Science Fiction Blog

The final part of the SFX Book Meme, the top third of the list, a higher proportion of which I’ve actually read.

33. China Mieville
Drags fantasy kicking and screaming into the 21st century; and rejects the idea that fantasy worlds have to be pre-industrial; he combines high-fantasy magic with steampunk technology, and throws in a good dollop of horror into the mix, giving something that feels truly exotic. His biggest fault is that he gets a bit preachy at times, which can get annoying if you don’t share his hard-left politics.

32. Raymond E. Feist
Another writer of ‘Extruded Fantasy Product’ – I’ve only read a couple of his books, but they’re so D&D that you can even work out when characters went up levels.

30. Roger Zelazny
The man responsible for the Amber cult. Actually I thought his “Lord of Light” was a better book, although the whole ‘god-like characters who lord it over mere mortals’ genre doesn’t do a lot to me; it’s too munchkiny. I prefer to see such characters as the villians of the story.

27. William Gibson
One of the few science fiction authors who’s writing has changed the real world. Had he not written “Neuromancer”, you might not be reading this.

25. CS Lewis
The first two of his “grownup” SF novels, “Out of the Silent Planet” and “Perelandra” still hold up as theology-based fantasies, although I have to say the final volume, “That Hideous Strength” is rather silly.

24. Diana Wynne Jones
The only book of hers I’ve read is the satirical non-fiction “Tough Guide to Fantasyland”, which parodies all the clichés of Extruded Fantasy Product.

23. John Wyndham
“Triffids!”. I have a feeling I read that at school, which would make him one of the first SF author I ever read.

20. Stephen King
I’ve only read “The Shining”, and liked the way it was deliberately vague as to whether or not the place was really haunted, or whether it was all in the minds of the characters. I really need to read “The Stand”, see as I played in David “Amadán” Edelstein’s online game

19. Ray Bradbury
Not read much of him, but what I have read was good.

18. Arthur C. Clarke
An author I first encountered in an English lesson at school, with the short story “The Nine Billion Names of God” – with one of the most memorable final lines in fiction, Of the writers of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of SF, I think he was the greatest.

17. Robert Jordan
I suppose I have to count him as an author I’ve read, even though I only lasted 150 pages into the first volume of his interminable (and never finished) Extruded Fantasy Product “Wheel of Time” saga.

15. Robert Heinlein
The one and only author who’s caused me to hurl one of his books across the room in disgust. The reason I loved Paul Verhoeven’s film of “Starship Troopers” is that it mercilessly satirised the dreadful politics of that book, and managed to piss off all those noxious right-wing geeks that worship Heinlein in the process.

14. Frank Herbert
“Dune” is an absolute classic every SF fan must read. The sequels are not so good; “God Awful of Dune” is so-called for a very good reason.

13. Peter F. Hamilton
I read the “Reality Dysfunction”, the first of his series that started off as space opera then turned into supernatural horror. Although entertaining, I never got round to reading the rest of the series.

11. Ursula K. LeGuin
“The Dispossessed” and “The Left Hand of Darkness” are two of the best soft-SF novels ever written.

9. HG Wells
I used to work in Woking, a town whose main claim to fame was that the place got trashed in “War of the Worlds”. There’s even a full-sized model of a Martian tripod in the shopping centre. I wish someone would finally make a big-budget film that actually set the story in the 1890s Britain of Wells’ novel rather than insisting on relocating the thing to present-day America.

8. Philip K. Dick
I’m guessing a lot of people know Dick through the Hollywood adaptations like “Blade Runner” and “Total Recall”. But do go and read some the original books; there’s far more in there than can be fitted into a two hour action movie.

7. Iain M. Banks
Anyone else think the opening chapters of the first Culture novel, “Consider Phlebas” reads like a Traveller adventure with a particularly sadistic GM? Banks, more than anyone else, is responsible for reviving the genre of space opera, which had become more or less moribund. Most of his non-SF novels (the non-M ones) are worth reading too.

6. Isaac Asimov
Another author I first encountered at school, with his first novel “Pebble in the Sky”, very much one of his lesser works. Like a lot of “Golden Age” SF, a lot of his 40s and 50s writing is rather dated now. Personally I think “The End of Eternity” is his best book.

5. George R.R. Martin
Many people rave about his “Fire and Ice” saga, but I’m afraid the first volume rather left me cold, and I didn’t go on to read any more. It’s a series allegedly based on the English wars of the roses, but all the characters seem to be lifted straight out of American soap opera. Ugh.

4. Douglas Adams
I thought the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series consisted of two great books, one ok-ish one, and two pretty terrible ones you can tell he didn’t really want to write. The Dirk Gently books were rather better.

3. Neil Gaiman
Only read two-and-a-half books of his, the half being “Good Omens” co-written by Terry Pratchett. The other two were “Neverwhere”, which was the novelisation of the TV script, and American Gods, which has been slated by two bloggers I know as anti-American, and grossly sexist.

2. J.R.R. Tolkien
Difficult to find anything to say about Tolkien that hasn’t already been said, except that he cannot be blamed for the Extruded Fantasy Product that followed in his wake.

1. Terry Pratchett
After nearly 30 books, the most recent Diskworld novels are still far better than anything that far into a series have any right to be. Personally, I don’t care for the Rincewind novels myself, and consider the Witches and Guards books to be my favourites.

Next part of the SFX Book Meme

66. Harry Harrison
Another of those prolific authors of whom I’ve only read a few possibly atypical books – The darkly satirical “Bill the Galactic Hero” is of course the other necessary counter to Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”.

63. Dan Simmons
Only read SF, rather than his horror, but you can still tell he started out as a horror writer. Some genuinely far-out ideas.

59. Stephen Baxter
See #66. Only novel of his I’ve read is the H.G.Wells homage, The Time Ships. Fine Victorian romp, but no idea whether that’s typical of his work or not.

56. C.J. Cherryh
I’ve read quite a lot of her novels over the years; just about everything is pretty solid old-school space opera. If you play Traveller, you’re probably already a Cherryh fan.

52. J.G. Ballard
“Crash”. It’s completely sick. Never read anything else of his.

49. H.P. Lovecraft
Iä! Iä! Squamous and rugose! Technically his work is dark, twisted science-fiction rather than horror, although he’s been hugely influential in the horror genre. Despite his god-awful prose style a lot of his stories are still very powerful; especially the way he didn’t base his horrific entities on any real-world mythology, but made up his own myths.

48. Mervyn Peake
I read the first two Gormenghast books many years ago, but never got round to reading the third. When the BBC adapted it for TV, half the characters reminded me of gamer friends of mine. Not sure what that says.

45. Neal Stephenson
I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by him, but I do get the feeling that some of his recent books are too long by a third, and could have done with a more aggressive editor. Favourite is “The Diamond Age”, although nothing much can top that opening chapter from “Snow Crash”.

41. Kurt Vonnegut
The only book I’ve read of his is “Slaughterhouse 5″.

39. Michael Moorcock
I’ve read a lot of his self-confessed trashy throwaway sword-and-sorcery novels, some of which are better than books written over the course of a single weekend have any right to be. I really ought to read some of his more serious ‘literary’ works.

38. David Eddings
The epitome of hack. The sort of interminable and interchangeable fantasy sagas churned out by him and others has been dubbed “Extruded Fantasy Product”.

36. Orson Scott Card
Quite enjoyed “Ender’s Game” and read a couple of other books of his, nothing special.

35. Stephen Donaldson
Angst! Doubt! Self-loathing! Thesaurus Swallowing! Actually, forget the Thomas Covenant sagas, and read “Mordant’s Need” instead, it’s actually quite good.

34. Gene Wolfe
At his best, no author can touch him. I can’t think of any other author whose best work (The Book of the New Sun) I’ve read four times. At his best he can create alien worlds so vivid, he actually takes you there. Sometimes he can be frustrating, in that everything you read is from the viewpoint of his first-person narrator, and when that character has no idea what’s going on, neither should the reader.

Continuing the Book Meme, the bottom third of the list.

100. James Herbert
Oh dear. Juvenile hack horror I read back when I was young and stupid. I suppose he’s not quite as bad as the awful Guy N Smith.

97. Charles Stross
Definitely a current favourite. I first came into contact with Stross’s work through the world of blogging, and since then I’ve been on a major Stross binge over the past 18 months. First one I read was “Accellerando” a couple of years back, and his imagination was so overwhelmingly powerful it gave me a sort of mental vertigo. He’s far more than a one-trick pony; he’s done near-future conspiracy (Halting State), parallel-worlds fantasy (The Merchant Princes series), so-called “New Space Opera” (Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise) and surreal black comedy (The Atrocity Archives).

95. Brian W. Aldiss
I’ve found his 60s “new wave” work rather uneven, but his later “Helliconia” trilogy remains one of the best examples of SF worldbuilding I’ve read.

94. Ken MacLeod
I think I’ve read most of what he’s published. I loved his first couple of books, but felt he’d got into a bit of a rut, writing books that were entertaining at the time, but tended repeat the same tropes book after book. And he tends to wear his libertarian-socialist politics on his sleeve at times. But his last two, the first-contact story “Learning the World”, and the very dark near future “Execution Channel”, seem to show him breaking out of that rut.

93. Olaf Stapledon
Only read his two best-known books, “First and Last Men” and “Star Maker”. Chilly, and rather dated. I can’t imagine anyone writing a novel today with no real characters and no dialogue whatsoever.

91. Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Read his Arabesque trilogy plus “Stamping Butterflies”. Intriguing cyberpunky stuff, often quite complexly plotted.

90. Christopher Priest
“Inverted World”. One book that’s given me actual nightmares, which I put down to compellingly good writing.

86. M. John Harrison
Only read “Pastel City”, which for some reason I could never really get into.

84. Kim Stanley Robinson
Only read the Mars Trilogy; entertaining hard-SF read although I wonder how on earth some of the flakier characters managed to get past the sort of psychological tests that would be needed to get on a manned Mars mission.

80. Joe Haldeman
“The Forever War” is the necessary counter to Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”

78. George Orwell
“And they looked from man to pig, and from pig to man….”

75. Julian May
I loved her Pliocene Exiles saga, felt the ‘prequel’ Intervention series was a bit forced, and found her next one (for which I can’t even remember the name) very disappointing. I’m forced to conclude this is a writer who peaked early.

73. Robert Silverberg
I’ve only read a couple of his later works, which I get the impression are a bit more lightweight than his earlier books.

70. Larry Niven
I read a lot of his ‘known space’ novels at an impressionable age. Good scientific and engineering ideas but flawed by embarrasingly wooden characterisation and poor plotting. Good at ideas, not so good at telling stories.

69. Alfred Bester
Read his 50s classics, “Tiger! Tiger!” and “The Demolished Man”, and they’re both good.

67. Jack Vance
Quite possibly my favourite author. I love his mannered prose style, and the way he seems to paint pictures with words. The epitome of ‘soft SF’, concerned with cultures and societies rather than mechanics of how spaceships work; his starships are plot devices to transports the characters to exotic worlds and the baroque cultures that exist there.

The Ministry of Information has picked up the lastest meme doing the rounds, which is to copy SFX Magazine’s list of top science fiction and fantasy authors, list the ones you’ve read, and say a few words on each.

I’ll do this one in several parts, starting with a list of those authors I’ve not actually read, and haven’t really got anything to say about. In most cases I do recognise the name, and one or two are on my ‘to read’ list.

99. Gwyneth Jones
98. Sara Douglass
96. Terry Goodkind
92. Michael Marshall Smith
89. Jonathan Carroll
88. Scott Lynch
87. David Weber
85. Jacqueline Carey
83. Theodore Sturgeon
82. J.V. Jones
81. Joe Abercrombie
79. Simon Clark
77. Samuel R. Delany
76. Charles de Lint
74. Edgar Rice Burroughs
72. Susanna Clarke
71. Stanislaw Lem
68. Katherine Kerr
65. Marion Zimmer Bradley
64. Richard Matheson
62. Elizabeth Haydon
61. Terry Brooks
60. Richard Morgan
58. Jennifer Fallon
57. Mercedes Lackey
55. Harlan Ellison
54. Jasper Fforde
53. Octavia Butler
51. Robert E. Howard
50. Sherri S. Tepper
47. Jules Verne
46. Alastair Reynolds
44. Clive Barker
43. Jim Butcher
42. Tad Williams
40. Trudi Canavan
37. Alan Moore
31. Lois McMaster Bujold
29. Anne McCaffrey
28. Steven Erikson
26. Guy Gavriel Kay
22. Philip Pullman
21. Robin Hobb
16. J.K. Rowling
12. David Gemmell
10. Robert Rankin

There are a couple of them I recognise from quotes – Theodore Sturgeon is known for Sturgeon’s Law, which states that 90% of everything is rubbish, and this applies across all genres, and presumably all media. And Mercedes Lackey gave the famous quote “Clichés are useful shorthand for readers”. I parsed this to read “Don’t bother to read her books, you’ll find them clichéd”.

Arthur C Clarke was buried today.

Of the trinity of golden-age science-fiction writers (the other two being Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein), I believe he was the greatest of them all, and it’s his writing that’s stood the test of time the best. His style to me was the very definition of “Hard SF” with completely believable physics and engineering, often centre-stage as important elements of the plot, yet still populated by human characters. And he lived long enough to see many of the technological marvels he wrote about come reality.

One of the greats indeed.

This week’s meme comes via Dorothea Salo’s Caveat Lector

Below is a Science Fiction Book Club list most significant SF novels between 1953-2006. The meme part of this works like so: Bold the ones you have read, strike through the ones you read and hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put a star next to the ones you love.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien *
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov Like a lot of ‘Golden Age’ SF, this one has dated badly, and is nowhere near Asimov’s best work. Ignore the flatulent 80s sequels like the plague.
3. Dune, Frank Herbert * Just read the original novel. Ignore the terminably dull sequels.
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson * Notable for having changed the real world, in that it caught the imagination of some of the people that went on to create the Internet. Were it not for this book, you might not be reading this.
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick *
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe * I find Wolfe frustrating. Some of his work, such as this one, are utterly compelling. Other’s I’ve really struggled with.
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.*
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov *
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett. I found this quite amusing at the time, although it pales by comparison to later Discworld novels. I’ve never emphasised much with Rincewind as a character, and later Rincewind novels are by far the weakest Discworld books.
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson. Danger! Hazardous leak of long words following explosion at thesaurus factory! Quite possibly the worst prose this side of E. Gary Gygax. And that’s before we start on the utterly dislikeable protagonist.
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin *
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny. Agree with Dorothea, Ãœbermenchen lording over mere mortals doesn’t do it for me. And I don’t care much for Amber either.
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick * Rivals Keith Robert’s Pavane as the gold standard for alternate-history novels.
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven. Probably Niven’s best, in that the central ideas are strong enough that you don’t notice that Niven can’t really do either characters or plots.
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson Still a good book even if nothing can top that incredible first chapter.
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein Ugh. This is the only book I’ve ever thrown across the room in disgust. Reading it was like being stuck in a lift with Norman Tebbit. On the other hand, I loved Paul Verhoeven’s movie adaptation precisely because it trashed Heinlein’s awful book and royally pissed off all the crypto-fascist SF geeks that worship the book.
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock Black Blade! Forged a million, billion years ago!
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer