Honestly, I'm not sure where this list originated, but somebody came up with this list of "the most significant Science Fiction and Fantasy books of the last 50 years". I was having breakfast with some friends a couple of months ago, and we were musing about what should be in the "SF Canon". This is one person's list, and I suspect others would have other lists.
The in thing to do around here (based, at this writing, on the actions of Orac, PZ, John, Joseph, and Bora, is to post the list, posting in bold the ones that I've read.
Let's see how my nerd cred does:
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien : well, yeah. I first read it the summer after 6th grade, and for a while read it every 4 years after that. I'm no longer on the regular scheduled, but I've read it many times. At times, I've called this my favorite "book".
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov : Embarrassing Rob Story : I tried to read Foundation in 8th grade, and couldn't make it through it. (!) Reason: I was reading it like a novel. By the time the fourth or fifth short story in this collection of short stories started, I was trying to keep track of too many characters, and the thing didn't hold together well enough to keep my attention. It was infinitely frustrating, led to a very bad grade on a book report paper in English class, and put me off of Isaac Asimov for years. I reread it in college, and loved it, and then read the whole trilogy (plus many others after that). It helps to approach it right.
3. Dune, Frank Herbert : Oh yeah. First read back in 6th grade or so, only reread once. I should read it again, I'm overdue.
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein : Never read this one. I've read a lot of other Heinlein, but not this. Heinlein's tendency to overfocus on being a dirty old man sometimes gets tiresome.
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin : Just reread recently, in fact.
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson : I read this back in grad school. I realize that this created a genre, but the book didn't seem to me the revelation that many others saw it to be. I suppose I should reread it. I've never read any of the sequels.
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke : A classic. Also read 'Imperial Earth" and "Against the Fall of Night" by Clarke, even though they aren't on this list.
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury : I think this book should be banned. It clearly is a subversive message in support of terorrism.
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. : Hey, it's on my shelf. I'll read it at some point.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov : So, when I got over my Asimov fear that came from not approaching Foundation properly in 8th grade, I became an Asimov fan. In early grad school, I read a substantial fraction of all of his novels. This one is rightly a classic, and has aged remarkably well.
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett : The Douglas Adams of fantasy. I haven't read very much of Discworld, but I've enjoyed what I've read.
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison : Nope. I have this mental block about Harlan Ellison that comes from the fact that the man's public persona is a complete, utter, arrogant asshole, and that he is a copyright maximalist who likes to use things like the DMCA as a blunt instrument against anybody who has the gall to recognize that all creativity is derivative. It will be difficult to overcome my distaste for the public persona that Ellison has fostered for me to want to read anything he's written ever again. "City on the Edge of Forever" remains one of the best Star Trek episodes, but I'm firmly convinced that the world would be a better place if Ellison had been an unknown bricklayer rather than a high profile science fiction writer (or at least high profile science fiction persona; I'm not sure his writing has the profile that he thinks it does).
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison : See previous.
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester : It's on my shelf. I'll read it someday.
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey : I've been on a Pern kick in the past as well. The early ones were great, but eventually the suffered form the "too many books in a gigantic series from an author who can no longer be edited" problem.
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card : Amazing. Just reread recently.
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman : This one should be higher on the list. It does interesting and fun things with special relativity. They do have faster-than-light travel, but they have to achieve relativistic speeds to do it, which means that there are time dilation effects. And, yes, I know that that is hardly the main point of the novel, but I thought I"d mention it.
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl : The sequels become flatulent, but this book is amazing. It's a very good "precursor" story of humans trying to understand advanced alien technology that they found laying around, but in parallel it's also a neat psychological story told from the point of view of a deeply disturbed individual.
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling : I love Harry Potter; sue me. And while many hardcore SF grognards turn their noses up at these pop-culture kids books, there is no doubt that the Harry Potter books have become among the most significant SF/F books in the last 50 years.
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams : What the heck is this doing down at #27!?!?!?!?!? Every so often I quote it, but young people today have no idea what I'm quoting. The kids nowadays just aren't familiar with the classics.
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice : this is one of those subgenres that I seem to have completely missed out on. Perhaps it's partly because I'm a gamer and always was a little put off by the oh-so-superior airs adopted by many Vampire: the Masquerade players.
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
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke : once again, the sequels become flatulent (and weren't even entirely written by Clarke), but this book is an awful lot of fun. It's one of the classic books about humans discovering and exploring (and never really figuring out) an advanced alien artifact.
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven : I'm surprised that this is so low on the list. In grad school, before my Asimov kick, I went on a Niven kick. I'm very fond of his "Known Space" stories, although in my opinion the short stories were better than this novel.
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien : No, I haven't read it. I probably never well. Life is too short.
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson : I liked Cryptonomicon more, but this book is more significant for SF.
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein : I was on a Heinlein kick back in 6th grade or thereabout -- I read many of his "Juveniles" (which are quite good, and very different from the word "juvenile" that can be applied to Heinlen late in life in his unending "dirty old man" phase). I started to read Starship Troopers back then, and just could not get into it. This book is not a Juvenile. I reread it several years ago before the "nothing like the book" movie came out, and that time got through it and quite enjoyed it. Yeah, it's heavy handed with Heinlein's political philosophy, but it's consistent and the book does make a compelling case for it within the world of the book.
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford : Part of the reason I picked this up is that I shared an office with Benford's nephew (Dominic Benford) in grad school. This book was actually co-written by Gregory Benford and Dom's mother. This was before "Gregory Benford" was a big name, and their publisher told them that unless your names are "Niven & Pournelle," single-author SF books sell much better. As such, it gets credited just to him.
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer : I need to reread this. I went on a Riverworld kick in high school, and read all three books. There are more, now, but I need to reread the first ones before I read the others, if that's even worth doing.
General Comments: This book seems to lean more towards SF than fantasy, but that may be because I've read more of the SF books than fantasy book son the list. It's true that I'm more "into" SF than fantasy myself (although i was more into fantasy for a while in high school as a result of being a D&D nerd).
I've read a little under half of this list. Does that mean I'm not all that much of a nerd? No. Clearly it means that the list is wrong! Well, OK. I do admit that many of the titles on the list are titles that I recognize and know that I "should have" read.
There are some books I'm surprised not to see on the list
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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein
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something Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser by Leiber
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something by Stephen King (yeah, SF grognards may say that that's not really SF, but there's no doubt that much of it is, and that it's extremely influential). I haven't read enough King to know what to nominate, but that won't stop me from mentioning The Dead Zone.
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something by Dean Koontz (same caveats as King). I nominate Watchers.
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some sort of media tie-in (again, SF grognards turn their noses up, but go look at a bookstore bookshelf at some point, and then tell me that they're not significant)-- if I had to nominate one for being a worthwhile read, it would be The Final Reflection, a Star Trek novel by the late John M. Ford
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I, Robot by Isaac Asimov; at least as, if not more, influential when compared to his Foundation trilogy, despite the lifetime achievement award that the latter received;
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Tau Zero or something else by Poul Anderson. There's no doubt that Poul Anderson is a "big name," but perhaps there's no single novel that people associate with him the way (say) Fred Pohl has Gateway.
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The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Or does that count as mainstream fiction because of who wrote it?
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Something Berserker by Fred Saberhagen
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The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Perhaps this isn't all that influential, but it's great, and will probably become more influential as more time passes.
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...and probably others I'm not thinking of right now.
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The list is in alphabetical order after the first ten, so I don't think there's any significance to Hitchhicker's Guide being #27.
I read Stranger in a Strange Land when I was in junior high school (around 1970) and found it very radical and daring. I read it again fifteen or so years ago and found it very dated and almost silly at times.
Mr.Tompkins in Wonderland - George 'Big Bang' Gamow
May not be on the ranks of those listed above, but surely you'll like this if you're a physics freak. :)
I have mentioned elsewhere that the Budrys is a must read. I am glad to see someone else includes Poul Anderson, but would pick BRAIN WAVE, a really new idea. THE STARS, MY DESTINATION is much better than THE DEMOLISHED MAN, but both should be taken off the shelf. The same with the Miller.
As for Ellison, yes, a major jerk, but some of his short stories were amazing, particularly "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." (And I'm old enough to remember Harlan stories from before he was considered a decent writer, and he hasn't changed a bit.)
I would agree that some sort of Trek tie-in should be considered, but would include that first collection of fan fiction that basically got people to realize how popular the series was and started work on the movies and TNG.
Finally, another person whose first encounter with Foundation was just like mine!
And, come to think of it, we reacted almost identically to Neuromancer as well.
Back in '01, he offered to "rip me a new one". That was at the same speakers' panel where I got my copy of Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading signed by Peter David and Neil Gaiman (it was the only book I had on me, or something). And hey, why isn't anything by Gaiman on that list?
The list appears to have come from the Science Fiction Book Club and is from 2003.
Hitchhiker's isn't actually at #27; the list appears to be ranked for the first ten, and then the other 40 are alphabetical.
I'm a little surprised Iain M. Banks isn't on the list. I got way into Banks about 2 years ago, and would certainly place "Consider Phlebas", "The Player of Games", and "Use of Weapons" on this list.
Had a very similar experience with the Foundation trilogy --- ninth grade for me, and I managed to do OK on the book report (though it was like pulling teeth to finish it). Reread it in college, loved it.
Rob, keep grabbing more of the Pratchett. Over the course of about 4 years I read all of the Discworld novels; they're like wonderful (and sometimes silly) little snacks: Not too long, not too heavy, just right as well-written, thoughtful, and (mostly) light-hearted entertainment.
And hey, why isn't anything by Gaiman on that list?
I thought about that one. I haven't read a lot of it, but have really enjoyed all of "Good Omens" (written together with Prachett), "Neverwhere", and "American Gods". I'm not sure that any of them have been terribly influential.
I suspect that Gaiman's most influential work has been the Sandman comics, but I haven't read them, so I am not really in a position to judge them. I"ve heard very good things about them, however.
-Rob
I've read all but 6 14 40 43 and 49. However, a lot of them I didn't particularly care for. This list is pretty odd, I think.
From what I understand "City on the Edge of Forever" is only about half Ellison's, by the way.
From what I understand "City on the Edge of Forever" is only about half Ellison's, by the way.
There's a whole story associated with that, and I don't even know the whole story.
I learned some of it by reading David Gerrold's "The World of Star Trek" back in 9th grade. Ellison had a script that wasn't exactly what Star Trek wanted or needed. This is pretty standard, and scripts from real writers get rewritten by TV show writing staff all the time. Ellison didn't want that, though, and kept trying to do rewrite after rewrite to make it work. Eventually, it didn't, and a whole lot of bad blood between Gene Roddenberry and Harlan Ellison resulted.
Then again, it's difficult for me imagining *anybody* and Ellison having any kind of interaction where some part of Ellison's tremendous ego might be at stake without a lot of bad blood resulting.
-Rob
There are so many good ones. Baen books published an anthology of classic science fiction short stories called "The World Turned Upside Down." Just last week I picked up a copy off a remainder table at my local bookstore for $5. If anyone is interested in sampling a buffet of classic sci-fi but is short on free time then I can highly recommend it. A list of top 50 sci-fi books that does not include anything by Keith Laumer seems suspect to me; but I'm sure everyone has at least one favorite author that gets shafted by the critics.
"4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein : Never read this one. I've read a lot of other Heinlein, but not this. Heinlein's tendency to overfocus on being a dirty old man sometimes gets tiresome."
Funny...this is the only Heinlein I've ever read (I was in middle school), but I'd say that 'tendency to overfocus on being a dirty old man' describes it perfectly!
Rob Knop wrote:
I'd tend to agree with you on the "most influential" part (and having read them, I'd say they are quite good indeed). Several other people in various ScienceBlog threads have nominated them as well.
On an unrelated note, I wonder if you'd like to give an opinion on "A New Theory of the Universe", written by the cell biologist Robert Lanza and published in the most recent American Scholar. Speaking perfectly frankly, it made my brain hurt and gave me unpleasant Chopra flashbacks, but maybe that was just me. (Link to my reactions provided in this post's URL field.)
David Brin's works are conspicuous by their absence. Startide Rising is a great book.
Startide Rising is a great book.
Yes. Indeed, I'm surprised that's not on the list anywhere.
David Brin... who, after all, has a Ph.D. in Astrophysics!
Ben Bova should also be somewhere on the list as well. The first SF book I read was _The Weather Makers_. Again, it's tough to point to a signature work, but the overall body of work is very impressive. He's also done a lot of great science writing as well.
I've only just started reading proper science fiction again, and I'd forgotten how good it can be when it is quite good. I grew up reading everything from Wells to Burroughs to Bradbury to AE Van Vogt. I was surprised not to see anything by Stephen Baxter on the list - 'Titan' is a terrifying and disturbing piece of hard science-fiction, and I'm starting 'The Time Ships' now, because I'd like to see how the sequel to Wells' 'The Time Machine' pans out - why is there nothing of Herbert George's on the list? That's a crime. I've also just finished reading 'The Man in the High Castle', which is an amazingly imagined piece of alternate history - the sparseness of it, the starkness, it was chilling. On the other hand, I'm sorry, but both Shannara and Harry Potter are rubbish, and the latter is badly-written rubbish (can't remember the writing quality of Shannara, it's been too long, suspect rubbish though). You're kidding, right, about banning 'Fahrenheit 451', though, aren't you, right?
You're kidding, right, about banning 'Fahrenheit 451', though, aren't you, right?
Yeah. I was trying to be ironic. It is, after all, a book about burning books....
Not that I'd necessarily disagree with you about Harlan Ellison, but... you are aware, aren't you, that Dangerous Visions is a multi-author anthology, and only one of the stories in it is by Ellison? (So it would be easy to skip that one story, and you'd still have all the stories by Silverberg, Pohl, Niven, Anderson, Aldiss, Dick, Leiber, Sturgeon, Ballard, Delaney, Zelazny, ...)
It just sounded like you were rejecting it because it was all Ellison -- which is true of Deathbird Stories.
. On the other hand, I'm sorry, but both Shannara and Harry Potter are rubbish, and the latter is badly-written rubbish (can't remember the writing quality of Shannara, it's been too long, suspect rubbish though).
Of course, if the list is "Most Significant Books" and not "Best Books," it makes perfect sense that Shannara and Harry Potter are there. Shannara, for instance, largely jumpstarted the whole sub-Tolkien epic fantasy market.
My vague memory of the Shannara books is that the first really was recycled and degraded Tolkien, which set the mode for all the subsequent genre books by imitating the form and missing much of the meaning of Tolkien. (E.g., the Quest for the Magic Plot Token of Power, which the hero will use to overcome the Dark Lord.) The second book (Elfstones of ...) was actually better because he wasn't directly regurgitating Tolkien anymore, but was trying to tell a different story. I don't think I read anything beyond that, though.
You might want to read something from Stanislaw Lem, author of Solaris. Most of his books aren't all that fictional (e.g. Summa Technologiae is just a thought experiment from the 1950s to predict certain developments in technology). Not exactly entertainment only, but insightful none the less.