ones, classic ones from the godlen age of SF. But then, I also wanted to get ideas or some of the most recent price wining books as well. Recent books would be easier to read for kids, at least that’s what I think.

So it started with what I have in my book shelves (and cardboards of books…), some personal memories, a few online “list of best SF books” (in French) and a series of iterative prompts on LLMs to expend it, refine it, etc.

I have now published a cleaned-up version as a permanent page: Les meilleurs livres de science-fiction et fantasy. Warning: the page is in French, listing the French editions and is meant for French-speaking readers.

Each entry has a theme and a one-line summary, so we can browse it with context instead of just having titles. And it comes with three guided reading paths:

• one for an adult (me) who used to read a lot and wants to get back into it (short books first, always a short story collection on the side, big cycles last),
• one for a strong reader of 12 years oald, which climbs from Stefan Wul’s Niourk all the way to Dune over a year or two
• one for a 13-year-old who prefer the romance but has a taste for fantasy as well.

I will most likely update it along the following weeks, months and years!