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.

The following quotes are from a post that is actually about Science Fiction as an MMORPG, but it has some discussion which definitely applies to written fiction.

In my view, all the most-popular SF (Fiction or Fantasy, you choose) like Star Trek, Star Wars, SG, BG, etc. More closely resemble fantasy than SF.

In these, you’ll find all the character-centricity you need to make a compelling story. The setting (the technology) is incidental to the story rather than the focus. When you start throwing in goofy aliens with weird “powers” (or Chicago mobsters, or Nazis, or mutants, or ….) you are starting to get awfully close to reskinning fantasy in space. And honestly, thats not necessarily bad.

Here, where SF can stand for Science Fantasy (an obvious oxymoron if I’ve ever seen one), I think a more appropriate SF would be: Space Fantasy (as the other can be called “High Fantasy” – a term I’ve heard before, which I believe applies to things like A Game Of Thrones). It takes place in Space, and it’s basically a Fantasy.

Too often pure SF is more about the idea and not the character, or if about the character, it has a dependency on a technological element that is both critical to the story and too susceptible to being over taken by our headlong technological rush into the future potentially rendering the dramatic heart of the story irrelevant or to quote Wil, downright silly. Its much easier to keep our disbelief suspended when we’re talking about the Force in another galaxy than to disregard what have become now-glaring factual inaccuracies (or implausibilities) in light of scientific advance. FTL travel or the gravity problem anyone?

And that is why most laypeople (I believe) just call it SciFi no matter what narrower definition could possibly be applied. It’s not technically Science Fiction, the narrow definers argue, but it certainly is Fiction. And the term SciFi differentiates it from pretty much every other sort of fiction there is. It’s not (usually) horror, mystery, romance, fantasy, chick lit, or anything else. Sure, it can be a mix of SciFi with any other genre, but it’s still going to be distinguished as SciFi.

I accepted this concept starting with Neal Stephenson’s lecture at Gresham College in which he basically asserts that Science Fiction doesn’t really need to be narrowed down as a genre since (these days) everything that is not another genre is Science Fiction. It’s not a hard and fast fact, but more a byproduct of the way we are currently producing content. Science Fiction has become so mainstream that it, as a genre, can encompass just about everything that isn’t cordoned off by another group.