::sigh:: backed into a book meme

[viktor_haag]

OK, just about everyone on my friends list has already done this meme, so now I feel compelled. Curse you, memes!



This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club.

Bold the ones you’ve read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien **
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert **
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin **
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe ***
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin *
Little, Big, John Crowley ***
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer


Comments:
• Obviously, I'm not such an F&SF nut as some of my lj-friends
• Asterisks need a three point scale
• Hate? Hate is a very strong word. I don't hate any of these books. Strikeouts are "dislike", and not even particularly strong dislike.
• I am astounded to see not one book by Vance on this list, especially given Canticle For Leibowitz, quite possibly one of the most over-rated SF books of all time. Also, no love at all for Dan Simmons? Hello? Hyperion? Fall of Hyperion? Carrion Comfort? Bah.
• How the hell do you stick Interview with the Vampire on this list, and not one single book by Stephen King? (And before you start spluttering with objections, I humbly submit Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, and The Stand (original, edited version), all of which put the poncy Lestrade well in his place. And if you don't think so, go back and read them all again: in fact, the presence of I Am Legend on this list, and not one of those four books by King is also a bit of a slap in the face, although I have way more respect for Matheson than I do for Rice.)
• Another slap in the face: no Poul Anderson? Broken Sword? Three Hearts and Three Lions? War of the Gods? Mother of Kings? ::thhhpppbbbbbbpppp::
• And no Ray Bradbury? For shame. (Retracted -- Doug points out in the comments that Farenheit 451 was written by Ray, and not his lesser known brother, Skippy.)
• '53 is an awfully suspicious start date until you realize that LotR was published in '54 onwards. Convenient how that date leaves LotR at the top of this list and drops out Peake's "Gormenghast" books which started from '46 on, Orwell's 1984 ('49), and Wright's Islandia ('42). (This is a potty conspiracy theory: see comments for the real reason that '53 was picked as the start date.)
• I humbly submit that this list should really be called "50 favourite F&SF novels of a small group of editors at the SFBC".

Comments

[thebitterguy]

Your dourness is something which I find more shocking with each passing day.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Don't worry TBG -- you're in no danger of losing your moniker...

Perhaps I can be known as The Dour Fellow or something. We could have a team-up issue.

[thebitterguy]

You can be my sidekick, if you'd like.

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Conversely, it seems every Power Girl needs a skinny white girl. *snarfle* Damn, I'm easily amused.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Is that like Danny Rand sidekick, or Tim Drake sidekick? I could consider the former, but if you want me to be one of those ablative-youth-in-tights deals, you can keep on looking, buster.

[thebitterguy]

Every Power Man needs his skinny white boy.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Every lithe-and-nimble Iron Fist needs his "break down that door" musclebound... OK, OK, you win...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Did you see that recent picture of Iron Fist (from Civil War, I think) where for some reason he's carrying a pistol in either hand?

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Nope. I haven't been reading Civil War. I tend to eschew big crossover maxi-events that require me to spend cash on a whole raft of books I don't normally get on a monthly basis.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It was a wonderful one panel example of We Have No Friggin' Idea What This Character is About.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

1953 is the year the SFBC was founded. This would be a list of significant books from their first 50 years.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Ah! So it might also select from the books they've actually published?

I wonder if the spreaders of this meme know that: I kind of got the impression it was one of those "AFI best movies of all time" hype-y lists which are notoriously heavy on American studio pictures and notoriously light on submissions from just about any other system in the world.

But if there's a small pool from which these choices are drawn to start with, then it makes more sense.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It's a measure of my supreme laziness that while I have a list of everything that they published until about 2001, I am not going to check it to see. I am pretty sure that they didn't do some of them until afte this list came out, or at least one, because I wrote the report on the Cordwainer Smith collection. I also don't think they ever did the Rice.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Cordwainer Smith collection? Is this where I'd heard about all-of-Smith-in-a-book? I thought my memory was pointing me at the two-book set from NEFSA... are SFBC going to publish a single-volume collection?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

All of Smith's short SF fits into one volume, THE REDISCOVERY OF MAN. His only SF novel is the other NESFA Smith book, NORTSTRILLIA.

I don't know if they did publish either but I do know that as of the early 2000s, they probably hadn't or they wouldn't have had me read and report on them.

Actually, now that I think about it, TRoM is recent enough (the collection, not the stories in it, I mean) that the SFBC couldn't have done it in the 1960s, because the collection didn't exist.

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Well, 1953 is the first year that Hugo Awards were handed out (although there are now retroactive Hugo awards for 50 then 75 years before the current award period).

About 18 of the books are Hugo winners (including Canticle....) and many others are Hugo nominees.

About a dozen are Nebula Award winners (with about a six book overlap).

Almost nothing published in the last 10 to 15 was nominated (including Hugo Award winning Hyperion).

Doug.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It's that "significant" thing: it's really hard to tell what of recent SF is going to turn out to be the significant works. Remember when shared universes were all the rage? But that burned out pdq because the publishers forgot an important lesson: never let Janet Morris participate.

Andrew Wheeler is a big Vance fan so I know he is aware of Vance.

I asked what they meant by "significant" and got this answer:

"Not exactly "best" and not exactly "most popular," but somewhere in the
middle, with as much wiggle room as we could build in. Basically, they
were books that we thought were important to the history of the field,
for various reasons."

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Although the list contains many Hugo and Nebula Award winners it is notable short in the area of Short Stories. Leiber and Vance both have a half-dozen Hugo Awards for Short Stories, but many of what we consider their "books" are actually collections of earlier works.

Now Ellison gets the nod twice for his several short story compilations (Dangerous Visions and Deathbird Stories) ... and it's kind of funny, because although he edited and compiled Dangerous Visions, he didn't actually write them.

I'm curious how anthologies ever made it on to a list of novels.

Andrew Wheeler Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

on this meme over at the SFBC blog:

http://thebookblogger.com/sfbc/2006/11/sfbcs_top_50_books_list_goes_w.html#more

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

One response to Viktor: No Bradbury? Does Farenheit 451 not count? :)

One additional thoughts on the nature of the list:

Although the SF choices are grounded in the Hugo and Nebula Awards, neither awards have been too kind to Fantasy over the years (which, if anything, is a condemnation of the kind of crap that is usually passed off as fantasy). Instead, the Fantasy choices on the list seem to be the "heralded classics" ... the Lord of the Rings, Wizard of Earthsea, etc. Thankfully the list isn't based on sales, however, or we might end up with RA Salvatore topping it off.

Doug.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Does Farenheit 451 not count?

Check. I was deluding myself; distracted by thoughts of short-story collections, and horror, showing up on the list.

As for fantasy, I'd say Little, Big qualifies, and is rightly placed. More recently, I wonder what I'd hope to see there from the pure fantasy camp - I honestly can't think of something recent that's truly "significant": Perdido Street Station maybe? Or something by Patricia McKillip? Or perhaps Phil Pullman's trilogy?

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

And how Terry Brooks made it on the list.

::shudder::

I suspect he stands in for the serial-book-slush-pile mess that is most of modern fantasy.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Because his piece of crap dumbing down of the surface ideas of LORD OF THE RINGS cursed the field with a million turgid extruded fantasy product novels and while that ain't good, it's significant.

It's a bit like how JAWS and STAR WARS are significant because their success doomed films to endless series of shitty summer blockbusters.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Although the SF choices are grounded in the Hugo and Nebula Awards, neither awards have been too kind to Fantasy over the years [...]

Up until about 2000, when the preponderance of fantasy fans and writers began to have a telling effect.

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Granted.

Still, at least we've seen things like Lois McMaster Bujold, previous SF winner and Clarke's book (which our host here did not enjoy :) ). I can make no excuse for Rowling, and I blame the 'shippers and our lack of decisive military action against anyone claiming a fandom.

Doug.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Or Robert Jordan...

::B::

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Nod about Anderson being sadly overlooked. And where is de Camp ("Less Darkness Fall"?). King is also a terrible omission from this list, but so too is Jack Finney ("Time and Again", "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "The Third Level") as another author that explores the quirky interface of SF and fantasy.

And why so little so-called children's & Young Adult SF and fantasy? I see no Norton, Pullman, Pinkwater, Diana Wynne Jones ("Howl's Moving Castle", or Juster ("The Phantom Tollbooth") on this list.

And where the heck is Richard Adam's "Watership Down"? ? ?

Or James Schmitz's "The Witches of Karres" (which wasn't published in hardback until 1966 though it first appeared in magazine format in 1949; if "Children of the Atom" can appear on this list, why not this?)?

::B::