Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

This list is built from top 100 SF lists from several different web sites. Each list was scored, #1 = 100 points, #2 =99, etc., then combined & ranked. The result is a composite list that was intended to be a reading guide for SF classics. A number of these will fall into this group's universe of Hugo & Nebula nominees, but not all of them do. I'll put a spreadsheet version into the Google drive when I get a chance.

1 - Dune - Frank Herbert
2 - The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
3 - 1984 - George Orwell
4 - Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
5 - Neuromancer - William Gibson
6 - Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A Heinlein
7 - Childhood's End - Arthur C Clarke
8 - Ringworld - Larry Niven
9 - Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
10 - The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K Le Guin
11 - The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
12 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
13 - Hyperion - Dan Simmons
14 - Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C Clarke
15 - The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
16 - The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
17 - The Time Machine - H G Wells
18 - Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
19 - The Man in the High Castle - Philip K Dick
20 - A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M Miller
21 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick
22 - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells
23 - Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
24 - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A Heinlein
25 - Gateway - Frederik Pohl
26 - The Dispossessed - Ursula K Le Guin
27 - Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
28 - Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
29 - Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
30 - 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C Clarke
31 - Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
32 - A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
33 - The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester
34 - A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
35 - Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
36 - Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
37 - Ubik - Philip K Dick
38 - The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
39 - Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
40 - Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card
41 - Starship Troopers - Robert A Heinlein
42 - The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
43 - The Road - Cormac McCarthy
44 - Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
45 - The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
46 - The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov
47 - The Mote in God's Eye - Niven & Pournelle
48 - The Gods Themselves - Isaac Asimov
49 - Old Man's War - John Scalzi
50 - Startide Rising - David Brin
51 - To Your Scattered Bodies Go - Philip Jose Farmer
52 - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
53 - Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner
54 - The City and the Stars - Arthur C Clarke
55 - A Wrinkle In Time - Madeleine L'Engle
56 - The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
57 - The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
58 - More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon
59 - Way Station - Clifford Simak
60 - A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
61 - City - Clifford Simak
62 - Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne
63 - Altered Carbon - Richard K Morgan
64 - This Immortal - Roger Zelazny
65 - A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick
66 - Earth Abides - George R Stewart
67 - The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi
68 - Out of the Silent Planet - C S Lewis
69 - Roadside Picnic - Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
70 - The End of Eternity - Isaac Asimov
71 - The Door Into Summer - Robert A Heinlein
72 - Timescape - Gregory Benford
73 - Blood Music - Greg Bear
74 - The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
75 - Consider Phlebas - Iain M Banks
76 - I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
77 - The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
78 - Dhalgren - Samuel R Delany
79 - Mission of Gravity - Hal Clement
80 - The Fifth Head of Cerberus - Gene Wolfe
81 - The Space Merchants - Pohl & Kornbluth
82 - Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon
83 - Downbelow Station - C J Cherryh
84 - Tau Zero - Poul Anderson
85 - The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C Clarke
86 - Cyteen - C J Cherryh
87 - Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon
88 - Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg
89 - Double Star - Robert A Heinlein
90 - The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K Le Guin
91 - We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
92 - Cities in Flight - James Blish
93 - The Drowned World - J G Ballard
94 - To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis
95 - Barrayar - Lois McMaster Bujold
96 - Babel-17 - Samuel R Delany
97 - A Connecticut Yankee in KA's Court - Mark Twain
98 - Helliconia Spring - Brian Aldiss
99 - Grass - Sheri S Tepper
100 - Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler

Do the lists you pulled from exclude fantasy? I was surprised to see no Harry Potter (considering Hunger Games is on there) or Tolkien or GRRM.

Yes, this is definitely a SF, not SFF list. Also compiler by older fens I guess, not only 60s SF in the top-10, but as our January reading of #6 shows, it is not for everyone

I’ve read 82 of those. Guess I have a taste for that type of “classic.”

Stephen wrote: "I’ve read 82 of those. Guess I have a taste for that type of “classic.”"

I've read 80, you are ahead

Oleksandr wrote: "Yes, this is definitely a SF, not SFF list. Also compiler by older fens I guess, not only 60s SF in the top-10, but as our January reading of #6 shows, it is not for everyone"

Right on all counts: just SF, a bit older, not for everyone...but this was meant to be a broad survey. It was very informal & loose (not to mention very nerdy), just to give myself a reading guide. At the time, I hadn't even read half of the top 50! I think we can all agree that whether one considers them the "best" or not, they were famous, popular classics that made an impact on the genre. If I repeated this exercise today, I wonder how much it would change or if the sites I found would even be updated! Regarding Kalin's question, I wonder if I could do this for Fantasy as a genre. Might be fun to try.

I always like to check out top 100 lists, and I really like that this list is a compilation of those lists which, as you said, points the way to some great reads.

When I look at the list, the books I haven't read starts right at the top: I'm sad to say I've never read Dune. I know! I need to get to it! And while I haven't read the Foundation books, I have started reading the Robots series which will lead into reading the greater Foundation series. But 3-9 I've read.

I haven't read Le Guin's Hainish books (10 & 26), or Hyperion, or Canticle, or Red Mars, or Solaris - although I intend to get to them all - but otherwise I've read the rest of the top 43. So, 35 of 43 is pretty good, right?

But then through #65 it gets hit or miss for me - I haven't read the Vonnegut books at 44 and 56, Mote, The Gods Themselves, Startide Rising (although it's coming up in the next few months), the Verne books at 52 and 62, The Hunger Games or More Than Human. 13 of 22 is so-so.

The next 10 I've only read one: Roadside Picnic. FAIL*. And the last 25 is almost as bad**: 6 of 25 - I've read I Am Legend, Space Merchants, Fountains of Paradise, We, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and Barrayar.

Total read: 55 of 100. Need to hit the books.

EDIT: *I don't mean Roadside Picnic is a FAIL. Roadside Picnic is awesome - I gave it 5 stars. I mean I'm a FAIL for reading only one book out of 10 there.

ANOTHER EDIT: **These six are a real mixed bag for sure. Space Merchants is great (as is the sequel which didn't make this list), To Say Nothing of the Dog is really good, I Am Legend is good although dated, We is good from a historical perspective, Fountains of Paradise is forgettable and Barrayar is better never spoken of again.

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "Total read: 55 of 100. Need to hit the books...."

Quite a solid number. A few of the books you've mentioned were monthly reads here, so you may necropost there if you wish

I've read 74 of these books. Of the top 50, I've read 45.

BUT (and this is a big but) just because I've read a book doesn't mean I liked it. I seriously question some of the choices here. Like, there is only one Iain M. Banks book here, and it's Consider Phlebas? That's really not the best book in the Culture series! Use of Weapons, Player of Games or even Excession are much superior to it.

And really, Stranger in a Strange Land at #6? Even #106 would be far too high for that.

And while I appreciate that Parable of the Sower made it on the list, it really needs to be a lot higher than #100; top 20 at least.

And while Grass had some merits, it has no place on a top 100 list.

And.. (assume that I'll just keep going like this for couple of hours, at minimum).

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "Barrayar is better never spoken of again"

Oh man, this is a minority opinion in this group! I loved it, and I think basically everyone else who took part in the Vorkosigan challenge loved it too. Please do necropost on the Barrayar thread and expand there!

When I started, I had read only 24 of the top 50, and only 6 of the next 50 - 30/100, my whole reason for doing this! I attacked the top of the list first, and by the end of 2018, I had read another 30, 19 from the top 50. I hit the lower half hard in 2020 and read another 18. Today, having read #53-Stand On Zanzibar, #65-A Scanner Darkly, and #99-Grass in January, I'm down to the last 8:

#77-The Time Traveler's Wife
#78-Dhalgren
#80-The Fifth Head of Cerberus
#82-Last & First Men
#91-We
#92-Cities in Flight
#97-A Connecticut Yankee...
#98-Hellconia Spring

Antti wrote: "I seriously question some of the choices here. Like, there is only one Iain M. Banks book here, and it's Consider Phlebas? That's really not the best book in the Culture series!..."

True, some may not the "best", but again, these aren't MY choices, they're just lists from the net. I just wanted an objective list to work from - "objective" meaning that scoring several should work out some of the variation in choices. Not to mention that a different person would undoubtedly use a different methodology to build the composite.

I liked Consider Phlebas, but I agree that the next two were better. However, I wasn't familiar with the series at all then, so it introduced me to the series.

Allan wrote: "...again, these aren't MY choices, they're just lists from the net. I just wanted an objective list to work from..."

That's what I like about it. Those Top 100 lists are so subjective that it makes a lot of sense to MetaCritic them.

By the way, does the spreadsheet version have the rest of the books? The ones that didn't make the Top 100? That would also be fun to look at...

Oleksandr wrote: "RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "Total read: 55 of 100. Need to hit the books...."

Quite a solid number. A few of the books you've mentioned were monthly reads here, so you may necropost there if you..."

I may just do that when I get to them.

Antti wrote: "RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "Barrayar is better never spoken of again"

Oh man, this is a minority opinion in this group! I loved it, and I think basically everyone else who took part in the Vorko..."

Haha! I'll post my review link - I think it will answer a lot of questions: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I guess the critique of the list is our (SF) sub-culture version of the critique of The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom

Allan wrote: "True, some may not the "best", but again, these aren't MY choices, they're just lists from the net."

Yeah, I got that, this was just a similar knee-jerk reaction as when new Hugo nominees are announced: a bewilderment that so many fans could find certain works good and ignore others, which feel much superior to me.

It's the worst when you see a list like that, which has very many books I personally would've chosen, so it feels ALMOST right to me, which of course makes the odd choices feel even odder.

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "By the way, does the spreadsheet version have the rest of the books? The ones that didn't make the Top 100? That would also be fun to look at..."

It's not very organized, as I was doing it loosely on the fly, so it's hard to see exactly what I did. There are definitely some inconsistencies:
a) How do I treat books that are only on 1 list? (looks like I excluded those, but there appears to be a few exceptions - why those and not others?)
b) The Book of the New Sun was highly ranked on individual lists, but is not on the final. Did I exclude it because it's 4 books?
c) I have a few more ranked, but after that, nothing is ranked:
101-The Snow Queen
102-The Fall of Hyperion
103-Hothouse
104-The Postman
However, I can post a simple list of the excluded or unranked books.

The Unranked or Excluded (in alphabetical order):
1 - A Case of Conscience - James Blish
2 - A Deepness in the Sky - Vernor Vinge
3 - Air: Or Have or Not Have - Geoff Ryman
4 - Ammonite - Nicola Griffith
5 - Anathem - Neal Stephenson
6 - Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy - Jeff Vandermeer
7 - Battlefield Earth - L Ron Hubbard
8 - Beggars in Spain - Nancy Kress
9 - Behold The Man - Michael Moorcock
10 - Blindsight - Peter Watts
11 - Bring The Jubilee - Ward Moore
12 - China Mountain Zhang - Maureen F McHugh
13 - Citizen of the Galaxy - Robert A Heinlein
14 - Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
15 - Cry of the Wind - Sue Harrison
16 - Dangerous Visions - Harlan Ellison
17 - Eon - Greg Bear
18 - First & Last Men - Olaf Stapledon
19 - Flatland - Edwin A Abbott
20 - Have Space-Suit - Will Travel - Robert A Heinlein
21 - Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - James Tiptree, Jr.
22 - I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
23 - Ilium - Dan Simmons
24 - Inverted World - Christopher Priest
25 - Life During Wartime - Lucious Shepard
26 - Light - M. John Harrison
27 - Lilith's Brood - Octavia E. Butler
28 - Lucifer's Hammer - Niven & Pournelle
29 - No Enemy But Time - Michael Bishop
30 - Pavane - Keith Roberts
31 - Queen City Jazz - Kathleen Ann Goonan
32 - R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) - Karel Capek
33 - Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
34 - Red Rising - Pierce Brown
35 - Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds
36 - River of Gods - Ian McDonald
37 - Rogue Moon - Algis Budrys
38 - Sarah Canary - Karen Joy Fowler
39 - Schismatrix Plus - Bruce Sterling
40 - Slan - A E Van Vogt
41 - Sphere - Michael Crichton
42 - Spin - Robert Charles Wilson
43 - Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel
44 - Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
45 - Swastika Night - Katharine Burdekin
46 - Synners - Pat Cadigan
47 - Take Back Plenty - Colin Greenland
48 - Tales of the Dying Earth - Jack Vance
49 - Tau Zero - Poul Anderson
50 - The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton
51 - The Atrocity Exhibition - J.G. Ballard
52 - The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
53 - The Chrysalids - John Wyndham
54 - The City, Not Long After - Pat Murphy
55 - The Cyberiad - Stanislaw Lem
56 - The Death of Grass - John Christopher
57 - The Fabulous Riverboat - Philip Jose Farmer
58 - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - Claire North
59 - The Many-Colored Land - Julian May
60 - The Martian - Andy Weir
61 - The Player of Games - Iain M Banks
62 - The Reality Dysfunction - Peter F Hamilton
63 - The Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith
64 - The Skylark of Space - E.E. "Doc" Smith
65 - The Stainless Steel Rat - Harry Harrison
66 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K Dick
67 - The Wanderer - Fritz Lieber
68 - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells
69 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon
70 - Time Enough For Love - Robert A Heinlein
71 - Timescape - Gregory Benford
72 - Use of Weapons - Iain M Banks
73 - VALIS - Philip K Dick
74 - We Were Liars - E. Lockhart
75 - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang - Kate Wilhelm
76 - World War Z - Max Brooks
77 - Xenocide - Orson Scott Card

Very cool and there are some interesting books in here. I've read none of the four "just missed" books you listed. Of the unranked 77 I've read:

6 - Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy - Jeff Vandermeer
7 - Battlefield Earth - L Ron Hubbard
14 - Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
19 - Flatland - Edwin A Abbott
21 - Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - James Tiptree, Jr.
22 - I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
27 - Lilith's Brood - Octavia E. Butler (reading now, actually)
28 - Lucifer's Hammer - Niven & Pournelle (well...I got halfway into this but lost track of where I was when I started college and ended up abandoning it halfway through - I'll go back and re-read it someday)
33 - Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
34 - Red Rising - Pierce Brown (abandoned halfway through)
41 - Sphere - Michael Crichton
44 - Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
48 - Tales of the Dying Earth - Jack Vance
50 - The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton
60 - The Martian - Andy Weir
61 - The Player of Games - Iain M Banks
66 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K Dick
67 - The Wanderer - Fritz Lieber (also gave up halfway through)
68 - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells
76 - World War Z - Max Brooks
77 - Xenocide - Orson Scott Card

So that's 21 out of 77, or out of 81 if you include the "just missed" books. The stuff I missed is a nice "wish-list" of books I'll keep an eye out for.

I've read 38 of the 77 unranked plus 2 of the just missed. There are a fair number of H/N nominees on both lists, so keeping up with the group reading has helped check some of those off.

I was somewhat amazed yesterday when I counted up where I was in 2017, only 30/100 of these classics. What was I reading instead??. Looking back, I must've been in an "epic" trance. In the preceding years, I read all of Game of Thrones, the entire Wheel of Time series, Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy & a number of history tomes: Massie's Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War, Gilbert's Churchill: A Life, Keegan & the like. I really wish I'd done what Stephen did, tracking my reading from way back.

Only read 55 of the 100, and 15 of the 77. Need to lift my game

I started browsing a few lists of top fantasy books. I quickly discovered that because it’s a much older genre, lists are loaded with fairy tales & children’s/YA books. Other lists try to keep it more contemporary, cutting it off around 1960 or a few years earlier with Lord of the Rings. For this group, the latter would make much more sense, so I’ll have to filter existing lists ti have enough to work with. Another type of list is “favorites”, which tend to be much more current, and ignore most beyond the last ten years. I welcome ideas while I’m working with it.

Yesterday I read Esquire on Hugo 2023 debacle and in related articles, they have The 50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time and The 50 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. Both are much more current, but IMHO much more average books than in this list

Allan wrote: "...I’ll have to filter existing lists ti have enough to work with. Another type of list is “favorites”, which tend to be much more current, and ignore most beyond the last ten years. I welcome ideas while I’m working with it."

I would love to see a Metacritic-esque Top 100 Fantasy books list. I'd be OK with leaving the kid/YA books in and filtering the results later. I doubt every list would have the same kid/YA books except for the more well know like Harry Potter, etc. After all, The Hobbit was written as a childrens book. And we did include Hunger Games and Red Rising and even Wrinkle in Time in the SF list, which are all aimed at younger audiences.

True, I’ll pull some together and just see what I have. Some of the ones I was looking at go back to Le Morte D’Artur, The Arabian Nights, Mary Poppins & Alice in Wonderland. That’s why other lists had a cutoff around 1960. I’ll work with what I have though.

I don't remember exactly, but I've read somewhere a bit over 1/2 of that list. It's quite an interesting list, with alot of things I would expect to share the same fans. Thanks for sharing!

Came across a new "best of" list today in a July 2024 article in Esquire Magazine. It appears to be the author's attempt to mix some newer books into a more standard list. I hadn't heard of many of the newer ones, so I thought it was interesting. My library has most of them. Here's the list:

1 - Frankenstein - Mary Shelley - 1818
2 - Dune - Frank Herbert - 1965
3 - The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury - 1950
4 - The Fifth Season - NK Jemisin - 2015
5 - Kindred - Octavia E Butler - 1998
6 - The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K LeGuin - 1969
7 - Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro - 2005
8 - Exhalation - Ted Chiang - 2019
9 - Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel - 2014
10 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick - 1968
11 - The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu - 2015
12 - 1984 - George Orwell - 1949
13 - The Employees - Olga Ravn - 2022
14 - Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - 1932
15 - How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe - Charles Yu - 2015
16 - The Complete Robot - Isaac Asimov - 1982
17 - Childhood's End - Arthur C Clarke - 1953
18 - Roadside Picnic - Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - 1972
19 - The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut - 1959
20 - Shikasta - Doris Lessing - 2010
21 - Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson - 1992
22 - Hyperion - Dan Simmons - 1989
23 - Oryx & Crake - Margaret Atwood - 2007
24 - Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer - 2014
25 - Ammonite - Nicola Griffith - 1992
26 - Future Home of the Living God - Louise Erdrich - 2017
27 - 1Q84 - Haruki Murakami - 2011
28 - The Forever War - Joe Haldeman - 1974
29 - Dhalgren - Samuel R Delany - 1975
30 - In Ascension - Martin MacInnes - 2023
31 - The Stand - Stephen King - 1978
32 - Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie - 2013
33 - A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine - 2020
34 - The City & The City - China Mieville - 2009
35 - Radiance - Catherynne M Valente - 2015
36 - The Children of Men - PD James - 1992
37 - Engine Summer - John Crowley - 1979
38 - The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - Becky Chambers - 2016
39 - Zone One - Colson Whitehead - 2011
40 - Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir - 2021
41 - A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M Miller - 1959
42 - Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - 1979
43 - The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell - 1997
44 - The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester - 1956
45 - Neuromancer - William Gibson - 1984
46 - The Mountain in the Sea - Ray Nayler - 2022
47 - An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon - 2017
48 - The Body Scout - Lincoln Michel - 2021
49 - The Time Machine - H G Wells - 1895
50 - A Wrinkle In Time - Madeleine L'Engle - 1962
51 - Heinlein, Robert A. - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - 1967
52 - A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess - 1962
53 - Solaris - Stanislaw Lem - 1961
54 - Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky - 2015
55 - Rosewater - Tade Thompson - 2018
56 - The Resisters - Gish Jen - 2020
57 - This Is How You Lose the Time War - El-Mohtar/Gladstone - 2019
58 - Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny - 1967
59 - The Claw of the Conciliator - Gene Wolfe - 1982
60 - Excession - Iain M Banks - 1996
61 - Semiosis - Sue Burke - 2018
62 - The Book of Phoenix - Nnedi Okorafor - 2015
63 - What Mad Universe? - Frederic Brown - 1949
64 - Sea of Rust - C Robert Cargill - 2017
65 - Way Station - Clifford Simak - 1963
66 - Under the Skin - Michael Faber - 2012
67 - Contact - Carl Sagan - 1985
68 - Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker - 1937
69 - Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson - 1992
70 - Midnight Robber - Nalo Hopkinson - 2000
71 - The Ten Percent Thief - Lavanya Lakshminarayan - 2023
72 - Beautyland - Marie-Helene Bertino - 2024
73 - Redshirts - John Scalzi - 2012
74 - The Calculating Stars - Mary Robinette Kowal - 2019
75 - The Echo Wife - Sarah Gailey - 2021

Allan wrote: "Came across a new "best of" list today in a July 2024 article in Esquire Magazine. It appears to be the author's attempt to mix some newer books into a more standard list. I hadn't heard of many of..."

I've made some number-crunching and here are the results:
period # of books %of total
1800-1900 2 2.7
1901-1950 5 6.7
1951-1960 4 5.3
1961-1970 9 12.0
1971-1980 6 8.0
1981-1990 5 6.7
1991-2000 8 10.7
2001-2010 4 5.3
2011-2020 24 32.0
2021-2030 8 10.7

So, the compiler dares to suggest that almost 1/3 of the genre best are from a single decade and that almost half (48%) are from this century - as much as the last two centuries. Moreover, during 1950-2010 no clear improvement decade to decade, but then bang!

I don’t know, 2000 was quite a long time ago now. It makes sense that current readers would have a bias in favour of contemporary books. There’s just so much of the great older stuff I haven’t read that I tend to miss a lot of the newer books.

Oleksandr wrote: "So, the compiler dares to suggest that almost 1/3 of the genre best are from a single decade and that almost half (48%) are from this century ..."

Exactly my thought. It's like they just picked their favorites from an older list, tossed out the rest and then added their favorites from 2000-2024. However, as I searched the library for those newer ones, many of them sounded interesting & had been nominated for various awards - just not the awards we're used to looking at. I've read 48 of the 75; of the 27 I haven't read, 20 of them are newer, since 2000.

Stephen wrote: "It makes sense that current readers would have a bias in favour of contemporary books. There’s just so much of the great older stuff I haven’t read that I tend to miss a lot of the newer books. ..."

Another good point. Looking back, I spent much of 2018 and 2019 reading all the great classics I'd missed, as determined by my composite list research. But expanding to the greater H/N list gave me a huge deficit in older books. I've never been one to keep up with contemporary books, but this group & the new release group have raised my awareness. Even with that, many of these were new titles to me, albeit pretty decent ones. I plan to try filtering some of them into my reading in 2025.

The thing is, I have shelves of books I bought in the past that I want to get to, which increases my bias toward reading older books.

Stephen wrote: "The thing is, I have shelves of books I bought in the past that I want to get to, which increases my bias toward reading older books."

Yes!

Stephen wrote: "The thing is, I have shelves of books I bought in the past that I want to get to, which increases my bias toward reading older books."

My wife "supports" me reading & disposing of the physical books I have on my shelves!

A side note - is the list really top-75, not top-100?

Instead of working, I crunched more numbers, here is a table for 1975, 1987, 1998 Locus magazine best SF + the Esquire 2024 list from above

Allan wrote: "When I started, I had read only 24 of the top 50, and only 6 of the next 50 - 30/100,.."

Um, the posts are dated Feb 02, 2024, so, when was this thread actually started, please? Years ago?

Oleksandr wrote: "A side note - is the list really top-75, not top-100?"

It is just 75, oddly. I guess another 25 would have exceeded the length of article they wanted.

Cheryl wrote: "Um, the posts are dated Feb 02, 2024, so, when was this thread actually started, please? Year..."

That's when this thread was started, Feb 2, 2024. I built my composite list in 2017, but had never shared it until it came up in another thread & someone requested that I post it. Haven't made much progress on a fantasy best list though.

Oleksandr wrote: "Instead of working, I crunched more numbers, here is a table for 1975, 1987, 1998 Locus magazine best SF + the Esquire 2024 list from above..."

Although those earlier lists are shorter, it really looks like this new list attacks 50s SF in particular, and 60s not far behind. I have to think that a significant factor in eliminating those is a more contemporary representational perspective. 19 of 37 books from 2000 were written by women.

Allan wrote: "Although those earlier lists are shorter, it really looks like this new list attacks 50s SF in particular, and 60s not far behind. ."

In 1951-1960 they removed all Robert A. Heinlein, which is fine (I may grumble, but RAH had his share of success) but also what irks me they eliminated The Foundation Trilogy, Fahrenheit 451 and More Than Human, all three are important works

Oleksandr wrote: "Allan wrote: "Although those earlier lists are shorter, it really looks like this new list attacks 50s SF in particular, and 60s not far behind. ."
..."

The top 25 of the original list are foundational (pun intended) works that are tough to argue with. But you see authors like RAH, Card, Pohl, all of whom have had criticism for being less inclusive, removed.

Looks like they went with 1 work per author and chose The Complete Robot for Asimov, The Martian Chronicles for Bradbury, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The Clarke is Childhood’s End. I’d say all of these are arguable. Though I would say they picked the right Bradbury and Clarke, in the sense that those are my favourites by those authors. I do agree that More Than Human belongs there.

The choice of books from 2000 on is also of interest to me. Few of them are from the Hugo/Nebula lists. It might be an interesting exercise to see what we all think are the top 20-25 in the 25 years from 2000 to 2024.

Allan wrote: "The choice of books from 2000 on is also of interest to me. Few of them are from the Hugo/Nebula lists. It might be an interesting exercise to see what we all think are the top 20-25 in the 25 year..."

I'd say they were often included for greater diversity, e.g. 1Q84 or their message - like choosing Kindred over much more SF (and IMHO stronger) Parable of the Sower

Consider some obvious 2000+ omissions:
A Deepness in the Sky
Game of Thrones books 2 & 3
American Gods
Perdido Street Station
The Road
The Curse of Chalion/Paladin of Souls
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Old Man's War
Anathem/Seveneves
The Windup Girl
Embassytown
Uprooted

I’ve always thought KSR’s Aurora belonged on any list of important recent science fiction books.

I love this list and thank you all, but I have no time to peruse it now. Later, perhaps.

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: and Barrayar is better never spoken of again" . . .

Barrayar is one of my faves ever . . . just goes to show there is something for everyone out there