Why do people make lists-just to torture readers? (Heh. Of course. Yes.) So this list of the 100 greatest scifi and fantasy books can only make one crazy. (Containing as it does no Roger Zelazny even-or Iain M. Banks?)
Monday, January 18, 2010
59
I'm 22 out of 100. That's embarrassing. And apparently I need to read some Gene Wolfe.
You do! Expect to be simultaneously BORED and BLOWN AWAY.
I'm reading "A Fire Upon The Deep" right now, so I hear that.
Also, no Charlie Stross?
Ha, totally, on that first point. Wolfe is even less a page-turner than Vinge, but you'll feel smarter when you're through with one of his books (after you get over feeling dumber for not understanding half of it).
Don't get me started on Charles Stross. The only thing I like about that dude is that he invented the githyanki.
And I hear you on Stross: he is no stylist, but he wins me over with his sci-fi macroeconomics and I can't quit him.
I'll probably give him a try again in five to ten years and realize I love him. It's happened so many times.
you should! start with the fifth head of cerberus and if you like that read the book of the new sun. (some of the other wolfe choices on that list are suspect.)
No Samuel R. Delany, no Octavia Butler. Ayn Rand? really?
You beat me to Samuel Delany, which to me is worst oversight of the list. (I'll also echo your Ayn Rand rly?)
Delany is the one really inarguably atrocious omission.
Oh, Octavia Butler is definitely a bad one to leave out.
What about Pale Fire???!? Can someone please explain to me what Pale Fire is doing on a list of science fiction novels.
"The post-apocalyptic theme is so dumb and I never really liked it until I read Walter Miller's version."
Post-apocalypse themes are dumb? Whyzzat?
Yeah, setting aside how that is obviousely untrue, I was surprised to see a negative comment in the top 100, if they didn't like the book, why not make it a top 99?
It's just super lazy. Postapocalyptic stories write themselves. It's just really easy and lame.
I'm a big fan of sci-fi/fantasy and an enormous fan of Danny Champion Of The World, but that book is not ... sci-fi or fantasy? As near as I can tell?
No William Gibson, Greg Bear, Robert Heinlein, Kim Stanley Robertson, David Brin or Julian May?
Heinlein appears five times?
My mistake, I meant Robert Silverberg.
Silverberg's in there too, as is Jordan. Anton Wilson maybe?
I wouldn't call RAW scifi, really.
But if Kim Stanley Robinson's not in there, that is just complete bullshit.
No Joanna Russ, come on.
The Fountainhead???
No Charles Stross, no Ian MacDonald, no Linda Nagata and no Ian Reynolds. I call foul.
It's always nice when really nerdy people make me feel like less of a nerd myself.
Two rather major gripes:
1) I fucking LOATHE Ayn Rand. After the debacle of the financial crisis, can't we finally decide that Objectivism should really and truly die and go away?
2) NO WILIAM GIBSON??? I was thinking they'd all be clustered in the top 20, with Neuromancer at number one, but it was a complete and total snub.
But Rand's influence on spec fic is pretty undeniable. In fact, I'll say that long before my parents finished brainwashing me with their gay liberal abortionism, I had come to abhor Objectivists from the way Jerry Pournelle kept fucking up perfectly good Larry Niven novels.
=(
This list just makes me realize how much of my youth I spent reading Sci Fi shit from the library. Nerd alert! (Answer: 46/100)
From the list:
"It has been the major influence of many horrible things, but also many wonderful things. Where it leans on frivolity and wishful thinking, it is forgiven. It's really hard to read these today with how far things have come, but an important effort at the time."
WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN. TELL ME. I DEMAND TO KNOW!?
that's on "The Lord of the Rings" by the way
It means a ton of shitty fantasy was inspired by Tolkien (true), and FUCKING UGH THE TOM BOMBADIL SCENES, and the books are about an order of magnitude more boring than the movies, but still: indisputably seminal.
ugh america
Yeah, LOTR may have been among the last high fantasy novels I ever read. Because having read them, I got the horrible sinking realization that my junior high heroes-David Eddings and Terry Brooks-were professional Midearthian rebarfers.
Snort @ "rebarfers"
How is Riddley Walker not on that list? (Maybe I shouldn't even ask, my score is not high!)
THANK YOU.
A couple of thoughts: 1. While I'm surprised with Ayn Rand, it could be worse; this could've been an internet poll, and We, The Living could've come a close second to Battlefield Earth. 2. And while I'm glad to see a lot of books and others I've never heard of, J. G. Ballard is quite the omission, though I can maybe understand if the author just likes Gene Wolfe that much more. 3. While I'm surprised with what counts in this list (Pale Fire?) at least there are some soft-sci fi books that I love, such as The Master and Margarita, and Animal Farm.
Ballard seemed like one of the worst omissions to me as well.
Yeah, I would have stuck "High Rise" on there for sure.
A brief plea for Weis and Hickman's Death Gate books? I think their complicity with the interminable AD&D slop denies them some credit for having one magnum opus in them.
The Death Gate Cycle is pretty fucking great. But yeah, I tried rereading Dragons of Autumn Twilight a couple years ago for kicks, and wooooffff.
Worst. List. Ever. Way too much Heinlein and Wolfe. And The Fountainhead is not science fiction no matter how much you worship Rand.
I had never heard of many of these books and I'm not sure I want to.
Pale Fire and Danny the Champion of the World are in no way "sci fi".
This list is rife with what philosophy majors who work as editors call "category errors."
Don't get so ryled up about it.
No Stanislaw Lem? No Brothers Strugatsky? None of Frederick Pohl's Gateway novels? No Peter F. Hamilton? No E.E. Smith? No Samuel Delaney? There's way too much sword & sorcery on the list, but that's just me. An Ayn Rand is a writer only in the most technical of senses: she typed words onto paper and conned someone into publishing her love letters to herself.
Yeah, I though We could've taken 1984's spot, seeing as its such a directly comparable and better novel, but I guess it's hidden away in the "real" list.
Oh shit, you said Stanislaw Lem, so I meant to say that Solaris should have been on the list, I thought you said Yevgeny Zamyatin for a moment.
I'm loving this nerd-off!
Since the list includes fantasy, John Crowley should probably be on there for Little, Big. James Tiptree Jr. seemed like an omission, but this is a list of novels. Regarding Gibson, the author of the list wrote in the comments: "I'd rather throw myself off a cliff than read anything William Gibson wrote for example. Philip Jose is also so terrible to read today." So there you go!
One could also make the argument for the inclusion of Michael Moorcock somewhere on this list.
I can't reconcile the hatred of Gibson and the inclusion of, what?, three Neil Stephenson books, including Snow Crash. Makes not sense to me.
Agreed that the hatred of Gibson is odd given the inclusion of Sterling's Schismatrix and so much Stephenson and Swanwick.
Style is what I'd blame. Even if the subject matter is similar, Stephenson is rollicking (or at least quietly energetic) even when he's describing calculus, whereas Gibson is pretty flat and toneless even when he's writing an action scene. I don't mean that as a criticism of Gibson -- it's a voice he adapts deliberately, to certain effect -- but I could see how it'd be off-putting. (It kind of is to me!)
All that said, it is nice to see Camp Concentration, Schismatrix, The Fifth Head of Cerberus and Book of the New Sun on there. To get nitpicky: "True Names" shouldn't be on that list at all since it's not a novel. To get really nitpicky: "Cerberus" is misspelled as "Cerebus."
What an appallingly awful list, compounded by either ignorance or deliberate obfuscation of what "science fiction" means.
I would have put either The Handmaids Tale or Oryx and Crake on the list, even though a lot of people dont like to see proper literature authors mixed with the SciFi list, but if you already made the stretch for Pynchon then why not?
Science Fiction and Fantasy should not be lumped together like that.
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's "The Difference Engine" really should be on that list and near the top.
Also, Samuel R. Delaney and Iain Banks really really really should be on that list.
olaf stapledon - starmaker