THIS IS NOT A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL (THE GUARDIAN LIST)

[defrog]

ITEM: The Guardian has compiled a list of 1,000 novels you MUST read. And they have a science-fiction/fantasy section.

Mind, they’re a bit loose on the criteria for what constitutes SF/F – certainly there’s some room for debate whether dystopian and speculative fiction should count, but in my mind it’s a bit of a stretch to classify, say, Lord Of The Flies, Beloved, The Shining or any story featuring Satan as a character as science-fiction/fantasy.

Still, there’s plenty of books that sound like they’re worth checking out that I might not have otherwise thought to investigate. So it's a list worth reading.

For the record, here’s the books on the SF/F list I’ve already read (except for the two in boldface, which I haven’t read but are in the “to read” pile next to my desk):

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

Reading is fun,

This is dF

Comments

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

I noticed that too. I'm guessing they only bothered with genre breakdowns because no one's going to look at a list 1,000 items long in one go, or to make sure the list had a little variety in it instead of being biased to the usual and obvious classics. It's messy and imperfcet, but again, as a suggested reading list I got a few good recommendations out of it.

[jasonfranks.livejournal.com]

... fair enough, too. Right off the top of the SF list, I'm ready to hunt down DARWIN'S RADIO. I haven't read Greg Bear since I was in high school.

-- JF