A Best 100 Fantasy Novels list

[Randy M.]

Pringle's 100 Best Works of Fantasy

Thought I'd bump this thread up. Pringle's list of 100 best s.f. novels has garnered a ruckus over in the s.f. forum, so I wondered if others here now would find his picks as controversial.

Randy M.

 

[Hobbit]

Thanks Randy; and with that, let's also put the link in for Moorcock and Crawthorn's list of 100 Best Fantasy Books:

The list's HERE.

(If you go to 'view' at the top of the Amazon Reader and click on 'continuous' you'll get the list which goes on for two-and-a-half pages.)

Hobbit

 

[Randy M.]

Well, this list makes me feel a little better read than Pringle's s.f. list. I've read 27 completely,

• Gulliver's Travels
  The Castle of Otranto
  Vathek
  Frankenstein
  The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
  A Christmas Carol
  Wuthering Heights
  Moby Dick
  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Throught the Looking Glass
  The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  Dracula
  The Turn of the Screw
  The Lost World
  Zothique
  The Werewolf of Paris
  The Circus of Dr. Lao
  At the Mountains of Madness
  The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
  Conjure Wife
  You're All Alone
  The Haunting of Hill House
  Black Easter & The Day After Judgement
  A Wizard of Earthsea
  The Green Man
  The Philosopher's Stone
  The Compleat Enchanter
  Our Lady of Darkness
  

Plus I've read Titus Groan, part of the Gormanghast series, at least one story in each of Northwest Smith & Jirel of Joiry, and I may have read To Walk the Night -- Sloane wrote two books, Del Rey reissued them in the early '80s, and I recall reading one but not the other. I think this was the one I read, but I'd have to check my shelves to be sure.

What surprises me is how many of the titles I haven't read I've ended up buying, and how many of those I've recently been considering reading.

Randy M.

 

[Yobmod]

Well, first thought are that the Moorcock and Crawthorn is biased to ye olde fantasy, from when Moorcock was a kid or earlier.

1700s: 4 entries
1800s: 16 entries
1900s: 3 entries
1910s: 7 entries
1920s: 8 enties
1930s: 18 entries
1940s: 12 entries
1950s: 11 entries
1960s: 9 entries
1970s: 7 entries
1980s: 5 entries (until 1988 when published.)

It seems they really believe in the Golden Age of fantasy.

the 70's had a lot of big names that seem to be missing: no Mckillip (Forgotten Beast of Eld or Riddlemaster) no Zelazny (Chronicles of Amber), Donaldson (Chron. of Thomas Covenant), Silverberg, Calvino.

But at least i've heard of most of the 70's entires - the 80's ones are mostly terrible choices. Disch i've only ever seen his SF recommended; the Holt i've read, and it wasn't near good enough to be named best of the year, let alone the decade or ever. Prattchet is at least still well-known and read, but i think Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic are his worst books. The other 2 i've never heard of. No Gene Wolfe?! (BotNS, finished 1983), reeeediculous.

The benefit of hindsight i guess, maybe it would have been better for them to have a 1980 cut-off and included more 60s and 70s books.

(and in spite of the title (best books), i assume they delibrately chose no collections, rather than being biased against them - hence no Ellison etc.)

Is Wuthering Heights fantasy? I'll have to bump it up my list.

Finally, does anyone think Stormbringer is Moorcock's best book? better than The King of the Swords, or Gloriana, or The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, or The War Hound and the World's Pain? Honestly?

Edit: I'v read 12 completely and another half dozen in part.

 

[Krypter]

Read 26 of Pringle's and 23 of Moorcock's selection, but the choices seem really hit-or-miss. Pringle chose Iain Banks' The Bridge as the best of his work? Book of Ptath at No. 2?!? OK, The Sound of His Horn is a great forgotten novel on par with The Man in the High Castle, but really, some of the choices are downright puzzling and, as Yobmod points out so well, made more glaring by what is missing from Moorcock's list than what is present, the latter being generally excellent.

Still, a list by someone experienced is better than no list or the numerous lists of Most Popular Books, which are generally tragic.

Edit: maybe this list of Top 100/50 Lists could made into a sticky? There are quite a few around but finding them requires a bit of net-hunting.

 

[firqoret]

I've read nineteen of the Pringle fantasy list and ten of the sf list, but I also do own about other books which I have not yet read. Of the books on the Moorcock list, I've only read eleven.

There are some really weird choices on the fantasy list, no doubt about that. The Glamour was only mediocre, The Book of Ptath was pretty crappy and Jack of Shadows plain sucked (I have no idea wat this fourth rate Vance imitation does on any list, let alone on one over the 100 best fantasy novels).

I don't see a problem with including The Bridge. It's a very good novel and I don't think he has written anything else that can be seen as fantasy (Well, Walking on Glass maybe, but The Bridge is generally regarded as the better novel I think.)

The reason why Moorcock didn't include BotNS might be because he thinks it is sf. I know he wrote a very positive review when it came out, so he does like it.

 

[Randy M.]

Well, first thought are that the Moorcock and Crawthorn is biased to ye olde fantasy, from when Moorcock was a kid or earlier.

1700s: 4 entries
1800s: 16 entries
1900s: 3 entries
1910s: 7 entries
1920s: 8 enties
1930s: 18 entries
1940s: 12 entries
1950s: 11 entries
1960s: 9 entries
1970s: 7 entries
1980s: 5 entries (until 1988 when published.)

1) Depends on what criteria you have for calling something 'old.' Having been born in the 1950s, my perspective is that it's reasonable to call anything written prior to 1900 old, but anything from within the 20th century is only old in relative terms.

2) Just to point out, the Pratt and de Camp, The Compleat Enchanter (or most of it, at any rate) would have been written in the '40s or '50s though finally pulled together and published in the '70s.

It seems they really believe in the Golden Age of fantasy.

the 70's had a lot of big names that seem to be missing: no Mckillip (Forgotten Beast of Eld or Riddlemaster) no Zelazny (Chronicles of Amber), Donaldson (Chron. of Thomas Covenant), Silverberg, Calvino.

But at least i've heard of most of the 70's entires - the 80's ones are mostly terrible choices. Disch i've only ever seen his SF recommended; the Holt i've read, and it wasn't near good enough to be named best of the year, let alone the decade or ever. Prattchet is at least still well-known and read, but i think Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic are his worst books. The other 2 i've never heard of. No Gene Wolfe?! (BotNS, finished 1983), reeeediculous.

Ackroyd is a mainstream writer whose written biographies of Dickens and, I believe, of London itself. He apparently has some genre leanings; at least I've heard some genre readers mention him as of interest. Hawksmoor may be his best known novel.

Household -- I first heard of him when Spider Robinson reviewed The Sending (I think) in Galaxy and said something like, "Geoffrey Household ... not exactly a Geoffrey name." I've wanted to smack Robinson ever since for planting that in my mind so deep I can't get it out.

Anyway, Household was best known as a thriller writer, his best known novel was Rogue Male, filmed once with Walter Pidgeon and later with Peter O'Toole as the protagonist. This and Dance of the Dwarves are supposed to be quite good fantasy/horror novels. Great Tales of Terror and Supernatural includes his "Taboo," which is an effective novella, so I'm inclined to eventually read The Sending.

The benefit of hindsight i guess, maybe it would have been better for them to have a 1980 cut-off and included more 60s and 70s books.

(and in spite of the title (best books), i assume they delibrately chose no collections, rather than being biased against them - hence no Ellison etc.)

Not including Ellison is odd, as is not including Peter Beagle. There are a few collections, though: Both C. L. Moore entires, Zothique and The Compleat Enchanter.

Is Wuthering Heights fantasy? I'll have to bump it up my list.

It's been years since I read it, but I loved WH. And while its ... Gothic-ness? ... makes it reasonable to add to lists of horror stories, I'm surprised to see it added to a fantasy list. I'd say something similar about Moby Dick and I expect someone who had read Uncle Silas might say something similar about it, since I've only ever heard of it as an early mystery novel, in spite of Le Fanu's reputation for ghost stories.

Finally, does anyone think Stormbringer is Moorcock's best book? better than The King of the Swords, or Gloriana, or The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, or The War Hound and the World's Pain? Honestly?

I wouldn't put it past Moorcock to add as a good-natured tweak of the nose to his fans.

Randy M.

 

[Yobmod]

It's been years since I read it, but I loved WH. And while its ... Gothic-ness? ... makes it reasonable to add to lists of horror stories, I'm surprised to see it added to a fantasy list.

I'm partway through WH now, and liking it ver much. As far as i can tell, assuming no hoax twist, this is fantasy because there are ghosts flying around!
Which makes it a fantasy in my opinion

It really is annoying that one of the pinnacles of all English literature has passed me by, because no-one ever mentions that its fantastical


In fact, I should make a thread!

 

[Randy M.]

I'm partway through WH now, and liking it ver much. As far as i can tell, assuming no hoax twist, this is fantasy because there are ghosts flying around!
Which makes it a fantasy in my opinion

It really is annoying that one of the pinnacles of all English literature has passed me by, because no-one ever mentions that its fantastical


In fact, I should make a thread!

The you'll really like Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, which I'd consider a fantasy.

Really.

Sort of.

Okay. Should qualify that statement: It's a fantasy because in the real world society of that time few if any women had the flexibility to do some of the things Jane does. As a novel, it's one of the rallying cries for women to have the kind of freedom men gained on birth.


Randy M.

 

[Yobmod]

The you'll really like Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, which I'd consider a fantasy.
Really.
Sort of.
Okay. Should qualify that statement: It's a fantasy because in the real world society of that time few if any women had the flexibility to do some of the things Jane does. As a novel, it's one of the rallying cries for women to have the kind of freedom men gained on birth.

I would consider unlikely social roles making a book unrealistic, but not fantasty. Most of the really famous historical women have extremely unusal lives, but are not on the same scale of impossibility as ghosts, IMO.

(but Jane Eyre is on my very small non-spec-fic to read list anyway, with Ulysses, Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies.)

 

[Randy M.]

I would consider unlikely social roles making a book unrealistic, but not fantasty. Most of the really famous historical women have extremely unusal lives, but are not on the same scale of impossibility as ghosts, IMO.

(but Jane Eyre is on my very small non-spec-fic to read list anyway, with Ulysses, Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies.)

Fantasy not in the genre sense, but in the sense that it used its unrealistic social roles to express a common fantasy of women of the time: More freedom to determine their own lives. The famous historical women of the time were exceptions, not the norm, and JE came to be a symbol of what we'd now call female empowerment.

I'm hesitant to dive into Ulysses without the kind of time to read a broken leg might give me. I will, eventually, tackle Lord of the Flies, but I might reread Heart of Darkness sooner rather than later, given a chance -- great book. Very dark.

Randy M.

 

[Yobmod]

Fantasy not in the genre sense, but in the sense that it used its unrealistic social roles to express a common fantasy of women of the time: More freedom to determine their own lives. The famous historical women of the time were exceptions, not the norm, and JE came to be a symbol of what we'd now call female empowerment.

I got it, but I only read fantasy of an 'its impossible' type, not 'it's something people fantasise about.'
Far too much mainstream fiction is so unrealistic as to be completely unfeasible, but if it could have happened, then i'm not interested.

But I'm wondering how i would categorise Lord of the Flies, considering:

The novel begins with a large number of boys being stranded on a desert island. They were being evacuated from Britain, which is implied to have been the subject of a nuclear attack, and their plane crashes.

Sounds like SF?

 

[Seak]

I couldn't get to some of those lists, so I went to a top 100 list I know still exists.

Here's the Link.

I've only read 24 though. I'm still working on it. Plus there's too many other good ones out there.

 

[srohit]

^^ thanks for the link mate. nice one

 

[Paul Lamontagne]

I have to wonder about what David was thinking when he compiled this list.

Many potential inclusions are squashed out because of the Horror and SF/adventure works miscategorized here as Fantasy. I would immediately exclude all the following from the list: ...Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates...

[Edited to correct a typo. - Cor.]

KA-RAYZEE. The Anubis Gates is certainly fantasy. It's a Dikensian steampunk fantasy featuring evil Egyptian magicians, time-travel and the most diverse, grotesque and fascinating cast of rogues, villains and heroes maybe ever assembled in one novel. Not only is it fantasy, it's exemplary of the very best, most imaginative fantasy ever written.

 

[Caltob]

I think this is a copy of the old list.

 

[molybdenum]

I wouldn't call Lord of the Flies fantasy in the sense that you're looking for Yobmod. Such an event certainly could have happenned, just as a nuclear threat causing an evacuation from England was entirely possible at the time. Is it realistic....not really. At least I don't think so. I think it's still worth a read though. It has all the basic things I like about fantasy, in that it shows a possibility of how humans will react put in a completely different situation than the ones we're used to on this earth.

And for all we know, ghosts could be real, making Wuthering Heights perfectly realistic. (Just to be clear, I don't believe in ghosts, but there is a slight possibility. Very slight.)

 

[Randy M.]

Of the Pringle list, I've read 26, and have approximately 51 on the shelves gathering dust while I get caught up in other books. Of the Cawthorn/Moorcock list, I've read 33 with roughly 41 on the shelf. A few of the books in both lists I've read in the last 3-4 years, so there's still hope I'll get to some of the rest, I guess.

Actually, if someone wanted a fantasy reading list, these might be a pretty good start. No one is likely to like all of them, we can argue relative merits or even if some of them should be on a list of fantasy works, but I don't see anything there that strikes me as a complete misfire as a book.


Randy M.

 

[Rob B]

Wow, I read 28 on the Pringle list.

 

[Paul Lamontagne]

I don't see the problem. Pringle was using a definition of the fantastic that included supernatural horror, as many critics do. The expansive definition is frankly more defensible and less arbitrary than one that attempts to categorize a work by whether it's "scary" or not. For the record, James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock's "Hundred Best Fantasy" similarly includes classic works of horror such as Shirley Jackson's HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and Fritz Leiber's OUR LADY OF DARKNESS.

Here's that list - not sure if it's in order:

Gulliver's Travels by Joanthan Swift
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
Vathek by William Beckford
The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan poe
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh by J. Sheridan LeFanu
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
She by Henry Rider Haggard
Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Twillight of the Gods by Richard Garnett
The Story of the Glittering Plain by William Morris
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Dracula by Brom Stoker
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
Black Magic by Marjorie Bowen
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Citadel of Fear by Francis Stevens
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison
The Haunted Woman by David Lindsay
Lady into Fox and A Man in the Zoo by David Garnett
The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany
The Ship of Ishtar by Abraham Merritt
The Trial and The Castle by Franz Kafka
With Wood by John Buchan
War in Heaven by Charles Williams
Turnabout by Thorne Smith
The Night Life of the Gods by Thorne Smith
Dwellers in the Mirage by Abraham Merritt
Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith
The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore
Lost Horizon by James Hilton
Northwest Smith by Catherine L. Moore
Jirel of Joiry by Catherine L. Moore
The Circus of Dr Lao by Charles G. Finney
Land Under England by Joseph O'Neill
Conan the Conquerer by Robert E. Howard
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
To Walk the Night by William Sloane
Roads by Seabury Quinn
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
Slaves of Sleep by L. Ron Hubbard
Caravan for China by Frank R. Stuart
Fear by L. Ron Hubbard
Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft
Land of Unreason by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp
Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber
The Book of Ptath by A.E. van Vogt
The Dark World and The Valley of the Flame by Henry Kuttner
Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake
The Exploits of Engelbrecht by Maruice Reichardson
Mistress Masham's Repose by T.H. White
Adept's Gambit by Fritz Leiber
The Well of the Unicorn by Fletcher Pratt
You're All Alone by Fritz Leiber
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
The Devil in Velvet by John Dickson Carr
The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague de Camp
Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson
The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Golden Strangers by Henry Treece
The Great Captains by Henry Treece
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock
The Serpent, Atlan, The City and Some Summer Lands by Jane Gaskell
The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard
Black Easter and The Day After Judgement by James Blish
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Green Man by Kingsley Amis
Neither the Sea nor the Sand by Gordon Honeycombe
The Philosopher's Stone by Colin Wilson
The Pastel City by M. John Marrison
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman by Angela Carter
Red Shift by Alan Garner
The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
The Alteration by Kingsley Amis
Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber
The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers
The Sending by Geoffrey Household
The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
The Businessman: A Tale of Terror by Thomas M. Disch
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
Expecting Someone Taller by Tom Holt