50 greatest SF books...?

[dc]

It has taken me so long to get around to doing this meme that I have forgotten where I got it. Should have done what banhe did and tackled it straight away. My problem is there are one or two books I can't remember whether or not I have read them. I shall assume I have not. Interesting that of those I have read, and those I have liked, there are only four I would class as books I loved, and one of those with some reservations now.

Anyway. This is the (US) Science Fiction Book Club's list of the fifty most significant science fiction/fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002. I am not at all sure that I would agree with this selection, and I shall quietly skip over the fact that they are not all novels and that there are more than fifty books here (the first two are both trilogies!). If I were going to pick, say, an Asimov or two for a list like this, one of them would have to be I, Robot (I know it is a short story collection, not a novel; so is Deathbird Stories). I wouldn't pick Rendezvous With Rama as the most significant of Clarke's novels, let alone of SF in general.

Enough of that. Here is the list. What you do is bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished, and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved. It is safe to assume that several of the ones I have not read are on my to-read list. Incidentally, although most of the ones I started but did not finish I put down because I did not like them, that is not always the case. Sometimes pressure of work kept me away from a book so long I simply could not got back to it, so it effectively rejoined the to-read pile. The ones here that I think really fit in that category are The Left Hand of Darkness and The Book of the New Sun.

The list:

1. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien


2. * The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov


3. * Dune - Frank Herbert


4. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein


5. A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin


6. Neuromancer - William Gibson


7. Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke


8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick


9. The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley


10. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury


11. The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe


12. A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr.


13. The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov


14. Children of the Atom - Wilmar Shiras


15. Cities in Flight - James Blish


16. The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett


17. Dangerous Visions - edited by Harlan Ellison


18. Deathbird Stories - Harlan Ellison


19. The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester


20. Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany


21. Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey


22. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card


23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever - Stephen R. Donaldson


24. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman


25. Gateway - Frederik Pohl


26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling


27. * The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams


28. I Am Legend - Richard Matheson


29. Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice


30. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin


31. Little, Big - John Crowley


32. Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny


33. * The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick


34. Mission of Gravity - Hal Clement


35. More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon


36. The Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith


37. On the Beach - Nevil Shute


38. Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke


39. Ringworld - Larry Niven


40. Rogue Moon - Algis Budrys


41. The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien


42. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut


43. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson


44. Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner


45. The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester


46. Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein


47. Stormbringer - Michael Moorcock


48. The Sword of Shannara - Terry Brooks


49. Timescape - Gregory Benford


50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go - Philip Jose Farmer

Comments

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

No problem. It defaults to friends-locked, and I don't always remember to remove that when I post something I don't care about being locked.