NPR’s “Top 100 Science Fiction, Fantasy Books” list is out. Or as Josh Lukin called it on Facebook, the “Great White SF Writers List”: No Chip Delany, no Octavia Butler, no Nalo Hopkinson, just to list a few writers one might have reasonably expected to see on the list.
It’s pretty male, too: 15 books by women authors out of 100 (two of them Ursula K. Le Guin). Counting repeat authors, it’s 14 women out of 78 authors, according to Josh, who counted. That’s 18 percent. Among those missing: Joanna Russ, Gwyneth Jones, C.J. Cherryh, and James Tiptree Jr.
Of course, it was a popularity contest, with open-ended participation, so it’s not surprising they ended up with a predictable and not particularly interesting list. In reaction, I solicited suggestions for favorite SF here on the BVC blog a few weeks back, and our end result provides a fascinating reading list. It’s also much longer: 243 books and stories, all science fiction (we did fantasy separately).
I haven’t computed percentages by gender or race or nationality. Someone else will have to do that. I’m too tired. It took quite a while to sort a list strewn through 49 comments, take out the duplicates, differentiate between novels and short stories (short stories are in quotes), and arrange each item by the author’s last name so that it could be alphabetized by the computer.
And I confess I noticed the absence of a few names I consider important SF writers, so I used editorial fiat and added them. If you see some other authors or works you think should be included, the comments section is open.
A reminder: the rules of this list specified no Asimov, Heinlein, or Herbert (Dune snuck in anyway) and no Philip K. Dick stories that have been made into movies. It wasn’t meant as a slap at those authors; it was just an effort to keep from listing the same books that always show up. So in using this as a guideline for developing The SF Canon, don’t forget to include them.
The List:
- Adams, Douglas: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- Aguirre, Ann: The Sirantha Jax series
- Aldiss, Brian: Helliconia trilogy
- Anderson, Poul: Tau Zero
- Anderson, Poul: The Man Who Came Early
- Anthony, Patricia: Brother Termite
- Armstrong, Jon: Yarn
- Arnason, Eleanor: A Woman of the Iron People
- Arnason, Eleanor: Ring of Swords
- Asaro, Catherine: The Veiled Web
- Attanasio, A.A.: Radix
- Atwood, Margaret: Oryx and Crake
- Bacigalupi, Paolo: The Windup Girl
- Baker, Kage: In the Garden Of Iden
- Baker, Kage: The Company series
- Ballard, J.G.: “The Voices of Time”
- Banks, Iain M.: Culture Series
- Banks, Iain: The Algerbraist
- Barnes, Steven and Larry Niven: Dream Park and The California Voodoo Game
- Barthelme, Donald: “Game”
- Barton, William: When Heaven Fell
- Batchelor, John Calvin: The Birth of the People’s Republic of Antarctica
- Bayley, Barrington J.: The Garments of Caean
- Bear, Elizabeth: Dust
- Bear, Elizabeth: Grail
- Bear, Greg: Blood Music
- Bear, Greg: Darwin’s Radio
- Bester, Alfred: The Stars My Destination
- Beukes, Lauren: Moxyland
- Beukes, Lauren: Zoo City
- Bishop, Michael: Brittle Innings
- Bisson, Terry: “They’re Made Out of Meat” from Bears Discover Fire
- Bradbury, Ray: “The Veldt”
- Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451
- Bradbury, Ray: The Illustrated Man
- Brin, David: The Uplift trilogy
- Budrys, Algis: Who?
- Bujold, Lois McMaster: Memory
- Bujold, Lois McMaster: The Miles Vorkosigan series
- Bujold, Lois McMaster: The Mirror Dance/ The Mountains of Mourning
- Burroughs, Edgar Rice: Tarzan Of The Apes
- Butler, Octavia: “Bloodchild”
- Butler, Octavia: Patternmaster
- Butler, Octavia: The Wild Seed
- Butler, Octavia: Xenogenesis Trilogy – now called Lilith’s Brood
- Calvino, Italo: Cosmicomics
- Card, Orson Scott: Ender’s Game
- Carr, Terry: The Dance Of The Changer And The Three
- Carter, Angela: Heroes and Villains
- Carver, Jeffrey: The Chaos Chronicles
- Charnas, Suzy McKee: Motherlines
- Cherryh, C.J.: Chanur’s Legacy
- Cherryh, C.J.: Cyteen
- Cherryh, C.J.: Downbelow Station
- Cherryh, C.J.: Foreigner series
- Cherryh, C.J.: The Faded Sun trilogy
- Chiang, Ted: “Understand” from Stories of Your Life and Others
- Chiang, Ted: Stories of Your Life and Others
- Compton, D.G: The Unsleeping Eye
- Crispin, A.C. & Kathleen O’Malley: Silent Dances/Silent Songs
- Delany, Samuel R.: Driftglass (collection)
- Delany, Samuel R.: Empire Star
- Delany, Samuel R.: Nova
- Delany, Samuel R.: Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand
- Dick, Philip K.: Dr. Bloodmoney
- Dick, Philip K.: The Penultimate Truth
- Disch, Thomas M.: “The Squirrel Cage”
- Donaldson, Stephen R.: the Gap series
- Duchamp, L. Timmel: The Marq’ssan Cycle
- Dunn, Katherine: Geek Love
- Ellison, Harlan: “‘Repent Harlequin!’” Said the TickTock Man”
- Ellison, Harlan: “A Boy and His Dog”
- Emshwiller, Carol: The Start of the End of It All and Other Stories
- Engdahl, Sylvia: Stewards of the Flame/Promise of the Flame
- Fancher, Jane S.: Netwalkers series
- Foster, Alan Dean: Glory Lane
- Fowler, Karen Joy: “The View From Venus”
- Fowler, Karen Joy: Sarah Canary
- Gentle, Mary: Ancient Light
- Gentle, Mary: Ash
- Gentle, Mary: Golden Witchbreed
- Gerrold, David: War Against the Chtorr: A Matter for Men; A Day for Damnation; A Rage for Revenge; Season for Slaughter
- Ghosh, Amitav: The Calcutta Chromosome
- Gibson, William: Neuromancer
- Goldstein, Lisa: A Mask For the General
- Goonan, Kathleen Ann: Light Music
- Gould, Stephen: Jumper
- Haldeman, Joe: Camouflage
- Haldeman, Joe: The Forever War
- Haldeman, Joe: Worlds Trilogy
- Hall, Sarah: Daughters of the North (aka Carhullan Army)
- Hamilton, Edmond: What’s It Like Out There?
- Hamilton, Peter F.: Commonwealth Saga
- Hamilton, Peter F.: Night’s Dawn
- Hamilton, Peter: Pandora’s Star/Judas Unchained.
- Hand, Elizabeth: The Saffron Gatherers
- Harness, Charles L.: Cybele and Bluebonnets
- Harness, Charles L.: The Paradox Men
- Harrison, M. John: Light
- Harrison, M. John: The Centauri Device
- Herbert, Frank: Dune
- Herne, Lily: Deadlands
- Hesse, Herman: The Glass Bead Game
- Hopkinson, Nalo: Midnight Robber
- Itoh, Project: Harmony
- Jones, Adrienne: Backbite
- Jones, Gwyneth: Bold as Love and its sequels
- Jones, Gwyneth: Kairos
- Jones, Gwyneth: Life
- Kelly, James Patrick: “Think Like a Dinosaur”
- Kenyon, Kay: The Rose Quartet
- Knight, Damon: “I See You” from One Side Laughing
- Kress, Nancy: “Margin of Error”
- Kress, Nancy: “The Flowers of Aulit Prison”
- Kress, Nancy: Beggars In Spain
- Lafferty, R.A. “In Our Block”.
- Lafferty, R.A.: 900 Grandmothers.
- Laing, Kojo: “Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ”
- Le Guin, Ursula K.: The Dispossessed
- Le Guin, Ursula K.: Always Coming Home
- Le Guin, Ursula K.: The Lathe of Heaven
- Le Guin, Ursula K.: The Left Hand of Darkness
- Le Guin, Urusla K.: The Word for World is Forest
- Lee, Tanith: The Birthgrave
- Lem, Stanislaw: The Cyberiad
- Lethem, Jonathan: Girl in Landscape
- Longyear, Barry B.: The Portrait of Baron Negay
- Lovecraft, H.P.: “The Colour Out of Space”
- Lynn, Elizabeth: The Sardonyx Net
- Macleod, Ken: “Lighting Out”
- May, Julian: Saga of Pleistocene Exile/Milieu series
- May, Julian: Saga of the Exiles
- McCaffrey, Anne: Nimisha’s Ship
- McCauley, Paul: Fairyland
- McDonald, Ian: River of Gods
- McHugh, Maureen: China Mountain Zhang
- McHugh, Maureen: Nekropolis
- McHugh, Maureen: The Cost to be Wise
- McHugh, Maurren: Mission Child
- McIntyre, Vonda N.: Dreamsnake
- McIntyre, Vonda N: Fireflood and Other Stories
- McIntyre, Vonda: Starfarers quartet
- Mieville, China: Perdido Street Station
- Mieville, China: The City and the City
- Moon, Elizabeth: Esmay Suiza series
- Moon, Elizabeth: Remnant Population
- Moon, Elizabeth: The Speed of Dark
- Mooney, Ted: Easy Travel to Other Planets
- Moore, C.L.: Vintage Season
- Morehouse, Lyda: the Angel Protocol series
- Morgan, Richard K.: Takeshi Kovacs Series
- Moriarty, Chris: Spin State
- Nagata, Linda: The Bohr Maker
- Niven, Larry and Jerry Pournelle Inferno
- Niven, Larry: Ringworld
- Nojiri, Housuke: Usurper of the Sun –
- Nyland, Eric S.: Signal to Noise/A Signal Shattered
- Ogawa, Issui: Lord of the Sands of Time
- Okorafor, Nnedi: The Shadow Speaker
- Palmer, David: Emergence
- Park, Paul: Celestis
- Pollack, Rachel: Unquenchable Fire
- Pournelle, Jerry: CoDominium series
- Pratchett, Terry: The Science of Discworld
- Pullman, Philip: The Golden Compass and its sequels
- Rajaniemi, Hannu The Quantum Thief
- Reynolds, Alastair: Chasm City
- Reynolds, Alastair: Revelation Space/Ana Kouri Trilogy: Revelation Space; Redemption Ark; Absolution Gap
- Robinson, Kim Stanley: Galileo’s Dream
- Robinson, Kim Stanley: the Mars trilogy
- Robinson, Spider: Lifehouse Trilogy: Mindkiller; Time Pressure; Lifehouse
- Robson, Justina: Natural History
- Rosenblum, Mary: Horizons
- Rosenblum, Mary: The Drylands
- Russ, Joanna: “When It Changed”
- Russ, Joanna: We Who Are About To
- Russell, Mary Doria: The Sparrow
- Ryman, Geoff: The Child Garden
- Scalzi, John: Old Man’s War Series
- Sey, James and Minnette Vari: The Map and the Territory (Chimurenga 12 & 13: Dr. Satan’s Echo Chamber)
- Shaw, Bob: “Light of Other Days”
- Shepard, Lucius: “Barnacle Bill, the Spacer”
- Shepard, Lucius: The Jaguar Hunter
- Shinn, Sharon: Samaria series
- Silverberg, Robert: “Sailing to Byzantium”
- Silverberg, Robert: Dying Inside
- Simak, Clifford: Time is the Simplest Thing.
- Simmons, Dan: Hyperion Cantos: Hyperion; The Fall of Hyperion; Endymion; The Rise of Endymion
- Simmons, Dan: Ilium/Olympos
- Singh, Vandana: Distances
- Slonczewski, Joan: A Door Into Ocean
- Smith, Clark Ashton: “The City of the Singing Flame”
- Spinrad, Norman: Last Of The Romany
- St. Clair, Margaret: Agent of the Unknown
- Stapleton, Olaf: Last and First Men
- Stephenson, Neal: Anathem
- Stephenson, Neal: Snow Crash
- Stewart, George: Earth Abides
- Sturgeon, Theodore: “The Man Who Lost the Sea”
- Swanwick, Michael: “Ginungagap” from Gravity’s Angels
- Swanwick, Michael: Stations of the Tide
- Tenn, William The Liberation Of Earth
- Tepper, Shari S.: The Family Tree
- Tiptree Jr., James: “The Last Flight of Doctor Ain”
- Tiptree Jr., James: “The Women Men Don’t See”
- Tiptree Jr., James: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection)
- Tiptree Jr., James: Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death
- Traviss, Karen: The Wess’har Wars series
- Turtledove, Harry: “The Last Article”
- Turtledove, Harry: Guns of the South; In The Presence of Mine Enemies
- Varley, John: “The Phantom of Kansas” from The Persistence of Vision
- Varley, John: Gaean Trilogy: Titan; Wizard; Demon
- Varley, John: The Persistence of Vision (collection)
- Vinge, Joan D.: The Snow Queen/The Summer Queen
- Vinge, Vernor: A Deepness in the Sky
- Vinge, Vernor: A Fire Upon the Deep
- Vinge, Vernor: Marooned in Realtime
- Vinge, Vernor: True Names
- Vonarburg, Elisabeth: Chroniques du Pays des Mères (The Maerlande Chronicles)
- Vonnegut, Kurt: Breakfast of Champions
- Vonnegut, Kurt: Slaugterhouse Five
- Watts, Peter: Blindsight
- Watts, Peter: The Rifters Trilogy–Starfish, Maelstrom, and Behemoth
- Weber, David: The Honor Harrington books
- Wells, H.G.: The War of the Worlds
- White, James: Sector General
- Wilhelm, Kate: “The Winter Beach”
- Wilhelm, Kate: Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang
- Williams, Tad: The Otherland quartet
- Williams, Walter Jon: “The Green Leopard Plague”
- Williamson, Jack: With Folded Hands
- Williamson, Michael Z.: Freehold series
- Willis, Connie: “Even The Queen”
- Willis, Connie: Bellwether
- Willis, Connie: Doomsday Book
- Wolfe, Gene: “The Fifth Head of Cerberus”
- Wolfe, Gene: The Book of the New Sun
- Yamamoto, Hiroshi: The Stories of Ibis
- Zelazny, Roger: Creatures of Light and Darkness
- Zelazny, Roger: Lord of Light
- Zelazny, Roger: The Dream Master
- Zettel, Sarah: Fool’s War
- Zindell, David: The Wild series (Neverness, Broken God, etc.)
***************
Flashes of Illumination, a collection of my short-short fiction, is now available here from Book View Cafe. This 52-story ebook collects the flash fiction I published weekly during the first year of Book View Cafe, and adds in a few later stories as well.
My novella Changeling remains available as an ebook through Book View Cafe. It’s a coming of age story.
Both books are $2.99 and available in four DRM-free formats: mobi, epub, prc, and pdf.
It’s not just me that thought the NPR list was amazing, then. For certain values of amazing. Thank you for this!
There are books (and stories) here I haven’t read. I had better hunt them up. A much, much better list than the NPR one.
A terrific list. Thanks for putting it together, Nancy.
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Looks a heck of a lot better than NPR’s (which I complained bitterly about but,,,)
but
still no cigar.
No John Brunner at all. No Kornbluth. No Eric Frank Russell.
For shame: no Leigh Brackett.
Don’t get me started on individual stories rather than authors (Last of the Romany from Spinrad but no Bug Jack Barron?)
Ah, yes, Steve. I knew there were holes. If it were my own list, instead of a compilation of recommendations by those who happen to read this blog, there would still be holes — I’m not all that organized when it comes to making these lists and I tend to forget people whose work I haven’t read in a long time, like Brunner.
Greg Benford’s “Galactic Center” works aren’t included. Wow. what a miss.
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Great list. The problem of course is that each of us could only pick 10! So, of course many of my favorites are missing, but put this list together with the NPR list, The Locus two lists of the 50 best, David Pringle’s Best 100 SF to 1984 and John Clute’s and David Hartwell’s top 100 lists and you catch pretty much everything – Lots to read, lots to read, lots to read and here I am typing a blog post. What’s the matter with me?
As the saying goes, Bob: “So many books; so little time.”
And if I’d let everybody list as many books as they wanted to (including myself), I’d never have finished collating the list
And we’d still have missed somebody worth including.
Lists are a thankless task, but thanks Nancy for putting this together! I’m with Adam on Greg Benford’s Galactic Center books. These are some of my all-time favorites, and I wish I’d stopped by your earlier post to make the suggestion. It’s good to see the Zindell books here.
Thanks for the shout-out, Nancy! Looking at this wonderful list, I share Steve’s feeling that some authors aren’t represented by their best works (Delany, Dick), or by enough works (Sturgeon, Bester); but that’s a minor reservation. How wonderful that the great Phil Klass (whose “LIberation of Earth” is sadly still timely) and Vandana Singh appear on it! Names I wish had been included? Rebecca Ore and James Morrow. Maybe Davidson.