The NPR top 100 SF/fantasy books

[calimac]

The list.

The rank ordering is not very helpful; I immediately set out to classify them, and found that, by my determination, 56 were SF and 44 fantasy (including a couple that were really horror). That's more a publishing category separation than a theoretical separation of what counts as SF or not.

Of the 56 SF, 39 were published "in genre", that is, they were by authors associated with the SF community, who published their short fiction (and sometimes these books) in the SF magazines and anthologies, and whose novels generally came out in the SF lines; 17 were by outsiders or predated the genre. Only 5 were series, though a couple others were individual books that were part of series. I've read 31 of the 56.

It's harder for me, at least, to determine what's part of the fantasy publishing genre, partly because a good half-dozen of the fantasy titles I'd never heard of, which was not true of any of the SF titles. But I note that a good 24 of the 44 are series. Of those series, only about 4 predate the Big Fantasy Pat Boom.* Of the series, only 3 - Sandman, The Book of the New Sun, and Lewis's space trilogy (if you consider that fantasy) - are ones I actually enjoyed and finished. (I don't count The Lord of the Rings as a series.) Several others I started and gave up in dismay, and as that includes such well-regarded authors as Donaldson, Zelazny (I like his other work, just not Amber), Robert Jordan, and GRR Martin, I don't have much hope for the others. On the other hand, I've read 10 of the 20 non-series fantasies, and they include most of my favorite books on the list. Overall, then, I've read twice as many of the SF than of the fantasy, so though my favorite books are fantasy, may it actually be fairly said that I like fantasy better? I have narrower tastes, and perhaps that could be said to be better tastes, but even if it is, it is not reasonable to say that someone who likes a field should have broad tastes?

Recently after reading a New Yorker article on the complex algorithms used by computer dating services, I looked at one of the better-rated interest quizzes - just out of curiosity as to what the questions would be, you understand; I am emphatically not in the market - and got stuck on the first question, which was: Do you like dancing? Well, what kind of dancing? I really like Regency and English country dancing, though I'm no longer physically up to it, and I met B. that way, so I'm not likely to put it down. I've done other types of choreographed folk dancing with enjoyment. I can do old-fashioned ballroom dancing, or at least I could when I last tried, thirty years ago, but I don't like it much. But what most of my contemporaries have called dancing for most of my life - flailing one's limbs impromptu to hard-driving rock songs - is completely alien to me. I just don't move that way, even on the rare occasions that I actually like the songs. So, do I like dancing, or not?

*Damon Knight once wrote a story called "The Big Pat Boom", and if you've read it, you'll know what I think.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty useless list as far as I'm concerned. Most of the top ten are widely read books by authors whose names have some recognition outside the fannish world, often thanks to film and television, leavened by a couple of recent and trendy books. In other words, it's a pretty standard list of "sf&f that people who don't like sf&f have heard of." Of course, that's pretty much what I expected when I looked at the nominees.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It might be relevant to add (and I should have done so) that I didn't vote, as pawing through a list of 200+ books to choose my favorite 100 did not seem a particularly enticing use of my time.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Oh, by my count, I've read 20 of the f and 42 of the sf. Counting only those I read all the way through, not those where I read one book, or part of a book, and stopped.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I've read 10 of the 20 non-series fantasies, and they include most of my favorite books on the list.

Could you tell us what they are, that is, which of the 10 are among your favorite books on the list, and which other non-non-series fantasies or SF books are also among your favorites?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Two of the fantasy books would make my list of all-time favorite books without question: The Lord of the Rings and Watership Down. I also liked The Last Unicorn, The Princess Bride, The Once & Future King, the Space trilogy, and pretty much all of the Gaimans.

To say which of the SF I liked requires a mental paradigm shift, as my liking for good SF feels quite different. Nevertheless, all the Asimovs (my favorite old-time genre SF author), Childhood's End, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Forever War, Flowers for Algernon, both the Le Guin books, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and Cat's Cradle all got my thumbs-up for good reading.

[jane-dennis.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a pretty annoying list in many respects. The idea that Small Gods and Going Postal were the only Pratchett choices may have been the single worst thing. And why in Selden's name wasn't Foundation on the list?

Otherwise, I think your list mostly is mine. (I so love Watership Down, nice to know you do too.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The Foundation trilogy is on the list. (I was surprised; I thought nobody read that any more.) So are I, Robot and The Caves of Steel.

Not only have I read Watership Down N times, I've visited its sites twice.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned in another post, a quick count got me to 53 of these books, but its missing too many of my favorites to influence my further reading. I tend not to separate out sf from fantasy, as that will lead to further divisions by marketing category (Xanth is included by not Harry Potter?)

Not completely useless, I suppose, and I encourage things that encourage reading, but this list doesn't instill me with confidence.

[richardthe23rd.livejournal.com]

At least I recognize some of these. Well, the majority, I guess, and the rest are probably after my time. (I am so last millennium.) Interesting that some selections are a series grouped together as one entry, while others are not (Isaac Asimov's Robot novels are listed separately). One wonders, idly, what were their criteria for making that distinction, but not for very long.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

I've read 72 of the 100. Some of the ones I have not read are ones which I would not read, either.