After sorting through several thousand nominations and collecting over 60,000 votes, NPR has compiled a list of favorite sci-fi and fantasy books.

Harry Potter fans may notice something missing from their list of the top 100. NPR has an answer for you, "You'll notice there are no young adult or horror books on this list, but sit tight, dear reader, we're saving those genres for summers yet to come."

Should Potter have been allowed in the arena? Maybe, but this is also a chance to spotlight some literature than might otherwise get overlooked.

Here is a tease to NPR’s top sci-fi and fantasy books:

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

3. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert

5. A Song of Ice and Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin

6. 1984, by George Orwell

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

Sure, things are pretty bad right now. The economy is terrible, people are out of work, we're fighting I-don't-know-how-many wars, and "The Real Housewives" franchise is still thriving on Bravo.

But at least earth hasn't been overrun by murderous aliens who have wiped out most of the planet's inhabitants and have the rest of us on the run while they try to kidnap and enslave our children.

That's the kind of light-hearted fare you'll find in TNT's ambitious new summer science fiction series, "Falling Skies," which debuts this Sunday.

Actually, it's somehow not as depressing as the plot makes it sound. Even though all that stuff I mentioned is going on, the post-apocalyptic doom and gloom is framed in a compelling story that's tinged with a sense of hope. And it's highly entertaining.

The series, executive produced by Steven Spielberg, stars Noah Wyle ("ER") as Tom Mason, an American History teacher who has joined a resistance movement in Massachusetts to fight the aliens -- they call them Skitters -- and to try to restore some semblance of normal life for his three sons.

The Klingon Language Institute scholarship offers a student scholarship for $500 in the field of language study.  Applicants need not know Klingon.