Gary K. Wolfe -- ''Five titles I think you should read... They are books which remain as vividly in mind now as when I first read them, and which I would eagerly read again. They are listed alphabetically by author:

• Vacuum Diagrams, Stephen Baxter
• The Calcutta Chromosome, Amitav Ghosh
• Forever Peace, Joe Haldeman
• Antarctica, Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons''

Faren Miller -- ''My top five picks:

• The White Abacus, Damien Broderick
• The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, A. S. Byatt
• Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn, Robert Holdstock
• The Gift, Patrick O'Leary
• Going Home Again, Howard Waldrop''

Russell Letson -- ''Picking five favorites from this big litter is a problem... so my act of rebellion will be to list six, in democratically alphabetical order.

• / (Slant), Greg Bear
• Finity's End, C. J. Cherryh
• Diaspora, Greg Egan
• Forever Peace, Joe Haldeman
• Secret Passages, Paul Preuss
• City on Fire, Walter Jon Williams''

Edward Bryant -- ''Five Memorable Books from 1997:

• Slippage, Harlan Ellison
• Wizard and Glass, Stephen King
• The Throne of Bones, Brian McNaughton
• Black River, Melanie Tem
• Revelations, Douglas Winter, ed.''

Jonathan Strahan -- ''If forced to pick, my favorites for the year would be:

• Back in the USSA, Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
• Finity's End, C. J. Cherryh
• Modern Classics of Fantasy, Gardner Dozois, ed.
• Diaspora, Greg Egan
• Secret Passages, Paul Preuss''

Charles N. Brown --

[SF novels] ''My own favorites? Antarctica, by Robinson, Diaspora by Egan, and the marvelous fusion of archaeology and quantum physics in Secret Passages by Paul Preuss.''

[Fantasy novels] ''My own favorites were the Pullman [The Subtle Knife], Powers [Earthquake Weather], and Roessner [The Stars Dispose] novels.''