Lou Anders posted the SFBC’s top fifty, highlighting which he’d read and loved. Great idea, Lou! Here’s mine
This is the Science Fiction Book Club’s list of the fifty most significant science fiction/fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002.
The Key:
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Strike-out the ones you hated.
Italicize those you started but never finished.
Put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.
Additional notes below indicated with lower-case letters.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert*
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein*
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin* a
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson*
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick*
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.*
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov*
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish* b
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett c
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison*
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison*
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester*
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey*
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card*
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson* d
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman*
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl*
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling*
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin*
31. Little, Big, John Crowley*
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny*
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick*
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute e
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke*
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven*
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut*
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson*
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner*
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester*
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks f
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer*
So I’ve at least attempted all but nine of the fifty, heard of all but one (Wilmar Shiras? Children of the Atom?), and loved thirty of the fifty. I’d put them into considerably different order (Stand on Zanzibar, Lord of Light, Snow Crash, Man in the High Castle, and Little, Big would be the top 5 I’d choose from this list). I wonder what happened to the first Amber Chronicles, Moon is a Harsh Mistress (after the obligatory Stranger - way too high - the only other Heinlein is Starship Troopers, for Darwin’s sake?) Another kind
As always, the interesting questions are why some things are there and not others. A few of the entries are entire series (LOTR, Book of the New Sun, and Cities in Flight), others are single volumes from series (Earthsea, Ender’s Game, Dangerous Visions), and one is one-half of the series eligible within the time frame (Thomas Covenant). LOTR and New Sun are legendary as series, while Cities in Flight is pretty obscure (I’ve never met anyone else who’s read any of it). It’s interesting to compare Cities in Flight with Ender’s Game et al.:
- in CIF, the first two books are conceptually interesting, gripping, and highly original, while the remaining books do little more than ring the changes on the future that has emerged by the end of the second book. The series as a whole sank without a ripple at the time - no Hugos, no Nebulas at the time, though has been thoroughly decorated retroactively. Clearly enjoying a rehabilitation in the present day. Overall, though, you’ve got two really pretty decent books and two ordinary ones.
- Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead both were awarded the Hugo and Nebula, the first time an author had achieved that dual recognition twice. Ender’s Game capped the first part of Orson Scott Card’s career, in which all of his protagonists were boys under ten years old; Speaker for the Dead, his first book to feature an adult protagonist, is even better. Both are widely considered to be among the best ever, though the first has a wider appeal due to its military-technical setting and accessibility to children. Soon after Speaker, OSC entered the third part of his career, in which he appears to have gone crazy and forgotten how to write, while subjugating his talents to the service of his bizarre conservative-Mormon ideology. So in the Ender et al series, you’ve got two transcendant books, a couple of brilliant misfires, and a bunch of paper-thin politico-ideologico-homophobico-crap.
[Digression: Card's current homophobia is especially repellent, even creepy, given this early novel, whose protagonist is a young boy who's such a beautiful singer that the 3rd person omniscient narrator takes it for granted that virtually every man he meets will want to, er, possess him. That's not the point of the book, but it's what happens throughout.]
a Loved all the Earthsea books when I was a kid, haven’t gone back to them since. Wizard was probably my favorite book at one time.
b Covered this above - I just don’t think that the last half of the series belongs in the list. The first book was a brave, original, and exciting anti-McCarthy hard-sf yarn - put it on there as a proxy for all of the brave SF writers who satirized the government when it was risky.
c I know, I know, this is on there as a placeholder for the whole Discworld series, but come on! There are much better books in the series to hold this place. Why not put all of Discworld in, as well as all of Harry Potter, for that matter?
d Loved it when I was a kid, hate it as an adult. Idiot characters, rape fantasies, horrendous prose. Donaldson is the Robert Ludlum of F&SF, with the scary harbinger of continued output even after his death.
e Honestly, I have no idea whether I finished this. I remember a couple of scenes quite vividly, and it’s really unusual that I don’t finish a book once I’ve started it. Must have made a huge impression on me.
f Same as e, without the memory of the scenes. I remember holding the beautful trade paperback edition in my hands, and discussing it with all of my friends who were reading it at the same time, but nothing at all of the story itself. Another huge influence on my life.
