NPR 100 SF/F Books meme

[asterroc]

NPR 100 SF/F Books meme: bold the ones you've read, italics the ones you intend to read, underline series/books you've read part of, and strike the ones you never intend to read.

Things in parentheses are my commentary, including P if I read it in Print format or A for Audio format. P/A indicates I started the series in Print and finished in Audio, or A/P for the other way. P+A indicates I first read it in Print format, and later reread in Audio.

For 62 out of 100, I have either read all or some of the series.


1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien P

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy , by Douglas Adams P/A (I've read the whole series. P except for A: The Salmon of Doubt)

3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card P/A (I've missed a few of the Shadow novels and many of the short stories in IGM. P for the older books and full novels, A for one of the newer books and many of the short stories.)

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert A

5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin A (Books 1 and 2 only, not sure if I'll finish.)

6. 1984, by George Orwell P

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury P+A

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov P (Aren't there more than just three books? Especially when you consider that the "I, Robot" books are in the same universe.)

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley P

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman P (And two more in the series, IIRC.)

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman P

12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan A/P (All but the posthumous one/s.)

13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell A

14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson

15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore P (I'm impressed a graphic novel made it to the list!)

16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov P (See above.)

17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein P

18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss

19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley A (Is Dracula not considered SF/F?)

21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick P? (Are Dick's short stories all set in the same universe?)

22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood P

23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King

24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke P (And sequels.)

25. The Stand, by Stephen King

26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson A+P (Both abridged audio cassette and unabridged print version. The abridged version is interesting for how the story is altered.)

27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury P+A

28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman P

30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein P

32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams

33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey P/A (And AFAIK all the sequels by both Anne and her son Tim.)

34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein P

35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller

36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells P+A

37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne A

38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys P

39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells P (+A?)

40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny

41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings P+A (And the sequel series.)

42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley P (I don't think I ever completed this book, let alone others in the series.)

43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson

44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven P+A (And most of his other novels in the same universe, or out of it. He's in my top three favorite authors b/c of his good science in his fiction.)

45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin P (That is, I've read this entire book, but only I think one other in the same universe.)

46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien P (Repeats shouldn't count! This is the same universe as #1.)

47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White P

48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman P

49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke A

50. Contact, by Carl Sagan P

51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons P

52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman P

53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson P

54. World War Z, by Max Brooks

55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle P

56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett

58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson

59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold A (Been reading them out of order as I can get my hands on the audiobook versions from my library online.)

60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle P (I forget, are there sequels to this?)

62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind A (Unfortunately. Even spent money on some of them.)

63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson A

66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist

67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks P (And the sequel serieses, P/A.)

68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard

69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger A

71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne P

73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore

74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson P

76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke P (And at least one sequel)

77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey (Is this the one that "Naamah's Kiss" is in?)

78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin

79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury P+A

80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire A (Um, I guess this falls into SF/F.)

81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson

82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks

84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson A

86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher A (Not sure it's worth the time of reading more than just the first book. Pretty fluffy to me.)

87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn

89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan

90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock

91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury P (I thought this was horror, not SF/F?)

92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge

94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov P (See previous note.)

95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson

96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle P

97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville

99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony P (There are so fucking many of these books, I don't know when I gave up.)

100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis P


Originally posted on Dreamwidth. comments there. Comment here or there.

Comments

[ayashi.livejournal.com]

I think that some books that had more... urban fantasy elements (like the Sookie Stackhouse novels) weren't included here. Maybe that includes Dracula? lol, I have no idea XD

Technically Naahmah's kiss is book 6 of the Kushiel series, but it's also the first of its own trilogy, sooo I dunno xD I am presuming that they are including it in that listing.

I LOVED Watership Down so much. It was one of the books I consider being my "gateway drugs" into Fantasy. I think I read Watership down, and then started reading the Redwall series, but I'm not entirely sure if that was the order or if it was the other way around. After Redwall, I read Mercedes Lackey's Mage Wars series (about the gryphons), and that was kind of my gateway trilogy into fantasy books about humans, since they were also the first books I read that were probably intended for adults XD

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Maybe Dracula falls into religious fiction rather than science fiction, as the explanation for the unusual events is religious in nature. Left Behind would also fall into that category if you haven't read it - it's about what happens to everyone left over after all the good people on Earth are Raptured at the same time. Other than the main character's conversion story, I enjoyed the book, as I enjoy "speculative fiction" in general (that is, fiction where the author proposes some unusual situation and then writes about the consequences and the characters' reactions to that situation), regardless of what the original premise is.

Animal-based fantasy doesn't grab me as much. I never read Watership Down, and I only read maybe one or two of Redwall.

So strangely despite your being younger than most of my friends whom I met through T$, who are themselves younger than me, I rarely think of your age at all while it often pops into my mind with the others. And then you say that Lackey's Mage Wars series (1994-1996) was your gateway in to (human) fantasy, while my gateway into fantasy as opposed to sci-fi was The Last Herald Mage (1989-1991). By the time the Mage Wars series came out, Lackey had passed my "too many books in a series" rule. (I refuse to read more books in a series than there are letters in the author's name.)

Come to think of it, I bet The Last Herald Mage series is part of why I'm so supportive of LGBT rights today.

[q10.livejournal.com]

the various Robot fiction was retroactively attached to the Foundation universe. the material that was collected as the first three published Foundation books was a fairly distinct literary project from the other stuff written to be in that universe, and predated the later sequels and prequels by decades. the general fan and critical perception is that the first three books stand on their own pretty well and that most of the later stuff was a dubious cash-in project. in any case, those three are the ones that earned a recognized place in the canon of science fiction classics, while, say Foundation and Earth hasn't really been assigned the same status.

the last time i checked (about 15 years ago), there was one sequel to The Mote in God's Eye. i don't especially recommend it.

more generally, i think the intent of the list was that when a single book is mentioned they mean just that book, and when a series or collection is named they mean the specified series. so when they say The Caves of Steel they aren't asking about, say, Robots of Dawn (if they'd wanted to include both, they would have said ‘the Robot novels’), and likewise, by saying specifically The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, they're indicating that this isn't a question about The Hobbit or The Book of Undocumented Tales or whatever. see also the way The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed get separate entries even though they're in the same universe - they weren't conceived of as part of the same project, and they don't really share any particular narrative connection.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

more generally, i think the intent of the list was...

Yeah, the list wasn't created for memes. :)

see also the way The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed get separate entries even though they're in the same universe

I recently read "The Word for World is Forest" and didn't particularly like the book, which led me to look up more info about it, which led me to learn that it is part of the tLHoD universe. I like to read related books in the order the author wrote them, so it frustrated me that Audible.com had no info at all that "Forest" was in the same universe. I don't think I would have liked Forest any more had I read it in order, but it's a philosophical point.

[q10.livejournal.com]

but i mean, the intent of the meme was probably to take the list at face value when it mentions individual books vs when it mentions series.

in the particular case of the Hainish/Ekumen cycle, i really, really wouldn't lose too much sleep over reading it all in precisely the order it was written. the sense of continuity is very loose, and even keeping track of where all the short stories fit into the writing/publication history is a pretty involved task, and i think there are even one or two stories where it's not clear, even to the author, whether they're part of that universe or not. plus, the couple of novels just aren't up to the standard of some of the later work.

other curious cases: there's a lot of character overlap between different Vonnegut novels, but there's no effort at consistency. also, the issue of whether Diamond Age and Snow Crash is a bit complicated.

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

PKD's work is not set in a continuous universe.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Do you have specific evidence for this? A lot of the language bridges the different stories, such as "con-apt" (sorry if the spelling/punctuation is wrong, I read most of PDK in audio format) and I think also "artiforg" (which was borrowed later by the 2010 movie Repo Men, based on a 2009 novel).

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

This is a weird list. Iain Banks is still writing Culture novels (and Anthony will probably still be writing Xanth novels a few years after he dies--I kid, but not much)--how do you decide if you've read the series or not? On the other hand you have entries that don't really stand on their own (e.g. Dragonflight).

I've read 65 of them, read part of the designated series for a few more, and in two cases (Wicked and The Book Of The New Sun) read part and abandoned the rest.

I would also suggest that "Animal Farm" is neither science fiction nor fantasy, but that's a different discussion. :)

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I would also suggest that "Animal Farm" is neither science fiction nor fantasy, but that's a different discussion. :)

It's hard to define SF and F. There are quite a few dystopias (sp?) on here, but dystopias aren't necessarily SF/F by definition (such as Animal Farm). Vampire flicks/novels today are usually put into SF/F, but I suspect the makers of this list didn't consider Dracula an SF/F novel or they would have included it.

This is a weird list.

I'm at least glad to see that it includes some more contemporary pieces and not only classics. And I was pleasantly surprised that it included two graphic novels. But the repeat of authors surprises me less positively - there's so many more authors out there! - especially considering that out of some 90-ish unique authors they only managed to squeeze in 10 women and I don't think there are any non-white authors. If they hadn't duplicated authors, they could've fit more minorities in.