Fanatical Pupil

Here’s an annotated version of the list of the Top 100 SFF Books as voted by NPR listeners. Bold for the ones I’ve read, and because I’m a bit concerned about how pathetic that’s going to look, I’m going to put Italics for ones that I actually have a copy of on my shelf, just waiting to be read. There’s a summary at the bottom for anyone who wants some analysis and introspection.

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin (I’ve only read the first one, but at 900 pages, that’s no small accomplishment)
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov (started reading it and just couldn’t get into it…)
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys
39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
49. Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote In God’s Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore
74. Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

Summary
I’ve read 13. Though #1 is a Trilogy, and #23 The Dark Tower Series is actually 7 books, so I could say I’ve ready 22 of the Top 110, which gives me slightly better percentage (20% vs 13%). Of course, if you do that, then you probably have to expand A Song of Ice and Fire and all the other Trilogies or Serieses (Wheel of Time is at least 10 books) and then my percentage would probably end up lower than the original 13%. So, I guess I’ll just have to increase my number the hard way: actually reading.

Have copies ready to be read: 13. I’ve managed to up my monthly word intake to (a very roughly estimated) 100,000 words. So, if I say that each of the 13 books is about 150,000 words, then I’ll be through those 13 in a little over a year and a half. Not bad considering it took me 30 years to get through the first 13.

SF Signal: ‘Judgement’ – The eBook That’s Both Free and Cheap.

The story here obviously isn’t really about the book. You can click through if you want a description of thigns like plot and characters.

What really matters is that John at SFSignal says:

You can either buy the novel in various eBook formats at Smashwords for the more-than-reasonable price of $2…or, you can read it online for free.

This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says people will not pay for what they can get for free. Will it work? The thinking is that people will pay for what they like, especially if it’s cheap enough. I’d be interested in hearing a few months from now how well this works…

I have to point out, though, that the “read it online for free” part means you have to read it on the author’s website on a really, really, really… really, really, really long web page. So, really, it’s not an experiment to see if people will pay for something they can get for free because what they get for free is not the equivalent of what they pay for. It’s more of a test of how much people are willing to punish themselves before they spend a small amount of money.

Of course, I did a quick test, and was able to get a high quality version of the book simply by copying the really (really, really, really) long web page into an Open Office Writer document. I’m pretty sure there’s a script the author could embed on the site that would prevent people from selecting and/or copying text – if he really wanted to see if people would pay for something they could read online for free.

Of course (number 2), it would also be interesting to have 2 versions and do split testing to see if you get better conversions to the pay version from the site that doesn’t allow copying, or if people would just give up and not even read the book. As Tim O’Reilly says, “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” (h/t: Cory Doctorow)

Joe Konrath not only has a really cool marketing experiment going on, but he also puts forth some good ideas about marketing books.

The one that most caught my attention was this:

For years, I’ve been wondering why publishers waste money on full page ads in the New York Times, featuring a picture of the book cover and a bunch of blurbs, when a much more effective ad would be a full page excerpt from the novel.

It seems that even the back cover of a book would be more effective. Sure, it’s great that people give blurbs, but honestly, I often feel like these are reciprocal back-scratching sorts of moves rather than real opinions. And they don’t really tell you what the book is about. The first thing I read when looking at a book on Amazon is the description. Then, if it sounds good, I’ll check a review that rated it highly as well as a review that rated it low. Most of the books on Amazon don’t have an excerpt available yet, or I would consider going to that as a second option (or definitely as a third option if my quick review of the reviews kept me interested).

In terms of Konrath’s experiment of putting other people’s excerpts into his books, it sounds like something I’d be interested in. I usually don’t read the excerpts if their from the same author because either I liked the book enough that I plan to read the book from which the excerpt comes anyway, or I didn’t like it enough to feel like reading an excerpt would make me want to read the next book (or another book by the author).

If it was framed, however, as books “recommended” by the author I’d just read, and there were 3-5 excerpts available to read through, I would find it fascinating. It would probably be enough for me to check out a book, even without an excerpt, if it were simply in a list of books recommended by an author I liked. Getting to read excerpts of these new books for free would fit exactly in the movie preview metaphor that Konrath came up with.

And maybe the best part of this marketing effort is that it maintains it’s utility (and perhaps increases it) as the market continues to shift more towards eBooks and away from traditional paper books.

I’ve already seen a couple thousand posts in response to this Wall Street Journal article by Lev Grossman. There’s a video here that kind of further expounds on his theory behind modern literature, which evidently can actually include novels that have plots. Who knew?

Since there’s so much else to read, I’ll try to sum up my comments in a single sentence: Grossman’s article appears to be written by someone who has been trapped by TIME magazine’s definition of “literature” for so long he didn’t realize that there books (I mean, any books) were actually written after 1930, until he read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel.

If you’re interested in more:
Conversation Reading
The Mumpsisms

If you want more:
From me: I read another interview with Grossman where he says how he grew up obsessed with fantasy novels/series like Narnia, Lord of the Rings, etc. It’s odd, then, to think that he could be so close-minded when it comes to the idea of “good books” having good plots. I’ve always been more interested in Science Fiction myself, and while I’ll admit that I haven’t read many of the science fiction works from around the time of Narnia and Lord of the Rings, I have read quite a bit of modern scifi. While certainly not all of it can even approach what might be called “literary” I can’t help but think of Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book), The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book), Cryptonomicon. Yes, I realize they’re all by Neal Stephenson, but all of them are clearly plot-driven, but also written in a style that I would consider worthy of literary criticism.

Of course, the whole article could really just be a Michael Arrington-like Controversy On Purpose designed to get people to say Lev Grossman as many times as possible across the internet. If that’s the case, Bravo! Great Success!

This putting Book One online for free thing works out really well for me, since I started reading the series with Book Two aka Bloodlines. And since I have yet to start Book Four (of Nine), I won’t have to rewind through seven books to catch the beginning of the whole thing. It’s even available as an audiobook! Downloading that right now…

Free offer expires May 13, 2008 (the day the last book of the series comes out).