Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/1874

I thought I was going to have a really great number since out of the top 12 I'd only missed 3 (Brave New World, Slaughterhouse Five, Ender's Game).

But as it went along there were fewer and fewer till I ended up with only 23. To be fair, I don't usually read the really new stuff, especially if it's an incomplete series so things like Gideon the Ninth I will read one day, just not yet.

Interestingly there were a few I hadn't even heard of before, so that made the list a bit more interesting rather than just a "yeah, yeah I know, it's already on my TBR list, let me quit my job and I'll have time to get around to it..." :)

Twelve. A lot of "hey I should read that one day" on here!

40.

I don't typically read a lot of the classics these days, but I ready a bunch in school and then went through a phase. A couple others I have and just haven't read them (Hyperion, Children of time, Parable of the Sower, Seveneves) because yes, job, responsibilities. BAH

I'm impressed that both of Ted Chiang's short story collections are on the list, but given that his second collection is excellent, I guess I'm not surprised.

Also, agreed about the collection. I'm surprised Sylvan Neuvel's Sleeping Giants is on there because I didn't think anyone had heard of it. Likewise Severence by Ling Ma didn't make a huge splash as far as I'm aware and was published by a different subgroup of McMillan than Tor.

Started off strong but ended with only 17 lol Many are still on my tbr, but also quite a few of my favourites are not on the list. But that's always the way of it.

I also found it weird to see Octavia Butler's Kindred on there since it's not really sci-fi (even by Butler's own words) so much as dark fantasy/historical fiction. There isn't any sci-fi aspect to the time travel. It's meant to be mysterious and more fantasy-esque. Just strange that pretty much her most sci-fi books ever (Xenogenesis) were missing while Kindred was in there.

LOL, I've only read 7 of them. Not surprised, honestly, because I tend to avoid or dislike the popular stuff.

How do they actually choose the books on there, though?

I was pleasantly surprised to see Wool by Hugh Howey on the list.

16.5. It will be 17 when I finish Hyperion.

81.
85 if seeing the movie version counts :)
Dang, I'm old.

I was curious why Ancillary Sword was listed but the 1st book in the series, Ancillary Justice, isn't. Book 1 has twice as many ratings (the ratings differ by 0.08).

11.

22 and plenty more on the way!

40. Haha. I didn't expect that. I was really happy to see Ted Chiang's collections on here, his books touched me in a way I never expected. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Wool by Hugh Howey and Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuval. Some of these I'd never heard of and put on my want to be read shelf though! :)

I've read 82, about the same as G33z3r. (I'm old, too.) With the exception of The Collapsing Empire, I have no plans to read the rest. Thanks to groups like this one, I've heard of them & have decided they're not for me.

To create our list, we ran the data to reveal the most reviewed books on our site. Additionally, each title needed at least a 3.5-star rating from your fellow readers to join this list. And, since science fiction is known for its continuing voyages, in the case of multiple titles from the same series, we chose the one with the most reviews.

So it's based on number of reviews + high-ish ratings. And then for a series they picked the one with most reviews. Interesting that the first book in a series wouldn't get the most reviews, after all if someone hated it they would review and the not keep reading, usually reviews drop as a series progresses as people lose interest in the series. But maybe one book just really stands out so much that people just have to post a positive review when they normally wouldn't post at all.

Still, given I haven't heard of some of them, either I'm out of the loop or there is a very vocal subgroup posting reviews on some of the newer books. I mean they haven't been out long enough to have the number of reviews and older book would have.

H.G. Wells has three books on that list, guess I really, really need to get around to reading those. I even have nice Folio Society versions of them. One day...

I decided to do another count, how many books do I own that I haven't read yet off that list, got 22 (3 of them were free from Tor)

I've read 54 of those, and probably half of the others are on my TBR list. Maybe my reading theme for next year should be "something from a best of list"?

Andrea wrote: "Still, given I haven't heard of some of them, either I'm out of the loop or there is a very vocal subgroup posting reviews on some of the newer books. I mean they haven't been out long enough to have the number of reviews and older book would have...."

It occurred to me that there's a bias in the "reviews" count to newer stuff. E.g., when I joined GR I had already read a lot of books. I scanned the books on my bookshelf (and entered a lot of them manually since they pre-dated the bar codes) to catalog them, but I didn't write reviews of books I'd read before. So if you were to assemble "top 100" from my reviews, you'd miss a lot of good books. As GR's membership has grown, the reviews list comprises super-classics plus newer popular stuff, leaving a valley that consumes popular but older books.

I am curious about the books eliminated due to a less than 3.5 rating, implying there are some bad books that a lot of people still read.

I also added a lot of books I'd read when I first joined. I sorted the SF books I have shelved here (942) & started scrolling down. I got all the way to about 900 before I found a book with an average rating lower than 3.5. While I rated some of those higher, I don't think any of them should have made a top 1000 list, much less 100. Of course, I feel that way about quite a few of the books on the current list, too. Red Rising, Oryx and Crake, & Redshirts were all good, but not top 100 material. The Road & Never Let Me Go were awful & were done far better elsewhere.

G33z3r wrote: "I am curious about the books eliminated due to a less than 3.5 rating, implying there are some bad books that a lot of people still read."

That would be kind of a cool list to see. We also get the "best of" but never the "worst of" :) And the fact it has a lot of reviewers would filter out the self-published stuff they couldn't even bother to run through a spellcheck. Though seeing the worst professionally published book (from one of the big publishers) could be interesting too.

39

I still don't get why Redshirts is so highly regarded.

Book Nerd wrote: "I still don't get why Redshirts is so highly regarded."

I think for the same reason Ready Player One and Among Others are well thought of: to borrow Jo Walton's phrase, a love letter to fandom. SF fans love their own. :)

A grand 14. And of those that I've read, I hated five of them and loved eight of them. There were also a couple of DNFs outside of the 14, that I don't count as "read".

52 so far. Kurt Vonnegut has been on my "should read" list for so long and i've never gotten around to it. He has so many books on there. Also the worst book i've ever read made that list, ha.

Brendan wrote: "Also the worst book i've ever read made that list, ha."

Out of curiosity which one was that?

RP1

I've read 37, many of them not included on my Read list - I thought about entering all the books on my shelves when I joined GR, but it is a job that has been put into the "I'll get around to it someday" list :)

Interesting that the top 5 books on the list are all dystopian.

I've read 31, some of them so long ago that I don't even have them on my Good Reads read list. And some of them I did not think very highly of.

G33z3r wrote: "Book Nerd wrote: "I still don't get why Redshirts is so highly regarded."

I think for the same reason Ready Player One and Among Others are well thought of: to borrow Jo Walton's phrase, a love letter to fandom. SF fans love their own. :)"
It was more just cashing in on fandom. There are trek episodes that poke fun at trek tropes better than that book did.

Anyway I have 16 of the top 20. This list seems way more skewed toward sci-fi.
I have to read Kurt Vonnegut and Octavia Butler and I still have to get to the Hyperion series.

Book Nerd wrote: "This list seems way more skewed toward sci-fi...."

I'm not understanding this. It's a list of SF books.

Jim wrote: "Book Nerd wrote: "This list seems way more skewed toward sci-fi...."

I'm not understanding this. It's a list of SF books."

Ah, that would explain it. I thought it was Sci-fi and fantasy.

Book Nerd wrote: "Ah, that would explain it. I thought it was Sci-fi and fantasy."

That would be an interesting, but they're apples & oranges with a lot of hybrids. I'd really like to see a list of the hybrids. They're some of my favorite. Zelazny wrote a lot.

Hmmm they did one also for fantasy here: https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/1875

Honestly looking through that "most popular 100 fantasy books on GR" list...it seems my tastes really run counter to this list. A lot of new books on there of the last few years that I'm not really interested in. Which isn't me saying that I don't read "new" fantasy. I definitely do. Just many of the ones on that list, I haven't felt particularly compelled to read. Plus many of my favourites of the last decade not on there either.

I read 35 off of the fantasy list, not surprising there were more since that's more my genre. Although even there I found some I've never heard of before.

I've got about another 25 if I count the ones I own but haven't read yet. Some of the covers weren't the ones I recognized though so that made the count kind of tricky at a quick glance :)

18 of the fantasy ones for me, but I loved a lot more of them! I like most of my covers a lot better than the ones they showcased, though.

I've only read 17 of these I should step up my game.

39 + currently reading Soulless! So the same-ish as scifi. how fun.

Some I couldn't remember if I had read, as they were pre-goodreads.

I've read 48 science fiction and 30 fantasy.

G33z3r wrote: "It occurred to me that there's a bias in the "reviews" count to newer stuff. E.g., when I joined GR I had already read a lot of books. I scanned the books on my bookshelf (and entered a lot of them manually since they pre-dated the bar codes) to catalog them, but I didn't write reviews of books I'd read before. So if you were to assemble "top 100" from my reviews, you'd miss a lot of good books. As GR's membership has grown, the reviews list comprises super-classics plus newer popular stuff, leaving a valley that consumes popular but older books."

Great point. This is true for me as well. When I joined I spent a few minutes clicking through and adding books I had read before, but they were only ones that were big/popular or that I remembered well. I didn't review them. In fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't give a star-rating either to many of them because it had been too long and I didn't feel like I could give an accurate rating. (It's hard to do that even with something I've just finished!)

I've read 14 of the fantasy ones, though there were a couple of others that I DNFd and a couple that I wasn't sure about... may have read them ages ago and forgotten about it.

I only have 20 of the fantasy books.
I've never gotten around to reading Watership Down. And I'd like to get into Harry Dresden(only read Storm Front so far).

Only 31 and one DNF for me. Popular fantasy isn't really my thing.

Only 59 of the fantasy list, considerably less than the 81 from the scifi list. I notice Dragonflight is on the fantasy list, which explains its absence from the scifi list.

I’ve read 13 from the science fiction list but many already marked TBR. Similar on the fantasy list — I’ve read 18 but have many more on my TBR shelves.

I've read 20 of the fantasy list, but I generally read more sci-fi than fantasy. I also have another 15 or 16 on my TBR list.

Interesting to see The Hobbit ahead of Lord of the Rings - that's not usually the case. It's also not common to see The Silmarillion so high on the list.

There are some omissions that surprised me - no Elric, no Conan.

I'm missing some of the really epic series since they are so long I've been daunted to get into them - Shannara, Wheel of Time, Sword of Truth, even Elric though that's not nearly so long and the books are small. Maybe one year I should make that one year's reading theme, pick like 3-4 of those insanely long series and just work my way through them. But that would kind of lack in variety...and be REALLY hard to do the BINGO challenge :D

Andrea wrote: "Shannara, Wheel of Time, Sword of Truth, even Elric though that's not nearly so long and the books are small."

I think all of those books are relatively small compared to the popular fantasy epics of today! The series aren't quite so daunting if you judge them by word count, I think. But Elric is some of the best fantasy I've ever read.

Word counts of popular fantasy & SF series

Read 12 of the SF and 40 of the fantasy. Interesting gaps - can’t imagine Harry Potter is unpopular.

I've read about half the fantasy, with a few DNFs in the count. I count them because it means I know something of the story & how it is written. Usually steers me clear of similar books by the author so I don't waste more of my time. Again, I didn't see much I thought I'd like to read, but I'm not reading nearly as much fiction now. Today's science has surpassed the SF of my youth & I'm finding a lot of history is stranger than the fantasy. Odd world. Interesting times.

28 of the sci fi
More on the TBR, but others I'm not interested in.

32 fantasy with quite a few on the TBR. One DNF and several on the No-Thanks shelf.

Yeah (to the comments about lists being biased towards new books, and 'best' being very relative); some of the big, 'most popular' ones tend to be things I've never been interested in, while my favourites are often not on such lists. I think it comes down, of course, to personal taste... which is so personal... and people getting on the bandwagon of 'cult' books or ones that become huge successes, like Harry Potter, regardless of how truly good they are. I prefer my individual tastes, because I can depend on them to lead me to books I really enjoy, which are good quality (to my mind). I find that hype is often just that.

Having said that, I've read 12 of the top 100 fantasy list, with several of those being among my favourites; so there is some good taste there! :D
Only 4 of the 100 SF, though (Animal Farm - under duress at school; eye-opening but so depressing; Ender's Game, Dune, and The Long Earth). I didn't really love any of them, either, although they were well-written. SF is not my fave genre, so it makes sense. I do have some faves in it, but they're not in the list - Stephen Lawhead's 2 (or 3?) SF books, for example. I did really like The Martian movie, though, but haven't read the book and wouldn't - SF is more something I enjoy in a movie - and some of those are among my favourites.

Tamara wrote: "...Animal Farm - under duress at school ..."

I recommend trying to reread some of those books again. Damn English teachers for ruining them by making us read them too early! Even when I struggled through them, I just didn't get them, but did later on & found them fantastic.

Whoa...only 17 from the SF list, and surprisingly only 15 from the Fantasy list. I have a lot of reading to do. I also find it interesting that there are a greater percentage of 'old' (generally regarded as 'classic') SF books on the list and a lot of the Fantasy ones are newer.

23 from sci-fi and 45 from the fantasy list. I'm pleasantly surprised I've read so many sci-fi and not at all surprised by the fantasy considering its my fave genre!