{"id":2491,"date":"2010-01-25T17:21:30","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T22:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=2491"},"modified":"2020-07-06T10:51:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T14:51:57","slug":"top-sffantasy-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/01\/25\/top-sffantasy-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Top SF\/Fantasy works"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.marginalrevolution.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tyler Cowen<\/a> linked to Alex Carnevale&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/thisrecording.com\/today\/2010\/1\/18\/in-which-we-count-down-the-100-greatest-science-fiction-or-f.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">top 100 SF&amp;F works<\/a>, which has some odd choices (Jack Vance and Ursula K. LeGuin appear to have been the compiler&#8217;s favourite authors). In the comments to Tyler&#8217;s post, an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.listology.com\/list\/david-pringles-best-100-science-fiction-novels\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">alternate (unannotated) list by David Pringle<\/a> was recommended. Pringle&#8217;s list doesn&#8217;t include Fantasy books, so there&#8217;s less overlap between the two than you might expect.<\/p>\n<p>No list of this kind is, or can be, truly authoritative, but there are some common items on each list I can&#8217;t criticize as being in the top of the field:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>The Moon is a Harsh Mistress<\/em>, Robert Heinlein. Carnevale has this at #2. Pringle doesn&#8217;t list it, but has several other (in my opinion, lesser) Heinlein works on his list. This is one of the best libertarian SF novels ever. Even if you&#8217;re not over-fond of his work, this short novel is well worth reading.<\/li>\n<li><em>Frankenstein<\/em> Mary Shelley. This book made #6 for Carnevale, but didn&#8217;t make Pringle&#8217;s list. I read this when I was 12, and it made quite an impression on me, although I have to admit I like it much more now than I did on first reading it.<\/li>\n<li><em>Dune<\/em>, Frank Herbert. Carnevale likes it much more than Pringle (#11 versus #48). I liked the original book, but lost interest sometime later in the series. <\/li>\n<li><em>The Hobbit<\/em> and <em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, J.R.R. Tolkien. Not the original fantasy work, but probably the most common source for inspiration (and verging-on-outright-plagiarism) for an entire sub-field of Fantasy. <\/li>\n<li><em>Stranger in a Strange Land<\/em>, Robert Heinlein. One of the most subversive books ever published, at least as far as the middle class of the 1960&#8217;s was concerned. On the surface, it&#8217;s the story of a Martian named Smith. It seems to be one of those books you either love or hate &mdash; not much middle ground here.<\/li>\n<li><em>Alice in Wonderland<\/em>, Lewis Carroll. Pair this with Carroll&#8217;s <em>Through the Looking-Glass<\/em> for the full effect. Another author whose work has been strip-mined for ideas by later writers.<\/li>\n<li><em>1984<\/em> by George Orwell. Pringle&#8217;s #1 pick and Carnevale&#8217;s #26. I&#8217;d certainly put it in my top ten.<\/li>\n<li><em>Fahrenheit 451<\/em>, Ray Bradbury. This book made both lists (#8 for Pringle,#27 for Carnevale), but I&#8217;m afraid I&#8217;ve never read it (I tried a couple of Bradbury books when I was in my early teens, but never warmed to him as an author).<\/li>\n<li><em>The Man in the High Castle<\/em>, Philip K. Dick. Another book that made both lists, but which I haven&#8217;t read, and for similar reasons. Early experiences with an author&#8217;s work can have long-lasting effects.<\/li>\n<li><em>A Fire upon the Deep<\/em> by Vernor Vinge. A book that appeals to both fans of the huge stage of deep space and aficionados of the early Internet.<\/li>\n<li><em>Citizen of the Galaxy<\/em>, Robert Heinlein. One of the very best &#8220;young adult&#8221; SF novels from before they called them that. Both a coming of age novel and a condemnation of slavery and hypocrisy. Powerful stuff for young minds.<\/li>\n<li><em>Starship Troopers<\/em>, Robert Heinlein. Another great polarizer: it&#8217;s either the best military SF novel ever written or the worst piece of hyper-Fascist propaganda ever written. It&#8217;s interesting that Heinlein wrote this book at about the same time as he was working on <em>Stranger<\/em>. Readers who only knew about the one work might have suffered severe mental whiplash to find he&#8217;d written the other one, too. Either way, pretend that the film never happened (aside from the names, it doesn&#8217;t have much to do with the novel).<\/li>\n<li><em>The Hitchhiker&#8217;s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em>, Douglas Adams. You want whimsical? HHG took whimsy to a whole different level. What Terry Pratchett did with Fantasy, Adams did with SF.<\/li>\n<li><em>Animal Farm<\/em>, George Orwell. A book that suffers from being pushed on high school students as mandatory reading. The revolution on the farm, and the aftermath.<\/li>\n<li><em>The Baroque Cycle<\/em>, Neal Stephenson. A huge four-volume work that repays the effort to work through. Some authors work best at a certain length (short story, novella, novel, etc.). Stephenson seems to work best at the library-shelf level.<\/li>\n<li><em>Ringworld<\/em>, Larry Niven. I wouldn&#8217;t call this a top-ten, but the series of books in this series certainly belong in the top 100.<\/li>\n<li><em>A Canticle for Leibowitz<\/em>, Walter M. Miller. Post-apocalyptic done well.<\/li>\n<li><em>Snow Crash<\/em>, Neal Stephenson. Certainly one of the most entertaining books I&#8217;ve ever read (it helped that I was working in the computer industry at the time). From Stephenson&#8217;s earlier less-than-library-shelf-length period.<\/li>\n<li><em>The Day of the Triffids<\/em>, John Wyndham. A book I had to read in middle school, yet one I still recall with great affection. Few books can survive being forced down kids&#8217; throats. This one can.<\/li>\n<li><em>Memory<\/em>, <em>Mirror Dance<\/em>, and <em>A Civil Campaign<\/em>, Lois McMaster Bujold. I had trouble stopping at just three of Bujold&#8217;s &#8220;Vorkosigan&#8221; series, as they&#8217;re all highly entertaining and deeply engaging. Some call it space opera, but it&#8217;s far more involved and well-executed than that easy label would indicate. One of the very best SF authors ever. Her more recent work is predominantly Fantasy, and while they&#8217;re very good, I&#8217;m more interested in her SF writing.<\/li>\n<li><em>The Atrocity Archive<\/em> and <em>The Jennifer Morgue<\/em>, Charles Stross. Imagine if the British secret service had an even more eldritch secret service component. But run strictly according to civil service rules.<\/li>\n<li><em>Pyramids<\/em>, <em>Men at Arms<\/em>, <em>Interesting Times<\/em>, and <em>The Wee Free Men<\/em>, Terry Pratchett. Another author for whom it is difficult to select even a few examples (they&#8217;re all so good). His Discworld series started as a simple pastiche of typical swords-and-sorcery novels, but which quickly outgrew the confines of the first few books. <em>The Wee Free Men<\/em> is the first of a series of Young Adult novels for the Discworld (including <em>A Hat Full of Sky<\/em>, <em>Wintersmith<\/em> and the forthcoming <em>I Shall Wear Midnight<\/em>).<\/li>\n<li><em>Old Man&#8217;s War<\/em>, John Scalzi. Another military SF story, but so well thought-out and executed as to transcend the ordinary levels of the sub-genre. Follow-on works are equally good (<em>The Ghost Brigades<\/em>, <em>The Last Colony<\/em>, and <em>Zoe&#8217;s Tale<\/em>).<\/li>\n<li><em>Island in the Sea of Time<\/em>, S.M. Stirling. Another time-travel story, but avoiding the usual pitfalls of time travel story lines (the secret was to go back before written history&#8230;). This was the first book of a trilogy. Stirling is currently completing a related series of stories hinging on what happened to the world left behind in the original trilogy (starting with <em>Dies the Fire<\/em>).<\/li>\n<li><em>The Probability Broach<\/em>, L. Neil Smith. More interesting (and amusing) ideas per page than any other novel of its era. Another libertarian book, but don&#8217;t let the label scare you off: great reading.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What&#8217;s that? No Clarke? No Asimov? No Sturgeon? No Card? No Zelazny? No Brunner? Not in the top whatever-number-I-stopped-at. Each has strong fans, and some good work, but not top-rank in my view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tyler Cowen linked to Alex Carnevale&#8217;s top 100 SF&amp;F works, which has some odd choices (Jack Vance and Ursula K. LeGuin appear to have been the compiler&#8217;s favourite authors). In the comments to Tyler&#8217;s post, an alternate (unannotated) list by David Pringle was recommended. Pringle&#8217;s list doesn&#8217;t include Fantasy books, so there&#8217;s less overlap between [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28],"tags":[86,354,868,1382,478,85,632],"class_list":["post-2491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media","tag-criticism","tag-georgeorwell","tag-jrrtolkien","tag-lneilsmith","tag-robertheinlein","tag-sf","tag-terrypratchett"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-Eb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2491"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58508,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions\/58508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}