“What are the most award-winning Science Fiction & Fantasy books of 1983?” We looked at all the large SFF book awards given, aggregating and ranking the books that appeared so we could answer that very question!

A note on our grading system: We give 5 points for every nomination a book received and an additional 5 points for each win. These values are purely arbitrary, easy to add up, numbers. For more info on our super scientific grading system visit our Info page. For a full list of the awards and award winners can be found below our rankings at the bottom of the page.

Before we take a look at the top Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 1983, let’s set the scene for those awards by taking a look at what else was happening that year:

1983

Internet first begins, First mobile cellular telephone call. Kilauea begins erupting on the Big Island of Hawaii (still flowing). Wah Mee massacre in Seattle. final episode of MASH airs. Tokyo Disneyland opens. US embassy bombing in Beirut kills 63. Disney channel is founded. Margaret Thatcher re-elected. Pioneer 10 passes the orbit of Neptune for the first time. Sally Ride becomes first American woman in space. GPS made available for civilian use. First Hooters opens. Invasion of Grenada. Martin Luther King Jr. Day becomes an official holiday. Additional entertainment released – Scarface, The outsiders, Return of the Jedi, The A-Team, Terms of Endearment, Risky Business, Trading Places, Valley Girl, War Games, The Right Stuff, A Christmas Story, The Meaning of Life, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Winter’s Tale, The Witches, etc.

And now, on to the list…

43 .) Fire Dancer by Ann Maxwell

Rheba is the sole survivor of a blaze that destroyed her planet, and Kirtn is the Bre’n warrior sworn to protect the exquisite, sensual fire dancer on a perilous journey to a far-off planet.

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42 .) The Zen Gun by Barrington J. Bayley

“The novel about:
the absolutely ultimate weapon that can ever exist…
The sub-human who found it and tried to use it…
The beasts who manned humanity’s last star fleet…
The widening rim in the space-time continuum…
The brief cosmic empire of the pigs…
The theory of gravitaitational recession…
The su[er-samurai who served the zen-gunner…
The colonial girl who defied the galactic empire…”

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41 .) The Nestling by Charles L. Grant

“Shadow-fast
Whisper-soft
Something is coming
Something deadly…
The Nestling
A quiet rustling of the wind?
A woman’s laughter in the night?
Or an evil which defies all nature..”

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40 .) Queen of Sorcery by David Eddings

The master Sorcerer Belgarath and his daughter Polgara the arch-Sorceress were on the trail of the Orb, seeking to regain its saving power before the final disaster prophesized by the legends. And with them went Garion, a simple farm boy only months before, but now the focus of the struggle. He had never believed in sorcery and wanted no part of it. Yet with every league they traveled, the power grew in him, forcing him to acts of wizardry he could not accept.

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39 .) Millennium by John Varley

In the skies over Oakland, California, a DC-10 and a 747 are about to collide. But in the far distant future, a time travel team is preparing to snatch the passengers, leaving prefabricated smoking bodies behind for the rescue teams to find. And in Washington D.C., an air disaster investigator named Smith is about to get a phone call that will change his life…and end the world as we know it.

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38 .) The Many-Colored Land by Julian May

In the year 2034, Theo Quderian, a French physicist, made an amusing but impractical discovery: the means to use a one-way, fixed-focus time warp that opened into a place in the Rhone River valley during the idyllic Pliocene Epoch, six million years ago. But, as time went on, a certain usefulness developed. The misfits and mavericks of the future—many of them brilliant people—began to seek this exit door to a mysterious past. In 2110, a particularly strange and interesting group was preparing to make the journey—a starship captain, a girl athlete, a paleontologist, a woman priest, and others who had reason to flee the technological perfection of twenty-second-century life.

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37 .) Oath of Fealty by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

In the near future, Los Angeles is an all but uninhabitable war zone, racked by crime, violence, pollution and poverty. But above the blighted city, a Utopia has arisen: Todos Santos, a thousand-foot high single-structured city, designed to used state-of-the-art technology to create a completely human-friendly environment, offering its dwellers everything they could want in exchange for their oath of allegiance and their constant surveillance . But there are those who want to see the utopia destroyed, whose answer to tomorrow’s best and brightest hope is mindless violence. And they have just entered Todos Santos. .

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36 .) The Red Magician by Lisa Goldstein

In the schoolroom of a simple European village, Kicsi spends her days dreaming of the lands beyond the mountains: Paris and New York, Arabia and Shanghai. When the local rabbi curses Kicsi’s school for teaching lessons in Hebrew, the holy tongue, the possibility of adventure seems further away than ever. But when a mysterious stranger appears telling stories of far-off lands, Kicsi feels the world within her grasp.

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35 .) The Floating Gods by M. John Harrison

“The phone rang three times before Andy picked it up. “”Hello?”” he said. A voice replied, “”I just killed someone.””
Only Andy Zadinski is convinced that the caller is serious. But no one else will listen; not the police, not his friends, not even his father. They all say he’s crying wolf. But when Andy decides to investigate he discovers more than he bargained for. Nina Klemmer may not be the only target for murder after all..”

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34 .) The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Here is the magical legend of King Arthur, vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne. A spellbinding novel, an extraordinary literary achievement, THE MISTS OF AVALON will stay with you for a long time to come..

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33 .) Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle

Orthe – half-civilized, half-barbaric, home to human-like beings who live and die by the code of the sword. Earth envoy Lynne Christie has been sent here to establish contact and to determine whether this is a world worth developing. But first Christie must come to understand that human-like is not and never can be human, and that not even Orthe’s leaders can stop the spread of rumors about her, dark whisperings that could cost Christie her life.

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32 .) The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce

The Darkangel, a vampire of astounding beauty and youth, can only summon his full power when he finds his 14th and final bride. But for Aeriel, whom he kidnaps to serve his brides, there is something about him–something beyond his obvious evil–that makes her want to save him rather than destroy him.

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31 .) Cat Karina by Michael G. Coney

Few true humans remain on the future Earth, where caimen, shrugleggers, and felinas dominate. The people are descendents of crocodiles, alien races, and jaguars, and they are much different than the humans–they are products of genetic experiments created to perform specific functions. Some work in the swampy lands, others are the strong burden-bearers, but none are as beautiful as the felines–not even the humans. And no one is worthy enough to win over the most attractive felina, Karina. She is a rare bea

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30 .) God Stalk by P.C. Hodgell

In the first book of the Kencyrath, Jame, a young woman missing her memories, struggles out of the haunted wastes into Tai-tastigon, the old, corrupt, rich and god-infested city between the mountains and the lost lands of the Kencyrath. Jame’s struggle to regain her strength, her memories, and the resources to travel to join her people, the Kencyrath, drag her into several relationships, earning affection, respect, bitter hatred and, as always, haunting memories of friends and enemies dead in her wake.

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29 .) Tea with the Black Dragon by R. A. MacAvoy

Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter Elizabeth is in trouble, she just does not know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours of the night are the only contact she has had with Elizabeth for years. Now Elizabeth has sent her a plane ticket and reserved a room for her at San Francisco’s most luxurious hotel. Yet she has not tried to contact Martha since she arrived, leaving her lonely, confused, and a little bit worried. Into the story steps Mayland Long, a distinguished-looking and wealthy Chinese man who lives at the hotel and is drawn to Martha’s good nature and ability to pinpoint the truth of a matter. Mayland and Martha become close in a short period of time and he promises to help her find Elizabeth, making small inroads in the mystery before Martha herself disappears. Now Mayland is struck by the realization, too late, that he is in love with Martha, and now he fears for her life. Determined to find her, he sets his prodigious philosopher’s mind to work on the problem, embarking on a potentially dangerous adventure.

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28 .) The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

Harry Crewe is an orphan girl who comes to live in Damar, the desert country shared by the Homelanders and the secretive, magical Free Hillfolk. When Corlath, the Hillfolk King, sees her for the first time, he is shaken — for he can tell that she is something more than she appears to be. He will soon realize what Harry has never guessed: she is to become Harimad-sol, King’s Rider, and carry the Blue Sword, Gonturan, which no woman has wielded since the legendary Lady Aerin bore it into battle, generations past.

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27 .) The Door in the Hedge by Robin McKinley

Master storyteller Robin McKinley here spins two new fairy tales and retells two cherished classics. All feature princesses touched with or by magic. There is Linadel, who lives in a kingdom next to Faerieland, where princesses are stolen away on their seventeenth birthdays-and Linadel’s seventeenth birthday is tomorrow. And Korah, whose brother is bewitched by the magical Golden Hind; now it is up to her to break the spell. Rana must turn to a talking frog to help save her kingdom from the evil Aliyander. And then there are the twelve princesses, enspelled to dance through the soles of their shoes every night.

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26 .) Dreamrider by Sandra Miesel

Adrift on a sea of dream and nightmare.

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25 .) Phantom by Thomas Tessier

It is the story of Ned Covington, a ten-year-old boy, who explores an abandoned building near his home and what he finds there.

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24 .) The Windhover Tapes: An Image of Voices by Warren Norwood

This book follows a diplomat and his crew on the starship, Windhover, as they journey throughout space seeing all sorts of alien lands.

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23 .) Benefits by Zoe Fairbairns

Benefits is a feminist dystopia in which a patriarchal state uses the social security system to impose repressive lifestyles on women.

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22 .) Roderick or The Education of a Young Machine by John Sladek

The robot, Roderick, who was educated by watching television, is adopted by an elderly couple in Kansas and tries to adjust to American society

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21 .) Startide Rising by David Brin

The Terran exploration vessel Streaker has crashed in the uncharted water world of Kithrup, bearing one of the most important discoveries in galactic history. Below, a handful of her human and dolphin crew battles armed rebellion and a hostile planet to safeguard her secret–the fate of the Progenitors, the fabled First Race who seeded wisdom throughout the stars.

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20 .) 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke

2001: A Space Odyssey shocked, amazed, and delighted millions in the late 1960s. An instant book and movie classic, its fame has grown over the years. Yet along with the almost universal acclaim, a host of questions has grown more insistent through the years, for example: who or what transformed Dave Bowman into the Star-Child? What alien purpose lay behind the monoliths on the Moon and out in space? What could drive HAL to kill the crew? Now all those questions and many more have been answered, in this stunning sequel to the international bestseller. Cosmic in sweep, eloquent in its depiction of Man’s place in the Universe, and filled with the romance of space, this novel is a monumental achievement and a must-read for Arthur C. Clarke fans old and new.

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19 .) The Pride of Chanur by C. J. Cherryh

No one at Meetpoint Station had ever seen a creature like the Outsider. Naked-hided, blunt toothed and blunt-fingered, Tully was the sole surviving member of his company — a communicative, spacefaring species hitherto unknown — and he was a prisoner of his discoverer/ captors the sadistic, treacherous kif, until his escape onto the hani ship The Pride of Chanur.

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18 .) The Firelings by Carol Kendall

The Firelings, who live precariously on the edge of the Volcano Belcher, must offer the volcano a sacrificial victim or escape through the Secret Way of the Goat.

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17 .) Lady of Light by Diana L. Paxson

“It was the sixth century after the Cataclysm…

…and in the fair coastal kingdom of Westria, the dashing young King set out to find a bride, a lady who could be not only mistress of his heart, but also Mistress of the Jewels.

The Jewels of Westria: whoever could master their mysteries controlled the awesome power of the elements – and ensured the survival of fair Westria.
“

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16 .) Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin

Abner Marsh, a struggling riverboat captain, suspects that something’s amiss when he is approached by a wealthy aristocrat with a lucrative offer. The hauntingly pale, steely-eyed Joshua York doesn’t care that the icy winter of 1857 has wiped out all but one of Marsh’s dilapidated fleet; nor does he care that he won’t earn back his investment in a decade. York’s reasons for traversing the powerful Mississippi are to be none of Marsh’s concern—no matter how bizarre, arbitrary, or capricious York’s actions may prove. Not until the maiden voyage ofFevre Dream does Marsh realize that he has joined a mission both more sinister, and perhaps more noble, than his most fantastic nightmare—and humankind’s most impossible dream.

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15 .) Voyage from Yesteryear by James P. Hogan

Voyage from Yesteryear is a 1982 science fiction novel by the author James P. Hogan which explores themes of anarchism and the appropriateness of certain social values in the context of high-technology. The inspiration for the novel was the contention that the ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland had no immediate practical solution, and could only be solved if the children of one generation were somehow separated from their parents, and hence did not learn any of their prejudices.

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14 .) Tik-Tok by John Sladek

Something has gone very seriously wrong with Tik-Tok’s “asimov circuits.” They should keep him on the straight and narrow, following Asimov’s first law of robotics: A robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. But, that’s not what’s happening. Although every thing looks fine from the surface, and Tik-Tok maintains the outward appearance of a mild-mannered robot, his agenda is murderously different. And, it’s not just because of his artistic tendencies and sympathy for the robot rights movement, either. This witty chronicle of one abnormal machine-man, and his dealings with an assortment of deranged and maniacal humans, truly showcases the satirical genius of John Sladek.

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13 .) Nifft the Lean by Michael Shea

“Follow the adventures of Nifft the Lean, the master thief whose felonious appropriations and larcenous skills will lead you through Stygian realms to challenge your most lurid fantasies and errant imaginings. Places where horror, harm and long eerie calms flow past the traveler in endless, unpredictable succession.

Travel with the man whose long, rawboned, sticky fingers and stark length of arm will lead you down to the vermiculus grottoes of the demon sea, to stand beneath the subworld’s lurid sky and battle monsters who seem the spiritual distillations of human evil itself! We invite you to the very gates of Hell and beyond―come if you dare!”

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12 .) The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick

The final book in Philip K. Dick’s VALIS trilogy, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer brings the author’s search for the identity and nature of God to a close. The novel follows Bishop Timothy Archer as he travels to Israel, ostensibly to examine ancient scrolls bearing the words of Christ. But, more importantly, this leads him to examine the decisions he made during his life and how they may have contributed to the suicide of his mistress and son.

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11 .) Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward

In a moving story of sacrifice and triumph, human scientists establish a relationship with intelligent life forms–the cheela–living on Dragon’s Egg, a neutron star where one Earth hour is equivalent to hundreds of their years. The cheela culturally evolve from savagery to the discovery of science, and for a brief time men are their diligent teachers.

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10 .) The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

Ace Books is proud to present this classic novel of time travel in a beautiful new trade edition. It took the fantasy world by storm a decade ago, and now fans can savor this Philip K. Dick Award-winner for the first time all over again. Only the dazzling imagination of Tim Powerscould have assembled such an insane cast of characters: an ancient Egyptian sorcerer, a modern millionaire, a body-switching werewolf, a hideously deformed clown, a young woman disguised as a boy, a brainwashed Lord Byron, and finally, our hero, Professor Brendan Doyle.

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9 .) Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

Riddley Walker is a brilliant, unique, completely realized work of fiction. One reads it again and again, discovering new wonders every time through. Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state―and invented a language to represent it. Riddley is at once the Huck Finn and the Stephen Dedalus of his culture―rebel, change agent, and artist.

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8 .) The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe

The Citadel of the Autarch brings The Book of the New Sun to its harrowing conclusion, as Severian clashes in a final reckoning with the dread Autarch, fulfilling an ancient prophecy that will alter forever the realm known as Urth.

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7 .) The One Tree by Stephen R. Donaldson

Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery begin their search for the One Tree that is to be the salvation of the Land. Only he could find the answer and forge a new Staff of Law–but fate decreed that the journey was to be long, the quest arduous, and quite possibly a failure..

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6 .) Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury

The novel details the attempts of two of the priest-clans, the Kaiel & the Mnankrei, to expand into territory controlled by the Stgal. Ultimately, all the priest clans are trying to attain dominance of the planet through the use of new technology, propaganda, treachery, and “war”, a new concept in this world. Previously, killing was done merely in order to provide food.

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5 .) Friday by Robert A. Heinlein

Engineered from the finest genes, and trained to be a secret courier in a future world, Friday operates over a near-future Earth, where chaos reigns. Working at Boss’s whimsical behest she travels from far north to deep south, finding quick, expeditious solutions as one calamity after another threatens to explode in her face..

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4 .) No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop

Joshua Kampa, the illegitimate son of a mute Spanish whore and a black serviceman, has always dreamed of Africa. But his dreams are of an Africa far in the past and are so vivid and in such hallucinatory detail that he is able to question the understanding of eminent palaeontologists. As a result, Joshua is invited to join a most unusual time travel project and is transported millions of years into the past of his dreams.

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3 .) Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov

At last, the costly and bitter war between the two Foundations had come to an end. The scientists of the First Foundation had proved victorious; and now they retum to Hari Seldon’s long-established plan to build a new Empire that the Second Foundation is not destroyed after all-and that its still-defiant survivors are preparing their revenge. Now the two exiled citizens of the Foundation-a renegade Councilman and the doddering historian-set out in search of the mythical planet Earth. . .and proof that the Second Foundation still exists. Meanwhile someone-or something-outside of both Foundations sees to be orchestrating events to suit its own ominous purpose. Soon representatives of both the First and Second Foundations will find themselves racing toward a mysterious world called Gaia and a final shocking destiny at the very end of the universe!

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2 .) Helliconia Spring by Brian Aldiss

The Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author and Science Fiction Grand Master delivers a sweeping epic of a planet suffering deadly conditions of alternating extremes in this Nebula Award finalist Helliconia follows an eccentric orbit around a double-star system with a twenty-six-hundred-year cycle of very long seasons. As spring slowly breaks the brutally long winter, humans emerge from hiding and a long sequence of civilization and growth begins to repeat again, unbeknownst to the participants but watched by an orbiting satellite station, Avernus, created by Earth some centuries ago. Humans free themselves from slavery to the aboriginal Phagors, and religion and science flower and expand. Brian W. Aldiss has, for more than fifty years, continued to challenge readers’ minds with literate, thought-provoking, and inventive fiction. Helliconia Spring’s prescience with regard to climate change is nothing short of extraordinary.

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1 .) The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe

The Sword of the Lictor is the third volume in Wolfe’s remarkable epic, chronicling the odyssey of the wandering pilgrim called Severian, driven by a powerful and unfathomable destiny, as he carries out a dark mission far from his home.

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The 1983 Award Nominations & Winners

(Winners Highlighted)

Nebula Award – Best Novel

Hugo Award – Best Novel

Locus Award – Best Science Fiction Novel

Locus Award – Best Fantasy Novel

Locus Award – Best First Novel

BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) – Best Novel

Philip K. Dick Award

The World Fantasy Award – Best Novel

Prometheus Award – Best Novel

Seiun (Japanese) Award – Best Translated Novel

John W. Campbell Memorial Award – Best Science Fiction Novel

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award – Adult Literature

The Ditmar (Australian) Award – Best International Long Fiction

SF Chronicle Award – Best Novel