Sunday, April 13, 2014

The 100 Greatest SFF Novels of All Time

This Recording has a list of 100 SFF novels they say are the greatest of all time:
1. The Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe
2. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
3. The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
4. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
5. Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
6. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
8. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
9. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
10. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
11. Dune by Frank Herbert
12. Planet of Adventure by Jack Vance
13. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
14. All My Sins Remembered by Joe Haldeman
15. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
16. The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (It's on my tbr stack.)
17. The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay
18. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
19. A Song of Ice And Fire by George R.R. Martin (I've read the first couple of books.)
20. The Fifth Head of Cerebus by Gene Wolfe
21. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
22. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
23. Lost Horizon by James Hilton
24. The Cadwal Chronicles by Jack Vance
25. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
26. 1984 by George Orwell
27. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
28. More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
29. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
30. A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge
31. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
32. Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein
33. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
34. Ubik by Philip K. Dick
35. True Names by Vernor Vinge
36. Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
37. Lyonesse by Jack Vance
38. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
39. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
40. Animal Farm by George Orwell
41. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
42. Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein
43. Flatland by Edwin Abbott
44. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
45. Alastor by Jack Vance
46. The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson (I tried but couldn't make it through this series.)
47. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
48. The Demon Princes by Jack Vance
49. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (I read Atlas Shrugged. That's enough Rand to last me.)
50. The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe
51. The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
52. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
53. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
54. The Book of the Short Sun by Gene Wolfe
55. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (This is in my tbr stack.)
56. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
57. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
58. Nightwings by Robert Silverberg
59. Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
60. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (I read the first couple of books.)
61. The Book of Knights by Yves Maynard
62. Wildlife by James Patrick Kelly
63. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
64. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
65. A Song for Lya by George R.R. Martin
66. The High Crusade by Poul Anderson
67. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
68. The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
69. Flow My Tears The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
70. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
71. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
72. Maske: Thaery by Jack Vance
73. Old Man's War by John Scalzi
74. Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling
75. Ringworld by Larry Niven
76. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
77. Free Live Free by Gene Wolfe
78. Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
79. Griffin's Egg by Michael Swanwick
80. Watership Down by Richard Adams
81. The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
82. The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
83. The Alteration by Kingsley Amis
84. Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin
85. Sphere by Michael Crichton
86. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
87. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
88. Song of Kali by Dan Simmons (on my tbr list)
89. Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
90. Camp Concentration by Thomas Disch
91. Dhalgren by Samuel Delany
92. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
93. An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe
94. The Company by K.J. Parker
95. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
96. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
97. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
98. Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
99. Sorcerer's Son by Phyllis Eisenstein
100. The Word For World Is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin

The list is quite heavy on some authors (Wolfe and Vance, for example), a very idiosyncratic list. I've read 59 of these. Very few of the ones I haven't read are on my tbr radar.

via SF Signal

8 comments:

  1. I've read no more than about 15 of these. Not my fav genre, but should select a few of these to become more well rounded! Agree with you on Ayn Rand!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ah, but it'll take you away from your better-liked genres. i'm not sure i can recommend that. lol so many books, so little time, alas ;)

      Delete
  2. "The Master and the Margarita" - sounds like a novel about a guy mixing drinks. lol
    I counted to 19 read on this list. Most of them I never heard about. Some I don´t even think of as genre fiction, like George Orwell. And now I got all nostalgic about Arthur C Clarke, perhaps I should consider re-reading him...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i've still got some clarke on my shelf, thinking i'll re-read them. i definitely consider orwell sff, but i'm liberal in my classification. i have master/margarita on my shelf patiently waiting for me. i watched part of a tv adaptation of it on youtube, but it was long and i never finished it.

      Delete
  3. Interesting list, didn't do an exact count but have read a few of these. At first I found it odd that Alice in Wonderland was included in this genre but of course it fits.

    Darla

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. it is an interesting list, isn't it. too many books by the same authors, i think.

      Delete
  4. Thanks for the list. I too noticed how certain authors seemed to dominate the list possibly because even the most well rounded readers have styles of writing that they really enjoy. I've read 26 of the books on the list and will probably look for Gene Wolfe.

    ReplyDelete
  5. i almost always find something new on these lists. i really liked the 1st 4 books of wolfe's book of the new sun series.

    ReplyDelete