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Flowchart Guides Readers Through the 100 Best SF Books
Hugh Pickens writes writes "T. N. Tobias writes that over the summer, over 60,000 people voted at NPR to select the top 100 science fiction and fantasy books of all time. The result? A list of 100 books with a wide range of styles, little context, and absolutely no pithy commentary to help readers actually choose something to read from it. Now SF Signal has come to the rescue with a 3800 x 2300 flowchart with over 325 decision points to help you find the perfect SF or Fantasy book to meet your tastes. Don't like to scroll? There's an interactive version that let's you answer a series of questions to find the perfect SF book."
Why is it that no one appreciates MODERN science fiction anymore? There are so many great *modern* science fiction writers out there (just take a look at Gardner Dozois's incredible Year's Best Science Fiction anthology sometime for an excellent sampling). Yet every time someone talks about science fiction, all anyone brings up are golden and silver age writers like Henlein, Asimov, Phillip Dick, etc. Not that there is anything wrong with those guys, but does everyone think science fiction writing ended when disco was still hot? There is great NEW stuff coming out every year. Hell, even Fredrick Pohl's best stuff came in the 90's, not the 60's.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Everything is flowcharts in Hell!
You should try looking at the list - there are plenty of contemporary Sci Fi and Fantasy authors on it.
Culture is more than commerce
Why is it that people don't read the article before making lots of assumptions...nevermind.
Because it's a list of what people expect to say is the best.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
William Gibson is on there.
And yes, you're overestimating the new stuff, and underestimating the old stuff they chose.
You're also not recognizing that the new stuff is far less widely read than the old stuff. SF&F is rarely bestseller-list material, and spreads through osmosis.
Current Sci-Fi hasn't been around long enough for it to be influential. It's also not been around long enough for the crap to be forgotten by history. For a neophyte if they pick something new off the shelf it's likely to be crap. If it's not crap, it's likely to borrow heavily from the classics. If it's completely novel (no pun intended), they won't have any context in which to appreciate that. In all these cases the reader benefits from being introduced to the classics first.
Notice that nothing about this argument is Sci-Fi specific. It applies to all cultural works.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
No, there are few. How many released in the last 5 years 10 years??
and any kist with "The Silmarillion" on it as the best is clearly a waste. It's interesting if you are interested in following the history in LotR, but greatest fantasy sci-fi in the top 100? no.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
no tad williams ... horrid list
My cynical side wants to attribute it to the genre's turn towards the literary. Aficionados might rejoice that science-fiction finally matured and could claim to be great literature, but casual readers don't want to tax themselves with the challenging prose and labyrinthine plot of, say, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun when Golden Age science-fiction provides a simple tale that can be read in an hour or two.
Dozois's anthologies are a great place to find the standouts of the last few decades. It was his Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction that introduced me to Wolfe, Kate Wilhelm, Nancy Cress, (late-period) Robert Silverberg, Lucius Shepherd and others when I had previously known only pulpish science-fiction.
Asimov barely makes it to #8. Really? And authors like Ian M Banks (Use of weapons), Stanislav Lem (Futurology congress) and Strugackie brothers (Roadside picnic) are not even there. Well I guess The Amber Chronicles would compensate for that.
Last I heard, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and Neal Stephenson are pretty modern....
Yeah, I don't read all that much SciFi and the chart quickly lead me to a whole bunch of softcore SF classics, all of which I've read.
Here's a question: How does it make a SF title any better to have been written in the last hundred million seconds out of 100,000 years? Isn't keeping up with the present the domain of the Twitterverse?
I'm a well-aged consumer of scotch, cheese, movies, and books. If I'm going to consume something fresh, it's probably a documentary that took ten years to finance and film.
Not just the Silmarillion, two Stephan King books.
Good to know the middle school (and middle school reading level) was represented in this poll.
Also the red/green mars drek. At least that was low on the list. Stephan King was in the top half for fucks sake.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
True enough (though I greatly enjoyed it). I was sad not to see anything by John Ringo in the military fiction category. Easily my favorite still writing author (the ghost series is excellent and free from Baen books).
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
how do you expect anyone to read fantasy without L.E. Modesitt? and no Dave Duncan either?
What about Fred Saberhagen's awesome Berserker universe? Or the Bolo universe by Keith Laumer?
I have read about 30 of these, and since it was about half fantasy and I don't read that in general, I'd say I've read about 3/5s of the stuff there (that I care about). I saw a few I wouldn't read regardless. So I'd say the list was pretty good. Only a couple on it that I've been meaning to read and haven't yet.
You can't read everything, so this would be a good place to start.
Of course, it's going to suffer from "Why didn't they put X on the list?", but it has a limit of 100 and that's actually kind of small. I don't know why they lump fantasy in with sci-fi. I've read only a few fantasy stories that I much enjoyed, but beyond that, they really aren't similar categories. It's pretty much the same as lumping "Sci-fi and Romance" genres together. "The top 100 Westerns/Autobiographies." Why not?
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
For the most part, "modern" stuff hasn't been around long enough to see whether it stands the test of time.
Frankly, picking a book/movie/whatever for a "best of all time" list that is only four or five years old is silly...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Why not try reading the link before you guess. There's a lot of Stephenson (probably the author with the most indiviual listings there), gibson, vinge, banks, fforde, and lots of other modern authors.
So are Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, and Iain M. Banks...
Aficionados might rejoice that science-fiction finally matured and could claim to be great literature, but casual readers don't want to tax themselves with the challenging prose and labyrinthine plot of, say, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun
Even that review describes itself as one of the best "science fantasies". Sorry, that means its not sci fi, its just princes and knights having swordfights for control of the kingdom, am I guessing right? I'm betting there is swordfights and horseback riding, right? Claiming on the back cover that the date is 9000 AD instead of 900 AD doesn't magically make it scifi instead of fantasy, sorry.
It may be an excellent book, but its probably not an excellent sci fi book.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Nearly all of it is modern? It just isn't contemporary.
Here's what I was going to write:
It's hard to get into a "top 100 ever" list in less than 5 years (it takes time to build up a following) but there are a lot from the last 20 years on that list: Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson (both multiply), Iain Banks, Vernor Vinge, Connie Willis.
But then I looked through the full list. You're right, it's full of crap and old stuff. My list above is too short.
I went the "familiar but not too experienced" route of fantasy and it recommended 'The Silmarillion'. That book, I have (attempted to) read before. That book, as a first fantasy book, would turn ANYONE off reading fantasy ever again.
I was very, very glad there was nothing by Ringo. The man a rightwing nutjob, and it bleeds into his books in a horrible way. He does write well, though.
I am legend! This will be disappointing for a lot op people.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Why isn't any of his work on this list?
You might prefer such a strict definition of science fiction, but the list that is the topic of this Slashdot discussion contains not only books where science coexists with fantastical elements, but also outright fantasy. The term "Science fiction" is commonly used to encompass a wide range of genres.
And it has been like that for a long, long time. Wolfe's sequence is hardly more fantastical than e.g. Olaf Stapledon's work, but the latter is regularly seen as a classic of science fiction (and not fantasy). Indeed, it was the prevalence of fantastical elements in Golden Age science fiction that led some to use the term "hard science fiction" to emphasize works that didn't stray from our understanding of physics.
Er...
"I don't mind a few chuckles between explosions" leads to the Culture series (fine) but "I don't have a sense of humor that I'm aware of" and "I just like my action intense" goes to the Vorkosigan Saga? What the hell? Bujold is funnier than most sf on her worst day. And sure, there's _some_ intense action, but just as much, well, character comedy and romance. I'm, er, not sure if the person who did that bit of the flowchart ever actually read the books at all...
They have Lois McMaster Bujold, whose Vorkosigan saga is quite young ("Cordelia's Honor" is in the list).
It's quite modern, and quite good as well. Dates to the 90s and 00's.
And one minute you're reading Cordelia's Honor and the next you're hunting around for the rest of the series. Thankfully, it's from Baen. They have almost every book for free download if you can find the CD site. (The missing one, Memory, is probably one of the best in the series and unfortunately has to be bought. It's an unfortunate oversight).
"... and absolutely no pithy commentary.."
Hmmm.. who would this apply to? YOU? Yes indeed.
Hugs and kisses,
Juan Epstein
If you haven't had the pleasure of reading any of Alastair Reynolds Hard SF books... I HIGHLY recommend them.
No Lovecraft, Dunsany or Olaf Stapleton? You have to lucky they tossed you a bone in Verne and Wells. The lack of PKD on this list should be considered an embarrassment to the NPR marketing staff. This list really represents the effect of cinema on culture.
Hello
The lack of PKD on this list should be considered an embarrassment to the NPR marketing staff.
I realize that clicking links in the submission is considered bad form here, but Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is in the upper right corner of the flowchart.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I mean, The Lord of the Rings was a good book, but sci-fi it ain't, and it's not the same kind of book as The Martian Chronicles or real sci-fi.
The interactive selection was a joke. There are so many places where you are asked "A or not A" and then wind up with only B as a possibility. You want space, but "not too far"? Mars vs. the rest of the universe. Sigh.
Specifically, Small Gods and Snow Crash. The classics are all there, and a few modern ones I don't think will outlast the century, but the majority of them are all very solid.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The term "Science fiction" is commonly used to encompass a wide range of genres
Yeah, most recently as seen in video, Sci Fi is now wrestling, ghost hunting, and giant monster horror B movies. I am unimpressed.
Much like "begging the question" is commonly used completely inappropriately, mostly as a pompous "filler" rather than what it actually means. Again, an emphatic and vigorous "eh".
So back to Wolfe... am I right or wrong, the only thing sci fi about his book is likely to be playing with numbers so the date is in the future, and Maybe some Heinlein style wordprocessor search and replace work where absolutely nothing is changed but the word "telephone" is replaced with "videophone" and "India" is replaced with the word "Mars"? And there's sword fighting, feudal system, and maybe some magic? That's the impression I'm getting.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
but some of the more recent SF has gotten the short straw, maybe because the folks that read SF 30 years ago haven't read any recently. Me ? Still have an Analog subscription (with a few interruptions over the years), and still see some of the good 2/3/4 parts series turning into books that are worthwhile. Stories that resonated with me while I was growing up have been sort of imprinted, so I understand where the bias comes from for the 40/30 year old classic stories.
Now about that 'wave a wand' or 'cast a spell' stuff ? Not interested.
I'm glad that's the first fork in the map. I have zero interest in vampires and unicorns but that seems to be the bulk of the "Sci-fi / Fantasy" section in the library or book store or netflix. The two genres have very little in common, in my opinion.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
No, it's science fiction. It won't seem it when you read it the first time, but that's because Wolfe is writing on a level that is amazingly subtle. One of the finest living writers, in my opinion.
Just one... err maybe two: Daniel Suarez: Deamon and Freedom
Am I the only one who was hoping for something like this: http://xkcd.com/657/
Is 1563649 a prime number?
I love Sapkowski's The Last Wish and Blood of Elves - the inspiration for the Witcher game. Too bad they are missing....
For shame. It's probably the wittiest, sexiest, most thought provoking sci-fi novel of the last 40 years.
I was hoping to find some good things to read, but I only found a handful of titles on the list that I don't already own. And most of those I won't.
I was surprised to find some rather - um - lower quality pulp on the list, but I suppose this sort of "everyone vote for your favorite" thing is bound to have a smattering of that.
Oh well. Back to my lists of Hugo and Nebula nominees - that's a much better selection, frankly.
WALSTIB!
As has been pointed out numerous times already, it's really "The 100 most popular science fiction and fantasy books among listeners of NPR that could be bothered to vote".
As for the flowchart, which is really the point of the post, they did a pretty good job of it, considering what they had to work with.
Electric Sheep was in, or am I mistaken?
The absence of Stross is painful, though
Fantasy is pretty much the opposite of science. Can we stop grouping it with SciFi?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Try googling "The Fifth Imperium".
A bigger problem is their wild inconsistency on single books versus series; a great example is the top of the list: the Lord of the Rings trilogy, then a single book from the Hitchhikers "trilogy", then Ender's Game as a singleton, then Dune as a series, etc. Later they have two Asimov robot books separately, then The Silmarillion (but not The Hobbit), and so on.
Have you read my blog lately?
It'd be nice if I could make it re-list by weighting the votes.
I like Vernor Vinge, Neil Gaiman, Bujold, George RR Martin, and Neal Stephenson.
I don't like Kim Stanley Robinson, Anne McCaffrey, David Eddings, Dan Simmons, or Arthur C. Clarke (blasphemy! I know!)
If you feel the opposite, kudos to you, but don't complain, my idea will work for you too.
I'd love to be able to have it weigh the votes of the people who liked the same stuff as me more heavily and the people who like the stuff I don't like less heavily and then see what the new top 100 looks like, and maybe pick out the highest placed book/series that I haven't already read from the new list.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Given the choice between Fantasy and Science Fiction, I've always been a Science Fiction guy. My one Honorable Mention in Fantasy would have been Heinlein's Glory Road -- for some reason, the kind of book I can read over and over.
Pity that it didn't make the cut.
It is indeed a shame Ringo Clancy-fied himself.
The March Upcountry series (which he co-authored with Weber) is excellent, the first four books of the Posleen Wars is solid military SF (as is the Cally offshoot that was co-written) and the Council Wars were also good. (As a side note, Weber has also Clancy-fied himself, but in the "I don't need an editor" way, as opposed to the "I assume all my readers will share my political views and will present them uncritically" way.)
It's kind of funny, the downright bizarre Paladin of Shadows ("Ghost", et al) series was something he didn't ever think would get published, due to it being too extreme. Jim Baen published it anyway, correctly divining that there was a market for this stuff. With how well it did, Ringo made the not entirely unjustified decision to let his political and/or sexual preferences become a major part of his works.
I guess it makes him money, but I can't stand to read the stuff. (I don't like extreme polemic from either end of the political spectrum in my SF, and the sex stuff in Paladin of Shadows is just gross, and I'm not a prude.)
Quite honestly, I am stunned and shocked that the Gormenghast books are not in there. http://www.amazon.com/Gormenghast-Novels-Titus-Groan-Alone/dp/0879516283
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I really don't like how Bujold's Vorkosigan series comes after a path where one says no to humor. Sure, they can be pretty serious at times. Bujold has explicitly said that she thinks one of the keys to good literature is making characters have a miserable time (not her exact wording but pretty close). But the light-hearted bits are terribly funny. And even when things are going wrong, a lot of the characters, especially Miles, have such delightfully sardonic attitudes that this shouldn't be there. Frankly, a lot of these paths should lead to the same books as options. Overall, amusing but not a great actual flow chart for the purpose intended.
Stephan King
Yup, you're quite the literary genius.
So are Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, and Iain M. Banks...
Yeah, but we were talking about GOOD modern authors.
My first time through the interactive version, it pointed me at "Cryptonomicon." I took another spin and it suggested "Neuromancer." I tried one more time and went through a much longer maze and eventually landed on "I, Robot." 2/3 ain't bad. I agree with you that modern SF is underrated, but from what I've seen so far, these guys aren't guilty of that.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Seems people are simply not aware of the classics very well, given some startling omissions here. "The End of Eternity" is one of Asimov's greatest works and its lesson is one very applicable today (hint: replace time travel with information technology after reading this book, I got goosebumps thinking about that, shame on NASA for making space boring) http://www.amazon.com/End-Eternity-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0765319187/ I also don't see a single book from the sci-fi grandmasters like Jack Williamson (the timeless classic "The Humanoids" http://www.amazon.com/Humanoids-Novel-Jack-Williamson/dp/0312852533 and it's sequel, etc.) or Clifford Saimak ("Cemetery World" http://www.amazon.com/Cemetery-World-Clifford-D-Simak/dp/0399110712 etc.).
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Nothing by Glen Cook?
And the half-serious series from Jim Butcher? WTH?
Who the fuck cares how that tard spells his name? It won't make his books any less awful.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
this is just an Amazon ad, every selection you make in that 'interactive' char ends up with an Amazon link.
You can't handle the truth.
There are some surprising omissions and poor categorizations in there. For instance:
The Belgariad (Eddings) is reached by following the Sword and Sorcery - NO option and the 'five or six books enough for you' - YES option (rather than the No - I shall require at least ten option) when in fact there are 12/13 books set in the Belgariad universe.
If you're going to include Thomas Covenant in the fantasy section, you should without doubt include Donaldson's far superior Gap Series in the Sci-Fi section.
There are plenty of other inconsistencies, omissions and strange categorizations of books. I shan't bore you with them. I admire the effort put in, and it's not an awful flowchart per se, but I think that it most usefully demonstrates the limitations of a flowchart or tree diagram and that it isn't the best way to categorize books.
The Book of the New Sun is science-fiction. It starts out as seemingly fantasy, but the science fiction elements are there from the very beginning if you respond to Wolfe's love of apparently casual relevations. For example, many readers go through the first book oblivious to the fact that the protagonist's home is the ruin of a spaceport. But soon Wolfe introduces directed energy weapons, plenty of spacecraft (propelled by solar sails or antigravity technologies whose advantages and limitations are discussed), terraformation schemes, time travel with grandfather paradoxes, and other speculative elements.
There is horseriding, but the horses are genetically engineered and Wolfe offers a substantial explanation of why warfare might regress from machines like tanks to biological tools.
There's also magic, both of the kind that can be explained as extremely advanced technology and (to a lesser extent) of the sort that defies scientific explanation. But I don't think that challenges the work's claim to be science fiction. After all, Larry Niven's Known Space universe has telekinesis and telepathy with no scientific explanation at all (it's just there, some have it and some don't), but the books are still science-fiction, and often categorized specifically as hard science fiction.
I used to wonder why Fantasy was grouped in with SF. But futuristic SF involves things that are not possible (at least by our current understanding.) Why should we limit "Science Fiction" to Starships and Lightsabers? Why not Swords, Sorcery, and Magic? If we strip current tech from a "hard" SF book, you are left with more-or-less magic anyway.
Really, my yardstick for good Fantasy (at least, Fantasy that I enjoy reading) is that it presents a system of magic that is methodical and is internally consistent. I don't care for the "call upon the favor of the Gods" type stuff. But stuff like the Mistborn trilogy, or the Coldfire or Magister series all present stuff that would be "hard" traditional SF if the setting had been changed.
Instead of trying to draw a fuzzy line between "hard" Fantasy, and Tolkien-type stuff, it makes more sense to just stick them in the same section of the store.
No, he can't. It is spelled Steven.
You're so cool because you hate something popular!
I know that people get very passionate about their Science Fiction writing, but reading some of the responses here you'd think that there was some massive, genocidal weapon aimed to exterminate SF readers.
Get a grip, people.
It's a list. Did you vote? Remember, your favorite author, well, it might not be everyone else's favorite author. The list is based on what people voted for.
Personally, although I've heard of many of these titles, I've read only a small handful, the rest being on my list of things to do when that precious free time returns at some point in the unknown future. And I thought the flowchart was really very entertaining and insightful. Well done, I say! Hear, hear, I say -- perhaps this list will result in a few more people picking up a classic Science Fiction book and reading it, perhaps even enjoying it. Is that really so bad?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Stephen King is popular because he knows how to tell a good yarn. It doesn't matter if it is "Literature" in the snooty, elitist sense.
No it isn't.
Maybe that's on purpose.
LotR really is just one big story, and only a halfwit would pick up The Two Towers and read it on its own, but the Silmarillion -- i can't really imagine someone wanting to read it without having read LotR,.. but it is a virtually completely standalone work.
Meanwhile I read Robots of Dawn years before I found a copy of The Caves of Steel, and reading them out of order is no real issue... they really are stand alone works.
Ender's game as a singleton makes sense; I read speaker for the dead and xenocide, and although i enjoyed them they weren't nearly as magical for me. And I don't even have any real interest in reading Cards other trips back to that well. Starts to feel like butter scraped over too much bread.
THHGTTG early novels are mostly better than the later ones.
I've read Dune, but not the later novels - so I can't comment on that one. But I've heard from some people that the first Dune book is better than the series.
Sci-Fi and fantasy have a tendancy to serialize, and i think far too much modern work is designed as some epic career spanning project. To the real detriment of the work.
It's pretty much the same reason Alternate History is considered part of SF, even ones that don't depend on time travel or something like that to cause the difference. Traditionally, AH was written by SF authors, so it's part of SF.
Actually, the series is about as old as I am: its beginning dates into the early eighties. (Though the Book of Ivan has yet to be published.)
What amazed me is the path you have to take to get to it – if you really have no sense of humor, you won’t much enjoy the books.
Ignore this signature. By order.
You didn't like the Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books? What's wrong with those? I consider them good hard science fiction. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but it's certainly not unworthy of such high praise.
It's been pointed out many times that SF&F actually outsells many of the books listed on say the NYT list of bestsellers. It's just that the editors of those lists exclude certain genres from what they will list. Harlequin romances for example.
Three Squirrels
This list is just not credible, it lumps series with up to 11 books and graphic novels in with regular novels. At best you can consider it a fan favorite with some very obvious additions.
If you are interested in looking at some real classics of SF lists you should take a look at some of these:
https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists.asp
These lists:
Locus Best SF Novels of All-Time
The Classics of Science Fiction
Guardian: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels
The ISFDB Top 100 Books (Balanced List)
David Pringle's Best 100 Science Fiction Novels
SF Masterworks
Are all far better.
For more discussion on why its a useless list see:
https://www.worldswithoutend.com/mbbs22/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=391&posts=20&start=1
It must count as fantasy since it sure as hell isn't science fiction...I can think of no more ironic classification than "the stand" (a horror story) in "fantasy".
To be honest, having read them a few times, I find they have pacing issues, where Red Mars drags everything out, in some cases hours by hour. And yet when you get to Green Mars he races through years and presents significant historical events in a paragraph or two. I understand that you built relationships with the earlier characters and many of those have passed by the later books, but the ending seems rushed and consquently poorly thought out and 'unfinished'.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Some categorize it as hard SF, some don't.
Anything relying on magic is de facto fantasy. Anything relying on 'unknown forces' completely under control is fantasy. Not to mention contradictory.
Likewise, telekenisis and telepathy are fantasy as there is not a damn thing about the brain that could provide the power for the latter - far, far less for the former.
Opinions may vary.
But I like Iain Banks...
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Gardner Dozois has an odd bias: he tends toward stories like those of the "new wave" authors circa 1970. If you think like a hippie, if you like stories where individuals and mankind are powerless against the universe, you'll like his choices. I hate them.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I can suspend disbelief regarding time travel, warp drive etc etc.
But a space mission staffed by people recruited in the parking lot of a dead show? The explanation for that group is simply nonsensical.
Kim Stanly Robinson's characters are simply unbelievably dumb. They would have died for sure.
Technology unworkable or trivial. Social changes undesirable and unworkable.
It went from hard science fiction to fantasy about page 1.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
He is popular for the same reason USA today was once a popular newspaper.
Simple stories, no big words.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I see a lot of complaining about the lack of newer Sci-Fi and Fantasy books in the list. This can be easily explained. It's not specifically because the older authors and series are more well known, though that is definitely part of it. The reason is simply that this was a NPR poll. If you stop for a second, you would realize that NPR's audience trends towards an older demographic. As such, they are more likely to select authors that they have enjoyed over the years. When you get older, you tend to have less time to read (unless you are and avid reader and make time) and are more likely to select books based on proven authors.
Personally, I read a lot of Sci-Fi and fantasy when in university. I went to the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, NB, Canada and they had one of the largest Sci-Fi collections in Canada, if not the Northeast (ranked 10th in the world in 2009). I even got to read the special collection books as I worked as a temp in the library to make some money. It was cool having access and it is only recently, with the development of the kindle and the amazon bookstore, that I've gotten back into reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy as I now have access to more interesting stories than the popular Vampire/Magic/Star (Trek/Wars) that lined the shelves in most book stores.
Culture is more than commerce
'Ender's Game' the novel is butter scraped over too much bread.
'Ender's Game' the short story was much better. IIRC it was in Pornelle's first 'There Will Be War' collection.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There are so many great *modern* science fiction writers out there
There are. But there are even more hacks than ever before. I find most contemporary sci-fi and fantasy books to be unreadable. The signal to noise ratio has gone way up from the golden era. Because these genres have become much more mainstream fare, the barrier to entry has gone way down and so a lot of authors that wouldn't have even gotten published 40 years ago are now cranking out trilogies of garbage.
To aspiring writers out there: If you are going to write sci-fi or fantasy books, please have more substance than 'I like elves and blasters are cool'.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Saw this poster some time ago, but come on, Terry Goodkind? I couldn't get past the first 100 pages of the Sword of Truth.
Much like "begging the question" is commonly used completely inappropriately, mostly as a pompous "filler" rather than what it actually means.
Yes, I really wish those idiots would stop pretending that it has anything at all to do with the logical fallacy petitio principii. Their insistence on mistranslatiing "assuming the principle" really puts a crimp on discussions when they butt in to declare that we stop using "begs the question" to describe the situation where some action or behavior or statement needs a follow-up question to clarify or explain it.
Ok, a lot of those books I get. But I quit "The Way of Kings" less than halfway through. Grew incredibly tired of characters I didn't care about, a world where things are weird for reasons that seem to have neither logical underpinnings nor any sort of explanation, and skipping around to different characters who are then forgotten about for an incredible amount of time. The book was more of a mess than good. "Oh hey look, bet you'd like some sort of explanation for just about any of this werid stuff going on; well too bad! I'm gonna write some more about this one dude at and incredibly slow pace. Look nothing much is happening to him again!"
I would not recommend it at all.
His vocabulary is extensive, but besides that, "big words" don't make something worth reading. In fact, it's just the opposite when authors go out of their way to use uncommon words. His stories are compelling, as are his characters. Snooty elitists look down on King just because he rights popular stories, and not "high art".
Stephen King is popular because he knows how to tell a good yarn
He used to, long time ago, but he lost the knack - now he mostly just tells a long yarn
No Lovecraft, Dunsany or Olaf Stapleton?
Also, no Ellison? No Delany? No Fredric Brown? Not to mention del Rey, Simak, Sprague de Camp , any of which should have been there instead of Brooks or Eddings.
Also 4 Gaimans, but only 2 Pratchetts? Come on, I like Gaiman, but he can't hold a candle to Pratchett, especially if you consider the whole oeuvre.
Wow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods
I have preferred to define SF as "Speculative Fiction" rather than Science Fiction (partly because of that abomination "SciFi" perpetrated of the ignorant media), and to me SF is about creating a consistent world with one (or a few) assumptions. If you assume, for example, that you have faster than light travel, you may well end up with a Science Fiction novel; if you assume, for example, dragons, you may end up with a Fantasy novel; there are exceptions to both - I would categorise Anne McCaffrey's Dragon series as largely Science Fiction, for example.
I think the reason for the frequent grouping of Science Fiction and Fantasy together is that both require the acceptance of one or more of these assumptions (or hypotheses, or axioms, if you have a mathematical bent). Other kinds of fiction do not, and so are better suited to less flexible minds :D
Note that every other kind of fiction can be combined with Science Fiction and Fantasy. Asimov wrote some excellent murder mystery SF, for example (He also wrote a number of non-SF murder mysteries, like A Whiff of Death and Authorised Murder). (Far too) many authors have written romance novel science fiction and fantasy. IMHO, the entirety of other literature may be represented as Speculative Fiction with minimal (or no) hypotheses - you could call it the degenerate subset.
The Way Of Kings was on the list and I rather enjoyed it. It is however only the first book and the next isn't due any time soon. However, for a first book it is quite lengthy and does entertain.
I try to find newer material, but the market for high fantasy isn't exactly a crowded one.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Those are "Young Adult" novels so they were probably actively cut from the list if they were present.
Perhaps they should have a top 100 of each decade, as well as a top 100 of short stories.
The early Asimov stories seem timeless, like the one about the kid who avoids the "transporters" that have replaced school buses, and prefers to walk home along the sidewalk and past robotically maintained gardens. Then his parents take him to a psychologist, who gives some common sense advice, and decides himself to walk home to see what it is like.
Different era's were framed by the different war and social situations. 1950's had the fear of overcrowding in cities (before urban sprawl and the suburbs), plus the cold war. Several short stories had the nightmare of people living until they were 300+ years old, allowing accidents between pedestrians and motorists to keep the population down, or families fighting each other to have more kids.
1960's had the space race and many stories then were based on humanity colonising the nearby stars. They projected the idea of biker gangs into space as trading companies.
1970's had the Space Shuttle, fear of pollution killing the Planet (Logan's Run), nuclear war (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century), 1980's had space exploration (Rendezvous with Rama, V'Ger, ST:TNG)
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Seems people are simply not aware of the classics very well
Classics like Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, those kinds of classics? You surely can't be talking about this stuff. Please tell me Slashdot's readership is more enlightened than this...
shame on NASA for making space boring
How old are you? NASA put a man on the moon. Think about that for a moment. They put a man on the moon...over FORTY YEARS AGO. You seriously can't see THAT and get goosebumps? There's something wrong with you.
What I read of The Last Centurion (and I didn't blow the cash to actually buy it and read it in full), the bias did harm the story line. It was downright Rand-ian in it's polemic. Ringo wasn't preaching in that book, he was whacking the reader on the head with a 2x4.
And if you check out the Tuloriad (co-Authored with Kratman), that most certainly does prothletize (if I'm using (or even spelling) the word correctly... couldn't find a definition, and hadn't seen it before.) It most certainly is preachy, and even includes an downright silly afterword just in case you missed the not-at-all subtle (but poorly made) point. The Christian co-plot (I was considering calling it a sub-text, but that would have given it too many points for subtlety) absolutely destroyed what could have been an otherwise fascinating plotline.
But yeah, I have no beef with those that like the PoS series, but it ain't my cup of tea.
No Lovecraft, Dunsany or Olaf Stapleton?
Also, no Ellison? No Delany? No Fredric Brown? Not to mention del Rey, Simak, Sprague de Camp , any of which should have been there instead of Brooks or Eddings. Also 4 Gaimans, but only 2 Pratchetts? Come on, I like Gaiman, but he can't hold a candle to Pratchett, especially if you consider the whole oeuvre.
If your talking about "older" authors the biggest omission by far, IMHO, has to be Alfred Bester. The Stars My Destination was written in the '50s but reads like something just published. No list of the supposedly all time greatest SF is complete without it. Also, no Jack Vance?? Granted, Vance is not to everyone's taste, but he's indisputably one of the genre's most influential writers and for god sakes, he at least outranks Goodkind!
SciFi is often (usually) the extrapolation of technology based on whatever made-up science the author requires to serve his setting and plot. Please tell me exactly what science Gene Roddenberry was drawing on when he came up with the warp drive or the transporter for Star Trek.
Very few authors with FTL travel bother to come up with some scientifically plausible way for it to actually be possible. They cobble something together, often with an internally-consistent and plot-useful structure if they don't want to be writing crappy pulp (Weber and Drake have both done decent jobs, Roddenberry did not), but it's not, in any way, based on science. Most (though not all) ignore time dilation. Most (though not all) ignore special relativity. Most (though not all) ignore the effects of hitting a piece of dust at appreciable fractions of c. (The usual crutch around all this is "Hyperspace"... convenient, but still a total fabrication.) We still call it science fiction, despite the complete and total utter lack of anything vaguely resembling actual science.
Need I remind any geek of Clarke's famous maxim about technology and magic? The type of Fantasy I generally read DOES have internally consistent systems for what we call magic. I named three book series, all of which use forces that don't exist in our universe, but are consistent within the book's setting, and no more implausible (and possibly more plausible) than a "warp" drive that runs off of "dilithium crystals" and somehow enables time travel when the plot requires it, but not when the plot requires time travel to be impossible.
There certainly are some authors that set their books in near-future that use reasonable extrapolations of current technology, but to be frank, that's a pretty small fraction of what's out there.
P.S. Give me some geek cred... you didn't need to tell me what A Song of Ice and Fire referred to. :-)
Ayn Rand's books are well-written fiction.
That is to say, fiction written down in a deep, dark well...
(captcha: regret)
Totally agree on Bester.
Also I'm surprised not to see John Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" on this list.
And if they're including juvenile fiction, why not "A Wrinkle in Time" by L'Engle? That one molded many a young reader like myself.
I haven't read any really recent sci-fi, so what do the 2000s (or worse, the 2010s) have? No space exploration at all, and only projections about Facebook taking over the internet?
Is it good or bad that the dozen or so books I found, I've previously read? Strangely, none of my favorite science-fiction and fantasy books were the books I was presented with. The choices seem to be fairly limited and don't seem to be really selective. Perhaps it's time to work up an application that will help to better track books based on the old animals or twenty questions format. Shouldn't take too long to implement.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
If your talking about "older" authors the biggest omission by far, IMHO, has to be Alfred Bester.
Oh, yes! Don't know how I missed Bester. As to Vance, I'm conflicted - I absolutely loved some of his short stories, and I think "The Moon Moth" is one of the best SF stories ever written, but I'm not really impressed by a lot of his other stuff. Maybe I just don't "get" him (as I never managed to really "get" Silverberg or Wolfe, even though they're both considered among the greats). Still, the only place where Goodkind ought to be listed before Vance is a dictionary. Also missing is an author who should be dear to the Slashdot crowd - I mean, of course, Charles Stross. While no Clarke, he's certainly better than Eddings.
I'm also a bit confused by the choice of "The Codex Alera". I don't really see anything special about "The Codex Alera" - it's what used to be called An Extruded Trilogy back on rec.arts.sf.written (this is NOT a good thing), and not deserving in any way to be on in any top 100 list (not even on length). Jim Butcher's Dresden series would have been a much more convincing choice (or Steven Brust's Vlad books).
This is a personal opinion, but I'd have liked to see some more non-English language writers on the list; I think somebody else mentioned Stanislaw Lem. The Strugatski brothers ought to be there too, and maybe so should Gerard Klein and Italo Calvino. Any of them are easily better than many of the ones on the list
Well of course. Otherwise we would have nothing to talk about, friend. :)
I think you're treading dangerously close to a definition that's going to give you a nasty conclusion: that it's all fantasy and no work of hard SF has ever been written.
For example: got space colonies? Then you must have some magical economic force in your story.
Got highly-accurate genetic predictions? Oh please, your characters have magically accurate embryology models and magically powerful computers to run simulations of those models in better-than-real-time.
My point being, you're going to always be drawing a line somewhere, saying that isn't believable enough to be anything other than magic, whereas this is believable enough so that it doesn't need to be explained in detail. And yet ultimately, that lack of detail is what makes it fiction rather than a patent application. Somewhere within those glossed-over details, there is very likely a Devil. The position of the line is subjectively intuitive.
Let's say we have a 600-page story with apparent telekinesis in it.
In one version of the story, on the last page, the "telekinetic" character finally confesses his fraud to another character and shows the gullible fool the electromagnet under the table and the control switches under the toes of his shoe. The gullible character exclaims, "Damn, you sure fooled me! I'm a little angry, but since the same trick bluffed the spacebugs and ultimately saves all our lives, I guess I ought to be glad." You'd agree this story could be hard SF, right? (Could be, as long as I don't mention the spacebugs are actually dragons and that one of them was slain with a "laser sword.")
In another version of the story, everything is the same, except the fraud is never revealed. The gullible character, and the reader, never find out about the electromagnet. It's left unexplained. Not hard SF? It's the same story!
In a third version of the story, the author is a total bastard. He doesn't reveal the fraud or leave it unexplained. Instead, he lies! And not just to the character, but to you the reader. "Oligonicella looked under the table, and to his surprise, there was no electromagnet. 'It was real magic all along!' he exclaimed with amazement." Damn, what a fucking lie. Fortunately, you the reader don't believe it (even if the gullible character did), because you know there's no such thing as telekinesis. Does the author's damn lie make his story not hard SF? Well, maybe. That's a tough one. What if he sprinkles in a clue or two, such as somebody noticing on page 532 that the table had a scratch mark, as though possibly from the end of a wire?
Shit. That scratch mark could have been left by anything.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
OH MY FUCKING GOD. You have just given me the best gag gift idea, ever.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Stephen King is popular because he knows how to tell a good yarn
He used to, long time ago, but he lost the knack - now he mostly just tells a long yarn
Fortunately the books in the list, The Stand and the Dark Tower series, are in the former category (at least the beginning of the Dark Tower is, anyway...)
Claiming on the back cover that the date is 9000 AD instead of 900 AD doesn't magically make it scifi instead of fantasy, sorry.
You're right. And I haven't read this particular book, so I can't comment on it specifically, but speaking in general terms, what makes "science fantasy" a subgenre of science fiction is that the author typically has a detailed explanation of why the apparently-fantastic elements of the story are actually plausible elements of a future society. The canonical example is probably Anne McAffrey's dragons, revealed after several books of the series to have been genetically engineered by colonists who were concerned that future generations might not keep the technology required to allow their colony to survive alive by themselves. Sure, the basis of the technology seems scientifically sketchy (how *exactly* are they able to transport themselves? how does a telepathic link to their rider work?) but no more so than a lot of stuff that's broadly accepted as science fiction (how does a hyperdrive work? where do the nanobots get enough energy to transform an entire world into goo from?).
Here's a question: How does it make a SF title any better to have been written in the last hundred million seconds out of 100,000 years? Isn't keeping up with the present the domain of the Twitterverse?
Because part of the purpose of the SF genre is to explore what authors think may be the eventual outcome of current trends. Obviously, in doing so, those who are exploring the latest trends are likely to be writing stories that are more relevant to the thoughts of their readers with regards to the same trends. So when I read, say, a Charles Stross story, I might find the authors thoughts about the future importance of virtual economies insightful, and it might provoke me to think myself about what is likely to happen in that direction. On the other hand, if I read an Asimov story about robots, all I get is the story, because the dialogue concerning the development of AI has already progressed well beyond the thoughts that were embedded in those books.
The sense-of-wonder that many of us seek in SF can only be provoked by truly novel ideas, and those are more likely to come from modern books.
Mod up: This post has been inaccurately modded troll. There's nothing troll-y about it. Hopefully someone with a mod point will fix this injustice.
Hell, even Fredrick Pohl's best stuff came in the 90's, not the 60's.
WTF? Pohl's best stuff was his collaborations with CM Kornbluth in the 50's.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Aficionados might rejoice that science-fiction finally matured and could claim to be great literature, but casual readers don't want to tax themselves with the challenging prose and labyrinthine plot of, say, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun
Even that review describes itself as one of the best "science fantasies". Sorry, that means its not sci fi, its just princes and knights having swordfights for control of the kingdom, am I guessing right?
Whooosh.....
Watch this Heartland Institute video
But I like Iain Banks...
But do you like Iain M. Banks?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Stapleton: Last and First Men and Starmaker are possibly two of the best books ever, but I would have been surprised to see them on the list. Just read them and consider the concepts he is presenting and the timeframes he is covering.
Well you've got (among others) Peter F Hamilton - global warming, politics etc. (Mindstar Rising trilogy) or epic saga dealing with space-faring cultures and humanity facing the realisation that Death isn't the end (Night's Dawn trilogy), along with many others. Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash, Diamond age etc., and his most recent (in the last month) Reamde looking at the successor to World of Warcraft Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon (and the rest of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy) is a stunning 'new' work, well recommended China Mieville - Perdido Street Station and Scar in particular Charlie Stross - Halting State is another one about a future with distributed 'augmented reality' games etc. And not one of 'em talks about social networks etc.
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
I haven't read any work by Sanderson yet. However I'm in process of rereading through Wheel of Time (did 1-9 + half of 10 first time through). I've had friends say Sanderson is a great author, but I'm going to let his treatment of Wheel of Time help me decide just how good he is. If he can take the stuff built up by Jordan and still keep it good then I'm definitely going to jump into his other stuff.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Here's something that can be highly frustrating. When a work fantasy has more hard rules that govern how the magic of the world works (which aren't typically broken) than some of the science fiction that is written.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Give them book 7 of Wheel of Time as a gag gift.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Amongst strange categorizations:
Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" in "both science-fiction and fantasy". This is science-fiction only.
Anne McCaffrey "Dragonflight" in "Fantasy" side. This is science-fiction looking like fantasy.
And so I have to say, I can't believe Dick isn't in the top 10. For Chrissake, he has an award named after him.
I also can't believe A Wrinkle in Time isn't on there.
Also, no Lester Del Ray.
And Ender's Game, number three, really?
I was surprised and gratified to see that The Mote in God's Eye made it.
I think there has been a greater percentage of post-apocalyptic stories in the last 10-15 years(The Road, City of Ember, Blindness, World War Z, Dies the Fire, The Passage, Hunger Games, Oryx & Crake) , or maybe I am just noticing them more because my tastes in SF have changed.
Uhg, Hyperion. There never was a more disappointing series of books/movies/TV shows/etc. The first two books were brilliant, some of the best fiction I've read. The 2nd two books were complete trash. Stupid, overblown, poorly written, pretentious masturbation. It's like Simmons had a stroke after writing the first two and decided to finish the series despite being newly mentally handicapped.
But a space mission staffed by people recruited in the parking lot of a dead show? The explanation for that group is simply nonsensical.
He has a tendency to write liberal characters, but I was unaware of any explanation offered or even acknowledgement of that fact in the books.
I can suspend disbelief regarding time travel, warp drive...... Technology unworkable or trivial.
Technology that was unworkable....like say...oh.... time travel and warp drive? And what tech do thing was trivial? I dunno. You seem to by trying too hard to find flaws because you don't like the authors politics.
"Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers" ???
Very interesting; I'll have to check these out. I only said that because, looking around at what we've accomplished in the last 10 years, it doesn't seem like we've done much except make social networks. In fact, it seems to be a "lost decade" in many ways.
The characters aren't just liberals. They are _stupid_ fucking liberals who would doom any mission with their mumbo jumbo.
Kim Stanley Robinson has no idea how engineers work. Never bothered meeting one before writing a book about space exploration.
Good scifi is about new technology and how it would affect people. Not about imaginary versions of human nature.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
... he said, in post on Slashdot.
Stupid chart. Second question, right after choosing 'Science Fiction' is 'Do you like Cyberpunk?' with a YES answer of 'I love that Billy Idol album.'
Sorry, but this lost ALL cool/interest for me right there. Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk shouldn't be immediately related to a shit-poor wanna-be musician from the 80's. I'm pretty sure they could have figured out a way to make this second question have a relevant 'Yes' option without resorting to musical faggotry. Just because the moron had a shitty failed album called Cyberpunk that he tried to relate to a shit poor understanding of computers, this reference should make sense? Fuck guys, half the readers here were probably born AFTER that album.
'Cyberpunk' doesn't correlate to shitty 80's attempts at 'futuristic' movies and music. If that's what you think, you're not fucking getting it. At all.
Severe cognitive dissonance.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Hey, I LIKE Star Trek... it's is generally fairly well-done Space Opera. But what it does not contain is an internally consistent system of science or physics; the capabilities of Trek technology are loose rules that are routinely modified to fit the plot of the current episode/movie. Which is fine; it's fiction, not a documentary.
The only point I was trying to make is that one does not require science to be Science Fiction. Nor does something require spaceships and ray guns to deserve to be in the Science Fiction section of the book store.
I agree. I bogged down about 2/3rds of the way through Red Mars. I find the politics and cheating depressing, in that I can see people behaving that stupidly. It's Heart of Darkness on Mars. And it's simply not interesting. Mars is such an extreme environment that the first colonists there absolutely will not be able to cheat each other without getting everyone killed. One suicidal depressive, hothead, or love triangle going postal and taking out the air supply would do it. Even playing it straight, a colony may fail anyway. The way the book should end is that everyone dies for being so stupid. The Byzantine Empire failed thanks to treachery. The generals and wealthy families were fighting over the empire while Islamic fanatics were carving it up. Even used the invading hordes against one another.
After everyone dies and thereby provides a compelling object lesson, the next group to try it will be a bit more evolved, won't be prone to that kind of deadly rashness. The engineering problems are quite fascinating and challenging enough, and that's what they will need to solve to make it. Can we create soil out of Martian dirt? Grow crops in it? Would there be enough sunlight? Is it practical to even think of colonizing Mars? It would be an experiment worth doing, no doubt, but can we get mroe out of Mars than we would put into any effort to maintain a colony? Maybe not.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"