The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Pick this if you want the shortest, most quotable way in. It is comic science fiction rather than fantasy, but it is the cornerstone of the whole deadpan-British tradition that Pratchett and Gaiman grew out of.

Why Consider This One

Arthur Dent’s house is demolished to make way for a bypass on the same morning the Earth is demolished to make way for an interstellar one. Rescued by a friend who turns out to be an alien, he tours the galaxy with a towel and a mounting sense of grievance. Douglas Adams takes the biggest questions science fiction likes to ask, the meaning of life, the nature of the universe, and answers them with a joke: the answer is 42, and nobody can remember the question. That single gag holds more genuine philosophy than most solemn novels manage in three times the pages.

It belongs on this list because it is the purest, most efficient dose of the style. There is no dense world-building to push through and no jargon to decode, just wit polished to a gleam. Read it and you understand the DNA that comic fantasy inherited: the absurdity, the affection for hopeless characters, the sense that the universe is a badly run office and that this is somehow very funny.

What to Expect

A short, fast, episodic adventure of around 220 pages with a cast you will quote for years: Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian, and Marvin the depressed robot. Expect loose plotting, because Adams cares more about ideas and jokes than mechanics, and let that go. There are four sequels of varying quality, but this first book is perfect on its own and reads in an afternoon.