Essential Reading?

The reason for my ponderings about audience on Saturday is that there’s a list being linked around the Internet of “Essential Science Fiction.” I’m not sure if it’s the same list being copied, or a few different content writers saw the idea and each tried to put their fingerprints on it. Anyway, this list really bugs me. The names on it are all too familiar: Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke. Some of the lists stretch themselves and add McCaffrey.

Those are all great writers, so what’s my problem? It’s that their books are OLD. They were written in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. McCaffrey’s work, from the ’80s, is the most recent and hers are 40 years old. Speaking as someone in the 60+ age group, I’ve already these books. What good is a list like this, when it doesn’t offer me anything NEW to read and explore?

Every age has a worldview that seeps through. A zeitgeist, if you will. The underlying assumptions of family structure, wealth and power, whose voices should be heard. In all the listed authors, the worldview is more of a historic mirage. Unfortunately, there are segments of society that want to force us back into that ’50s era, where everybody except white men were straight-jacketed. This kind of “essential reading” reinforces the faux nostalgia that has been so corrosive to our democracy.

Our era has a zeitgeist, too. We may have a hard time seeing it, because we’re standing so close. But our readers are in the middle of it, too, and their expectations spring from the same zeitgeist. This is entirely appropriate. In our capitalist worldview, they are customers — customers who expect their entertainment to be tailored to their interests, a la Netflix. Successful authors are the ones who pay attention to their readers’ priorities.

The list I’m harping on brushes right over every major genre development since about 1995. Cyberpunk, military science fiction, urban fantasy, steampunk — all are ignored. Graphic storytelling is ignored. This has been a longtime battle, as some critics seem to feel the illustration is a sign of intellectual inferiority. I would invite them to visit my special ed classroom, where struggling readers find the pictures essential to reading comprehension. To me, this list almost seems like an attempt to limit what kinds of books are considered valid. If that doesn’t worry you, it should.

The list also passes over dozens of authors whose work was vital to the development of our genres. Katharine Kurtz (Deryni), David Eddings (Belgariad), Weiss and Hickman (Dragonlance) from the 80s. Octavia Butler (Parable), Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars) and David Weber (Honor Harrington) from the ’90s. Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson) and Jim Butcher (Harry Dresden) from the early 2000s. C. J. Cherryh, George R. R. Martin and Tanith Lee all published multiple remarkable novels all the way from the ’70s until the 2010s. Not one of them is acknowledged.

Okay, I’m telling on myself. Those are mostly fantasy writers, not SF. This is where I stop to catch my breath and open the floor. What writers from more recent decades do you think should be included on an “essential reading” list? I look forward to your thoughts!

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