Recommended Reading: Weird SF Novels

MaryKate Jasper and Charlie Jane Anders have an interesting blog post over at io9 entitled 10 Ultra-Weird Science Fiction Novels that Became Required Reading.  In it they list ten SFF novels that are, as they say, "ultra-weird" but essential.

I recommend the entire article to you, but for reference the 10 books are:

1. Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. Famous for its non-linear narrative, the original edition sold more than a million copies. The novel has drawn praise from Umberto Eco and has been compared to Pynchon. 
2. The Four-Gated City by Doris Lessing. Weird and experimental series by 2007 Nobel Laureate.
3. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. The novel follows Valentine, who believes in the rightness of consuming your friend’s flesh after he/she dies, the superfluity of clothing, and the obvious self-evidence of an afterlife, as he founds the Church of All Worlds, in which sexual liberation blends with psychokinesis. Won 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel; one of its invented words, “grok” has entered the Oxford English Dictionary. 
4. Ubik by Philip K. Dick. Time Magazine named this book, in which half the characters might be dead, as one of the 100 best novels written in English between 1923 and 2005. 
5. The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold.  Time travel book in which the protagonist interacts (and has sex) with past and future versions of himself, even impregnating a female version of himself who may turn out to be his own mother. Nominated for the 1973 Nebula Award and the 1974 Hugo Award for Best Novel. 
6. The Female Man by Joanna Russ. A representative work from the 1970s feminist movement, nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel (in 1975), this book is about four women from different realities brought together to experience each other’s gendered (or not) cultures.
7. Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre. The novel follows a healer through a post-apocalyptic, desert-like landscape, as she looks for a replacement “dreamsnake,” whose bites produce hallucinations similar to acid trips. It won the 1979 Hugo Award, the 1978 Nebula Award, and the 1979 Locus Award. 
8. Lilith’s Brood (Previously Xenogenesis) by Octavia Butler. An alien race, the Oankali, which has three sexes - male, female and ooloi - aims to replace the human race with human-Oankali hybrids after a massive near-genocide has almost wiped out humanity.
9. The Mount by Carol Emshwiller. On a world where humans are used as riding mounts for an alien race called the Hoots, this novel explores what happens when humans get used to, and even enjoy, their servitude. 
10. The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. 

This post follows on from an earlier one by Anders entitled 10 Weirdest Science Fiction Novels That You've Never Read. The list here was:

1. This Business of Bomfog, by Madelaine Duke (1967). Dystopian world where the Brotherhood of Man, Fatherhood of God (BOMFOG) complex tries to prevent wars by giving Important Guests access to perpetual-motion art and private swimming pools. 
2. The Tsaddik of the Seven Wonders by Isidore Haiblum (1971) A Tsaddik is a Hasidic spiritual leader or wise person, and this book is legendarily steeped in Jewish lore, as the main character visits various times and places in Jewish history. This tsaddik wanders around through time & space, fights an intergalactic real estate conspiracy, and participates in in a battle between hordes of demons & time-hopping Chassidim in a Polish castle. 
3. All of An Instant by Richard Garfinkle (1999) A scientist discovers a place called the Instant, interference with which erases entire cultures and wipes out whole timelines. In addition to the normal dimensions of height, width and depth, duration forms a fourth dimension in the Instant, and it places limitations on the memories and abilities of its inhabitants.
4. Passing for Human by Jody Scott (1977) Benaroya is a giant space dolphin who's only interested in pleasure, until she decides to study humans. 
5. Time Snake and Superclown by Vincent King (1976) The main character is living on Earth, observing a species of wraiths who are pretending to be human. While investigating this insidious plot, the hero has bad sex with a female wraith, who transforms his face into a clown mask — permanently — and steals his pants. 
6. Flesh & Gold by Phyllis Gottlieb (1999) A member of a race of moral haiku-writing telepathic sauropods, stumbles upon two mysteries while on duty on grimy mining planet Fthel V. 
7. Panda Ray by Michael Kandel (1996) Christopher looks like a normal 10-year-old boy, but he's actually a member of a superpowerful race of creatures who control the world using their technology and psychic powers. When Christopher starts bragging about this at school, including details about how ESP killed the dinosaurs, bad things happen.
8. The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer by Carol Hill (1996) With her magic cat, Schrodinger, Amanda goes to Mars and finds herself in a battle for her life and her planet with the greatest seductress of all, The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer, a being from forty million light years away.
9. The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy by Harold Bloom (1979) The only novel that the famous literary critic ever wrote — and he has disowned it utterly. Don't let Harold Bloom see you reading this book! It's a quasi-sequel to the space-faring novel A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay. 
10. The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson (1967) Aliens are supplying a new kind of drug, known as "Reality Pills," which cause your LSD hallucinations to become physically real.