Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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'
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.