“What are the most award-winning Science Fiction & Fantasy books of 1974?” 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 1974, let’s set the scene for those awards by taking a look at what else was happening that year:

1974

First Personal Computer (Altair 8800), Black Hole Radiation discovered by Stephen Hawking, Superstring Theory Introduced, Touch-screen interface invented, Patty Hearst Kidnapped by Symbionese Liberation Army. World Population reaches 4 Billion. Super Outbreak of tornadoes in US. Hank Aaron becomes all-time home run leader. Worlds Fair Opens in Spokane Washington. India becomes 6th nation to detonate a nuclear weapon. West Germany Beats Netherlands in World Cup. Philippe Petit, a Man oN Wire if you will, crosses between Twin Towers. Richard nixon Resigns. Gerald Ford Becomes President, pardons Nixon. Ali knocks out Foreman in Rumble in the Jungle. World Tourism Organization established. Lucy hominid skeleton found. Malta becomes a republic. World Intellectual Property Organization becomes agency of UN. Last Japanese holdout from WW2 surrenders. Rubix’s Cube introduced. Dungeons & Dragons introduced. Deaths – Duke Ellington, Charles Lindbergh, Oskar Schindler, Ed Sullivan, etc. Popular Entertainment released – The Godfather Part II, Blazing Saddles, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Chinatown, Young Frankenstein, Planet of the Apes. Non SFF books – Jaws, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, All the President’s Men, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Carrie, etc.

And now, on to the list…

The Top Science Fiction & Fantasy Novels Of 1974

16 .) Excalibur by Anne Laubenthal

The novel is set in modern times against the background of the legendary Medieval Welsh colonization of Mobile, Alabama under the prince Madoc in the 12th century. The modern Pendragon, King Arthur’s secret successor, must recover Arthur’s famed sword Excalibur.

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15 .) The Embedding by Ian Watson

Ian Watson’s brilliant debut novel was one of the most significant publications in British sf in the 1970s. Intellectually bracing and grippingly written, it is the story of three experiments in linguistics, and is driven by a searching analysis of the nature of communication. Fiercely intelligent, energetic and challenging, it immediately established Watson as a writer of rare power and vision, and is now recognized as a modern classic.

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14 .) High Deryni by Katherine Kurtz

With young King Kelson on the throne of Gwynedd, the priesthood of the Eleven Kingdoms felt its control deeply threatened. For Kelson was half Deryni — part of that race of humans gifted with extrasensory powers…a race that had ruled two centuries earlier, but was dethroned and driven underground. Now, the final battle for ultimate power was about to break into open conflict, led by the Church which equated the supernatural powers of the Deryni with witchcraft and heresy!

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13 .) Protector by Larry Niven

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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12 .) Hrolf Krak’s Saga by Paul Anderson

The Danish king Halfdan is murdered and his position usurped by his brother Frodhi. Halfdan’s young sons Helgi and Hroar go into hiding to escape his fate, successfully eluding Frodhi until they reach adulthood and can take vengeance on their father’s killer.

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11 .) The Green Gene by Peter Dickinson

Dr. P. P. Humayan expects prejudice from the English. Growing up in Bombay, he was raised on stories of the injustices of life in Britain, where racial status is marked on one’s papers and anyone of Celtic descent is born with green skin and forced to live in walled-off ghettos. But when he travels to London to announce that he has solved the genetic mystery of why the Celts are born green, he is shocked by the system’s brutality. Only one English girl is kind to him—and she will soon find herself in mortal peril

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10 .) The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

On the Midwinter Day that is his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton discovers a special gift — that he is the last of the Old Ones, immortals dedicated to keeping the world from domination by the forces of evil, the Dark. At once, he is plunged into a quest for the six magical Signs that will one day aid the Old Ones in the final battle between the Dark and the Light. And for the twelve days of Christmas, while the Dark is rising, life for Will is full of wonder, terror, and delight.

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9 .) Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity’s Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce’s Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force

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8 .) Inverted World by Christopher Priest

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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7 .) The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

This classic work of science fiction is widely considered to be the ultimate time-travel novel. When Daniel Eakins inherits a time machine, he soon realizes that he has enormous power to shape the course of history. He can foil terrorists, prevent assassinations, or just make some fast money at the racetrack. And if he doesn’t like the results of the change, he can simply go back in time and talk himself out of making it! But Dan soon finds that there are limits to his powers and forces beyond his control

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6 .) Dune by Frank Herbert

Here is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family–and would bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream

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5 .) The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart

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4 .) The People of the Wind by Poul Anderson

They said it could never work: one was born of Earth, the other of the sky; one has organized itself into increasingly complex governments, the other stays free as the wind. Yet out of such seemingly disparate materials a single nation, forged from the best of both races, has been formed on the planet Avalon. Then the two races go to war, and Avalon is forced to choose sides–or defy both

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3 .) Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

The capstone and crowning achievement of Heinlein’s famous Future History, Time Enough for Love follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein’s longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor

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2 .) Malevil by Robert Merle

The story’s events take place in rural France in the late twentieth century. The protagonist is Emanuel Comte, former school director, now turned farmer and landowner. He is also an owner of a tourist attraction – an old castle called Malevil after the nearby village. Comte is a highly motivated, well-respected person with a talent for diplomacy and leadership.

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1 .) Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

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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The Award Nominations & Winners

(Winners Highlighted)

Nebula Award – Best Novel

Hugo Award – Best Novel

BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) – Best Novel

Jupiter Award – Best Novel

Seiun (Japanese) Award – Best Translated Novel

John W. Campbell Memorial Award – Best Science Fiction Novel

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award – Adult Literature

Locus Award – Best Science Fiction Novel