Anthem

When people hear 'Ayn Rand', they tend to think of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Anthem is a David to her other Goliaths. It may originally have been conceived as a play, which would explain much of its storyline, as well as the fact that it's written as a prose poem. The style needs getting used to, and no real complexity of character here either. Still, it's not needed in this parable about the ultimate totalitarian collectivist society. Somewhat reminiscent of Kafka, though with a slightly different agenda. The 'Anthem' of the title, by the way, is one to individualism; which is what the book is meant to be. Why it's on the list: It's an important book, despite its comparatively small size (Rand's novels usually go on and on and on and…). It comes across as maybe the most terse and pithy of Rand's rants against the evils of collectivism. While the book is basically one giant in-your-face message board (like basically all of Rand's novels), it still provides solid and thought provoking entertainment. The only comparable anti-collectivist tirade in the SF genre is Jack Vance's Wyst: Alastor 1716. Read if you like: Objectivism (but then, I guess, you would already have read it already). Or to discover Ayn Rand and what she's all about—without however having to slog through massive tomes with übermensch heroes, who are in the habit of holding forth at length in monologues about their philosophies and just about everything else that takes their fancy.