“What are the most Award-Winning Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of the 1970’s?”

We have been going year-by-year through the 1970’s taking a look at the most award-winning books each year. As we reach the end of the decade we thought it would be interesting to take a look back at all of the years together to see which books did the best. We have gone over our arbitrary ranking system before, but essentially we gave a book 5 points for being nominated for an award and an additional 5 points if it won the award.

A larger look back at the decade also helps to highlight a few books that might not have ranked too high for any one year. Because awards are usually given out to books that came out in the previous year, sometimes a books wins were split between different years, depending on when it came out in that country or when the cut-off date was for certain awards, meaning it didn’t rank as high for our yearly top lists as it could have.

Altogether there was 186 unique books that were nominated for Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards during the 1970’s.

If you would like a more detailed breakdown of the years, books, and awards check out our lists for each year:

• 1970
• 1971
• 1972
• 1973
• 1974
• 1975
• 1976
• 1977
• 1978
• 1979

The Top Science Fiction & Fantasy Books 1970-1979

1.) Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Locus (Pre Split) – 10 (Win)
• BSFA – 10 (Win)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel- 10 (Win)
• Nebula – 10 (Win)
• Hugo- 10 (Win)
• Jupiter Awards- 10 (Win)

Point Total: 60

At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredible, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind’s first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams… and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits — just behind a Raman airlock door

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2 .) Ringworld by Larry Niven

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Japan Seiun Translated – 10 (Win)
• Nebula – 10 (Win)
• Hugo – 10 (Win)
• Locus (Pre Split) – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 50

A new place is being built, a world of huge dimensions, encompassing millions of miles, stronger than any planet before it. There is gravity, and with high walls and its proximity to the sun, a livable new planet that is three million times the area of the Earth can be formed. We can start again!

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3 .) The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Award Nominations / Wins:

• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 5 (Nomination)
• Nebula – 10 (Win)
• Hugo – 10 (Win)
• Jupiter Awards – 10 (Win)
• Locus (Pre Split) – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 50

Centuries ago, the moon Anarres was settled by utopian anarchists who left the Earthlike planet Urras in search of a better world, a new beginning. Now a brilliant physicist, Shevek, determines to reunite the two civilizations that have been separated by hatred since long before he was born

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4 .) Gateway by Frederik Pohl

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Locus Awards Sci-Fi – 10 (Win)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 10 (Win)
• Nebula – 10 (Win)
• Hugo – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 45

Gateway opened on all the wealth of the Universe…and on reaches of unimaginable horror. When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is…in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!

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5 .) The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 10 (Win)
• Hugo – 10 (Win)
• Locus (Pre Split) – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 40

The Earth’s leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand–despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties and do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But “home” may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries

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6 .) Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Jupiter Awards – 10 (Win)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 5 (Nomination)
• Hugo – 10 (Win)
• Locus (Pre Split) – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 40

Now one of her most famous novels returns to print, the spellbinding story of an isolated post-holocaust community determined to preserve itself, through a perilous experiment in cloning.

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7 .) The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Locus (Pre Split) – 10 (Win)
• Nebula – 10 (Win)
• Hugo – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 40

Only a few know the terrifying truth–an outcast Earth scientist, a rebellious alien inhabitant of a dying planet, a lunar-born human intuitionist who senses the imminent annihilation of the Sun. They know the truth–but who will listen? They have foreseen the cost of abundant energy–but who will believe? These few beings, human and alien, hold the key to the Earth’s survival.

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8 .) Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 10 (Win)
• Hugo – 10 (Win)
• Locus (Pre Split) – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 35

This is the haunting story of an extraordinary woman and her dangerous quest to reclaim her healing powers. Revered healer Snake must undertake a journey in search of the dreamsnake, whose bite eases the fear and pain of death

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9 .) No award by No award

Award Nominations / Wins:

• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 10 (Win)
• BSFA – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 30

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10 .) The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)
• Locus (Pre Split) – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 25

In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George’s dreams for his own purposes.

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11 .) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Hugo – 10 (Win)
• Nebula – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 25

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12 .) A Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson

Award Nominations / Wins:

• The World Fantasy Awards – 5 (Nomination)
• Mythopoeic Fantasy Award – 10 (Win)
• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 20

The setting is in a parallel world where William Shakespeare was not the Bard but the Great Historian. In this world, all the events depicted within Shakespeare’s plays were accounts of historical fact, not fiction. As some of the plays depicted anachronistic technology, Anderson extrapolated that this world was more technologically advanced than in reality. However, the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are also part of this world. The novel takes place in the era of Cromwell and Charles I, but the characters deal with the English Civil War which is coeval with anIndustrial Revolution. The fairy element provides a plot tension with the more advanced technology.

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13 .) A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• Nebula – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 20

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14 .) Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 20

Jason Taverner—world-famous talk show host and man-about-town—wakes up one day to find that no one knows who he is—including the vast databases of the totalitarian government. And in a society where lack of identification is a crime, Taverner has no choice but to go on the run with a host of shady characters, including crooked cops and dealers of alien drugs. But do they know more than they are letting on? And just how can a person’s identity be erased overnight?

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15 .) Gloriana by Michael Moorcock

Award Nominations / Wins:

• The World Fantasy Awards – 10 (Win)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 20

A fable satirizing Spenser’s “The Fairie Queen” and reflecting the real life of Elizabeth I, tells of a woman who ascends to the throne upon the death of her debauched and corrupted father, King Hern. Gloriana’s reign brings the Empire of Albion into a Golden Age, but her oppressive responsibilities choke her, prohibiting any form of sexual satisfaction, no matter what fetish she tries. Her problem is in fact symbolic of the hypocrisy of her entire court. While her life is meant to mirror that of her nation – an image of purity, virtue, enlightenment and prosperity – the truth is that her peaceful empire is kept secure by her wicked chancellor Monfallcon and his corrupt network of spies and murderers, the most sinister of whom is Captain Quire, who is commissioned to seduce Gloriana and thus bring down Albion and the entire empire

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16 .) Man Plus by Frederik Pohl

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 5 (Nomination)
• Nebula – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 20

In the not-too-distant future, a desperate war for natural resources threatens to bring civilization to a crashing halt. Nuclear warships from around the globe begin positioning themselves as the American government works feverishly to complete a massive project to colonize Mars. Former astronaut Roger Torraway has agreed to be transformed by the latest advances in biological and cybernetic science into something new, a being that can survive the rigors of Mars before it is terraformed. Becoming Man Plus will allow him to be the linchpin in opening the new Martian frontier…but not without challenging his humanity as no man has ever been challenged before.

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17 .) Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Locus Awards Fantasy – 5 (Nomination)
• The World Fantasy Awards – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 20

Our Lady of Darkness introduces San Francisco horror writer Franz Westen. While studying his beloved city through binoculars from his apartment window, he is astonished to see a mysterious figure waving at him from a hilltop two miles away. He walks to Corona Heights and looks back at his building, to discover the figure waving at him from his apartment window–and to find himself caught in a century-spanning curse that may have destroyed Clark Ashton Smith and Jack London

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18 .) The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Locus Awards Fantasy – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 20

The story of the creation of the world and of the First Age, this is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back and in whose events some of them, such as Elrond and Galadriel, took part. The three Silmarils were jewels created by Fëanor, most gifted of the Elves. Within them was imprisoned the Light of the Two Trees of Valinor before the Trees themselves were destroyed by Morgoth, the first Dark Lord. Thereafter, the unsullied Light of Valinor lived on only in the Silmarils, but they were seized by Morgoth and set in his crown, which was guarded in the impenetrable fortress of Angband in the north of Middle-earth. The Silmarillion is the history of the rebellion of Fëanor and his kindred against the gods, their exile from Valinor and return to Middle-earth, and their war, hopeless despite all their heroism, against the great Enemy

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19 .) Up the Line by Robert Silverberg

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Japan Seiun Translated – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 20

Up the Line is a time travel novel by American science fiction author Robert Silverberg. The plot revolves mainly around the paradoxes brought about by time travel, though it is also notable for its liberal dosage of sex and humor.

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20 .) A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

Award Nominations / Wins:

• BSFA – 10 (Win)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

Bob Arctor is a junkie and a drug dealer, both using and selling the mind-altering Substance D. Fred is a law enforcement agent, tasked with bringing Bob down. It sounds like a standard case. The only problem is that Bob and Fred are the same person. Substance D doesn’t just alter the mind, it splits it in two, and neither side knows what the other is doing or that it even exists. Now, both sides are growing increasingly paranoid as Bob tries to evade Fred while Fred tries to evade his suspicious bosses

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21 .) Blind Voices by Tom Reamy

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• BSFA – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

One summer day in the 1920s, Haverstock’s Traveling Curiosus and Wondershow rides into a small Midwestern town. Haverstock’s show is a presentation of mysterious wonders: feats of magic, strange creatures, and frightening powers. Three teenage girls attend the opening performance that evening which, for each, promises love and threatens death. The three girls are drawn to the show and its performers-a lusty centaur, Angel the magical albino boy, the rowdy stage hands-but frightened by the enigmatic owner, Haverstock. The girls at first try to dismiss these marvels as trickery, but it becomes all too real, too vivid to be other than nightmare reality

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22 .) Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

Dying Inside has stood the test of time and has been recognized as one of the finest novels the field has ever produced. Never wasting a word, Silverberg persuasively shows us what it would be like to read minds, painting an unforgettable portrait of a man shaped by that unique power; a power he is now inexorably losing

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23 .) Inferno by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

After being thrown out the window of his luxury apartment, science fiction writer Allen Carpentier wakes to find himself at the gates of hell. Feeling he’s landed in a great opportunity for a book, he attempts to follow Dante’s road map. Determined to meet Satan himself, Carpentier treks through the Nine Layers of Hell led by Benito Mussolini, and encounters countless mental and physical tortures. As he struggles to escape, he’s taken through new, puzzling, and outlandish versions of sin–recast for the present day.

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24 .) Inverted World by Christopher Priest

Award Nominations / Wins:

• BSFA – 10 (Win)
• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

The city is winched along tracks through a devastated land full of hostile tribes. Rails must be freshly laid ahead of the city and carefully removed in its wake. Rivers and mountains present nearly insurmountable challenges to the ingenuity of the city’s engineers. But if the city does not move, it will fall farther and farther behind the “optimum” into the crushing gravitational field that has transformed life on Earth. The only alternative to progress is death. The secret directorate that governs the city makes sure that its inhabitants know nothing of this. Raised in common in crèches, nurtured on synthetic food, prevented above all from venturing outside the closed circuit of the city, they are carefully sheltered from the dire necessities that have come to define human existence. And yet the city is in crisis. The people are growing restive, the population is dwindling, and the rulers know that, for all their efforts, slowly but surely the city is slipping ever farther behind the optimum.

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25 .) Orbitsville by Bob Shaw

Award Nominations / Wins:

• BSFA – 10 (Win)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

Racing from the certain vengeance of Earth’s tyrant ruler, space captain Vance Garamond flees the Solar System. And discovers the almost unimaginably vast spherical structure soon to become famous as ‘Orbitsville’ – a new home for Earth’s huddled masses.

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26 .) Protector by Larry Niven

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• Ditmar Award – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 15

Phssthpok the Pak had been traveling for most of his thirty-two thousand years. His mission: save, develop, and protect the group of Pak breeders sent out into space some two and a half million years before

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27 .) The Computer Connection by Alfred Bester

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)
• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

A band of immortal-as charming a bunch of eccentrics as you’ll ever come across-recruit a new member, the brilliant Cherokee physicist Sequoya Guess. Dr. Guess, with group’s help, gain control of Extro, the supercomputer that controls all mechanical activity on Earth. They plan to rid Earth of political repression and to further Guess’s researches-which may lead to a great leap in human evolution to produce a race of supermen. But Extro takes over Guess instead and turns malevolent. The task of the merry band suddenly becomes a fight in deadly earnest for the future of Earth

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28 .) The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A, McKillip

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Mythopoeic Fantasy Award – 5 (Nomination)
• The World Fantasy Awards – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 15

Like the Ring trilogy or the Earthsea books . . . this magical moonlit fantasy has dignity and romance, heart-stopping suspense, adventure, richness of concept and language

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29 .) The Jagged Orbit by John Brunner

Award Nominations / Wins:

• BSFA – 10 (Win)
• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

In THE JAGGED ORBIT, Brunner, writing at the peak of form that allowed him to create STAND ON ZANZIBAR, takes a long, hard, disturbing, hilarious look at the near, and not-so-distant, future and the catastrophic changes that widespread and rampant drug abuse, uncontrolled violence, high-level corruption in government, inhumane treatment of the too-readily defined “insane” and the accompanying collapse of the social order are wreaking on the world we recognize and turning it into a reality we must fear and hope to avoid. Brunner tells a spine-chilling tale and makes where the world could possibly go all too believable and real for our comfort

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30 .) The Stochastic Man by Robert Silverberg

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

Lew Nichols can predict the future. Not see the future, just make predictions based on research and statistics. Nichols is damn good at it, though, and his accuracy makes him a valuable addition to Paul Quinn’s political campaign for New York City Mayor and possibly the White House. But, when Nichols meets eccentric millionaire Martin Carvajal, predictions suddenly seem petty and flippant. You see, Carvajal can actually see the future—not trends, not options—a signal line of events stretching out ahead. It’s a gift Nichols can learn from this “mentor,” but at what price? Will knowing the future make the present meaningless?

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31 .) The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• Ditmar Award – 10 (Win)

Point Total: 15

Jaxom, a rebellious young aristocrat, and Ruth, his white dragon, fly into another time to retrieve the queen’s stolen egg, thereby averting a dragonrider war, and find their planet threatened once again by a Threadfall

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32 .) The Year of the Quiet Sun by Wilson Tucker

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

The Year of the Quiet Sun is a 1970 science fiction novel by Wilson Tucker about the use of forward time travel to ascertain future political and social events.

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33 .) To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Hugo – 10 (Win)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

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34 .) Tower of Glass by Robert Silverberg

Award Nominations / Wins:

• Nebula – 5 (Nomination)
• Hugo – 5 (Nomination)
• Ditmar Award – 5 (Nomination)

Point Total: 15

Simeon Krug has a vision – and the vast wealth necessary to turn dream into reality. What he wishes is to communicate with the stars, to answer signals from deep space. The colossal tower he’s constructing for this purpose soars above the Arctic tundra, and the seemingly perfect androids building it view Krug as their god. But Krug is only flesh-and-blood, and when his androids discover the truth, their anger knows no bounds… and it threatens much more than the tower

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