Although there’s still almost a month left in 2017, at least ten different sources have already selected their best SF/F of the year. File 770 has also posted a round-up of the year’s novellas. The SFWA has dozens of novels on the suggested reading list for Nebula voters, and the SPFBO project currently has one finalist that was published in 2017. Combining all those sources with the lists of new books posted at Locus and the new book lists posted at The Verge (including the list for December), I arrived at a list of over 700 probably Hugo-eligible titles that have ratings at Goodreads. For each title, I expressed the Goodreads rating as a percentage, squared it, and multiplied it by the log of the number of people who’ve rated the book, generating a single popularity score used to sort the lists below. This is obviously a little unfair to books that are just now coming out. I’ve also categorized the results in other ways that may be unfair:

• I’ve removed around two dozen “general fiction” titles when I have trouble imagining recommending them on the basis of their SF/F content. For example, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders rated very highly. In spite of its Booker Prize win this year, I don’t think any SF/F blog I read has even mentioned it, and although that could be a blind spot of my own, I suspect the way the story is put together limits its appeal to genre readers. Incidentally, I think the same author’s short story “Escape from Spiderhead” is one of the best works of SF/F that I’ve ever read.
• I’ve classified around 125 books as “young adult,” but this is often a judgment call, and I’ve neglected to distinguish middle grade from YA. To decide whether a book was aimed at younger readers, I relied in part on whether the book was shelved as young-adult at Goodreads and in part on what reviews said there about the content.
• I’ve separated standalone and “starting-point” novels from sequels that assume knowledge of the series. What counts as a standalone or starting-point novel is debateable, and although I’ve consulted reader reviews, it isn’t always clear.
• Finally, although I did initially look at distinguishing urban fantasy and horror from SF/F, there really weren’t enough examples of them among non-YA standalone / starting-point novels to worry about. There were well over 50 urban fantasy sequels, but only around 30 standalone or series-starting urban fantasies, most of which did not rate very well. So relatively few appear on the lists below.

Top 125 standalone or starting-point books (non-YA)

1. Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology
2. Mark Lawrence, Red Sister
3. Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale
4. Nicholas Eames, Kings of the Wyld
5. E. William Brown, Perilous Waif
6. John Scalzi, The Collapsing Empire
7. Andrew Rowe, Sufficiently Advanced Magic
8. Martha Wells, All Systems Red
9. Naomi Alderman, The Power
10. Brandon Sanderson, Snapshot
11. Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
12. Jeff VanderMeer, Borne
13. Omar El Akkad, American War
14. Stephen King and Owen King, Sleeping Beauties
15. Austin Chant, Peter Darling
16. Daryl Gregory, Spoonbenders
17. Andy Weir, Artemis
18. S.A. Chakraborty, The City of Brass
19. Catherynne M. Valente (with illustrations by Annie Wu), The Refrigerator Monologues
20. Joe Hill, Strange Weather
21. Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties
22. Daniel Suarez, Change Agent
23. Ed McDonald, Blackwing
24. Mira Grant, Into the Drowning Deep
25. Ann Leckie, Provenance
26. Natasha Pulley, The Bedlam Stacks
27. Marcus Sakey, Afterlife
28. Mur Lafferty, Six Wakes
29. Michael Poore, Reincarnation Blues
30. Seanan McGuire, Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day
31. Victor LaValle, The Changeling
32. C. Robert Cargill, Sea of Rust
33. Kevin Hearne, A Plague of Giants
34. Theodora Goss, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter
35. Cory Doctorow, Walkaway
36. Jaroslav Kalfar, Spaceman of Bohemia
37. Kathleen A Flynn, The Jane Austen Project
38. Ellen Klages, Passing Strange
39. Rob Reid, After On
40. Lara Elena Donnelly, Amberlough
41. Kameron Hurley, The Stars Are Legion
42. Linda Nagata, The Last Good Man
43. Edgar Cantero, Meddling Kids
44. Kory Shrum, Shadows in the Water
45. Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts
46. Vivian Shaw, Strange Practice
47. Robyn Bennis, The Guns Above
48. Kim Stanley Robinson, New York 2140
49. Jim C. Hines, Terminal Alliance
50. JY Yang, The Black Tides of Heaven
51. Curtis Craddock, An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors
52. Dan Moren, The Caledonian Gambit
53. Nicky Drayden, The Prey of Gods
54. Peter S. Beagle, In Calabria
55. Daniel H. Wilson, The Clockwork Dynasty
56. Kat Howard, An Unkindness of Magicians
57. Caitlín R. Kiernan, Agents of Dreamland
58. Ruthanna Emrys, Winter Tide
59. Karin Tidbeck, Amatka
60. Annalee Newitz, Autonomous
61. D.J. Butler, Witchy Eye
62. Angus Watson, You Die When You Die
63. Sarah Gailey, River of Teeth
64. Jeremy Robert Johnson, Entropy in Bloom
65. Mira Grant, Final Girls
66. Jacqueline Carey, Miranda and Caliban
67. Alex Wells, Hunger Makes the Wolf
68. Hugh Howey, Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories
69. Pajtim Statovci, My Cat Yugoslavia
70. Ann Claycomb, The Mermaid’s Daughter
71. Zachary Mason, Void Star
72. Tade Thompson, The Murders of Molly Southbourne
73. Tom Merritt, Pilot X
74. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Beautiful Ones
75. Michael Johnston, Soleri
76. Anna Stephens, Godblind
77. Marina J. Lostetter, Noumenon
78. Naomi Kritzer, Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories
79. Elizabeth Bear, The Stone in the Skull
80. Tom Holt, The Management Style of the Supreme Beings
81. Corey J. White, Killing Gravity
82. Scott Oden, A Gathering of Ravens
83. Tim Pratt, The Wrong Stars
84. Tracy Townsend, The Nine
85. Sofia Samatar, Tender: Stories
86. Dave Hutchinson, Acadie
87. Daniel Kehlmann (translated by Ross Benjamin), You Should Have Left
88. Gregory Benford, The Berlin Project
89. Giorgio de Maria (translated by Ramon Glazov), The Twenty Days of Turin
90. Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior
91. Spencer Ellsworth, Starfire: A Red Peace
92. Fonda Lee, Jade City
93. David Drake, The Spark
94. Orson Scott Card, Children of the Fleet
95. Frank Chadwick, Chain of Command
96. David Walton, The Genius Plague
97. Angela Roquet, Blood Vice
98. Marshall Ryan Maresca, The Holver Alley Crew
99. James Brogden, Hekla’s Children
100. K.J. Parker, Mightier Than the Sword
101. Carrie Vaughn, Bannerless
102. J-F Dubeau, A God in the Shed
103. Charlie Jane Anders, Six Months, Three Days, Five Others
104. Walter Jon Williams, Quillifer
105. Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin (eds.), The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories
106. Emma Newman, Brother’s Ruin
107. John Crowley, Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr
108. Molly Tanzer, Creatures of Will and Temper
109. John Kessel, The Moon and the Other
110. Paul Cornell, Chalk
111. Chris Sharp, Cold Counsel
112. Cherie Priest, Brimstone
113. Dale Lucas, First Watch
114. Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton (eds.), Haunted Nights
115. Gardner Dozois (ed.), The Book of Swords
116. Jeannette Ng, Under the Pendulum Sun
117. Brad Abraham, Magicians Impossible
118. Margaret Killjoy, The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion
119. Christopher Golden, Ararat
120. Tim Lebbon, Relics
121. Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male
122. Anna Smith Spark, The Court of Broken Knives
123. Steve Erickson, Shadowbahn
124. Anne Corlett, The Space Between the Stars
125. Joseph Brassey, Skyfarer

Top 25 sequels (non-YA)

1. Robin Hobb, Assassin’s Fate
2. Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer
3. Ilona Andrews, White Hot
4. Ilona Andrews, Wildfire
5. V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light
6. Patricia Briggs, Silence Fallen
7. N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky
8. Karen Marie Moning, Feversong
9. Dennis Taylor, All These Worlds
10. Anne Bishop, Etched in Bone
11. Brian McClellan, Sins of Empire
12. Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Miracles
13. Faith Hunter, Cold Reign
14. Marko Kloos, Fields of Fire
15. Jodi Taylor, And the Rest is History
16. Michael J. Sullivan, Age of Swords
17. Sylvain Neuvel, Waking Gods
18. Seanan McGuire, The Brightest Fell
19. Peter V. Brett, The Core
20. Alice Hoffman, The Rules of Magic
21. Benedict Jacka, Bound
22. John Connolly, A Game of Ghosts
23. Nnedi Okorafor, Home
24. Glynn Stewart, Duchess of Terra
25. Diana Gabaldon, Seven Stones to Stand or Fall

Top 25 YA standalone or starting-point books

1. Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
2. Marie Lu, Warcross
3. Stephanie Garber, Caraval
4. Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands
5. Pittacus Lore, Generation One
6. Christina Henry, Lost Boy
7. Claudia Gray, Defy the Stars
8. Emily R. King, The Hundredth Queen
9. Veronica Roth, Carve the Mark
10. Ibi Zoboi, American Street
11. Wen Spencer, The Black Wolves of Boston
12. Lisa Maxwell, The Last Magician
13. Maggie Stiefvater, All the Crooked Saints
14. Alastair Reynolds, Revenger
15. S. Jae-Jones, Wintersong
16. Ryan Graudin, Invictus
17. Julie C. Dao, Forest of a Thousand Lanterns
18. Garth Nix, Frogkisser!
19. Kelley Armstrong, Missing
20. Vic James, Gilded Cage
21. Jennifer Trafton (with illustrations by Benjamin Schipper), Henry and the Chalk Dragon
22. Cindy Pon, Want
23. Elle Katharine White, Heartstone
24. Laurie Forest, The Black Witch
25. Jodi Meadows, Before She Ignites

Top 25 YA sequels

1. Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin
2. Cassandra Clare, Lord of Shadows
3. Sarah J. Maas, Tower of Dawn
4. Jay Kristoff, Godsgrave
5. Philip Pullman, The Book of Dust
6. V.E. Schwab, Our Dark Duet
7. Victoria Aveyard, King’s Cage
8. Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones
9. Megan Whalen Turner, Thick as Thieves
10. Susan Dennard, Windwitch
11. Elizabeth May, The Fallen Kingdom
12. Alison Goodman, The Dark Days Pact
13. Libba Bray, Before the Devil Breaks You
14. Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, The Silver Mask
15. Rachel Caine, Ash and Quill
16. Mercedes Lackey, Apex
17. Scott Sigler, Alone
18. Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Warrior
19. April Daniels, Sovereign
20. Dan Wells, Nothing Left to Lose
21. Isaac Marion, The Burning World
22. Sarah Beth Durst, The Reluctant Queen
23. Arwen Elys Dayton, Disruptor
24. Kathleen Baldwin, Refuge for Masterminds
25. Kate Elliott, Buried Heart

This is an odd list, arising in a vague question about who ought to come to mind as a significant SF/F writer from the 1950s. My assumptions are that some folks more often thought of as writers from the 40s and 60s published notable books in the 50s and some folks who were prominent in the 50s maybe aren’t so widely read today. So what I did to focus on people who had written a 50s “classic” was use Goodreads to look up ~125 people who wrote SF/F (generously defined and particularly including YA) novels in the 1950s and rank them by the number of people who had read each author’s most widely read novel. As usual, I’ve omitted the actual data from Goodreads.

1. J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954)
2. C.S. Lewis (The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, 1950)
3. Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, 1953)
4. Isaac Asimov (Foundation, 1951)
5. Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers, 1959)
6. Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood’s End, 1953)
7. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (The Sirens of Titan, 1959)
8. Walter M. Miller Jr. (A Canticle for Leibowitz, 1959)
9. John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids, 1951)
10. Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, 1954)
11. Alfred Bester (The Stars My Destination, 1956)
12. Pat Frank (Alas, Babylon, 1959)
13. Nevil Shute (On the Beach, 1957)
14. Jack Finney (The Body Snatchers, 1955)
15. Theodore Sturgeon (More Than Human, 1953)
16. Clifford Simak (City, 1952)
17. Philip K. Dick (Time Out of Joint, 1959)
18. Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth (The Space Merchants, 1952)
19. Tove Jansson (Moominsummer Madness, 1954)
20. Jack Vance (The Dying Earth, 1950)
21. Hal Clement (Mission of Gravity, 1953)
22. John Christopher (The Death of Grass, 1956)
23. Stanislaw Lem (The Star Diaries, 1957)
24. James Blish (A Case of Conscience, 1958)
25. Brian Aldiss (Non-Stop, 1958)
26. Poul Anderson (The Broken Sword, 1954)
27. Andre Norton (The Time Traders, 1958)
28. A.E. Van Vogt (The Weapon Shops of Isher, 1951)
29. E.E. “Doc” Smith (First Lensman, 1950)
30. Fritz Leiber (The Big Time, 1958)
31. Fred Hoyle (The Black Cloud, 1957)
32. Eleanor Cameron (The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, 1954)
33. Ward Moore (Bring the Jubilee, 1953)
34. Robert Sheckley (Immortality, Inc., 1959)
35. Leigh Brackett (The Long Tomorrow, 1955)
36. Fredric Brown (Martians, Go Home, 1954)
37. Eric Frank Russell (Wasp, 1957)
38. Mordecai Roshwald (Level 7, 1959)
39. Frank Herbert (Under Pressure, 1956)
40. Arkady & Boris Strugatsky (Country of the Crimson Clouds, 1959)
41. August Derleth (The Mask of Cthulhu, 1958)
42. Mark Clifton & Frank Riley (They’d Rather Be Right, 1954)
43. Edmond Hamilton (The City at World’s End, 1950)
44. Ivan Efremov (Andromeda, 1957)
45. Tom Godwin (The Survivors, 1958)
46. Kōbō Abe (Inter Ice Age 4, 1959)
47. Ernst Jünger (The Glass Bees, 1957)
48. H. Beam Piper (Uller Uprising, 1952)
49. Philip José Farmer (The Green Odyssey, 1957)
50. Algis Budrys (Who?, 1958)
51. C.M. Kornbluth (The Marching Morons, 1959)
52. Jay Williams & Raymond Abrashkin (Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint, 1956)
53. H. Beam Piper & John J. McGuire (A Planet for Texans, 1957)
54. Alan E. Nourse (Star Surgeon, 1959)
55. Edgar Pangborn (A Mirror for Observers, 1958)
56. Vercors (Les Animaux dénaturés, 1952)
57. Philip Wylie (The Disappearance, 1951)
58. Bernard Wolfe (Limbo, 1952)
59. John D. MacDonald (Wine of the Dreamers, 1951)
60. Sarban (The Sound of His Horn, 1952)
61. Stefan Wul (Niourk, 1957)
62. Murray Leinster (The Forgotten Planet, 1954)
63. Robert Silverberg (Starman’s Quest, 1958)
64. Charles L. Harness (The Paradox Men, 1955)
65. L. Ron Hubbard (To the Stars, 1950)
66. Hugo Correa (Los altísimos, 1959)
67. Lester Del Rey (Nerves, 1956)
68. Ellen MacGregor (Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, 1951)
69. Randall Garrett & Laurence M. Janifer (Brain Twister, 1959)
70. Jack Williamson & James E. Gunn (Star Bridge, 1955)
71. Wilson Tucker (The Long Loud Silence, 1952)
72. Frederik Pohl (Slave Ship, 1957)
73. L. Sprague de Camp (Rogue Queen, 1951)
74. Damon Knight (A for Anything, 1959)
75. Randall Garrett & Laurence M. Janifer (Pagan Passions, 1956)
76. Raymond F. Jones (This Island Earth, 1952)
77. Frank M. Robinson (The Power, 1956)
78. Fletcher Pratt (The Blue Star, 1952)
79. John W. Campbell (Islands of Space, 1956)
80. Donald A. Wollheim (The Secret of the Ninth Planet, 1959)
81. David Karp (One, 1953)
82. Charles Eric Maine (Alph, 1958)
83. Ben Bova (The Star Conquerors, 1959)
84. Chad Oliver (The Winds of Time, 1957)
85. Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore (Mutant, 1953)
86. Edmund Cooper (Seed of Light, 1959)
87. Blake Savage (Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet, 1952)
88. John Brunner (The World Swappers, 1959)
89. C.L. Moore (Judgment Night, 1952)
90. James Blish & Robert Lowndes (The Duplicated Man, 1959)
91. C.M. Kornbluth & Judith Merrill (Gunner Cade, 1952)
92. Jack Williamson (Seetee Ship, 1951)
93. George O. Smith (The Fourth R, 1959)
94. James E. Gunn (This Fortress World, 1955)
95. Judith Merrill (Shadow on the Hearth, 1950)
96. Rex Gordon (No Man Friday, 1956)
97. J.T. McIntosh (World Out of Mind, 1953)
98. Francis Rufus Bellamy (Atta, 1953)
99. E. Everett Evans (Man of Many Minds, 1953)
100. Joseph Greene (The Forgotten Star, 1959)
101. Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett (Shrouded Planet, 1957)
102. Richard Marsten [Evan Hunter / Ed McBain] (Danger: Dinosaurs!, 1953)
103. John Lymington (Night of the Big Heat, 1959)
104. Angus MacVicar (The Lost Planet, 1953)
105. Allen A. Adler (Terror on Planet Ionus, 1957)
106. Islwyn Ffowc Elis (Wythnos Yng Nghymru Fydd, 1957)
107. Hugh Walters (First on the Moon, 1959)
108. Robert Crane (Hero’s Walk, 1952)
109. William Dexter (World in Eclipse, 1954)
110. Philip Latham (Missing Men of Saturn, 1953)
111. A.J. Merak (The Dark Millennium, 1959)
112. Patrick Moore (Mission to Mars, 1955)
113. F.L. Wallace (Address: Centauri, 1955)
114. Margaret St. Clair (Agent of the Unknown, 1956)
115. Stanton A. Coblentz (Into Plutonian Depths, 1950)
116. E.C. Eliott (Kemlo and the Zones of Silence, 1954)
117. Harold Mead (Mary’s Country, 1957)
118. Wallace West (The Bird of Time, 1959)
119. Curme Gray (Murder in Millennium VI, 1951)
120. Nat Schachner (Space Lawyer, 1953)
121. Perley Poore Sheehan (The Abyss of Wonders, 1953)
122. Robert Ardrey (The Brotherhood of Fear, 1957)
123. Eric Temple Bell (G.O.G. 666, 1954)
124. Lee Correy (Rocket Man, 1955)
125. René Ray (The Strange World of Planet X, 1957)

Here are the 50 most popular titles in the current catalog of NYRB Classics, according to the usual formula (the log of the number of ratings at Goodreads times the square of the average rating expressed as a percentage):

John Williams, Stoner
Stefan Zweig, Chess Story
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls
Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Frans G. Bengtsson, The Long Ships
Yaşar Kemal, Memed, My Hawk
Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio
John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
Tove Jansson, The Summer Book
Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity
Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel
Thomas Tryon, The Other
John Williams, Augustus
John Williams, Butcher’s Crossing
Magda Szabó, The Door
Patrick Leigh Fermor, Between the Woods and the Water
Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April
Oakley Hall, Warlock
Luigi Pirandello, The Late Mattia Pascal
Antal Szerb, Journey by Moonlight
Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts
J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country
Alexandros Papadiamantis, The Murderess
Yaşar Kemal, They Burn the Thistles
Jessica Mitford, Hons and Rebels
Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph
Stefan Zweig, Confusion
Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
Álvaro Mutis, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace
G.B. Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between
Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling
Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows
Alexander Pushkin, The Captain’s Daughter
Stefan Zweig, The Post-Office Girl
Erich Kästner, Going to the Dogs
Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War
Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten
Euripides (Anne Carson, trans.), Grief Lessons
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
Christopher Priest, Inverted World
J.G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North
J.A. Baker, The Peregrine
Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male
C.V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War

For the sake of comparison, here are the top 50 titles sorted only by their current Goodreads rating:

Paul Blackburn, Proensa
Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
Aleksandar Tišma, The Use of Man
Richard Holmes, Shelley
Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary
Anne Carson, Grief Lessons
Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Yaşar Kemal, They Burn the Thistles
Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
Álvaro Mutis, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
Yaşar Kemal, Memed, My Hawk
Patrick Leigh Fermor, Between the Woods and the Water
Henry David Thoreau, The Journal 1837–1861
Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile
Boris Pasternak, Letters
Tim Robinson, Stones of Aran: Labyrinth
Oakley Hall, Warlock
Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph
Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness
Frans G. Bengtsson, The Long Ships
Arun Kolatkar, Jejuri
S. Josephine Baker, Fighting for Life
John Williams, Stoner
Stefan Zweig, Chess Story
John Ehle, The Land Breakers
G.B. Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
J.F. Powers, The Stories of J.F. Powers
Randall Jarrell, Randall Jarrell’s Book of Stories
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair
John Williams, English Renaissance Poetry
Benjamin Fondane, Existential Monday
Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Broken Road
Kabir, Songs of Kabir
Tim Robinson, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage
Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace
Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy
Saki, The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories
Iona Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
Teffi, Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me
Aleksander Wat, My Century
Jean d’Ormesson, The Glory of the Empire
Alexandros Papadiamantis, The Murderess
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
J.A. Baker, The Peregrine
Jean Genet, Prisoner of Love
Elizabeth David, A Book of Mediterranean Food
Josep Pla, The Gray Notebook
Antal Szerb, Journey by Moonlight

Here are the Publishers Weekly 20th Century bestsellers with a number of ratings at Goodreads >= 250 and <= 2500 and an average rating >= 3.95, minus those shelved under spiritual, Christian, picture book, middle grade, or self-help and minus those not shelved under favorite or masterpiece, sorted for popularity by multiplying the log of the number of ratings with the square of the rating expressed as a percentage.

Nevil Shute, Trustee from the Toolroom
John Hersey, The Wall
Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions
Kenneth Roberts, Northwest Passage
Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles
Fletcher Knebel, Seven Days in May
Rafael Sabatini, The Sea-Hawk
Pearl S. Buck, Dragon Seed
P.C. Wren, Beau Geste
Robert Ruark, Something of Value
Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales
Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now?
Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River
Edna Ferber, Giant
James Hilton, Random Harvest
Mika Waltari, The Wanderer
Mika Waltari, The Adventurer
Irving Stone, Love Is Eternal
Irving Wallace, The Man
John Jakes, California Gold
Samuel Shellabarger, Prince of Foxes
Howard Fast, Second Generation
Irving Stone, Those Who Love
Louis Bromfield, The Rains Came
Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Murder
Robert Crichton, The Secret of Santa Vittoria
Willa Cather, Shadows on the Rock
John Galsworthy, Swan Song
Herman Wouk, Youngblood Hawke
Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind
Kenneth Roberts, Oliver Wiswell
Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver
Thomas B. Costain, Below the Salt
Marcia Davenport, The Valley of Decision
A.J. Cronin, The Green Years
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Shuttle
Samuel Shellabarger, Captain from Castile
Walter D. Edmonds, Drums Along the Mohawk
Meyer Levin, Compulsion
Edwin O’Connor, The Last Hurrah
Bess Streeter Aldrich, A White Bird Flying
John Galsworthy, The Silver Spoon
Kenneth Roberts, Lydia Bailey
Thomas B. Costain, The Tontine
Frank Yerby, The Foxes of Harrow
Ben Ames Williams, Leave Her to Heaven
Irving Stone, Immortal Wife
A.J. Cronin, Shannon’s Way
Lillian Smith, Strange Fruit
Mary Jane Ward, The Snake Pit

When SFSignal stopped publishing this year, I stopped systematically keeping track of new releases in SF/F, though I’m aware of sources like Kirkus, Locus, Tor, The Verge, and so on. I just relied on the book blogs I read to keep me informed of what people were reading.

But when I noticed that Locus’s lists of new and/or reviewed books would be easy to cut and paste into a tool I already have for looking up Goodreads scores, I thought that would be a nice, simple way to get a list of popular SF/F books for the year and sort them by the usual metric (the log of the number of ratings at Goodreads times the square of the rating expressed as a percentage).

After cleaning up the data a little and adding in a few more books, I had a sorted list of ~200 books published in 2016. Getting reviewed in Locus is already to some extent an indicator of likely popularity, but I still deleted anything that didn’t have at least a 3.64 on Goodreads to eliminate ~20%.

I’ve broken the books up by category (SF/F, Horror, Young Adult, Urban Fantasy, and Non-Fiction) somewhat arbitrarily. The results are not as comprehensive as my past efforts, but this list covers most of what I’ve seen pass by on book blogs this year.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Cixin Liu, Death’s End
Blake Crouch, Dark Matter
N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate
Brandon Sanderson, Arcanum Unbounded
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit
Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Blades
Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
James S.A. Corey, Babylon’s Ashes
Juliet Marillier, Den of Wolves
Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks
Joe Abercrombie, Sharp Ends
Marie Brennan, In the Labyrinth of Drakes
Michelle Sagara, Cast in Flight
Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric and the Shaman
Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky
Anthony Ryan, The Waking Fire
C.J. Cherryh, Visitor
Sylvain Neuvel, Sleeping Giants
Daniel Abraham, The Spider’s War
Seanan McGuire, Every Heart A Doorway
Ben Winters, Underground Airlines
Michael Chabon, Moonglow
Naomi Novik, League of Dragons
T. Kingfisher [Ursula Vernon], The Raven and the Reindeer
Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country
Margaret Atwood, Hag-Seed
Neal Asher, War Factory
Ken Liu, The Wall of Storms
Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit
Lois McMaster Bujold, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
S.K. Dunstall, Alliance
Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning
Todd Lockwood, The Summer Dragon
Thomas Olde Heuveldt, Hex
Mercedes Lackey, Closer to the Chest
Alastair Reynolds, Revenger
S.K. Dunstall, Confluence
R. Scott Bakker, The Great Ordeal
Mary Robinette Kowal, Ghost Talkers
Ian Tregillis, The Liberation
Brom, Lost Gods
Emma Newman, After Atlas
Yoshiki Tanaka, Dawn (Legend of the Galactic Heroes v. 1)
Sharon Shinn, Unquiet Land
Kij Johnson, The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe
Mercedes Lackey, A Study in Sable
Bob Proehl, A Hundred Thousand Worlds
K.B. Wagers, Behind the Throne
Alexander Weinstein, Children of the New World
Kai Ashante Wilson, A Taste of Honey
Connie Willis, Crosstalk
Jo Walton, Necessity
Carlos Hernandez, The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria
Paul Cornell, The Lost Child of Lychford
Wesley Chu, The Rise of Io
Ann VanderMeer, The Big Book of Science Fiction
Alan Moore, Jerusalem
K.J. Parker, The Devil You Know
Paul McAuley, Into Everywhere
Ali Shaw, The Trees
Madeline Ashby, Company Town
Allen Steele, Arkwright
Robert J. Sawyer, Quantum Night
Sofia Samatar, The Winged Histories
China Miéville, The Last Days of New Paris
Indra Das, The Devourers
J. Kathleen Cheney, Dreaming Death
Daniel Polansky, A City Dreaming
Chuck Wendig, Invasive
Patricia A. McKillip, Dreams of Distant Shores
Lian Hearn, Emperor of the Eight Islands
Marshall Ryan Maresca, The Alchemy of Chaos
Patricia A. McKillip, Kingfisher
David D. Levine, Arabella of Mars
Kerryn Offord, 1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz
Dominik Parisien, The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales
Foz Meadows, An Accident of Stars
Robert Kroese, The Big Sheep
Michael Swanwick, Not So Much, Said the Cat
Walter Jon Williams, Impersonations
Joan Aiken, The People in the Castle
Laurie Penny, Everything Belongs to the Future
Robert Charles Wilson, Last Year
Ellen Kushner, Tremontaine: Season 1
Will McIntosh, Faller
Beth Cato, Breath of Earth
Haris A. Durrani, Technologies of the Self
Christopher Priest, The Gradual
K.J. Parker, Downfall of the Gods
Blake Charlton, Spellbreaker
Eleanor Arnason, Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens
Alyc Helms, The Conclave of Shadow
Julie E. Czerneda, The Gate to Futures Past
Miyuki Miyabe, The Gate of Sorrows
Jonathan Strahan, Bridging Infinity
Michael A. Armstrong, Truck Stop Earth
Jonathan Strahan, Drowned Worlds
Sonia Orin Lyris, The Seer
Greg Egan, The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred
Leanna Renee Hieber, Eterna and Omega
Mike Allen, Clockwork Phoenix 5
Bryan Thomas Schmidt, Galactic Games
Andrea Hairston, Will Do Magic for Small Change
Jesse Bullington, Swords v. Cthulhu
Zachary Brown, Titan’s Fall
Kelly Barnhill, The Unlicensed Magician
Nava Semel, Isra Isle
Nick Wood, Azanian Bridges
Bryan Thomas Schmidt, Decision Points
Lisa Yaszek, Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction
Sarah Tolmie, Two Travelers
Jeffrey E. Barlough, Where the Time Goes
Jack Cady, Fathoms

Horror

Stephen King, End of Watch
Joe Hill, The Fireman
Michael Wehunt, Greener Pastures
Stephen Graham Jones, Mongrels
John Langan, The Fisherman
Laird Barron, Swift to Chase
Paul Tremblay, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock
Christopher Buehlman, The Suicide Motor Club
Matthew M. Bartlett, Creeping Waves
Livia Llewellyn, Furnace
Cherie Priest, The Family Plot
Sarah L. Johnson, Suicide Stitch
Lynne Jamneck, Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror
Damien Angelica Walters, Paper Tigers
Glen Hirshberg, Good Girls
Pedro Cabiya, Wicked Weeds: A Zombie Novel
Richard Gavin, Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness
Ross E. Lockhart, Eternal Frankenstein
Sunny Moraine, Singing with All My Skin and Bone
Michael Cisco, The Wretch of the Sun

Young Adult

Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom
Victoria Schwab, This Savage Song
Neal Shusterman, Scythe
Holly Black, The Bronze Key
Kelly Barnhill, The Girl Who Drank the Moon
Gail Carriger, Imprudence
Garth Nix, Goldenhand
Melissa Landers, Starflight
William Ritter, Ghostly Echoes
Rae Carson, Like a River Glorious
Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling
Rachel Caine, Paper and Fire
Mercedes Lackey, Elite
Kate Elliott, Poisoned Blade
Gwenda Bond, Lois Lane: Double Down
Sarah Beth Durst, The Queen of Blood
Jessica Cluess, A Shadow Bright and Burning
Cat Winters, The Steep & Thorny Way
Jennifer A. Nielsen, The Scourge
Kat Howard, Roses and Rot
Jennifer Mason-Black, Devil and the Bluebird
Destiny Soria, Iron Cast
Delia Sherman, The Evil Wizard Smallbone
Sandra Evans, This Is Not a Werewolf Story
Jonathan Stroud, Lockwood & Co: The Creeping Shadow
Laurence Yep, A Dragon’s Guide to Making Your Human Smarter
Fran Wilde, Cloudbound
Sarah Prineas, Rose & Thorn
Zetta Elliott, The Door at the Crossroads

Urban Fantasy

Ilona Andrews, Magic Binds
Patricia Briggs, Fire Touched
Anne Bishop, Marked in Flesh
Seanan McGuire, Once Broken Faith
Daniel O’Malley, Stiletto
Faith Hunter, Blood of the Earth
Ben Aaronovitch, The Hanging Tree
Faith Hunter, Blood in Her Veins
Benedict Jacka, Burned
Faith Hunter, Curse on the Land
Kevin Hearne, The Purloined Poodle
Seanan McGuire, Chaos Choreography
Richard Kadrey, The Perdition Score
Wen Spencer, Project Elfhome
Jim C. Hines, Revisionary
Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom
Elliott James, In Shining Armor
Mishell Baker, Borderline
Richard Kadrey, The Everything Box
Jim Butcher, Shadowed Souls
R.S. Belcher, The Brotherhood of the Wheel
Paul Crilley, Poison City
Melissa F. Olson, Nightshades
Angela Slatter, Vigil
Colin Gigl, The Ferryman’s Institute
Joseph Nassise, Urban Allies
Linda Grimes, All Fixed Up
E.E. Richardson, Spirit Animals

Non-Fiction

Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats
Kameron Hurley, The Geek Feminist Revolution
Jack Womack, …Flying Saucers Are Real!
Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Making Conversation
Mike Ashley, Science Fiction Rebels: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1981 to 1990
Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg