“What are the most award-winning Science Fiction & Fantasy books of 1976?” 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 1976, let’s set the scene for those awards by taking a look at what else was happening that year:

1976

First Commercially Developed Supercomputer Introduced. Winter Olympics in Innsbruck Austria. Jobs and Wozniak form Apple Computers. UK and Iceland end the Cod War. NBA and ABA merge. United States Celebrates Bicentennial. Summer Olympics in Montreal Quebec. First Supersymmetry that included gravity introduced. Viking 1 lands on Mars. Tangshan Earthquake in China Kills 242,000. Son of Sam Killer starts killing. Face on Mars Photo Taken. Seattle Seahawks play first game. Big Ben stops running for 9 months. Ebola Virus debuts. Republic of Irelands State of Emergency is lifted for first time since 1939. Carter defeats Ford, becomes first Deep South president since Civil War. Warsaw Treaty Organization is established. Assassination Attempt of Bob Marley in Kingston. Viet Cong disbanded. First Laser Printer introduced. Californias Sodomy Law repealed. Deaths – Agatha Christie, Werner Heisenberg, Howard Hughes, Mao Zedong. Popular Entertainment released – Taxi Driver, Rocky, Carrie, Network, The Omen, Charlies Angels, Logan’s Run, The Bad News Bears, All The Presidents Men, The Muppets Show. Non SFF Books – Roots, Interview With A Vampire, The Selfish Gene, The Final Days, etc.

And now, on to the list…

The Top Science Fiction & Fantasy Books Of 1976

28 .) Autumn Angels by Arthur Byron Cover

Three Godlike men (the lawyer, the fatman and the demon) … seek to give a godlike humanity depression, in an attempt to make their race seek purpose and become the ultimate species in the universe.

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27 .) Guernica Night by Barry N. Malzberg

Earth in the twenty-third century is adorned with corpses as suicides ravage a dehumanised population, compelled to live, or merely exist, in segregated complexes. Despite the technical wizardry of the Church of the Epiphany and the dictates of the unseen rulers, more and more people seek the ultimate exit. One man probes the social disease, but he too fights that dreadful and permanent seduction. If he succumbs, the victory of the Oppressors would be complete.

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26 .) Orbitsville by Bob Shaw

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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25 .) Down to a Sunless Sea by Cordwainer Smith and Genevieve Linebarger

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24 .) Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow

One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow’s imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.

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23 .) 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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22 .) Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo — Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear.

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21 .) The Female Man by Joanna Russ

Living in an altered past that never saw the end of the Great Depression, Jeannine, a librarian, is waiting to be married. Joanna lives in a different version of reality: she’s a 1970s feminist trying to succeed in a man’s world. Janet is from Whileaway, a utopian earth where only women exist. And Jael is a warrior with steel teeth and catlike retractable claws, from an earth with separate-and warring-female and male societies. When these four women meet, the results are startling, outrageous, and subversive.

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20 .) The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

Nickie Haflinger had lived a score of lifetimes…but technically he didn’t exist. He was a fugitive from Tarnover, the high-powered government think tank that had educated him. First he had broken his identity code — then he escaped.

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19 .) The Missing Man by Katherine MacLean

George Sanford has a gift for guessing right the first time and very little else going for him. When Ahmed and his other friends graduate school and got jobs in The City, George finds himself left behind.

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18 .) The Heritage of Hastur by Marion Zimmer Bradley

THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR is a brilliant epic of the pivotal events in the love-hate relationship between the Terran worlds and the semi-alien off-spring of the forgotten colonists who peopled Darkover. This is the complex and compelling tale of the early life of Regis Hastur, Darkover’s greatest monarch. But HERITAGE also spins the terrifying and heartbreaking story of those who sought to control the deadly Sharra Matrix and tells how Lew Alton met and lost his greatest love, Marjorie Scott. This is the unforgettable showdown between these Darkovan lords who would bargain away their world for the glories of Terran science and those who would preserve the special matrix powers that are at once the prize and burden of Darkover.

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17 .) A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire by Michael Bishop

Seth Latimer, a human member of a family of clones representing a far-future interstellar commercial combine, finds himself marooned on Gla Taus with no way home unless he joins a mission to a neighboring world to negotiate the transfer of a minority population from one planet to the other. The lure of trade expansion versus the grip of local custom and belief sets the story in motion. Secrets and treacherous intentions boil to the surface as diplomacy devolves into brutal expediency against a background of complex gender and religious polarization. The colorful details of alien settings and cultures are lovingly woven into this story of passionate individuals caught up in the sweep of history toward tragedy, change, and eventual renewal.

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16 .) A Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson

Welcome to an alternate civil-war-torn seventeenth-century England—a world where Hamlet once brooded and Othello jealously raged. Here faeries and sprites gambol in English woods, railroads race across the landscape while manned balloons float above the countryside, and the most respected historian of all is one William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.

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15 .) Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany

Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there…. The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. And into this disaster zone comes a young man–poet, lover, and adventurer–known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality,Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism.

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14 .) Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Ben Mears has returned to Jerusalem’s Lot in the hopes that living in an old mansion, long the subject of town lore, will help him cast out his own devils and provide inspiration for his new book. But when two young boys venture into the woods and only one comes out alive, Mears begins to realize that there may be something sinister at work and that his hometown is under siege by forces of darkness far beyond his control.

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13 .) The Birthgrave by Tanith Lee

A mysterious woman awakens in the heart of a dormant volcano. She comes forth into a brutal ancient world transformed by genocidal pestilence, fierce beauty, and cultural devastation. She has no memory of herself, and she could be anyone—mortal woman, demoness lover, last living heir to a long-gone race, or a goddess of destruction. Compelled by the terrifying Karrakaz to search for the mysterious Jade that is the answer to her secret self, she embarks on a journey of timeless wonder.

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

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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11 .) The Exile Waiting by Vonda N. McIntyre

The time is the distant future. Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by terrible storms during which its only city, Center, constructed around a natural cave system, is sealed from the outside. Mischa, a young thief whose capabilities are enhanced by hereditary mutation, is trying to escape with her drug addicted brother from the dominance of her uncle. When a starship arrives, commanded by the twin alien pseudo-sibs, Subone & Subtwo, Mischa seizes her chance. All goes well until Subone, in a moment of cruelty, lures Mischa’s brother into a fight, killing him. Mischa exacts her revenge, but then has to flee the wrath of the aliens and take refuge back in the deep caves underneath the city.

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10 .) The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

The story is set in the distant future of Pournelle’s CoDominiumuniverse, and charts the first contact between humanity and an alien species

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9 .) Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny

A galactic confederation of alien civilizations exchanges the star-stone and the Rhennius machine, mysterious alien artifacts, for the Mona Lisa and the British Crown Jewels as part of the process of admitting Earth to its organization. The star-stone is missing, and Fred Cassidy, a perpetual student and acrophile, is the last known person to have seen it

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8 .) ..And Call Me Conrad by Roger Zelazny

Conrad Nomikos has a long, rich personal history that he’d rather not talk about and a job he’d rather not do. Escorting an alien grandee on a tour around a shattered post-nuclear war Earth is not something he relishes, especially when he becomes central to an intrigue determining Earth’s future.

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7 .) (no award) by (no award)

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6 .) Brontomek! by Michael G. Coney

The planet Arcadia was on the verge of economic collapse. Its human colony had been decimated by the strange Relay Effect; in the aftermath, still more colonists were leaving for other worlds. The Hetherington Organisation promised to change that. If the remaining colonists put themselves entirely in their hands for a five-year period, they would transform Arcadia into the most prosperous planet settled by mankind, while preserving its great natural beauty.

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5 .) Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson

Staying at an old hotel, Richard Collier sees a photograph of Elise McKenna, an actress who performed there in 1896, and as he researches her life he becomes more deeply in love with her, until he finds himself transported back in time

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4 .) Inferno by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

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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3 .) The Computer Connection by Alfred Bester

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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2 .) The Stochastic Man by Robert Silverberg

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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1 .) The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

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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The 1976 Award Nominations & Winners

(Winners Highlighted)

Nebula Award – Best Novel

Hugo Award – Best Novel

BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) – Best Novel

The World Fantasy Award – Best Novel

Seiun (Japanese) Award – Best Translated Novel

John W. Campbell Memorial Award – Best Science Fiction Novel

Locus Award – Best Science Fiction Novel

The Ditmar (Australian) Award – Best International Long Fiction