As far as I know, the Gormenghast books are still in print from Overlook Press (with lovely introductions by Anthony Burgess and (oddly enough) Quentin Crisp. Ballentine tried to ride the Tolkien wave in the '70s with paperback issues of the Peake trilogy in the US. That first printing is probably a bit rare since later printings did not include the wonderful drawings by Peake on glossy paper in the middle of the ‘Gormenghast’ book. Come to think of it, am not sure any other edition of the books have those drawings. I’ve read Gormenghast many times, including once while tripping which isn’t all that easy if the words and letters kinda start to fall off the pages. Never really attempted that with any other book…
Whaaaaat.
I would love to read any of the purported stories of Trout. They always seemed by description gut-punchingly cynical.
Maybe skip the stories of “Trout Jr.”
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&text=Kilgore+Trout&search-alias=books&field-author=Kilgore+Trout&sort=relevancerank
Terry Pratchett’s Colour Of Magic may be the book that starts the Discworld saga but there are far better books he has written than that, many of them not Discworld books at all.
SHECKLEY.
SLADEK.
I just checked and was delighted to see that Norstrilia was still in print (though not in that cover anymore). Cordwainer Smith was remarkable.
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Clarke’s novelization of 2001 wasn’t all that good, IMHO, but The Fountains of Paradise is excellent.
Similarly Green Mars is probably a better book but most people who finish Red will be hooked enough to continue reading.
I think it goes to show that 100 books is too short a list. Good books are going to be left out and the choice is going to be arbitrary.
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Yeah, I’ve got the Ballantine paperbacks and the American hardcovers. But no way is Overlook paying to be on the list. I mean, go down that road and next you’ll be asking for Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. Probably the numbnuts at Amazon have no clue anyway. But how seriously can you take a list that has Terry Brooks by not John Crowley? I mean, not Little, Big? Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun? There is no lifetime where one needs to read Terry Brooks.
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I thought about this too, and decided that The Man in the High Castle would be the one to include. Not my absolute favorite of his, but definitely a great book, and probably a better first exposure to PKD than UBIK or VALIS. If you wanted a slightly less obvious choice, I’d go with Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said.
ETA: Also, whither Michael Moorcock? Either Elric or Jerry Cornelius surely deserve a spot! Of course, you put him on there, then next I’ll start arguing for Borges…
Venus on the Half-Shell was actually written by Philip Jose Farmer. I’ve enjoyed it alot, although I don’t think it reads much like the Trout works as described by Vonnegut. Ol’ Kurt hated the book apparently, and withdrew permission for Farmer to write anymore.
As much as I enjoyed Slaughterhouse 5 I think as a science fiction/fantasy work Sirens Of Titan would have been a better inclusion on this list.
And while I enjoyed all kinds of science fiction and fantasy in my wild youth it was always short story anthologies I devoured most greedily and went back to again and again. I’d love to see a list of 1000 science fiction and fantasy short stories to read in a lifetime. That’s where you’d find some should-be classics like Robert Sheckley’s hilarious “Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay” and Jack Lewis’s equally hilarious “Who’s Cribbing?” and probably a handful of Frederic Brown.
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For starters,
Random Acts of Senseless Violence - Jack Womack
We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter - Lucius Shephard
Blindsight - Peter Watts
The Execution Channel - Ken Macleod
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DERP! The spreadsheet wasn’t editable. It is now. Please be kind and don’t make a mess of it.
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I will note a lot of the really old stuff is available as quite reasonable ebook anthologies. I got all 12 Barsoom books for under $5 and recently The Lensman and Skylark books for about the same. While a lot is public domain now I don’t mind throwing the university and small presses the money for the time and effort of formatting it all nicely.
It is…acceptable. A few thoughts: I looked immediately for Alfred Bester and found him. That’s one hurdle over with.
I’m with the Stanislaw Lem fans above in that “Solaris” is only tangentially representative of an author who, aside from Monty Python, counts as the most obvious influence on the beloved Douglas Adams.
As I get older, it is sad to see some great and enjoyable science fiction/fantasy authors fall by the wayside: The fantastically cynical Thomas Disch, the unpredictable Michael Bishop and the grand wizard of hippie-era science fiction, Norman Spinrad. I’ll accept it.
What I won’t accept is people failing to see the monolith right in front of their faces: Brian Aldiss. Holy crap, Brian Aldiss!
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I really want to see the list as “A List”, not a constantly reordering montage on Amazon. Also, when I try to look at the Excel list someone painstakingly posted below, I get auto-moved back to the top of the comments. {I’m feeling a bit complain-y this morning, I guess!}
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This Amazon list uses narrow definitions of science fiction and fantasy. It looks like verse, drama or anything written prior to the 19th century is de facto excluded (how Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or The Tempest are not considered part of the fantasy canon is beyond me). Despite these arbitrary constraints, there are still some serious omissions, unmentioned thus far in the comments, such as:
Lewis Carroll - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass
Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis
Italo Calvino - The Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities
Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea - The Illuminatus! Trilogy
David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch, The Nova Trilogy
Umberto Eco - Foucault’s Pendulum
Edgar Allen Poe - Tales
Jorge Luis Borges - his complete works; in fact, Borges was himself a fantasy.
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C.J. Cherryh? Kate Wilhelm? Joanna Russ? Naomi Novik?
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First of all, I’m not a huge fan of lumping science fiction and fantasy together all the time. While it’s true that there is a good overlap in the fan base, the things that make a great science fiction novel/series are different than the things that make a great fantasy novel/series. Second, this is a list made by a store, so it’s purpose is to market products, so more obscure works and anything out of print probably won’t appear. Third, a list like this, a development of a canon or something, would need to be broken into some categories, like “here are twenty important classics of the genre that most modern authors either draw from or rail against,” and “here are twenty novels that were really popular and helped bring the genre into the mainstream,” and “here are the novels that aren’t very well known but which really push the boundaries of the genre and inspire other authors,” and “now here are some great novels/series that you don’t have to be a super fan of the genre to enjoy, they’re just solid, well-written, thought provoking, interesting, nuanced, works that take interesting risks.” Then it would be easier to see why some of the poorly written but popular works made the list, (You know who you are…) and advocate for the inclusion of some of the amazing but more obscure works that didn’t. (‘Futurological Congress’ by Lem and/or ‘Camp Concentration’ by Disch.)
