February 17, 2004

Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy list. Tristrom Cooke's list still serves as an indisposable guide for any patron of the SF arts, even though updates stalled last year. If you dare, view all 4375 titles ranked. Alternate up and coming choice: the Internet Book List, which spans other genres of literature.
posted by anonymous 20 years ago
  • I'm bummed 2001 didn't make the top 100.
  • The list is cracked - Lions of Al Rassan better than Tigana? Sure they're by the same author, but clearly Tigana is the superior ... oh, they have the same score, but were listed alphabetically. But still... The list includes 1984 at #43, but doesn't include Yegeny Zamiatin's We, the astoundingly beautiful and imagistic distopian novel that influenced Orwell in the writing of his own.* All of the books I recognise on the list are fine books (unlike some of these other top 100 type things), but there are many other equally good novels left off. I noticed Brave New World didn't make the cut either. Nor did the classic satire Monkey Planet. *Yes, this is a blatent Pepsi-blue plug for We - if you love science fiction, if you love literature, if you love life - read this book! It's profound and poetic, and pulsating with the passion that living is suposed to be about. That was probably too many p's. Nevermind, he's a better writer, even in translation. Incidentally, if you are reading this book, pay attention to the translation. I actually prefer the somewhat formal and stilted 1924 version to the more recent translation. Though the recent one is suposed to be more true to the fluidity of Zamiatin's Russian, I found the formality of the older helped my overly-prosaic mind hold onto the sometimes overwhelming chaos of the events and imagery - perhaps there is something to be said for a balance between order and chaos...
  • tcooke@maths.adelaide.edu? Funny, my brother works there. We can get the skinny on this Zemyatin-ignorin', Huxley-excludin' fella if'n we need to!
  • No "Farmer in the Sky" by Heinlein?
  • Sorry that it isn't being updated anymore. This is worth a banana. And, I have to say, having recently fallen into a sci-fi kick [partly perpetuated by the time-travel Curious George Q I posted] that Gene Wolfe's Sun series (all 11 books of Suns: New, Long, and Short) are fantastic and deserve to be much much higher on that list. And I'm a big fan of Tigana myself, jb
  • We certainly is exceptional. Also, strangely, the list includes loads of Neil Gaiman stuff, but not the Sandman, which is, by far, his best work.
  • No list of books is ever entirely satisfactory, it seems. I am a huge SF enthusiast, and can quibble with all of these. Rating such dissimilar authors as Orwell and Bujold, one's personal bias/taste is bound to pop out. So I think any list ends up being peculiar to the particular list-maker. Nonetheless, it's always fascinating to see what other folk think is important. Thanks, timmus.
  • I have to agree with the #1 placement of G.R.R. Martin's incredible "Song of Ice and Fire" series. I am rereading it now, in prep for the fourth book to be released this year.