John Ottinger III asked a group of bloggers to contribute to his Inside the Blogosphere column with their thoughts on the following question:

What are the best endings in science fiction/fantasy novels?

This  was my contribution:

“. . . he had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother” from 1984 by George Orwell. The protagonist, Winston Smith, finally capitulates and in a complete reversal accepts the party’s totalitarian faith. I think Orwell has a knack with good endings, he manages to write excellent last sentences that sum up the meaning of the novel and stick in one’s memory. For instance in Animal Farm: “The creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

If we were looking at science fiction outside the novel format, then I would also have to include the last scene of Planet of the Apes, where the protagonist Taylor (played Charlton Heston) on seeing the statue of liberty buried in the shoreline shouts out: “We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you. God damn you all to hell.”

There was a lot of variety in the different endings given by various  bloggers. Although I am Legend by Richard Matheson did get a mention a number of times.