Poll: What Is The Best Stand Alone Science Fiction Novel?

So the write-in nominations have been tabulated, and here is the poll for best stand-alone science fiction  novel.

The poll itself is in the usual spot on the left hand side of this blog, just under the bio of the pretentious writer--which is under The Reliquary.  It should be right near the bottom of this entry on the left--near the comment box

I had to remove a lot of the write in entries in order to create a reasonably sized poll.  The one book that got a "second" nominations was added, but all other nominations were only listed once.  So I had to decide which of the twenty way tie for second place would make it to the poll.

So here is how I decided what made it and what didn't:

If you wrote a nomination as a response to the X-post for the entry (on either G+ or Facebook) I didn't take the nomination.  They were good nominations, but I mentioned in the [original post] that I would favor the nomination written as a response to the post.  I need people to come to the site.

If you wrote multiple suggestions but expressed doubt that one of your suggestions might fit the poll (usually because it's was--or became--part of a series), I went ahead and took your OTHER suggestions.  If you ONLY wrote a suggestion that you weren't sure of, I probably took it regardless.  But as long as you gave me alternatives, I favored them.

If you wrote more than two suggestions for "the best," after scratching my head briefly as to why you thought a half a dozen novels were "the best," I assumed they were in order of preference.  On the original page, I asked for a single title…MAYBE two, so those of you writing in between 3-6 titles, I picked the first two UNLESS…you did something I mentioned above.  (One person suggested three titles but expressed doubt that one fit the pole, so I took the other two.)

You can vote as many as three times--just in case you simply can't decide between books.  However, you don't NEED to vote all three times, and voting thrice mathematically "dilutes" the impact of all your votes.