Engelbrecht
January 20th, 2010, 01:30 PM
There was a 100 Greatest SFF list (http://thisrecording.com/today/2010/1/18/in-which-we-count-down-the-100-greatest-science-fiction-or-f.html) posted recently that I thought was pretty interesting.
I posted a comment to the list as follows:
I'll guess I'll be something of a contrarian and say "kudos for a pretty strong list"! It's clear that the list includes both a decent sampling of core canonical works as well as a welcome sprinkling of more literary works. Nice book capsule descriptions too.
Inevitably, everyone will have their quibbles and pettifoggery, and here are mine (I happen to have read 80 of the 100 works listed, so I feel pretty well qualified to comment).
As abundantly noted above, some authors are overrepresented, consuming precious slots and stifling diversity. I'd suggest that placing a maximum of three slots per author (and preferably only two), would better serve the goals of the list.
Affected authors are: Dick (5), Haldeman (3), Heinlein (5), Le Guin (4), Martin (3), Stephenson (3), Vance (7), Wolfe (7). Were it my list, I might change them as follows:
Dick (2: Valis and either The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or Ubik)
Haldeman (1: The Forever War)
Heinlein (2: Stranger in a Strange Land/The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress)
Le Guin (2: The Wizard of Earthsea and either The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed)
Martin (1: A Song of Ice and Fire series)
Stephenson (2: Baroque Cycle/The Diamond Age)
Vance (2: Lyonesse trilogy/Dying Earth)
Wolfe (2: Solar Cycle (gives you all 10 Sun books!)/Wizard Knight duology)
Many of these cuts were painful but necessary (Dick, Wolfe, and Vance are particular favorites of mine - respectively, I've read 36, 27, and 20 of their works).
Additionally, some authors with two works that I would cut back to only one work are: Asimov (not sure of the keeper), Card (keep Ender's Game, drop Speaker for the Dead), Simmons (keep Hyperion Cantos, drop Song of Kali), and Vonnegut (not sure of the keeper).
The last cuts I'd make would be authors that would have trouble making a top 1000 list: Bradley (not so terrible, actually), Crichton (both books), Jordan, and Rand.
So far, the list is shorter by 32 books.
Next, I'd tinker with some replacements as follows: Anderson (replace High Crusade with The Broken Sword or Tau Zero), Kay (replace Fionavar Tapestry with Sarantine Mosiac), Lovecraft (replace Mountains with an omnibus - Library of America's H. P. Lovecraft: Tales gives you 850 pages of Lovecraft goodness), Silverberg (replace Nightwings with Dying Inside), Sterling (replace novel with collection, perhaps A Good Old Fashioned Future), and Swanwick (replace novella with collection, perhaps Tales of Old Earth).
I might also replace the Dahl children's book with either Lewis' Narnia series, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, or The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.
Now it's time to add new blood to the list. Some works that I'd consider to be without question top 100 books (and likely top 10 material) are The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany, The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison, Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, and the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake.
Other works that belong firmly on the list are Crash by J. G. Ballard, The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, The Last Unicorn and The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle, Collected Fictions by Jorge Borges, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter, Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh, Little, Big by John Crowley, the Well-Built City trilogy by Jeffrey Ford, Neuromancer by William Gibson, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, Dr. Rat by William Kotzwinkle, Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, the Constructors duology by Stanislaw Lem, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Od Magic by Patricia A. McKillip, Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, Gloriana, or the Unfulfill'd Queen by Michael Moorcock, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, Babylon (Homo Zapiens) by Victor Pelevin, The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds, The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman, All the Names by Jose Saramago, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders, The Best of Lucius Shepard by Lucius Shepard, The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad, Raising the Stones by Sheri S. Tepper, Blue Champagne by John Varley, The Once and Future King by T. H. White, Bellwether by Connie Willis, the first Amber series by Roger Zelazny. Obviously, these works represent my choices at to the best of each authors work, but it was a tough call at times. The easier task was deciding the authors to be represented.
Having added 39 new works, the modified list is now 107 items long, a surplus that I would cure by lopping off an additional 7 items from the somewhere in the bottom half of the original list.
Finally, I'd place Nabokov's Pale fire at or near the top of the list, while not messing around with the remainder of the ordering, which is, as they say, close enough for government work.
My modified version of the list is more inclusive, somewhat fresher, and shifted more strongly towards the literary end of things. Even so, there are at least 100 other authors with strong cases for representation, and several times that many works.
I'd be interested in seeing the thoughts of experienced readers as to the list.
I posted a comment to the list as follows:
I'll guess I'll be something of a contrarian and say "kudos for a pretty strong list"! It's clear that the list includes both a decent sampling of core canonical works as well as a welcome sprinkling of more literary works. Nice book capsule descriptions too.
Inevitably, everyone will have their quibbles and pettifoggery, and here are mine (I happen to have read 80 of the 100 works listed, so I feel pretty well qualified to comment).
As abundantly noted above, some authors are overrepresented, consuming precious slots and stifling diversity. I'd suggest that placing a maximum of three slots per author (and preferably only two), would better serve the goals of the list.
Affected authors are: Dick (5), Haldeman (3), Heinlein (5), Le Guin (4), Martin (3), Stephenson (3), Vance (7), Wolfe (7). Were it my list, I might change them as follows:
Dick (2: Valis and either The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or Ubik)
Haldeman (1: The Forever War)
Heinlein (2: Stranger in a Strange Land/The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress)
Le Guin (2: The Wizard of Earthsea and either The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed)
Martin (1: A Song of Ice and Fire series)
Stephenson (2: Baroque Cycle/The Diamond Age)
Vance (2: Lyonesse trilogy/Dying Earth)
Wolfe (2: Solar Cycle (gives you all 10 Sun books!)/Wizard Knight duology)
Many of these cuts were painful but necessary (Dick, Wolfe, and Vance are particular favorites of mine - respectively, I've read 36, 27, and 20 of their works).
Additionally, some authors with two works that I would cut back to only one work are: Asimov (not sure of the keeper), Card (keep Ender's Game, drop Speaker for the Dead), Simmons (keep Hyperion Cantos, drop Song of Kali), and Vonnegut (not sure of the keeper).
The last cuts I'd make would be authors that would have trouble making a top 1000 list: Bradley (not so terrible, actually), Crichton (both books), Jordan, and Rand.
So far, the list is shorter by 32 books.
Next, I'd tinker with some replacements as follows: Anderson (replace High Crusade with The Broken Sword or Tau Zero), Kay (replace Fionavar Tapestry with Sarantine Mosiac), Lovecraft (replace Mountains with an omnibus - Library of America's H. P. Lovecraft: Tales gives you 850 pages of Lovecraft goodness), Silverberg (replace Nightwings with Dying Inside), Sterling (replace novel with collection, perhaps A Good Old Fashioned Future), and Swanwick (replace novella with collection, perhaps Tales of Old Earth).
I might also replace the Dahl children's book with either Lewis' Narnia series, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, or The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.
Now it's time to add new blood to the list. Some works that I'd consider to be without question top 100 books (and likely top 10 material) are The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany, The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison, Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, and the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake.
Other works that belong firmly on the list are Crash by J. G. Ballard, The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, The Last Unicorn and The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle, Collected Fictions by Jorge Borges, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter, Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh, Little, Big by John Crowley, the Well-Built City trilogy by Jeffrey Ford, Neuromancer by William Gibson, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, Dr. Rat by William Kotzwinkle, Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, the Constructors duology by Stanislaw Lem, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Od Magic by Patricia A. McKillip, Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, Gloriana, or the Unfulfill'd Queen by Michael Moorcock, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, Babylon (Homo Zapiens) by Victor Pelevin, The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds, The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman, All the Names by Jose Saramago, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders, The Best of Lucius Shepard by Lucius Shepard, The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad, Raising the Stones by Sheri S. Tepper, Blue Champagne by John Varley, The Once and Future King by T. H. White, Bellwether by Connie Willis, the first Amber series by Roger Zelazny. Obviously, these works represent my choices at to the best of each authors work, but it was a tough call at times. The easier task was deciding the authors to be represented.
Having added 39 new works, the modified list is now 107 items long, a surplus that I would cure by lopping off an additional 7 items from the somewhere in the bottom half of the original list.
Finally, I'd place Nabokov's Pale fire at or near the top of the list, while not messing around with the remainder of the ordering, which is, as they say, close enough for government work.
My modified version of the list is more inclusive, somewhat fresher, and shifted more strongly towards the literary end of things. Even so, there are at least 100 other authors with strong cases for representation, and several times that many works.
I'd be interested in seeing the thoughts of experienced readers as to the list.