I’ve read 83 of NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction & Fantasy Books — and that’s about enough. Of the ones I have read there were about a dozen I wish I hadn’t, and of the ones I haven’t read, there were none I’m interested in reading.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
They put Xanth, the Drizzt series, David Eddings, and Stardust on there?
Gah, that list has no taste. No insult to Neil Gaimen intended- he’s a great author but Stardust was fairly average quality compared to many of his other works.
And World War Z was dumb. If you want to write a good zombie book, try making it so that zombies are dangerous enough that they represent a threat to people of reasonable intelligence rather than just making everyone stupid enough that a mindless, slow moving corpse represents a threat.
By saying you “wish you hadn’t” read some of them, do you just mean you didn’t like them, or do you actually mean you wish you had abandoned them after the first page? I ask because even for books I haven’t enjoyed, I’m not sure if there are more than one or two that I actually wish I hadn’t read. Even bad books (at least as far as SF&F) usually make me smarter, or sharper, or something positive, it seems to me.
I’ve read 42/100 of them. Some of the series I intended to read, some I may have read one book and decided to not go further into the series (so, I didn’t count them).
The Amber Chronicles and the Thomas Covenant stuff SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!
What sub-gamma compiled this list?
Eh, at least they had Eddings up there for the Belgariad and not the others. I actually enjoyed that one. Pretty cliche over all, but well written and fun. The Mallorean was really just a repeat of all the same stuff, making it a rehash of a cliche, which is pretty sad. The books centered around Belgarath and Polgara were kinda ok, more fleshing out the mythos’s history more than anything. Nothing special. But the Elenium and the Tamuli were just bad. They were just reskinned versions of the Belgariad and the Mallorean, making them rehashes of rehashes of cliches, and that’s just plain terrible.
The one on there that really pissed me off was the Sword of Truth. There are one, maybe two of them that could be considered good. But most of them are just soapboxes for Goodkind’s political and moral views, and they’re mostly atrocious. He’s a capitalism fetishist that would make Ayn Rand proud and he’s a serious proponent of total war, frequently opining how morally justified the “good guys” are for doing horrible things because the other side is totally evil and deserves it. In “The Third Kingdom”, one of his post-SoT books, the main character actually says “Destruction in the cause of good is a glorious thing.” And don’t get me started on his obsession with sexual violence. Nearly every book he writes has somebody getting raped and/or sexually tortured. He doesn’t deserve a place on any kind of “great works” list.
54. Plus 30 in my unread pile. Plus 2 I just bought. Something is very wrong here.
53.
I read alot not on the list, too.
Shannara‽
Good grief. And themadtapper‘s on the money with the abhorrent Goodkind’s chauvinistic sadism.
(I’ve only read forty of the hundred. Lightweight!)
re @4:
Really? Amber sukked? Thanks for sharing your opinion. Duly noted.
To share my opinion: Amber was awesomely fantasmagorical, a must read. (the last couple books of the hexology didn’t live up to the rep of the first trilogy).
Covenant was not good, but worthy of reading (with nose held).
54
I was surprised how many of the fantasy novels I’d read, considering I’ve tended to think of my taste as more SF than F.
And yeah: Amber was awesome. Must re-read that.
Hmmm…no Earthsea?
41/100
…
They put Xanth on there? And specifically “A Spell For Chameleon”, which has an especially high concentration Anthony promoting rape culture and rape-apologism? Seriously?
PZ, was that on your sub-list of “wish I hadn’t read” ? Because it is on mine (I don’t recall if I read the whole thing or not…).
Do I get partial credit for seeing the movie?
And Terry freaking Brooks? ugh. (I confess to liking the Belgariad, though. I read it as a kid, so not critically, at all, but I still think it deserves credit as accessible fantasy that manages to be something other than a Tolkien pastiche.)
Also, Iain Banks and Gene Wolfe waaaay down the list, with that hack Orson Scott Card near the top? In terms of popularity, sure, but in that case shouldn’t Harry Potter and Twilight be tops?
Snubs: Charles Stross, Bruce Sterling (for Schismatrix, at least), Alistair Reynolds, Jack Vance
57 here. And some were crap, and I’ll never open them again, and some were excellent. A bit hard to know how to answer where it names a series, and I’ve only read one or a few (Amber, Xanth).
Nice to see lots of LeGuin (even if no Earthsea), only one Anthony and not much Niven (esp w/ Pournelle).
For those complaining about the contents of the list, here’s the explanation:
So, blame people who frequented the NPR website 4 years ago.
Only 62 for me. And a few more are on my unread shelf, waiting their turn.
The list is pretty uneven, with no particular rhyme or reason whether entries are single books or complete series. I read the entire “Amber” series and loved it (esp. the first ones; Zelazny’s attention seemed to wander and the final entries were less effective). Too bad there wasn’t even a single entry by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the great-grandfather to much of the genre.
Geez, I would have thought I would have read more, but 43 it is. I did really enjoy the Kushiel’s Dart books.
–
I remember when my big brother gave me the Shanara book for Christmas one year, I thought it was really cool. I think I was eleven.
–
I would have liked to see When Late the Sweet Birds Sang on a list like this, though short, I thought it was pretty interesting.
I’m sorry but I must immediately discount this list for having the Silmarillion on it. I mean seriously!
It’s like a list of 100 best reads that has the Bible or anything by Shakespeare on it.
Oh and 51/100
A little disappointed I read so much SF&F when I was younger I thought I would have read more.
But, I was just looking for some good recommendations and here we are.
65/100, some of which I really wish I hadn’t read. Seriously, Piers Anthony? That ghastly Thomas Covenant series? Urk.
And speaking of ghast, where’s Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast on this list? I also have to admit that a lot of the classics were in the Aged Ps’ library when I was growing up, and since I’d read anything with print…
#9
Just pointing out that literally every comment towards a book or author in this thread, including the OP, is an opinion; no need to get snippy just because someone’s disagrees with yours. For example, #21 erichoug disparaging my favourite book doesn’t really mean shit to me, other than telling me we have differing tastes.
But getting back to #4… I would prefer to note that he actually used ‘sub-gamma’ unironically as an insult. In my experience, the only people to call people ‘gammas’ are the ones that also call people alpha or beta, i.e. MRA douchebags.
Watership Down?
Holms
I suggest your irony-detector may be out of kilter.
Still an’ all, this is very much a fun thread. If anyone wants to start accusing moarscienceplz of being a MRA*, might I suggest the T’dome would be more appropriate?
I highly doubt it.
I really liked the Amber books when I was in my twenties.
I should re-read them.
No Octavia Butler?
Not a list that should be taken seriously.
Brave New World was on the list.
Holms #24
It was a reference to Brave New World, which was on the list.
No ‘Eclipse’ Trilogy / ‘A Song called Youth’ there? :(
60. Must get a life.
Zeno
Just curious which Burroughs book you would suggest?
I’m seriously wondering. And I’m a big Burroughs fan. I don’t think there is anything he wrote I haven’t read at least once. I’d go for Tarzan myself. But maybe one of the Mars or an Innes book. Ooooo. Tarzan at the Earth’s Core!
I read the first three pages of Thomas Covenant and then tossed it when he raped the woman because he’s a leper. Sorry, when your hero is a self-pitying, rapist asshole I have no desire to read your book.
Edding’s Belgariad was a decent series but not good enough to get me to read any of his other books.
I read The Silmarillion once. I can get depressed on my own, I don’t need a book for that.
I was glad to see Erickson’s Gardens of the Moon on the list. I would have liked to have seen Joe Abercromie’s The First Law series on it.
Chigau,
I remember when I first read Brave New World. There was a sentence that contained the phrase “pneumatic blond” in reference to a person. I had to look it up to figure out what it meant (this was pre-google).
Wow, clearly I’m going to have to turn in my nerd card, having charted a mere 27. (Not counting the partial reads.)
57. Not bad.
But honestly, poll or not, a lot of the authors seem to repeat. I’d have preferred a list of 100 books by 100 authors – and basically, if an author’s one book gets voted in, then all other of xir books get moved off the list to make way for a new author.
Still, I think there’s a few on there I could be bothered to read that I haven’t yet. But some that I definitely wish I hadn’t, that is true, too.
Okay, this thread seems to be commentators discussing _their_ favorite books & whether they aren’t, or are, on the NPR listicle. So, to contribute:
I was disappointed to not see any Moorcock … (oops, Elric series is there … but the other “Eternal Hero” cycles are not)
ummm, oh yeah:
I too was puzzled how to answer when a SERIES was listed and I read only the first book and did not continue. I assumed that meant “no”, so I did not vote for such (looking at you, Dune. The first made me so thirsty, I could not continue).
I too was bamboozled by Silmarillion. It’s not a SFF genre novel, it’s more like an encyclopedia of Middle Earth history. Yeah, I know it is fictional, but I just can’t fit it into the same category as the other books listed.
70.
No Tiptree, no Sturgeon, no Ellison, no Delany, no Kay, no Lafferty, no Leiber, no Wilhelm, no Varley, none of the Wilsons, no Butler, no Rucker, no Bear, no Waldrop, no Bester…?
No surprise. I gave up on NPR about two decades ago: no regrets.
54 for me. It is difficult to read such a list without thinking….wtf?? As an example, the Thomas Covenant series…I actually read it all, even tho the writing was crap. King, I can’t stand…maybe I was unlucky in my choices the two times I tried to read his books, but to me he is a bit like Dan Brown….very, very popular, and rich, but a poor user of language. Banks, Stross, Stephenson would be my top three, with Stephenson narrowly coming out on top. His Baroque Cycle, tho not really SF, was brilliant…..if you like 2700 page novels….but Anathem as one of his best? Give me a break….to me it was perhaps his worst work ever. As for people missing, Samuel Delaney belongs on the list, altho his best work, Dhalgren, is probably not what most responders to the survey would see as very accessible.
stillacrazycanuck@40: but Anathem as one of his best? Give me a break….to me it was perhaps his worst work ever
What, worse than REAMDE? OK, the ending got weird, but still.
@41
sh*t, I forgot that one!
Still, I will forgive him a lot for The Diamond Age, which was my first introduction to him. I’ve pre-ordered his next one on kindle….will keep my fingers crossed.
@28:
Yeah, that’s what I thought. I was so sure she’d be there that I checked twice.
67.
I’m also not terribly interested in most of the ones I haven’t read, and wish I hadn’t read a few that I have. I agree with some other commenters that the list is criminally lacking some books and authors.
56. Lightweight.
41.
To add to the list of the missing, really surprised not to see something from Alice (Andre) Norton.
I’m surprised by how many of the books that I have read from this list and enjoyed at the time (like reading the Thomas Covenant series in my teens), but would have absolutely no interest in reading today.
And thanks to everyone for their suggestions – added to my list.
41/100 for me — it’s a pretty terrible list, mostly because of the way it was formulated (and why doesn’t YA or horror count as SF/F???), but to me it really fails because it’s useless as a guide to further reading. If your favourite book was a Goodkind novel, there’s not a chance in hell that you’ll enjoy The Dispossessed or A Canticle for Leibowitz, and if you’re new to the genre and looking to get into it and pick up a Xanth novel on this list’s recommendation, there’s a good chance you’re never going back to the SF/F section of the bookstore. Ever.
I’ve read 41 of the books on the list. I was pleased that Asimov was one the list several times but I just can’t believe that a pulp hack job like the Star Wars Heir to Empire is on the list. I was pleasantly surprised that the Atwood novel The Handmaid’s Tale was on the list. Several of LeGuin’s novel’s were on the list, thankfully The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. I trust the lack of Earthsea was because it was considered young adult stuff.
Although the list has Brave New World and 1984 I am sad it doesn’t have Zamatyin’s We which helped to inspire them, or the play R.U.R. by Capek which introduced us to robots.
I liked the Belgariad when I was a kid, so I reread it recently when my son turned 8 to see if it would be something I wanted to encourage him to read. I knew that there was an issue with the gender roles, and I wanted to see if it might not be too bad.
Then I reached the part where Barak rapes his wife. Yep, one of our heros, a viking berserker werebear, breaks down a locked door in order to rape his estranged wife. The only negative outcome is that some of the other main characters tease him mildly for it.
But it turns out OK, because she gets pregnant from the rape (it must not have been a legitimate rape because her body didn’t shut it down). This time, she bears a son, which makes things all better and they are now deeply in love. It isn’t explained why the two daughters they had weren’t enough to bring them back together – probably because girls don’t count
Just 22. Considering I haven’t really read much F&SF for about 30 years, that’s surprisingly high. I’m one of the few nerds in the world never to have read Pratchett, something I’ll be rectifying over the next few days. For me, not enough Asimov, not enough Niven, and WAY not enough McCaffrey.
I’m amused to see that spellcheck knows “Asimov”.
Martin, Card and Jordan in the top 12?!
May as well just go and stare at a wall for a month.
I read Animal Farm in high school and never considered a fantasy novel like Nineteen Eighty-Four or Fahrenheit 451.
If you want a good SF series, try any of the “Best of the Year …” anthologies, particularly those from Gardner Dozois or the Nebula Awards collections.
Thomas Covenant and Wheel of the World are among the worst books I have ever put down. I quit the former about 100 pages in. I kept trying to give Robert Jordan a chance- quit after book three when I noted that all they protagonists did was travel from town A to town B and took 300+ pages to do it. Lots missing in addition to those listed above I missed: Legacy of Herot, Golden Witchbreed, no Harlan Ellison (although this would require short story collections), no Samuel Delany, or even Andre Norton. Clearly a list put together by people who do not read SF. had read 46. NO ROBERT SILVERBERG.
I only actually read eleven of those books/series. That’s a bit of a blow to my geek cred.
To make it worse, I’m counting books that I started reading but didn’t finish. I tried reading CS Lewis’ “Out of the Silent Planet” after finishing the Chronicles of Narnia – I would have been ten or eleven at the time – but I got bored with it. Probably because it wasn’t really written for people my age. Of course, as an adult, I’d probably hate the novel for entirely different reasons so I have no desire to have another go at it.
Oddly enough, I think that might have been my first sci-fi novel and it didn’t sour me to the genre. The first sci-fi novel that I read in its entirety was Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, followed by its sequels (also on that NPR list). I was only thirteen at the time, so I probably didn’t get as much out of the novels as I would have if I read them as an adult, but I enjoyed them anyway.
I’m really annoyed that we’re still stuffing SciFi & Fantasy into one category, but The Hunger Games and Uglies can’t be in Science Fiction because their protagonists are teenagers. I think the whole idea of including Orwells books completely debunks the whole idea of there being a sub-genre called fantasy since Animal Farm doesn’t even pretend to either category.
That said, all you who are dishing on the Silmarillion as not good/fun/qualified for the list whatever, well you need to move over. I loved the book, I loved the tales of Beren and Luthien, and I read them in tandem with about 60% of the books on the list, so I’m sorry if the 1st 2 chapters are a little too Old Testament for you, but The Silmarrilion is Damn Good Fantasy.
Niel Gaiman doesn’t even belong on the list. Same goes for Alan Moore, but only becuase I don’t think we can include graphic novels without opening things up to movies and radio serials.
Heh. I’m under 20 of these–and I *have* read the Silmarillion. Like most of you, I’d have put a different list together, but such is life.
I have no doubt that any number of readers here could put together a credible list of 100 that misses all of these. And that is the good news. It is amazing how much there is to read! I (obviously) have no idea how these stack up against my own favorite SFF books, but I liked most of what I read.
And no, I think only one of them was a novel completely in rhyme and meter.
Shit, I had totally forgotten about that part. That’s some straight-up fundie “wife’s duty is to fuck, so it’s not rape” stuff. If I remember correctly, Polgara has a talk with the wife after she “comes around”, where she laments not realizing sooner that her rapey husband was totally awesome. Last time I read those books I was much younger and had, shall we say, rather miscalibrated moral compass, and so didn’t fully understand just how terrible that particular story bit really was. Probably the same reason I didn’t recognize what a vile shit Goodkind was until his later books came out. I remember getting disgusted with the later ones, and then when I went back and looked at the earlier ones I couldn’t fathom how I’d ever liked them. Got older, got smarter, took some antifundiotics, now a lot of things I thought were pretty good turn out to really suck.
Sadly, the Malazan series has ruined all other fantasy for me. I had never heard about the series until the day PZ did that post about not watching Game of Thrones. So many people in this forum were gushing about the Malazan series that I picked it up – it took me almost a year and 3 attempts to get through the first book – by the end of the second book I was utterly in love and heartbroken (those who have read the series know what I am speaking of). This is a series that is DONE, every detail plotted out from the start (none of that – hey this was popular…let’s milk it another 8 books), brilliantly written – there is NO boring fantasy meme of “innocent farm boy discovers he is the only one who can save the world and becomes and expert swordsman in a week.” The women in the series are the most equally portrayed of any book I’ve ever read – they are smart, hold positions of power, and fight brutally in battle alongside the men. The detail and the intricacies boggle my mind – I don’t know how one person is able to create such a world with layers and layers. It’s not an easy read. You must pay rapt attention to everything – nothing is spoonfed…not a molecule. But it’s not gratuitous – he respects the intelligence of his readers. I can read it again and again and I get just as much enjoyment as I did the first time around. It’s a MUST read for any fantasy fan, imo.
So, I also wanted to thank those – I can’t remember who or if anyone is still around – that recommended the Malazan series :)
I quite enjoyed The Silmarillion on my second attempt, when I decided to skip the first fifty pages or so and just started reading in media res. However, I didn’t get to the end, so I couldn’t tick it on this list as ‘read’.
I got 59%, but I’ve always been more of an SF fan than fantasy, so a mixed SF&F list like this drags my score down. For other authors who would be on my list if I’d compiled this, I propose Tim Powers and Samuel R Delany. I guess Andre Norton falls under the YA test, or I’d include her, too.
I’ve read only 15 on the list but have some on my to-read list and some I will never read. Like Ender’s Game, Convent and the Dragonriders of Pern is so fucking problematic, to put it nicely. There’s only a few that I regret reading like the Wizard’s First Rule (which I loved until others clued me in on the author’s beliefs and how obvious it became later on in the series) and Clockwork Orange, because fuck being triggered in school and not be able to do a damn thing about it.
I’m very happy to see Robin Hobb, Mistborn, and the Kushiel Series. There’s plenty left off but one series that I loved but is often overlooked is Anne Bishop’s Black Jewel series. Plenty of romance, action, drama, wonderful fantasy elements, and it handles rape and gender oppression well but needs a huge trigger warning.
But yeah, fuck this “no young adults” bullshit. Don’t most people get hooked on Science Fiction and/or Fantasy when they’re young? Plus several of those books on the list I read as a young adult so I don’t know why young protagonists get shunned. And I’m guessing they’re just going to do a Young Adult list and not a Young Adult [Genre] like everyone else does so they’ll be on a list where the only thing they have in common is the protagonist age rather than being similar.
Oh look, I was right and there’s only a few overlaps. I’m glad to see Diary of a Part Time Indian and Crank among others but with Catcher in the Rye (Who the fuck likes that book? I’ve yet to see someone say so), Unwind (the dumbest anti-choice premise ever) and Go Ask Alice, fuck their lists. There also seems to be a lot of newer work while ignoring books like Catspaw (fan-fucking-tastic with a trigger warning) and declaring them the “Best Ever”. Which seems at odds with how the science fiction and fantasy are mostly older books. Huh.
I’ve read more of the young adult books, want to read more of them and regret fewer of them so maybe I just answered my own question on making young adult it’s own list. Doesn’t still mean young adult can’t be in the top 100 fantasy and science fiction list though.
Anything by Christopher Moore would be on my Fantasy list.
But, for some reason, his books are in the General Fiction section in bookstores.
Even though the books are populated by vampires, demons, stupid angels, seamonsters, and the like.
phere @59
I read the Malazan books as they came out. I let them sit for a couple of years and then read all of them straight through. I think that’s the only way to get the full force of Erickson’s writing.
Hi, JAL.
I liked Catcher in the Rye.
But mostly for ‘technical’ reasons.
It was one of my earliest experiences with loathing almost all of the characters in a book but continuing to read.
Salinger was a masterful writer.
—
I read Go Ask Alice several times, not because it was good but because my best friend was almost exactly like Alice and I wanted to help.
She loved the book but turned out OK anyway.
This is as good a place as any, since we’re sorta discussing ‘Young Adult’ fiction.
and I have been storing the resentment for … awhile
.
(I was born in 1955)
When I was in early school i.e. before highschool, there seemed to be a thing that when the protagonist was a child, the book was OK for children to read.
So we read:
The Yearling
The Red Pony
also, possibly because the protagonist is an animal (like children)
Black Beauty
then there was this, possibly because the protagonist was female (like a child)
Little Women
.
I wonder how I survived.
I had either 22 or 23. (There’s one which I think I read, but I remember nothing about it, so I may be wrong.) A lot of those titles are ones I have heard of, and read synopses of, and decided I didn’t want to read, or else which are such that having read the synopsis means there’s very little need to read the book. But what really struck me was that the list jumps back and forth between things which seem to be included for historical importance and things which are fun to read. Those should be two different lists, to my mind.
@Eric O, #55:
Oh, god, the “Space Trilogy”. You didn’t miss much.
Out of the Silent Planet is a decent-ish adventure story with some decent description and a few really perceptive bits, and the only book of the trilogy which could have been written without reference to theology, although of course it wasn’t.
Perelandra is sexist, and (IIRC) fairly racist as well (it’s been a while since I read it), which might be possible to semi-ignore if the book wasn’t also tremendously boring so that you don’t have much choice but to confront the ugliness of Lewis’ thoughts. And the whole thing is basically a big neo-Christian theological whoop-de-do — if you don’t like the concept of Original Sin, this book is not one for you. (In fact, come to think of it, you could call the whole trilogy “The Original Sin Trilogy” with equal accuracy.)
That Hideous Strength has some really interesting stuff in it but it suffers dramatically from C. S. Lewis’ nasty habit of making villains who were strawmen of political positions he didn’t like*, and making them act so much in whatever direction that was that they become unrealistic as human beings. And, of course, he was a regressive right-winger (albeit in a way which now seems extremely mild these days, thanks to his intellectual — for lack of a better word — successors taking more extreme views). So there are homosexual villains, and aggressively atheist villains, and anyone who has to do with science is pretty much automatically a villain, and one of the characters who is presented as being sort of prehistorically too-good-for-this-compromised-corrupted-modern-world (because of course the world is constantly getting more evil) has the ability to prophesy and he berates the main female character because she was supposed to have a baby which would have saved the world but she has left her husband and nothing else she does will ever be as important as the child would have been. In fact, all the “good” female characters are content to be subservient to the men and ignorant of what’s going on in a broader sense, and all the academics except the religious ones and the really evil ones are stupid in a broad, obvious way. And [SPOILER] any academic who threw in with the scientists is horrifically slaughtered in the end and the “good” characters say “well, they deserved it for hanging around with bad people”.[/SPOILER]
*Remember how in the Narnia books, Eustace (the starts-off-as-a-nasty-bully cousin) had parents who were pacifists and vegetarians and liked books instead of sports and were, IIRC, interested in social justice? Those things are presented as proof that they are horrible whiny unworthy people, and an explanation for why Eustace is such a stinker, and of course he claims to be a pacifist but is actually just a coward who is also a bully when he can get away with it. Lewis’ politics were just as terrible as Ayn Rand’s, in their own horrifying way.
If you want to read an interesting Lewis thing, go find a copy of The Dark Tower and Other Stories and read the (incomplete) The Dark Tower. It has a lot of interesting ideas, and doesn’t go much into theology IIRC.
I guess I come in the mid-60s (though I didn’t include some books I started but didn’t finish and some I might have read but don’t remember clearly).
No Cherryh that I could see and the Bujold book listed (Shards of Honor, stand in for the Vorkosigan universe) was an early one. Read in combo with Barrayar, though, Cordelia Naismith does not suffer powerful fools.
A better checklist might be Hugo/Nebula winners though even many of those haven’t survived the test of time.
Not sure why “1984” is in there tbh. It’s not a Sci-Fi story, it’s a prediction. A prophecy, if you will. Same goes for “Animal Farm”, why include it? It’s a parable not a fantasy. (Same with “Watership Down).
Anyway, I scored 36/100. A few ideas for other books to check out in that list.
@48,
Agreed!
@The Vicar, #67
Good to know I wasn’t missing much.
I think I’ll always have mixed feelings about CS Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia were really fun reads when I was young, and it’s hard not to appreciate him for it. Now that I’m grown up, I’m put off by the theology and politics (and yes, I remember Eustace and know now that his parents were a caricature of… well, Adult Me…) but I just can’t write Lewis off completely. For all his faults, he knew how to craft a compelling adventure story for young readers and I have to give him credit for it.
everyone down here go look at ethicsgradient#18
I’m surprised I actually made it to nine (well, 8½).
Blergh….Stardust is the only book i ever bought that made me angry i spent money on it…it’s also the only book with a movie adaptation that is definitely better, and that’s just sad…
Now, Sandman, that’s quality…
Michael Anderburg @56
I didn’t say The Simarillion wasn’t good, I said it was depressing. The part I liked best was the “Music of the Ainur” creation myth, probably because it wasn’t depressing. I understand that Tolkien wrote much of The Simarillion when he was in the army during World War I, which was not a happy time.
Woke up this morning with tears in my eyes, thinking about Flowers for Algernon. I read that book 30 years ago. Talk about pathos. At the end of that book I felt like I had lost a friend.
67 for me. Unlike everyone else, Thomas Covenant was something I loved, and still do. Yes, he unquestionably rapes a 16yo girl, 100 or so pages in. But the story of his becoming a decent person, and the deep regret he had for the rape, and the endless knock-on effects of that rape, were for me very healing and optimistic. Covenant is so determined to not believe he’s been transported to The Land, and yet comes to appreciate the people of various species he meets.
Also, his magic system was boss. :)
It’s definitely not for everyone, but I think it deserves a spot for its groundbreaking use of an antihero in fantasy, and for showing what rape can do to survivors and (crucially) their families. And a society that is determinedly pacifist. When they do need to fight a war, they’re lost until a blind military strategist from our world arrives.
Where it falls down, for me, is that there’s some unexamined racism (in the tough but servile Japanese/Gurkha analogues, the Haruchai), and the usual fantasy problem (thanks JRR) of “evil races”.
But overall, the book is an ecofreak fantasy, about people who want to harm a Land so bursting with life that it cures Covenant’s leprosy – but not his carefully constructed shell of bristling anger to keep caring people at bay.
I admit I’m biased; Judith Merrill put the book in my hands, literally, when I was 13. :)
I have read about 48 of these I think. It is a weird list. I have read in the region of 3000 SF & Fantasy books so far and a great many of those would I think be more deserving of a place on the list than most of those that are.
Quoting ethicsgradient @18, as many seem to have missed their comment:
Daz (#78)and chigau(#71): Who are you speaking to? We can still complain about the list while knowing the panel of experts worked off their readers nominations and votes. And it was NPR that choose which books qualified like 1984 anyways so it’s not like NPR is totally off the hook either.
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#64 chigau (違う)
Huh. That’s a first. I wasn’t calling Salinger a bad writer, I just loathed the book beyond just the characters and didn’t enjoy it or being forced to read it. I love reading but so fucking many of the books teachers and schools force on students are goddamn awful. I remember thinking if this shit is what adults read and liked, I’d give up reading when I grew up.
Maybe enjoy would’ve been a better word in my initial comment.
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I’m glad for a your friend.
The Vicar @67: I read Narnia as a child, of course, and also the space trilogy in adolescence (and enjoyed it — although I wasn’t religious, I was happy to accept the Christian mythos as just part of the back-story). Then I became a big fanboi of Lewis during my Evangelical period. He provided an attractive alternative Christianity with a bit more intellectual depth and aesthetic richness than the simplistic fundamentalism I was otherwise exposed to (which may only be saying how shallow and sterile fundamentalism is). I was too naive back then to recognize the mean-spirited straw-manning of his ideological opponents. So I have probably read (and may still have) most of what he ever published, including posthumous works and correspondence.
But I’m a little puzzled by you giving The Dark Tower a pass — while it developed an interesting time-travel concept, I recall it as being just as heavy-handedly theological (or at least heading in that direction, had it been continued). And the protagonist’s girlfriend is shallow and sex-obsessed (see also: Susan Pevensey, as depicted by her siblings and friends in The Last Battle. Lewis really had a problem with modern womanhood). Disclaimer: it’s been ~35 years since I read The Dark Tower.
41 here – I loved the Amber series but I think Lord of Light was his best.
I would have liked to see Madeleine L’Engle( A swiftly tilting planet really struck a chord with me) and Lloyd Alexander (got me interested in Celtic mythology and mythology in general)
I stopped reading the Thomas Covenant book for the same reason people mentioned previously. I also like C. J. Cherryh’s Alliance series.
I am more into mysteries and non-fiction these days
As for the CS Lewis books, my favorite will always be Till We Have Faces. I got dirty looks when I tried to find it at the local Christian book store thought (“We don’t carry that book here”).
I scored a 70. And that was low, because several of the series I started but didn’t finish.
This is a list of fan favorites, reflecting the eclectic tastes of the people who participated in setting up the list. So how about this? PZ, perhaps we could have an open thread dedicated just to us posting our favorite spec fiction books? (Science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, that sort of thing.) It would be interesting to see what others are reading.
JAL @79
Three books I was forced to read in high school that I loathed were Moby Dick, Wuthering Heights and Silas Marner. Some years ago, on the recommendation of someone whose reading taste I trust, I reread Moby Dick. It was great and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So I reread the other two books.
Wuthering Heights had improved somewhat. It’s perhaps sort of maybe almost readable, if you’re not too choosy, but it’s not a book I will ever willingly reread.
Silly-Ass Marner was even worse than I remembered. This epitome of a stodgy old classic. I admit it’s well-written and demonstrates knowledge of society, behavior, and motivation. However very little of consequence happens in the story and none of the characters are particularly interesting, the title protagonist included. Eliot is also fond of excessive philosophizing, with her observations being both dry and uninteresting.
I found myself comparing Silas Marner to Tarzan of the Apes. There’s no question that George Eliot was a much better writer than Edgar Rice Burroughs. And yet I far prefer the work of the pulp fiction writer to that of the famous Victorian novelist. Burroughs managed to present a colorful world full of adventure, unique characters, and intriguing secrets. Eliot, while writing it all very well, presents a drab and colorless world with no adventure, realistic yet simplistic characters, and secrets resolved in the soberest and somberest manner possible.
@Eamon Knight, #80:
I read The Dark Tower a couple of years after I read the space trilogy for the first time (I have since reread the first and last books of the trilogy… I tried to reread all of them but after the first couple of chapters, Perelandra bogs down into a fictional justification of Lewis’ worldview which is akin to the speeches in Atlas Shrugged), and I admit I haven’t reread it since then, so you may be correct. I just don’t remember any of the characters or the narration flat-out whanging you over the head with religion the way they do in the trilogy.
(Actually, if you like C. S. Lewis despite the religious angle, you ought to check out some of G. K. Chesterton’s fiction. He’s often — for which you may read “almost always” — explicitly religious, but some of his plots are extremely interesting. Catholics like to claim Chesterton for their own, and he certainly was a Catholic apologist, but his reasons for being a Catholic would either have given him massive cognitive dissonance or forced him out of the church if he had lived a few years longer — he died more or less from the strain of being on an anti-Nazi speaking tour, claiming it was every Christian’s duty to oppose the Nazis, mere months before the Vatican announced their deal with Hitler. He also denounced, all the way back in the nineteen-teens or so, American Christian fundamentalists, although that was in his newspaper work, not fiction.)
To my mind, the difference between C.S. Lewis and Madeline L’Engle is that L’Engle didn’t bash upside the head with “Christianity is the best, you should totes become Christian, and non-Christians are the worst.” Also, she can write in a non-dogmatic way.
Also, I’m arbitrarily giving her 1000 points for the paragraph that begins “It was a brain. A disembodied brain.”
@Al Dente, #84:
Well, yes, that’s one of my hobby horses. American public school curricula teach literature by taking a lot of books which are either old (and therefore must be “classic”) or interesting to adults, and making children read them at high speed, thus ruining the experience and making them believe that reading is boring and frustrating. There’s a huge amount of non-“literary” material, modern and old, which would be much more interesting, so they could be encouraged to actually read and get to the good stuff later. There’s both juvenile and adult sci-fi and fantasy — which is sometimes “literary” anyway — and mysteries and ghost stories and thrillers. A lot of the early stuff is even out of copyright now so it’s cheap as heck.
Personally, I can’t believe nobody so far has either praised or bashed Heinlein. Personally, I think he belongs on the list, but “Starship Troopers” is hardly his best work. Thomas Covenant, though, boy, there’s some hours of my life I’ll never get back. There was a hilarious review of “Lord Foul’s Bane” on Amazon that had me on the floor; it really itemized what was bad about Donaldson’s writing. As for Card, I hate his politics and his gay-bashing, but I still loved “Ender’s Game.” And the “Ender’s Shadow” series, too, for that matter.
daved #88:
As far as novels go, most people I talk to about him seem to reckon (and it’s certainly my view) that his best work was his YA, which is specifically excluded. Him, Andre Norton and Hugh Walters between them cemented my love of the genre.
Yeah, well, there are a couple I wish I could unread, especially Lord Foul’s Bane. The C.S. Lewis trilogy: well-written and infuriatingly smug. Most of the unreads (32) I never want to read (I’m willing to give Stephen King a shot), and some hardly count as literachoor.
Too much? There’s never enough, Prof.
Also, what’s with all the hate against Eddings? His Belgariad certainly deserves to be up there more than Xanth does in my mind, a series which promised much and delivered nothing but disappointment.
Eddings’ main flaw is that he could never break out of the Belgariad rut in his fantasy work. I read the Malloreon (a continuation of the Belgariad – it at least did the favor of countering the apparent racism of the first book and brought everything to a very satisfying conclusion, albeit a somewhat Christian one, fucking Errand,) I’ve read his Elenium and Tamuli (each a sort of retelling of the theme albeit with different emphases and skin – I enjoyed its characters and setting at least), started his Dreamers books (his weakest by far from what I saw), and the Redemption of Althalus (a blatant retelling of the Belgariad, but it had some good moments. Sadly, it seemed his decline was assured.) The “prequel” novels to the Belgariad were great, because of the vividly different focus and the back-end view to the entire history of the setting it had.
Eddings was never a bad writer though. His characters and settings were always vivid and engaging. I mostly fault him on the character scale for being a little weak on female characters, this in spite of his wife Leigh being such a major influence.
When he died in 2009 I cried. I get choked up talking about him now. He was such an enormous influence for me and I loved his work (even in light of its flaws) so much that it hurt. I’d always wanted to send him a letter saying how much his work meant to me, and now I never can.
If I made a list, he’s going up there no matter what anyone says.
28 – current rank # 23,045 of 61,122 users (top 38%)
I might have missed a couple – it’s been along time since I read SF&F and some were familiar, but I don’t recall if I actually read them, or just know the story too well. And I just skimmed the list.
I agree about ERB – probably “Synthetic Men of Mars”.
Others not on the list: H Beam Piper’s future history series – “Space Viking” maybe; A E van Vogt “Slan”; E. E. “Doc” Smith “Lensman” series; “Andre Norton” – tough to pick one, but “Breed to Come” maybe; Eric Frank Russell “Wasp”; …
Bah.. I own over 300, probably another 100 or so on kindle, but only read 35 of the ones they list on there list… There list sucks. lol
I was sure I would beat you, but I only reached 80. Though it seems that is a bit much compared with most everyone else. Must be the March 9 birthday effect :)
I am glad they have Bujold there. Though no Butler? No Cherryh? No Brunner? And only Dune from Herbert?
Chigau @63 – Christopher Moore definitely
I haven’t read the Belgariad, and I suppose I’ll continue not having read it.
I haven’t read the Malazan series either, which I will definitely do now. Thank you.
if there are any Cherryh/Bujold/Brunner/Herbert fans here could you suggest some other authors you liked. Please.
As for C.S. Lewis. I was fan of the Narnia Chronicles as a child, but I hadn’t read all of them. Many years later a christian friend gave us the whole set and I started reading them to my son. I ended up having to censor a whole bunch of really racist shit in some of them while reading. I especially remember The Horse and his Boy, where white generally correlates to good and brown to evil. Not been much of a fan of C.S. Lewis since.
You know, I’m really, really surprised that The Dresden Files didn’t make the list.
What?! Dracula is not on the list. Neither are Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. At least Frankenstein is there. There are no non-English books either, but Americans don’t read much in translation.
I can highly recommend one for PZ and others!: Jonathan Stroud’s The Bartemaeus Trilogy.
The Vicar @87: American public school curricula….
I’ll see your American curricula and The Great Gatsby and raise you “Can Lit”, much of which is lugubrious navel-gazing. It’s a sort of ordeal of passage we impose on adolescents up here.
Me: only 39 of 100 (mostly older titles) — but that still puts me in the top 21 percent.
So this list came from a popularity poll in summer 2011. On that basis, I’d say it’s not bad. It omits authors & titles I’d have included — Cherryh’s Downbelow Station, Brunner’s Quicksand*, Biggle’s Monument, Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity, James Hogan’s Giants trilogy, James Schmitz’s The Tuvela (aka The Demon Breed), Sturgeon’s More than Human — to name some. But such lists always omit somebody’s favorites.
This list’s big problem, IMO, is lumping SF and fantasy together. There should be a list for each, because I doubt that the readerships of the two genres overlap to any great degree. Thus you can include authors like Schmitz, who also wrote fantasy (The Witches of Karres) or Andre Norton (her Witch World fantasies and Time Traders SF).
I’m glad to see Piers Anthony on the list, but I’d nominate Macroscope as his best work. And it mystifies me that Michael Flynn’s Firestar (the start of a dynamite four-novel saga) didn’t appear.
Oh, well. Insert the requisite Latin motto here.
* If you want a depressing novel, read Quicksand.
Brunner was good at doing depressing. “The Sheep Look Up” was a real downer too. But he was a superb author, and I am disappointed that “Stand on Zanzibar” didn’t make the list; terrific book. Forgot about Schmitz; “The Demon Breed” is a lot of fun, as was some of his other work. Someone else pointed out that John Varley didn’t make the list. Absolutely no excuse for that. His “Titan” trilogy blows Asimov away (not to mention that Varley is a far better writer).
I agree about The Sheep Look Up. Not only is it a downer, but it vastly overplays the miserably pervasive pollution plaguing America. Brunner also made some mistakes — as when he has a leaky microwave oven instantly cook someone. (See http://www.chris-winter.com/Erudition/Reviews/SciFiFic/Brunner_J/Sheep_Look_Up.html )
Still, the man wrote 83 novels (one in Portuguese) as well as short fiction, poetry, songs, and quite a bit of nonfiction, so mistakes are going to creep in somewhere.
I never read Stand on Zanzibar. That’s something I have to correct.
Also agree that John Varley belongs on the list.
Sili (#72): I’m surprised I actually made it to nine (well, 8½).
Fellini is on that list? Must have missed his title.
(Ducks…)
I’ll second the vote for Eric Frank Russell’s Wasp.
Let me add: Cordwainer Smith’s Norstrilia; Afred Bester’s The Demolished Man or The Stars My Destination (take your pick); Pohl & Williamson’s The Reefs of Space; Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain; John Wyndham’s Re-birth; Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men; Jack Vance’s The Last Castle or The Dragon Masters (for his SF; he gives great fantasy too); Gordon R. Dickson’s The Tactics of Mistake or Soldier, Ask Not; Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys; Clifford Simak’s Way Station; Edgar Pangborn’s a Mirror for Observers; and Poul Anderson’s Brain Wave.
And let us not forget comedy. Ron Goulart is no slouch. But The Butterfly Kid, by Chester Anderson and Michael Kurland, is the funniest SF novel of all time. (It won the Hugo in 1968.)
Incidentally, here’s an interesting list from Business Insider:
http://www.businessinsider.com/17-best-science-fiction-books-2015-2
@daved #88
The Ender series was good. It was surprising how insightful “Speaker for the Dead” was, given Card’s politics.
China Mieville is great and I liked “The Sparrow” by Russell.
Another vote for Eric Frank Russell’s Wasp.
Anything by CJ Cherryh—I can’t single one out.
And I have to include Arthur Conan Doyle’s Tales Of Terror And Mystery.
On Brunner. Read Shockwave Rider for some pretty prescient writing.
@caseloweraz (#102): I too thought John Wyndham ought to be in there for something (Re-Birth was ‘The Chrysalids’ in the UK, and might be his best). He’s the author of 2 books that have become standard tropes: ‘Day of the Triffids’, and everyone (in the UK, anyway) knows the word ‘triffid’ now (hey, my spellchecker recognises it, and it doesn’t even recognise ‘spellchecker’), and ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ (filmed as ‘Village of the Damned’), with the eerie, staring children who stick together and are cruel to any outsider.
39, roughly – there are some I’m not sure whether I’ve read or not, I know somethnig about them but can’t be sure it’s not just from others discussing them. Notably missing authors: Olaf Stapledon (for Last and First Men and Sirius), Octavia Butler (Kindred and the Xenogenesis trilogy), Stanisaus Lem (especially The Futurological Congress), Charles Stross (especially Neptune’s Brood, which I think must have been written to win a wager “OK, I bet you can’t write a successful SF novel involving an interstellar banking scam and intelligent cephalopods!”), Mervyn Peake (the Gormenghast trilogy), Katharine Burdekin (Swastika Night).
I’m with CaitieCat on Thomas Covenant. I really enjoyed the first series and all his misdeeds have huge consequences. The second series wasn’t bad. However, the latest series has left me meh. His writing is getting tiresome. I preferred the Gap series to be honest.
I know I’ve mentioned this before in previous SF related threads, but what about Greg Egan? There’s so much there for those who like the science in Science Fiction. The Orthogonal series anyone?
@106
Yup. At least as relevant as Gibson when it comes to cyberspace. I remembered another really depressing Brunner novel: “Total Eclipse.” On the flip side, however, “The Stone that Never Came Down” is, overall, quite upbeat.
I read 50, including some I wish I hadn’t. The latter group includes anything Thomas Covenant, the CS Lewis Space trilogy, Game of Thrones, and the whole dang Wheel of Time. When Brandon Sanderson finally finished the last of the Wheel of Time I bought a copy on Kindle just so I could find out how it turned out. You could really tell which pieces had been written in advance by Robert Jordan, much more than in the other books Sanderson worked on. When I was done I contributed the entire heap to Goodwill.
Thomas Covenant, I read the first three when they came out because my high school library had them. I swore I wouldn’t read any more. My boyfriend at the time gave me the 4th for my birthday. In retrospect that should have told me some important things about him. That series, and Game of Thrones, are two that I am not sorry to have abandoned and only wish I had done so sooner.
James Tiptree, Jr.
A little late to the game on this.
Only 29 for me, but most of them I really enjoyed, so I’m fortunate in that respect. A few I didn’t enjoy, such as Snow Crash, though I know I’m in the minority when it comes to that one. The Dark Tower series I started when I was 13, and it didn’t conclude until I was 20, so I was emotionally invested in it in a way that allowed me to ignore the often bad writing and plotting (especially in the last three books.)
Like many others, I’m really surprised not to see any Octavia Butler on here. A criminal omission.
This comments section has been great, though! I’ve gotten far more out of it in the way of suggestions than from the NPR list. Also some pretty good advice on what books to avoid. My to-read list is now sufficiently packed with great sci-fi and fantasy suggestions. How exciting! Thanks everyone!