World of Westfahl Article: Science Fiction Quotations: Most Frequently Quoted Works

Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits. Edited by Gary Westfahl. Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2005. 461 pp.

For more information about this book, you can visit the Yale University Press website which includes its Table of Contents, my introduction, and the author and title indexes.

I also wrote an article about the book for Locus Online which features lists of most frequently quoted works, most frequently quoted authors, and most popular topics. However, I limited the lists to the top fifteen in each category. Presented here for the first time are the complete versions of the lists I compiled, with all works that were quoted at least ten times, all authors who were quoted at least 15 times, and all topics that included at least 25 quotations.

Most Frequently Quoted Works (10 or more quotations)

1. Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson) 37

2.

The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Drowning Towers (George Turner)
34

4. Dune (Frank Herbert) 30

5. We (Yevgeny Zamiatin) 28

6. Pyramids (Terry Pratchett) 22

7. The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin) 21

8.

The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
Lost Horizon (James Hilton)
A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr.)
20

11. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell) 19

12.

Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
Galactic Pot-Healer (Philip K. Dick)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert A. Heinlein)
Time Enough for Love (Robert A. Heinlein)
18

16. The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster) 17

17. Neuromancer (William Gibson) 16

18.

Stand on Zanzibar (John Brunner)
The Farthest Shore (Ursula K. Le Guin)
15

20.

Naked Lunch (William Burroughs)
"The Children's Crusade" (Edgar Pangborn)
14

22.

A Case of Conscience (James Blish)
Herland (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
Prisoners of Power (Arkady and Boris Strugatsky)
13

25.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Douglas Adams)
Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Edward Bellamy)
Dawn (Octavia E. Butler)
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Robert A. Heinlein)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
The Difference Engine (William Gibson and Bruce Sterling)
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (Jules Verne)
The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells)
12

33.

Life, the Universe and Everything (Douglas Adams)
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (Richard Bach)
The Ganymede Takeover (Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson)
Count Zero (William Gibson)
Macrolife (George Zebrowski)
11

38.

The Fountains of Paradise (Arthur C. Clarke)
Clans of the Alphane Moon (Philip K. Dick)
Starship Troopers (Robert A. Heinlein)
Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin)
The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis)
10

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