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formerly known as etaoin...
The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002
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
To drop John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids from this list of most significant modern SF because it misses the cut by just 2 years (1951) seems to me an injustice, but since it's always been one of my personal favorites maybe I'm just quibbling.
I also would liked to have seen Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man there, a finer collection of thematic SF/Fantasy short stories has never been written, and it set the benchmark for the form, IMO.
Has anyone here ever read any Phillip K. Dick? I never have but I get the feeling that once I get around to it I will really enjoy his books.
And I dunno about Starship Troopers as a second choice for Heinlein. I'd have to go with Time Enough for Love, which I think belongs on the list anyway. I can think of other Heinleins I'd replace Starship Troopers with...The Time Tunnel for one.
formerly known as etaoin...
Bingley
Bingley
A good list, who would we add if we forgot about the last 50 years and just went back as far as we could?
As a start, how about, in no special order:
The Time Machine, HG Wells
The First Men in the Moon, Jules Verne
The Worm Ouroboros, ER Eddison
The Well at the World's End, William Morris
The Mabinogion, ?
But some other books I'd mention in an overview would be:
1. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
2. The War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, The Food of the Gods, H. G. Wells
3. The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
4. Colossus [author?], the first great cyber novel about a giant computer developing Artifical Intelligence and taking over the world.
5. Erewhon, Samuel Butler
6. The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
7. The Lost World, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
8. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
9. Dracula, Bram Stoker
And what about The Hobbit? Or is that inferringly included with the trilogy? If not, I'd rather see The Hobbit on the list than The Silmarillion.
And I know some folks have mixed feelings about Michael Crichton, and view him somewhat askance as more pop than SF...but I really think Jurassic Park belongs on that list.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
I agree. Did you know that this book features a description of a giant squid, complete with beak, and was published before giant squids were known to the scientific community? (They were probably known anecdotally by sailors.) The bodies of giant squids were subsequently discovered and were found to indeed have huge, powerful beaks. As far as I know, to this day no one has ever captured a living giant squid.
Thereby revealing yourself to be no true tolkieniac.
I love The Silmarillion, and have read it several times, while I have never been able to get through The Hobbit since initially reading it when I was seven.
No, truth be told, I embarked upon The Silmarillion 3 times and could never get through it.
I would go along with that, but The Hobbit doesn't fit the rules for the first list; it was first published in 1937. You can add it to the second list.
I would want to add to the second list:
The First Book of Lankhmar, Fritz Leiber although this is a collection of short stories originally published separately.
Without Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, Terry Pratchett's Ankh Morpork might not have existed.
-joe (Heinlein's) Friday
TEd
well, it should.
and no thanks for pointing out the alphabetizing. I was at least somewhat happy in my conceit that Book of the New Sun, which is one of my top ten regardless of genre, at least came 11th.
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