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This is not my beautiful list
Oct. 15th, 2004 09:20 amEric Rabkin has provided Business Week with his "personal favorites" list of 15 Great Science Fiction Novels.
No question about it, those are 15 great SF novels. No argument there. And if they're his favorites, one can't dispute that either. What struck me is how far they are from being my favorites. A few I haven't read, but though I only detested one that I have read (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), none of them would make my favorites list except for possibly A Canticle for Leibowitz. No, not even The Left Hand of Darkness. It's a good book, but there's at least three SF novels by Le Guin I like better, not to mention most of her fantasies. It seems to me, especially from the emphasis in his write-ups, that Rabkin's taste runs strongly to social-realist message SF. I can do that too: my best list would definitely include
both of which have a cleanliness to their discourse - I don't mean dogmatism, not at all; I'm referring to something in the prose style - that really appeals to me. But most of my SF favorites seem to go in a slightly different direction. Books like
at the least. For my olde classics, I'd include
and that's 15 entries total so let's stop there, even though that's top of the head and not a slow-considered list. I believe a distinct preference for fantasy can be detected even in some of my SF list. I believe something can also be told by some authors I've read who are not on the list: no Heinlein, no Gibson, no Card; no Bujold, no Cherryh, no Willis.
No question about it, those are 15 great SF novels. No argument there. And if they're his favorites, one can't dispute that either. What struck me is how far they are from being my favorites. A few I haven't read, but though I only detested one that I have read (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), none of them would make my favorites list except for possibly A Canticle for Leibowitz. No, not even The Left Hand of Darkness. It's a good book, but there's at least three SF novels by Le Guin I like better, not to mention most of her fantasies. It seems to me, especially from the emphasis in his write-ups, that Rabkin's taste runs strongly to social-realist message SF. I can do that too: my best list would definitely include
- Timescape by Gregory Benford (the all-time great SF novel about science)
- Kim Stanley Robinson's Orange Country trilogy (the all-time great SF books about urban planning)
both of which have a cleanliness to their discourse - I don't mean dogmatism, not at all; I'm referring to something in the prose style - that really appeals to me. But most of my SF favorites seem to go in a slightly different direction. Books like
- A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason
- something by Philip K. Dick, possibly VALIS
- Replay by Ken Grimwood (I say it's a thought-experiment novel, and I say it's SF)
- Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin, with an insistent "me too" from The Lathe of Heaven
- The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy
- The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg or, if that doesn't count, Dying Inside
- The Color of Distance by Amy Thomson (to date my favorite Novel By An Author I Knew When)
- Smoke by Donald E. Westlake (surprise! it's an unflinching invisible-man novel, and that makes it great SF by me)
- Free Live Free by Gene Wolfe
- Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny
at the least. For my olde classics, I'd include
- The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
- Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp
- 1984 by George Orwell
and that's 15 entries total so let's stop there, even though that's top of the head and not a slow-considered list. I believe a distinct preference for fantasy can be detected even in some of my SF list. I believe something can also be told by some authors I've read who are not on the list: no Heinlein, no Gibson, no Card; no Bujold, no Cherryh, no Willis.
