NPR's call for the best SF&F books of all time

[Mike (the Paladin)]

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/1390858...

Yes the votes were tabulated...I believe by the firm of "Dowe, Cheatum and How"...but I'm not sure. There's the link. It was liked above, but several posts back.

[Jim]

Mike (the Paladin) wrote: "Jim, my dad had the same attitude about comic books. I was an adult before I managed to fill in my collections (which I was then subsequently forced to sell). Science Fiction while hard to find was wasn't censored (as such). I got them to let me join the Science Fiction Book Club when I hit 14."

My father and I were both members of the SF Book Club when I was about that age. It's how I was able to get my hands on a copy of The Foundation Trilogy and read it at an early age.

[Helen]

Well, I'm not as well-read as I'd like!

[Jim]

Helen wrote: "Well, I'm not as well-read as I'd like!"

Are any of us? There are too many books & too little time.
;-)

[Ken]

Jim wrote: "As it was, Mom got rid of 3 boxes of them so I had to spend decades rebuilding my Edgar Rice Burroughs & Robert E. Howard collections. She thought they were trash, too. ."

That`s one thing I admired about my parents. The didn`t really care what I read. Sure the old man tried to get me to read other things and eventually I did (pretty much after I left home)

[Ron]

Candiss wrote: "...I can't love Robert Jordan or Piers Anthony..."

Candiss, I feel like I have to stick up for Anthony a bit. Before the Xanth books (and even the first couple of those are cute) he wrote some great science fiction: Macroscope was nominated for a Hugo; the Omnivore/Orn/0X trilogy is oustanding; the Cluster series was riveting, and had great aliens; and Battle Circle is good clean post-apocalyptic fun. It's just a shame he found out he could make real money writing toy books.

[Candiss]

Ron wrote: "Candiss wrote: "...I can't love Robert Jordan or Piers Anthony..."

Candiss, I feel like I have to stick up for Anthony a bit. Before the Xanth books (and even the first couple of those are cute) h..."

Ron, I had no idea! What a shame he altered his course. I'm glad a writer found a way to be monetarily successful, but I just couldn't enjoy the output (i.e. Xanth.) "Toy books" is a good way to describe it. (Incidentally, I have nothing against escapist fare. I think it certainly has its place. I just don't know if I agree with its ranking among the "best" sf/f of all time.)

[Red]

It's a more modern one, and by a French author, but ably translated to English, but Maurice G. Dantec's Babylon babies was quite brilliant I thought. The film adaptation babylon A.D. (like all too many) didn't do it full justice, though it was well enough.

[Jim]

I'm glad Anthony got a mention, too. I thought the first few Xanth books were excellent. They were quite new & different when I first read them. He definitely cashed in on the series & I didn't care much for the rest - didn't read most of them, but an odd one here & there.

Battle Circle was good - for the first 2 books. The last one was plain weird. Macroscope was excellent, though. I liked the Incarnations of Immortality & that politician one (Emperor of the Solar System or something) , too. The first couple of Adept books were fun & there were several others. He definitely earned a mention on the list.

[Sarah]

My teenaged father helped Piers Anthony edit one of his first short stories, Quidquepidalian.

I liked the first few Xanth books but outgrew them by the age of twelve. I enjoyed the Adept books more.

[Ron]

Red wrote: "It's a more modern one, and by a French author, but ably translated to English, but Maurice G. Dantec's Babylon babies was quite brilliant I thought. The film adaptat..."


I agree, Red, "Babylon Babies" is a remarkable novel, with fine characters, great geopolitical strategy and scary ideas. I haven't seen the film and I wonder if a movie could really capture the book.

[Ron]

Candiss wrote: "Ron wrote: "Candiss wrote: "...I can't love Robert Jordan or Piers Anthony..." and later "I have nothing against escapist fare. I think it certainly has its place. I just don't know if I agree with its ranking among the "best" sf/f of all time."

That's really what I'm driving at, Candiss. The Xanth books might well belong to a top-100 list of children's or YA series but not top-100 sf/f. I think Anthony legitimately deserves a top 100 sf/f ranking on the strength of "Macroscope" or the "Cluster" books or the Omnivore/Orn/0X trilogy (which I now see is sometimes called "Of Man and Manta"). In an ideal world he might have written the Xanth books under another name and continued writing other ("real"? "adult"?) sf projects as himself. It's not that I dislike the Xanth series, but I regret the loss of other stuff he might have come up with.

[Bill]

Jim wrote: "I'm glad Anthony got a mention, too. I thought the first few Xanth books were excellent. They were quite new & different when I first read them. He definitely cashed in on the series & I didn't ..."

I completely agree, Jim. I quite enjoyed the first few Xanth books and L'dOL quite a lot about some of the more outrageous puns. I still use 'Mundania' to refer to my outer life. I think they are worth a re-read. I doubt children could appreciate many of the puns.

My biggest disappointments were that Dhalgren or Samuel Delany didn't make the list at all and that Cyteen or any Cherryh was not on the list.

[Candiss]

Kernos wrote: "Jim wrote: "My biggest disappointment was that Dhalgren or Samuel Delany didn't make the list at all...."

I agree 100%.

[Sarah]

Octavia Butler is the other one I think really should have made it on there.

[Candiss]

SF Signal did a cool flowchart of the Top 100 winners:

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011...

(It's quite large once you expand it.)

[Jon]

Candiss wrote: "SF Signal did a cool flowchart of the Top 100 winners:

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011...

(It's quite large once you expand it.)"

Loved it! Thanks for sharing that link!

[Marty]

ok so what is the difference between high fantasy and low fantasy?

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

I've generally seen high and low defined by the level of magic. High fantasy has lots of magic being flung around, low fantasy has a lot less reliance on magic.

***

The chart's pretty cool and fun. I thought it funny, though, that on the path under the "let's find another world, this one is depressing" it takes you to the Dark Tower. 'Cause, yeah, that story's not at all depressing. LOL

[Stefan, Group Founder + Moderator (Retired)]

I've seen it defined as follows:

- "high" fantasy is fantasy set in an alternate world. Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, most epic fantasy.
- "low" fantasy is fantasy set in our world, but with added fantastical elements. So urban fantasy is often low fantasy. Also, most horror - real world plus vampires, real world plus werewolves, and so on.

I don't claim that this definition is, uh, definitive - but that's the one I've heard most often.

[Sarah]

± Colleen of the Crawling Chaos ± wrote: "The chart's pretty cool and fun. I thought it funny, though, that on the path under the "let's find another world, this one is depressing" it takes you to the Dark Tower. 'Cause, yeah, that story's not at all depressing. LOL "

Yeah, and BunWat pointed out in another group that the path of space-intense action-no humor should not end with the very entertaining Vorkosigan books.

[Mike (the Paladin)]

Coleen's definition is the one I've seen most often Stefan. Of course as in all thing literary, we'll probably never all agree, LOL.

[Stefan, Group Founder + Moderator (Retired)]

I just googled the terms and found this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fan...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy

... which seem to be mixing the definition I gave and ± Colleen of the Crawling Chaos ±'s. Anyway, you're absolutely right - as a survivor of the horrible wasteland that is literary academia, I can confirm that coming to any significant form of agreement about definitions like these is almost impossible!

[Candiss]

Stefan wrote: "I've seen it defined as follows:

- "high" fantasy is fantasy set in an alternate world. Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, most epic fantasy.
- "low" fantasy is fantasy set in our world, but with a..."

That's the definition I've seen most and tend to think with, as well.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

It gets even more confusing 'cause some people sort of use high fantasy as a synonym for epic fantasy, while others see epic more as a good vs. evil, world-saving scope thing as opposed to the level of fantasy.

In other words - some people consider LotR high fantasy because it's epic, while others consider LotR low epic fantasy (because there's not really a lot of magic used, when you get down to it, from that perspective. Not like a D&D type knock-off would use magic, anyway.)


Also, who is this Coleen of which you speak?

[Mike (the Paladin)]

My deepest apologies...."Coleen" gets past my spell check and I depend on it far too much. You are quite right to ask we spell your name correctly, Colleen. Sorry.

[Stefan, Group Founder + Moderator (Retired)]

I've already edited my mistake (which I'd copied from Mike's, believe it or not...)

As someone who has to spell both his first and last name all the time (and then usually still ends up with mistakes in the last name), I know how annoying it can be to have people misspell your name.

To make up for my mistake, ± Colleen of the Crawling Chaos ±, I will from now on use the entirety of your screen name in all communications.

[Mach]

I think of High fantasy and Low fantasy as Stefan classified it. The term Low fantasy is rarely used though.

You are really sensitive about how people spell your name , ± Colleen of the Crawling Chaos ±.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

*sigh* I guess I should've put the winkie face after my comment to emphasize I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek. Yes, it irks me a bit, but no, you don't have to copy the whole name. :>

[wendy c]

I was a voracious reader and loved many of the authors mentioned, but the ones that I still remember fondly enough to read again occasionally are those by Anne McCaffrey, Asimov, and Asprin, though the latter is pure fantasy. I don't think of Lord of the Rings as SF, but if it is then I admit I love the books, especially the longer version, and I love to read at the end about what happened to them all. Am I the only one to wonder why Gimli and Legolas could build a ship and go to the Grey Havens but Arwen can't? Tolkien did a great job.
I also do genealogy, and far back in my tree I came across the names Frodo and later on Gandalfdtr (daughter of Gandalf). I contacted the tree owner, a bit irritated, and asked if he enjoyed pulling researches legs. He responded that he really should put a post on the tree site as he was tired of getting emails like this. He told me,( I have no idea about the veracity of this,) that Tolkien's tree was one of the branches of the tree I was researching and that it seemed pretty obvious to him that Tolkien had found them too and really liked them and so called his characters by those names. They were his ancestors!

[Mike (the Paladin)]

Arwen chose not to. Arwen chose mortality (Elves could do that). A lot about the Elves comes out in The The Silmarillion. In the story of Beren and Lúthien, Lúthien (an ancestor of Arwen. Lúthien is called Morning Star where Arwen is called Evenstar) chooses to become mortal for her love of Beren.
Oh, and Arwen chose to be mortal for her love of Aragorn.

Okay, nerd credentials renewed, hope that hepled. :)

[Helen]

And who wouldn't choose the grogeous Aragorn, made me all of a flutter.