Where would we be without lists? Seriously, before the internet, what did we do for lists? How did we know what a heavily biased cross-section of sub-culture thought about any given irrelevant point before Web 2.0? Anyway, it’s okay, as we have lists now. Here’s another one for you.
This arrives in a bit of a roundabout way, but it’s a good list, so worth the effort. I found it on Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, who took it from Stego on the Song of Ice and Fire Forums. This is Stego that used to run the Speculative Reviews blog, but that’s been on hiatus for ages. Anyway, Stego says:
I put out an SFF Reading List a few years ago with about 500 works on it. People threw rocks. It was kind of amusing. Here is a far more condensed list of what I believe to be the seminal works of SFF since Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Limited to a mere 100. The paring down was heartbreaking.
This is my first reading list in years and is certainly an opinionated result of my years of amateur scholarship.
The only thing I do promise is that there is merit in all of these works. Chances are you would fall in love with most, if not all, if you give them a chance.
So why have I bothered to reprint all this stuff that can be found elsewhere? Two reasons. One, it’s a damn fine list and anyone would do well to have a look at any of the content and two, it’s another one of those ‘put an X by what you’ve read’ memes. Well, it is now anyway. So consider yourself tagged and share the meme, thereby sharing the quality list. Here it is, with my Xs to indicate which I’ve read (which I anticipate being a small percentage):
Asimov, Isaac: The Best of Isaac Asimov 1974
Asimov, Isaac: The Gods Themselves 1972
Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid’s Tale 1985
Bakker, R. Scott: The Prince of Nothing 2004-2007
Ballard, J.G.: High Rise 1975
Banks, Iain M.: Use of Weapons 1990 X
Beagle, Peter S.: A Fine and Private Place 1960
Bester, Alfred: The Stars My Destination 1956
Blish, James: Cities in Flight 1955-1962
Brackett, Leigh: The Long Tomorrow 1955
Bradbury, Ray: The Martian Chronicles 1950
Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451 1953 X
Brunner, John: Stand on Zanzibar 1968
Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and The Margarita 1940
Card, Orson Scott: Ender’s Game 1985 X
Clarke, Arthur C.: Rendezvous With Rama 1972 X
Clarke, Arthur C.: Childhood’s End 1953
Clarke, Arthur C.: The Fountains of Paradise 1979
Crowley, John: Little, Big 1981
Danielewski, Mark Z.: House of Leaves 2000
Dick, Philip K.: The Man In The High Castle 1962
Dozois, Gardner: Best of The Best: 20 Years of The Years Best SF 2005
Dozois, Gardner: Best of The Best 2 2007
Dunsany, Lord: The King of Elfland’s Daughter 1924
Ellison, Harlan: Dangerous Visions 1967
Ennis, Garth: Preacher 1995-2000 X
Ford, John M.: The Last Hot Time 2001
Gaiman, Neil: American Gods 2001 X
Gaiman, Neil and Pratchett, Terry: Good Omens 1990 X
Gemmell, David: Legend 1984
Gibson, William: Neuromancer 1984 X
Grimwood, Ken: Replay 1987
Haldeman, Joe: The Forever War 1975
Heinlein, Robert A.: Starship Troopers 1959
Heinlein, Robert A.: Stranger In a Strange Land 1961 X
Heinlein, Robert A.: Have Spacesuit — Will Travel 1958
Herbert, Frank: Dune 1965 X
Hoban, Russell: Riddley Walker 1980
Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World 1931 X
Jackson, Shirley: The Haunting of Hill House 1959
Joyce, Graham: The Tooth Fairy 1998
Kay, Guy Gavriel: Tigana 1990
Keyes, Daniel: Flowers For Algernon 1966
LeGuin, Ursula K.: The Dispossesed 1974
LeGuin, Ursula K.: The Left Hand of Darkness 1969
Lem, Stanislaw: Solaris 1961
Lovecraft, H.P.: The Dunwich Horror and Others 1963 X
Lynch, Scott: The Lies of Locke Lamora 2006
MacDonald, George: The Princess and The Goblin 1872
Martin, George R.R.: A Song of Ice and Fire 1996-Present
Matheson, Richard: I Am Legend 1954
McCarthy, Cormac: The Road 2006
McDonald, Ian: River of Gods 2004
Meynard, Yves: The Book of Knights 1998
Mieville, China: Perdido Street Station 2001
Miller Jr., Walter M.: A Canticle For Leibowitz 1960
Moore, Christopher: Lamb 2002
Morgan, Richard K.: Black Man 2007
Newman, Kim: Anno Dracula 1992
Niven, Larry: Ringworld 1970 X
Orwell, George: 1984 1949 X
Pangborn, Edgar: Davy 1964
Poe, Edgar Allan: Tales of Mystery and Imagination 1837-1845 X
Pohl, Frederick: Gateway 1977
Pohl, Frederick and Kornbluth, C.M: The Space Merchants 1953
Powers, Tim: The Anubis Gates 1983
Powers, Tim: The Fisher King Trilogy 1992-1997
Priest, Christopher: The Glamour 1985
Robinson, Kim Stanley: The Mars Trilogy 1992-1996 X
Russ, Joanna: The Female Man 1975
Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein 1818
Shephard, Lucius: The Best of Lucius Shephard 2008
Shippey, Tom: The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories 1992
Silverberg, Robert: The Book of Skulls 1972
Silverberg, Robert: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One 1970
Simak, Clifford D.: City 1952
Simmons, Dan: Hyperion 1990
Smith, Cordwainer: The Rediscovery of Man 1993
Smith, Michael Marshall: Only Forward 1998
Stapeldon, Olaf: Odd John 1935
Stephenson, Neal: Snow Crash 1992
Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1886 X
Stewart, George R.: Earth Abides 1949
Straub, Peter: Ghost Story 1979
Sturgeon, Theodore: More Than Human 1953
Tiptree Jr., James: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever 1990
Tolkien, J.R.R.: The Lord of The Rings 1954-1955 X
Vance, Jack: The Jack Vance Treasury 2007
Verne, Jules: Journey To The Centre of the Earth 1864 X
Vonnegut, Kurt: Cat’s Cradle 1963
Vonnegut, Kurt: Slaughter-House Five 1969 X
Wells, H.G.: The Time Machine 1895 X
Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray 1891
Wolfe, Gene: The Wizard Knight 2004
Wolfe, Gene: The Book of The New Sun 1980-1983
Wyndham, John: The Day of The Triffids 1951 X
Wyndham, John: The Midwich Cuckoos 1957
Zelazny, Roger: Damnation Alley 1969
Zelazny, Roger: Lord of Light 1967
There, I think that was 22. Not too bad. I often wonder when I do these things how often I mess it up. It’s hard to be certain of all the books I’ve read and I might have marked one book on one list and not on the other, or maybe just missed one scanning through. Anyway, it’s all a pile of bollocks, so it doesn’t matter. It’s just an excuse to reproduce a good list.
The reason I particularly like this one is that it covers SFF from the earliest works to the most recent, plus it includes graphic novels (i.e. The Preacher – essential reading for everyone) and it doesn’t seem to follow any particular bias other than a love for quality SFF.
And if that wasn’t good enough for you, here’s Stego’s original full 500, which is actually 570. This list is awesome. Not only is the first thing on the list by someone called Wanker Abercrombie, it also includes things like Eiji Yoshikawa’s Musashi, Alan Moore’s Watchmen (which I can’t believe didn’t make the Top 100 cut) and Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories, among many other things. While the top 100 above is a really pared down list, with only one thing from each author, the full list is an incredible cross section of excellent SFF in all its forms. Interestingly, I score a better percentage of read stuff on the full 570 than I do on the top 100.
So, if you’ve ever wondered what you should be reading in SFF, this list should keep you busy for a while.
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25
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