This is the significantly flawed list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. The meme instructions say that one is to bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished, and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved, but just to be annoyingly different, I’m just going to comment on them, because I really hate typing in endless formatting tags.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien – I’ve read this so many times I’ve lost count, and not only enjoyed it but gained new insights into the characters each time I’ve read it. It’s a masterpiece, and I don’t think anyone can question it’s significance, in terms of sparking a renewal of interest in fantasy and inspiring hundreds of writers, with very mixed results (see my comment on the Pointy Stick of Shitara, er, Shannara below).
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov – I loved this when I was younger, and read all the sequels, right up to the one where he even managed to tie in The End of Eternity. Now, well – Asimov’s writing is that of the early age of SF, when it was a mostly boys’ club and the ideas and the toys were more important than good writing or good character development. It’s not really my cup of tea anymore.
3. Dune, Frank Herbert – Oh yeah. How could a hippie SF reader not worship one of the first great ecological novels, and how could a political groupie not be swept up in the grand story of how the goals and actions of the elites at the head of all those power blocs are interwoven? The book requires the reader to learn systems analysis. It worked for me.
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein – I read this in the 60s, and for a while it was a bit of a bible to me. It really was a book of and for the counterculture. I remember when lots of hippies talked about grokking, and shared water, and I suspect that it influenced my development in lots of ways. For instance, I still have a tendency to talk a bit like a Fair Witness.
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin – I worship LeGuin, and the paper she writes on. I’ve read, I think, everything she’s written.
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson – this did not grab when I first read it, and I’m still not sure why, because there’s been a lot of cyberpunk I’ve read since that I really do enjoy. Maybe I was in a weird mood when I read it. Maybe I ought to read it again to see if my thought have changed.
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke – One of my all-time childhood favourites, no pun intended.
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K Dick – Loved it as a kid, although in retrospect I think some of its depth – the whole philosophical question of what is humanity – probably went right over my head. Another book I’m seriously considering re-reading, particularly since my memory of the book itself has been compromised by my love of the movie based on it.
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley – I have mixed feelings about this one. It’s an important modern reimaging of the Arthurian cycle, which means that of course I read it. I enjoyed reading it. I like it. But I’m somewhat uneasy with the treatment of the old religion in it, partly, I think, because Arthurian material has this ambiguity about it, in terms of whether it is in some way true or not. Most writers who attempt to place Arthurian stories into the time period where Arthur would have lived, if he or someone like him did live, usually try to make the cultural details reasonably accurate. But MZB’s old religion comes out of the feminist neo-pagan revival of the old religions, and out of the sometimes questionable scholarship of writers like Merlin Stone, rather than out of what is known and extrapolated about the old religion of the time. It’s a fantasy religion in an otherwise conceivably historic setting for a well-established myth cycle, and there’s something about that combination that I think MZB didn’t get just right.
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury – Classic. Important. Must be re-introduced to every new generation (just as the curiously absent 1984 should also be so treated) so that we remember how easy it is to lose one’s history, one’s freedom and one’s culture.
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe – Great work of literary SF, yes. Did I like it? No. Did it nonetheless fascinate me sufficiently to keep me reading the whole tetralogy? Yes.
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. – Read it, loved it, thought it was a great look at how religions function – and how spirituality transcends religion.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov – What’s not to enjoy about a detective story with robots?
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras – I had to look this one up to be sure I’d read it, because it’s been so long. As it is, I only remember bits of it. It stuck in my mind because when I read it, I was a young child who had been searched out through city-wide psychological testing and brought to a special school with a handful of other kids, where we were to be both educated and studied by teacher-psychologists who were trying to learn more about what made us special. And we all knew, deep in our bones, that there were many other people who didn’t like us or feel comfortable around us, and would ostracise us whenever possible, and hurt us if they could.
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish – Read all four volumes as a kid. Loved them. Thinking of reading them again one day soon to see how they hold up.
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett – the first book on the list I haven’t read. I think it was because when it first came out I’d just gotten totally sick of Robert Asprin’s MythAdventure books, and the reviews made me think the Discworld was going to be more of the same. However, I was gifted with one of the later books in the series recently, and quite enjoyed it, so I’ve been thinking about going to the beginning of the series and seeing what else I’ve been missing.
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison – Well worth its reputation.
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison – Ellison is Ellison. Back when he was writing really good stories, he may have equals, but no betters.
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester –I read it, but I barely remembered the story, just that it had telepaths and something about murder. Maybe it’s another one I should re-read, in case its deep meaning when over my head when I was young.
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany – I adore Samuel Delany’s work. In fact, one of his early books, Babel 17, influenced the way I think about language and reality profoundly. When you read Delany at the age of nine, he gets into your brain and stays there; and I’m very glad that he did. That said, I don’t understand Dhalgren, and more than I understand Finnegan’s Wake or Gravity’s Rainbow.
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey -– McCaffrey is one of my guilty pleasures. I read the first Dragons of Pern novels when they first came out, and have continued to read them even though McCaffrey’s sexual politics are problematic to say the least. I permit myself my inconsistencies.
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card – I’ve read and enjoyed all of the Ender books, even the new batch where Card is going back and telling the same story all over again from multiple points of view.
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson – as my partner says, “friends don’t let friends read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.” Unfortunately, I had no friends of that calibre when the books came out. I was actually interested enough in the story to read all the volumes, and I rather liked his giants, but, well, I’m disabled myself, and all I can say is that yeah, leprosy is a bummer, but it shouldn’t take three whole fucking novels for you to figure out that it’s still OK to be alive.
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman – An amazing book in so many ways. And like so many explorations of the effects of war on the warriors that one can conjecture were in part inspired by the disaster that was the US experience in Vietnam, it’s all too relevant again today.
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl – Not one of my favourites. I actually preferred Pohl’s collaborations with C.M Kornbuth to many of the books he wrote alone.
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling – Yes, I’ve read Harry Potter. All of it to date. And it’s fun. But I’m not sure why it’s on this list. Other than because it’s made shitloads of money. Maybe because it’s made reading an acceptable think for kids to do – not that it ever was. Those who deplore the lack of interest in books among today’s youth forget that kids have, with few exceptions, never read books, and have always tormented the small numbers of kids who do. Harry Potter will pass, as other book fads have in the past, and kids will go back to beating up kids who read books instead. Few societies are, or ever have been, actively literate, and I’m not really sure that’s ever going to change. For influential post-1953 children’s SF, I think Madeleine L’Engle is a more appropriate choice in terms of significance to the field of SF.
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams – Read all five volumes, although the last one isn’t as brilliant as the others. Loved them. Often quote them.
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson – post-apocalyptic vampires! Woo-hoo. Lots of fun, but I’m not sure what’s so incredibly significant about it.
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice – Yes, I do like vampires. No, I am not particularly fond of Anne Rice. Yes, I did read the first couple of her vampire novels. Interview was OK, The Vampire Lestat is IMO her best, and the others… not so much.
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin – I think it’s hard for people now to remember what an innovative, challenging, and even for some people dangerous novel this was when it was first published. Yes, people had been challenging gender roles and writing about alien ways of being sexual for some time (Sturgeon, Mitchison, Delany just to name a few), but LeGuin pulled it all together and put it right out where there was no avoiding the issue.
31. Little, Big, John Crowley – the second book on the list that I have no read, and I really cannot tell you why. I’ve gone and read some reviews, and I now think I ought to give it a try – I think it might suit my tastes more now than it might have when it was first published.
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny – I’m not sure why I’m not fond of Zelazny’s work. He often starts from source material that I’m deeply interested in – Vedic sources in The Lord of Light, and my beloved Arthurian material in parts of the Amber Chronicles. But I just don’t.
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick – I enjoyed but wasn’t crazy over this book as a kid, but suspect that it may have been a bit over my head. I think I’m going to reread this one, too.
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement – An interesting story from what I remember, which isn’t all that much. It may be one of the earlier examples of serious worldbuilding in which both scientific and internal consistency is carefully considered, which may be why it’s here – certainly, I can’t think of many earlier examples of setting a story in a world that works differently on all levels, but still makes sense once you understand the :rules.”
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon – Sturgeon changed things. He was one of the first “big name” writers (i.e., male and American) to break out of the boys’ club model and write about feelings, psychology, passion, and all that messy gurlz stuff. I might have picked one of his other works, or maybe just any stort story collection that has “The World Well Lost” in it, but let’s not quibble. Sturgeon belongs here, and picking the exact work is kind of irrelevant.
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith – It’s difficult for me to say whether I’ve read this book or not. In looking it up, I learned that this is a collection of all of Cordwainer Smith’s Instrumentality works. Have I read this precise book? No. Have I read all of the Instrumentality stories, and much else of his as well? – you bet.
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute – I think this was the only book that can be categorised as SF that Shute ever wrote. I’ve read much of his other fiction as well (A Town named Alice, No Highway, Beyond the Black Stump, and so on). This is, of course, the great apocalyptic novel (in Shute’s envisioning of a nuclear war there would be no post-apocalypse).
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke – Eh. Good story, interesting science, but I wouldn’t have called it one for the ages. There are other books by Clarke that are more significant, assuming you want to put two of his books on the list rather than acknowledging, say, a significant female on non-anglophone SF writer.
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven – Cool idea, fun book, I guess it’s a classic. I tend to not be as excited about hard SF unless there’s a lot of character development and soft science in there as well. I actually prefer the books Niven wrote with Jerry Pournelle to most of his later works, anyway.
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys – I barely remembered reading this book, and had to look it up to be sure it was the book I thought it was. That said, the overall concept was striking enough to stick in my brain for a very long time. The first statement of the now-classic “transporter” problem – who is the “real” person – the original, or the transported copy?
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien – I have read this almost as many times as I’ve read The Lord of the Rings.
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut – Vonnegut sometimes annoys me, and I vastly prefer his short stories to his novels. But I won’t argue with this, it’s a significant and influential book, and if you are going to read one Vonnegut novel, this should probably be it. (But don’t forget the short stories!)
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson – The last of the books on the list I haven’t read. Not sure why, hthe reviews just didn’t grab me.
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner – Certainly a fine dystopic novel, and if I remember correctly was one of the first major SF novels to use a really experimental style. I remember it being a bit of a tough read, but worth it. I’m thinking I might want to reread both this and his other great dystopian novel, The Shhep Look Up.
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester – Like the other Bester novel on the list, I had to look it up to make sure I had the right book in mind. Bester’s work did not seem to stick in my mind.
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein – I’ve read all the Heinlein there is. So of course I’ve read this. I have a very complex relationship with Heinlein and his work, and it’s gone through many changes. I rather enjoyed Starship Troopers for its story, but as with a number of Heinlein’s books, I wasn’t all that fond of his political arguments. Plus, I think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a better book.
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock – Moorcock has never been one of my favourite fantasy writers. And while I read the whole Elric saga, I’m not all that keen to go back and read it again. Can’t tell you why, just not my cup of tea.
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks – Yes, I read it – at least some of it. I’m not sure at this long remvove, but it may have been one of the few books I didn’t bother finishing. I thought it might be good. It wasn’t. And it brought forth that nauseating slew of paint-by-numbers fantasies where elves and dwarves and whatever other characters the author has stolen from Tolkien all behave like hollow stereotypes and… well, I won’t go on. This was the first and last Terry Brooks Tolkien pastiche I read.
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford – Another book that I wasn’t sure I’d actually read until I looked up some reviews. Obviously I did not find if significant or influential.
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer – Yeah, I read the Riverworld books. Like a lot of Farmer’s series, it started out intriguing and them went downhill. Farmer’s another one of those writers I have a complicated relationship with. Like Sturgeon, he was a big part of the 1950s maturation process in North American SF – I mean, his first published story was “The Lovers.” And I can get very much drawn into his Wold Newton families “fictional history”– you know, the one where Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Fu Manchu, Bulldog Drummond, James Bond and at least a dozen other fictional characters are all the descendants of a small group of travellers whose coach was exposed to radiation from an asteroid that landed at Wold Newton in the late 18th century. But he tends, I think, to try to include too much in some of his works, and they can get tedious.
The flaws in this list should be obvious. The list is hardly representative of the influential SF novels written in the past 50 years by women, by non-Americans, by non-anglophones. This may be the list of most influential mostly American white boy SF writers with a few women and Brits and Samuel Delany thrown in so we don't look like it's just about American white boys, but it's not a list of the most influential SF books of the past 50 years.
So, who would you add to the list (let's not worry about tossing anyone off, although I'd gladly jettison Shannara and Harry Potter right now)?
Books I'd definitely want to see on the list include:
Joanna Russ, The Female Man
James Tiptree Jr, just about anything - how about a collection containing "The Women Men Don't See," "Houston, Do You Read?," "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain," "Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Full of Light!" among just a few.
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Octavia Butler, Xenogenesis
Peter S Beagle, either A Fine and Private Place or The Last Unicorn
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman graphic novels
That's off the top of my head, and I'm sure there's more if I think a while.
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