Posted on 08/11/2011 5:46:33 PM PDT by Tanniker Smith
More than 5,000 of you nominated. More than 60,000 of you voted. And now the results are in. The winners of NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy survey are an intriguing mix of classic and contemporary titles.
A quick word about what's here, and what's not: Our panel of experts reviewed hundreds of the most popular nominations and tossed out those that didn't fit the survey's criteria (after — we assure you — much passionate, thoughtful, gleefully nerdy discussion). You'll notice there are no young adult or horror books on this list, but sit tight, dear reader, we're saving those genres for summers yet to come.
So, at last, here are your favorite science-fiction and fantasy novels. (And a printable version, to take with you to the bookstore.)
I’d choose Sixth Column over Farnham’s Freehold if I was adding another Heinlein to the list. Or The Door Into Summer, maybe.
Forever War was amazing. Forever Peace sucked though. IMHO
Wicked? Wicked!?
“I am surprised any of Heinlein’s books made an NPR list, he did not care much for pansy socialist types.”
Did you know he actually ran for political office as a socialist ? He was also a staffer when Upton Sinclair ran for governor of CA on a socialist platform (although he ran on the Dem ticket) in 1934.
I’ve read everything Heinlein ever wrote and I was shocked when I found out he’d once been a socialist.
I'm friends with DKM on facebook and Google+, big lib but great writer. All of his books are available as ebooks at fsand.com (his site), and he's released the first book of AI Wars - The Big Boost - another great one.
The quality of Joe Haldeman’s stuff was all over the place.
Not a good list. Very heavy on NPR listener-type crap.
The quality of Joe Haldeman’s stuff was all over the place.
Excerpt from “The Genre Artist”, an excellent Vance profile in the NY Times Mag, July 2009:
“Jack Vance, described by his peers as “a major genius” and “the greatest living writer of science fiction and fantasy,” has been hidden in plain sight for as long as he has been publishing — six decades and counting. Yes, he has won Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy awards and has been named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and he received an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America, but such honors only help to camouflage him as just another accomplished genre writer. So do the covers of his books, which feature the usual spacecraft, monsters and euphonious place names: Lyonesse, Alastor, Durdane. If you had never read Vance and were browsing a bookstore’s shelf, you might have no particular reason to choose one of his books instead of one next to it by A. E. van Vogt, say, or John Varley. And if you chose one of these alternatives, you would go on your way to the usual thrills with no idea that you had just missed out on encountering one of American literature’s most distinctive and undervalued voices.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19Vance-t.html?pagewanted=all
I can’t believe the first real space opera is not on the list: EE Doc Smith’s “Skylark” and “Lensman” series.
And “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” doesn’t qualify as some of the best SF of all time ?
It’s pretty easy to spot which entries are on the list solely due to typical NPR listeners picking out the few titles they actually recognized....
I couldn't stand LOTR, but I've read all 14 (or so) books in Asimov's Galactic Empire series and all of the Dune books and the subsequent off shoots.
Hey while I’ve got everyone SCIFI/Fantasy here - does anyone remember a short story about an astronaut in a space suit that suddenly thinks he’s have a malfunction or alien infection that once he gets back into the ship finds out it was only the ship’s cat that found it’s way into the suit?
It was in a short story collection I found in the 80’s that I can’t find anymore and I’ve been dying to give it to my kids to read.
Any directional pointers appreciated.
It’s been several decades since I read The Book of Skulls. Might be interesting to go back and see how it would seem to me now.
I have read Dying Inside several times over a long time, and still found it good. Whereas I loaned it to my daughter and she found it uninteresting.
If John Ringo had made the list I think the NPR editorial room would have looked like a scene out of Scanners....
It's not a critics' list, it's a readers' list.
Seriously, how many people have even read (or should I say "attempted to read") The Silmarillion?
If you haven't read it, you aren't likely to put it in your top five picks.
And I don't know how how humor and hard sci-fi were on the list, but if you focus the humor votes onto one book, Hitchhikers would be it.
I exchanged a few e-mails with DKM about fifteen years ago, and I’ve visited his blog a few times. He does come off as very liberal.
Thanks for the heads up on “AI War” but I refuse to read a novel electronically. I need a real book.
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