2. Where would we be without Dune, the granddaddy of contemporary science fiction? The world’s bestselling sci-fi novel of all time paved the way for Alien, Blade Runner, Stars both Wars and Trek, and countless other cultural tentpoles. Set far into the future, Dune envisions an intergalactic feudal society where powerful noble houses vy for control over resources, armies, and planetary power. At the center of it all is Arrakis, an inhospitable desert planet home to giant sandworms, a mysterious indigenous population, and the valuable natural resource spice. When young Paul Atreides is targeted as a potential messiah to lead the planet—and the galaxy—toward a new future, an epic story of war, betrayal, and mysticism unfolds. Frighteningly original and thematically ambitious, Dune offers a master class in the power of science fiction not just to entertain, but to examine the cultural landscapes and ethical questions of our time. Religion, colonialism, and environmentalism all come under Herbert’s microscope, as do the limitations of the hero’s journey. “No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a hero,” Herbert warns ominously. No science fiction hero has stepped lightly since.

1. On a stormy summer night in 1816, eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley sat down to write a ghost story. What poured from her pen that fateful night would change the world, revolutionizing our understanding of artificial life, bewitching generations of readers, and pioneering science fiction as we now know it. Even the uninitiated reader knows the story’s familiar bones: Dr. Victor Frankenstein builds a creature out of scavenged body parts, recoils from his creation, then sees all that he loves destroyed by his spurned progeny. In this landmark novel, Shelley fused a primordial parable with the upheavals and anxieties of the Industrial Revolution, and in doing so, laid the foundation for the themes and constructs of science fiction. The weighty questions she poses in Frankenstein continue to animate the genre to this very day. Why do we harbor such fear of the other? How responsible are we for our creations, and what does it mean when they develop agency of their own? Where’s the line between what science can do, and what it should do? Frankenstein strikes at the very heart of what it means to be human. It also rewards repeat readings—so much so that, even two centuries later, we’re still peering at it through new lenses, as queer, transhumanist, and feminist readings locate new depths within the familiar text. Plenty of imitators have tried to match the heights of Frankenstein, but none have come close. We owe everything to Shelley’s ur-textual story of modernity, morality, and progress’ great and terrible cost.