::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

[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.