essentialism

[calimac]

Here's a list of 50 essential SF books that I consider rather depressing, as I've only read half of them, and, of those, only about five of them did I really enjoy, and, of those five, two are sufficiently old and quaint that I'd be reluctant to recommend them, and two are not my favorites by their authors. That leaves The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Also, at least one of my favorite SF novelists isn't on the list, not to mention several favorite short-story writers who aren't at their best in novels (a circumstance also true of several writers who are on the list). Also, I've only read two of the books published in the last 30 years, and one of those I purely hated.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, I've only read seven:

Brave New World
Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Chrysalids
The Sirens of Titan
A Wrinkle in Time
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Of these, I love the the Orwell and the Wyndham; Adams and Huxley were enjoyable; the others, a bit meh. (I notice that the meh ones are also the three by non-Brits: I'm not sure whether that's a coincidence or not!)

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I've read twenty-nine of them. Maybe a couple more; there were some that I looked at and asked myself, "Have I actually read that one, or have I just heard about it?" It actually strikes me as a fairly decent list, though it has some elements of "if you haven't read this you don't know what's going on in sf" as opposed to "this is a good book." Even by that standard, though, it has some notable omissions—for example, none of the Lensman novels, which more or less define classic high-end space opera. I don't think I'd call it a disastrously bad list; someone who read all fifty would have a reasonably accurate sense for what sf is like as a genre.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The one thing such a reader would not get a reasonably accurate sense of is what I find attractive about SF, to the extent that I do, and that's why I find the list personally distressing. That, of course, is my problem, not necessarily anyone else's, but it does suggest to me that the list is more of an expression of its creator's personal tastes, and less representative of the essential outline of SF as a whole, than may appear at first glance.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I think that criterion is one that, in the nature of things, could hardly be met by anyone but you. At least, it would be a happy surprise to me if anyone came up with a list of "fifty essential works" that exactly targeted my sense for what sf novels have been most rewarding to read (for some examples, Memory, The Pride of Chanur, Courtship Rite, A Deepness in the Sky, Lord of Light), and I imagine your tastes must be every bit as personal and quirky as mine.

The one book on the list, of those I've read, that strikes me as clearly wrong is The Stand. It starts out as near-future epidemiological hard sf, to be sure, but about a third of the way in it takes a sharp turn into apocalyptic fantasy (and in this case I don't mean just "end of the world fantasy," but the exact religious sense of apocalyptic). And to be sure that's a legitimate genre, though not my favorite, but it's not sf of any sort.

I'm not sure if Atwood and Gibson are meant to be part of the list or are there as lagniappe (it looks as if there are fifty without them), but I might be tempted to take Atwood at her word and not count her fiction as sf.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm not expecting it to be my perfect list. But I would hope that a list that included respected and important books that I didn't particularly enjoy, like Dune or Man Plus, would also include a few books like Lord of Light or Lest Darkness Fall or Dying Inside.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Lest Darkness Fall isn't one of my personal favorites, but certainly on grounds of influence within the genre it absolutely deserves to be included. I don't know if it's the founding work of the time travel robinsonade, but it's certainly the outstanding reference point for that particular subsubgenre. And it may be the best known science fiction novel by de Camp, who is a substantial enough figure to deserve representation.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

i've read 35 of these, and liked most of them. In several cases I don't think they represent the author's best work...

[barondave.livejournal.com]

A quick count got me to 31. Most of them, around forty years ago. With a few oddities: I've read all the sequels to Old Man's War, but not the first one (when Scalzi was GoH at Minicon, I just got what Uncle Hugo's had on the shelves). If seeing the movie counts, add a few more.

As with any list, some that I would have placed on top without hesitation are missing: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (and not Starship Troopers), Davy, Babel-17 or Nova?, etc. Some seem a bit arbitrary: Why War of the Worlds and not The Time Machine? Why Make Room, Make Room and Logan's Run just because the movies were good?

Anyway, I think this is a good start. While not my favorite Sturgeon, I taught Venus Plus X as part of my Utopia class at the U. Pretty much all of these are at least "good" by my reckoning. I could make a good syllabus from these.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Too many movies, too many disaster novels.

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

I've read 34 of them -- mostly the classics, long ago, when I was in my teens and twenties. Some of the others I've bounced off (I still can't read Douglas Adams, for example -- his humor is not to my taste at ALL) and I'm apparently not reading recent stuff, since at least the last five are not books I've read.

[richardthe23rd.livejournal.com]

I counted 29. Obviously the author had a difficult time selecting just one Alan Dean Foster novel. And one graphic novel. But thank goodness Logan's Run made the cut.

[richardthe23rd.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I virtually stopped reading fiction in the last 15 years or so, once I discovered I just couldn't get past the artifice of it anymore.

[mithriltabby]

I’ve read thirty of them. Reactions: Consider Phlebas instead of The Player of Games or Use of Weapons? Really? And Embassytown made the list but nothing of C J Cherryh’s did? (Perdido Street Station, if they really wanted some essential New Weird, but really, there are better alien contact stories than Embassytown.) di Filippo’s Ribofunk and not Bear’s Blood Music? Perplexing.