Tor.com’s excellent “Five Books” section has a recent piece by Victor Milán, “Five Classic Works of SFF by Authors We Must Not Forget.” He recommends Jirel of Joiry by C.L. Moore, The Planetary Adventures of Eric John Stark by Leigh Brackett, The Dragon Masters by Jack Vance, Berserker (Berserker Series Book 1) by Fred Saberhagen and Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny.
Milán won the Prometheus Award in 1986 for Cybernetic Samurai. His latest book is The Dinosaur Princess. Find out more about him.
I’ve read a couple of Jirel stories, but none of the others, except Lord of Light. But to my mind Lord of Light is not only Zelazny’s best book but one of the best SF novels ever written.
However, Milán is wrong in calling it a hybrid of fantasy and science fiction. One of the early chapters pointedly makes a distinction between fantasy and science fiction, and applies it to the “demonic” Rakshasa who play an important part in the novel, making it clear that they are creatures of science fiction and not of fantasy. And the same applies to all the other wonders and marvels, including the putative gods the story is about. Of course, Zelazny’s concern is with essence, not with accident; the novel is full of things that resemble fantasy in outer appearance.