NPR conducted a survey of the most popular all-time science fiction and fantasy novels and the results are in. According to the polls, these are the top 100 SF & F novels.
Like the “other” meme from the BBC that sent around last year, there are some bizarre inclusions—entire trilogies and series instead of single novels—which I suspect are inevitable given the nature of the process. I mean, I love Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, but that’s what? Ten books? Hardly fair. But then something like Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun actually is a single novel published in four volumes.
It’s the omissions that bother me. It’s obvious a lot of young readers contributed, because there seems to be a significant percentage of newer work, often at the cost of seminal works that should be on any representative list. I mean, hell, Brandon Sanderson has two separate slots but Delany and Silverberg are nowhere to be found. I expected to see The Song of Ice and Fire on the list given its current popularity, but not that unwieldy piece of self-referential excess The Wheel of Time. I mean, come on—the best?
But I see the absence of work that is essential to any overview of 20th Century science fiction—no Joanna Russ, no Van Vogt, no John Brunner, no Gordon Dickson or Poul Anderson or Doc Smith or…
Partly, I think, the problem is in that they decided to lump SF and Fantasy together. Expected but disappointing. I really do not expect people who think the Xanth series fit for a top 100 list to even be aware of C.J. Cherryh, and if that sounds judgmental, so be it.
Last year I composed my own list of 100 novels “everyone should read” in response to the BBC meme. I suppose now I ought to do a 100 SF novels essential to any grasp of what science fiction is.
Or maybe not. Maybe this is just the nature of these things when handed over to a committee.
But I gotta say, women are sorely underrepresented in this. Of course there’s Ursula K. Le Guin (and Margaret Atwood, which I find amusing for other reasons) and Audrey Niffenegger. But come on: Octavia Butler, C.J. Cherryh, Joanna Russ, Mary Gentle, Sherri Tepper, Kate Wilhelm, Justina Robson, Nancy Kress, Leigh Brackett, C.L. Moore, Margaret St. Clair, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Nicola Griffith, Lisa Goldstein, Michaela Roessner, Emma Bull, Gwyneth Jones….
You get the idea.
