6 Best-Selling Sci-Fi Books Of All Time

Published Aug 23, 2026, 9:37 AM EDT Ambrose Tardive is an editor on ScreenRant's Comics team. Over the past two years, he has developed into the internet's foremost authority on The Far Side. Outside of his work for ScreenRant, Ambrose works as an Adjunct English Instructor. Ask anyone to name the top genres of books off the top of their heads, and sci-fi is going to be right up there at the top of the list with "thriller," and fantasy, and crime novel, and the amorphous category of "literature," whatever that means. Yet most readers will be surprised to learn how many of the bestselling books of all time science fiction accounts for. Spoilers, the answer is zero. The curious case of sci-fi, and the terrible truth for sci-fi writers, is that the genre doesn't do huge numbers. At least, not numbers that accurately reflect the genre's cultural impact. Another important thing worth noting about this ranking: sales data for books, especially older books, isn't easy to track. The numbers below are approximate, based on available figures. And for many sci-fi classics, the available numbers are surprisingly low. For example, take Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It seems low to say the book has only sold a million copies, roughly, but there's no available data that gives a more concrete figure. Finally, books like George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 are often listed among sci-fi's bestsellers, but they've been omitted here as formative dystopian fiction, rather than science fiction. Likewise, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, while absolutely proto-sci-fi, is kept off the list here, which restricts itself to modern, full-fledged examples of the genre. 6 Neuromancer Written By William Gibson; Published In 1984 Neuromancer has reportedly sold somewhere in the neighborhood of seven million copies since its release. There's a logic to its sales figures, considering that William Gibson's novel is ubiquitously cited as the foundational text of the cyberpunk genre. For readers interested in cyberpunk, Neuromancer is the obvious starting point. Like every classic novel with staying power, Neuromancer is rediscovered by each successive generation of readers that comes along. And while its cyberpunk and dystopian elements are routinely cited, what often surprises and delights new readers are Neuromancer's neo-noir and pulpy thriller elements. Though Neuromancer is the first part of the beloved "Sprawl Trilogy," the novel is self-contained, making it even more attractive to many people. With a long-awaited screen adaptation looming from Apple TV+, Neuromancer is continuing to add to its totals, but it would have to become a serious phenomenon in order to catch up to some of the other titles on this list. 5 The Three-Body Problem Written By Liu Cixin; Published In 2008 (English Translation By Ken Liu; Published In 2014) The Three-Body Problem is one of the juggernauts of modern science fiction. Certainly in terms of sales. Sales figures for Three-Body are a little tricky to pin down, because they're often conflated with sales of author Lio Cixin's entire Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. But there is no denying the series, especially the first volume, is a generational hit, first in its original Chinese and then in translation worldwide. Globally, The Three-Body Problem has sold an estimated nine million copies. And counting. The franchise's ongoing Netflix adaptation is going to keep generating buzz for the books, as will the novel's appearance on "best of" lists in perpetuity. What gives the first novel and edge over the rest is that Three-Body is hard sci-fi, but it is also a compelling mystery. One that the author expertly unravels chapter-by-chapter, moment-by-moment. Follow-ups The Dark Forest and Death's End lean into the "hard" part of hard sci-fi, increasingly alienating all but the most dedicated readers as the series progresses, and accounting for a drop-off in sales. But the first novel stands a strong chance of moving up at least one spot on this ranking in due time. 4 Ender's Game Written By Orson Scott Card; Published In 1985 Author Orson Scott Card is a controversial figure, but that doesn't discount what a literary phenomenon his novel Ender's Game was. Ender's Game is one of the handful of novels to capture science fiction's two most prestigious awards, the Hugo and the Nebula, in the same year. (Its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, did the same.) Ender's Game has appeared on various "best of" lists over the years: best sci-fi novels, best novels of the 20th century, even best novels of all time. But its real lasting legacy might be its placement on this list, because it was also a commercial smash hit at the time of its publication, and has been one of the biggest unit movers, in terms of sci-fi books, in perpetuity for 40+ years since. To the tune of nearly ten million copies. One notable thing that has significantly boosted the book's sales? The U.S. Marine Corps lists it as recommended reading, including for prospective officers. 3 The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Written By Douglas Adams; Published In 1979 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of the best books of all time, full-stop. It is brilliant sci-fi, but it is transcendent satire, and as philosophical as it is funny. That's true of most of the subsequent installments in the Hitchhiker series, too. (In the spirit of Douglas Adams' absurdist take on existence, his "trilogy" of novels is five books long.) But the first novel, in its many different forms, has sold nearly as many copies as the rest of the series combined. Why is that? Well, when looking at sales numbers, that tends to be true for most novel series in general. There's also the omnibus factor. The Hitchhiker's Guide books are most frequently reprinted as a single volume these days, with all of those copies counting toward the first book's total. They count toward the other book's totals too, but those novels never reached the first entry's formidable standalone sales. Vintage copies of all the Hitchhiker's Guide novels look great on a shelf, but the later novels are increasingly hard to find. The original has been through the most printings, and in every iteration it is said to have sold roughly fifteen million copies. 2 Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale Written By Ivan Yefremov; Published In 1957 (English Translation By George Hanna; Published In 1959) Andromeda is a deep-cut of hard science fiction now, even for most well-read sci-fi fans. That's largely because it never became a huge hit in the United States. Because, after all, it was a work of Soviet literature published at the height of the Cold War and the Space Race. In Russia, and other Soviet bloc countries, Yefremov's novel was cited as the book that popularized science fiction. Ivan Yefremov's book is propagandistic, but also inventive. Subtitled A Space-Age Tale, Andromeda is about a future interstellar society. Yes, it is a society born out of Soviet communism, but the struggles of space exploration and colonization Yefremov's characters face are universal. Among the many notable things about Andromeda is its depiction of a galaxy-spanning civilization that lacks faster-than-light travel, making exchanges between worlds generational affairs. Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale is generally said to have sold twenty million copies worldwide in the past 69 years. With its 70th anniversary approaching, now is the time for sci-fi completists to check out the book and give it an overdue reappraisal. 1 Dune Written By Frank Herbert; Published In 1965 Dune is having a cultural moment right now, with the Denis Villeneuve-directed film trilogy ending this year with an adaptation of Frank Herbert's first sequel novel, Dune Messiah. That follows the smash-hit two-movie adaptation of Herbert's original novel. It's a well-earned moment for the franchise, but it's nothing new to sci-fi fans, who have held Dune up as a sacred text since the day it came out. Yet if you stack all the other equally revered works of sci-fi literature up alongside Dune, Herbert's novel alone has its critical reputation backed up by book sales. That's a testament to how criminally undersold most great sci-fi novels are, but also to the magnitude of Dune's reach. The number of copies of Dune sold historically, across all printings, is generally put at approximately twenty million. Which puts it in the same ballpark as Andromeda, but it warrants listing higher for two reasons: 1) Dune's numbers are a bit more verifiable than Andromeda's, and 2) Dune is a modern-day bestseller again thanks to the movies, and is continuing to put up big figures as legions of new readers grab a copy of Frank Herbert's masterpiece. First Film Dune Cast Kyle MacLachlan, Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Javier Bardem, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Stellan Skarsgård, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista Created by Frank Herbert Movie(s) Dune, Dune, Dune: Part Two, Dune: Part Three