Not Another Best Of SF List!

Yup:

http://www.abebooks.com/books/features/50-essential-science-fiction-books.shtml

From the intro: "Science fiction is the most discussed and argued-over genre in literature..." (Hey! Sound like someone's been visiting Science Fiction Fans!)

Seriously - the link is worth checking out for the lovely vintage book covers alone. 8)

Those are some awesome covers.

Sorry, but I've got to disagree. Most of those covers are highly unattractive, which is partially why I collect modern--and, preferably, hyper-modern--first editions.

It would be boring if we all like the same type of art.

So true.

Edit: So, after writing the above, I went to C.S. Harris' website to see when her next mystery was due, and on her blog she had the obligatory blog roll, and I noticed one called "Grumpy Old Bookman" and I thought I'd see how his grumpiness matched up with my middle-age irritations. Well, his blog had this link to the making of a book cover, which is some sort of eerie coincidence, but it was well worth watching:
http://www.ted.com/talks/chip_kidd_designing_books_is_no_laughing_matter_ok_it_i...

>5 bookstothesky:

Thank you very much for posting that link; Chip Kidd is a hero of mine. 8)

>6 artturnerjr:

You're very welcome.

some classics there for sure, and many of those covers I have or have read. Great stuff. I love the quote "just the tip of the spaceberg"

I also thought it was cool that our favorite website (i.e., this one) got a shout-out in the intro. :)

>8 sf_addict: At least they called it "essential books" rather than "best books" -- which are almost always lists composed with no specific criteria -- and not even professional science fiction historians and critics have read the whole genre.

I thought it was rather pedestrian. Ian Sales has a more interesting list on his blog with links to 2 others that were compiled in tandem:

http://iansales.com/2013/01/28/ians-50-essential-sf-novels-part-1/
http://iansales.com/2013/01/29/ians-50-essential-sf-novels-part-2/

>11 justifiedsinner:

I don't know. To me, it's sort of less about the lists themselves than the spirit in which they are made. Have you ever read High Fidelity? Do you remember the "Top Five" game that the guys that worked at the record store played? It's what we see going on here, except it's with SF books instead of records and musicians. It's sort of like the geek version of cutting heads (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cutting%20heads). It's also harmless, entertaining, and occasionally motivates folks to check writers of merit that they may not have otherwise.

I've never seen a list of top 50 or so that I would agree with. Has anyone other than the original author of such a list? The abe list is less disagreeable than most, so perhaps it is pedestrian, but there is a lot of stuff I wouldn't include on an essential list, although I don't see any books I'd throw into the trash either (although Starship Troopers does not belong on an essential list, does it?). Viewing Ian's list it is certainly more provocative, with many more books I am unfamiliar with and hence don't know how essential they are. To Ian's credit, he doesn't include books he hasn't read, so it is his personal essential list. My own list would be quite different than either abe or Ian if I too was to stick to only books I had read. Because of that requirement I am not sure a single person could put together such a list of true "essentials". Looking thru Ian's top 50 I would likely also include "The Time Machine", "A Princess of Mars", "1984", "The Stars My Destination", "Dune", and "Red Mars". That is only 6 out of 50. Both lists include certain books that are stepping stones in the development of science fiction. Does that make them essential?

My other problem is that it has been too long since I've read certain books such as Gateway or Ringworld that I might include.

as >12 artturnerjr: notes, the lists are entertaining. I refrain from holding them harmless tho ;)

I think rather than calling such things "essentials" that a better term would be recommended.

ETA: both of the alternate lists linked to Ian's include some interesting and good books as well. For example, The Man in the High Castle would have a place on my recommended list.

The word "essential" is probably not the best one to use, but we used it because that's what abebook's called their list. As for my choices, I picked books that I think are good (mostly) and show the breadth of sf - including the stuff that usually gets ignored, like feminist utopian fiction. Even so, none of the three of us did especially well in terms of diversity - our lists individually contained less white males than abebooks' list, but not by that much.

No list is gonna appease everyone, its impossible as we're all different. So either such lists are pointless or harping on about not liking half the books listed is!

no, the lists are not pointless. neither is a certain amount of harping. Ian has a strong dislike of Asimov so he didn't include any. For me, in my development as a science fiction reader, both the Foundation Trilogy and The Gods Themselves (imo Asimov's best novel) were essential to me. I learned from them and moved forward. I think that is why we see things like Foundation show up. It was part of the growth of many readers (and writers) that would lead to stuff like the Dune duo or trilogy (and also Star Wars, maybe not so good). There is also a nostalgia effect but for me that doesn't detract from the importance of a work in the advancement of the genre.

If I made such a list (it is slightly tempting) I would probably include M A Foster's Gameplayers of Zan. I'd also put Steakley's "Armor" in as early military SF much moreso that Starship Troopers.

Lists that leave out authors who were primarily shorter fiction writers like Alice Sheldon (Tiptree) probably leaves a significant hole as well.

FWIW, I love "best of" book lists. I almost always find a title to put on the list that I take with me to the used book shops. I have found some of my best reads that way; books that I would otherwise have overlooked. I think that they are much more valuable than current bestseller lists that are filled with books in vogue that will not stand the test of time.

>13 RBeffa:

I've never seen a list of top 50 or so that I would agree with. Has anyone other than the original author of such a list?

Well, yeah, of course you're never gonna agree completely with anybody else's "best of/essential SF" list; it's way too subjective and there's way too much work to choose from. It's not like you're making a list of prime numbers under 100 or favorite Jane Austen novels. Nonetheless, I do occasionally see lists that make me say, "Yeah, this person/these people basically got it right."

The abe list is less disagreeable than most, so perhaps it is pedestrian

The list author stated that his primary goal was to "{p}ut together a list of 50 must-read science fiction books and don’t make anyone angry." This, of course, is never nearly as much fun as someone having the goal of putting together a list of 50 must-read science fiction books that's gonna make everyone angry. :D

ETA: grammatical corrections

Ok, maybe I was a bit snarky -- and hypocritical. I've actually bought these "best of" lists: A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction, The Road to Science Fiction #1, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels and Paul de Fillipo's follow up.

I just wish they would use "recommended" instead of "best" and give me some criteria. But I agree that they are useful in broadening your horizons and reading stuff you'd never heard of before. For instance, one of Ian Sales' list has a van Vogt novel on it I've never even heard of.

Of course, I never have the the self-discipline to start at the top of any of these lists and actually read all the listed books ...

> 13, 14, 19

I think the adjective you choose depends on the intent of your list. "Essential" fits (in a way that "best" or even "recommended" doesn't) if the point of the collection is to acquaint somebody with the history and shape of the genre.

I wouldn't put A Princess of Mars or Galactic Patrol on a "best" or even a "recommended" list, but . . . an "essential (for understanding the genre)" list? Sure.

#19 The House That Stood Still was also published as The Undercover Aliens, though that might have been just in the UK. There's also a "spiced up" version by Beacon Books titled The Mating Cry.

>19 RandyStafford:

A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction

That's a handy little book. I picked up a paperback copy back in the early 90s and still dip into it occasionally. A little over-opinionated at times (uh, you all wanna run that thing by me again about how 1984 is not science fiction, please?), but still nice to have around.

I have my own top 100 lists, one for SF and another for fantasy/horror - I give them to friends when they ask for some reading suggestions - however I've found it's better to customize the recommendation towards what they describe as their interests, specifically. As already mentioned, part of the problem is that we have a "memory of books" that push us to place them into our lists, but memory includes more than just the reading of content - it also includes context, setting, the reader's maturity and other factors. Many of the "juvie" novels I read in grade school (Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury, Norton all come to mind) will always be favorites - I've read a few as an adult and my perception of them changes - one reason I hesitate to reread those older novels as post-read I'm thinking "Man, this isn't very good" (they're rarely outright rubbish but often they end up sliding from my lists). There are so many novels out there that I haven't yet read that I don't want to spoil the illusion of my nostalgia...

Oh, and a little off-topic (but relates, as the best thing about the abebooks list are the photos of the covers). Artist Jim Burns just posted a link to this site on his FB page:
http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/

Funny stuff there. Site features the worst SF/F book covers...

> 23 "Many of the "juvie" novels I read in grade school (Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury, Norton all come to mind) will always be favorites - I've read a few as an adult and my perception of them changes - one reason I hesitate to reread those older novels as post-read I'm thinking "Man, this isn't very good" (they're rarely outright rubbish but often they end up sliding from my lists). "

Could not agree more

> 24

I've been re-reading many of the books I grew up with, the books that got me hooked on SF. I now have kids of my own and want to introduce them to the genre.

Some stand the test of time: The War of the Worlds is terrific. I read it to my ten year old as a bedtime book and we were both enthralled - when we weren't sidetracked by Wells' overuse of the word 'tumult'; we counted 10 usages in one chapter.
A Princess of Mars is awful. I mean really awful. I loved it as a kid but looking at it now, as a middle-aged man with a few thousand other books read since, it really is a very bad book.
Foundation is just dull, endless, one-to-one conversations about the political situation and plot twists that involve secret police agents having 'I AM A SECRET POLICEMAN' tattooed on the inside of their wrists.
The Lensmen books are all but unreadable.

I have no problems with recommending any and all of these books to my kids. For all their clunking prose, dated sexual politics, and dubious morality* they still have a real page-turning Sense of Wonder that I miss in the 'grown up' SF that I came to later.

What I need is a Top 50 list of books that got people hooked no matter how dreadful they really turned out to be later in life.

*Just look at the 'destroy entire planets first, ask questions later' actions of the Lensmen and ask yourself, who ARE the good guys here? Due process? Screw that, they have Zs and Xs in their names... They are EVIL! kill them!

25 >

As far as juvenile sci-fi to hook your children into I don't think you could go wrong with any of the early Heinlein ... Tunnel in the Sky, Door into summer, Glory Road and then there is Asimov's I Robot with its series of short stories on robotics.

those were some of my favourites as a preteen.

I agree with you about The War of the Worlds the technology may have changed but the story stands up almost 100 years later

I think you can make a pretty good case for War of the Worlds being more relevant now than when it came out; I don't know if I did, but hey, I tried:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2ZED41DXHWA98/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

I have trouble remembering what 1st got me reading SF because I've always read it, things like Space Cat Visits Venus and The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. The earliest older-level stuff was a mix of good (Heinlein juveniles, Ray Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, etc) and pulp (things like Williamson's Legion of Space and Legion of Time, for instance). I never liked the Lensman books; even as a kid I could see how bad they were.

I just had a similar experience to TOJM's, film-wise. I watched Cat Women of the Moon which I had liked as a child. I remembered it as B-grade, but having a certain lost-civilization glamor. Well, it was AWFUL -- cult-bad-movie awful, like Plan 9 from Outer Space. My jaw was dropping at how bad it was.

I love Cat Women of the Moon. That whole bit with there being no air on the moon and then throwing the cigarette the other side of the terminator and watching it burst into flame cracks me up just thinking about it.

I had forgotten about Tunnel in the Sky, I loved that as a kid and Have Space Suit Will Travel and Podkayne of Mars....

There was a selection of SF in both my Junior HS and HS libraries - I remember first finding Heinlein (from my Dad in paperback), Starbeast and Have Spacesuit Will Travel, then finding about 8 others in the library. I got hooked immediately.

The first book I remember reading was The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars 2-book set by Burroughs - at 12 years old or so, it was the Frazetta cover on the SFBC hardcover that hooked me. I didn't read A Princess of Mars until many years later as we didn't have a copy and neither did the library. I remember thinking that it wasn't as good as Gods and later books. In my teens I got into a Burroughs kick and read most of what was available in paperback - one standout is The Mucker and sequel - not SF but I loved the "hero from low-life" aspect of the books, sort of like Tarzan but set in an urban environment, transitioning to the old-west (the hero ends up south of the US borders) so opposite circumstances - classic love story, tons of action.

In my mid-teans I read most of the E. E. Doc Smith books I could find - and you're right, in retrospect the Lensmen and Skylark series are pretty bad, better to read Perry Rhodan or any of the Forrunner books by Norton (got hooked on those, mostly due to the Jeff Jones covers).

I remember having 5 of the Tarzan series Grosset & Dunlap hard cover books by Burroughs. He was not the goodie-two-shoes of movie and TV land. I wish I would have kept them but they were lost in a move. It was easy to trap Tarzan then...you just had a woman yell for help and he would come running LOL.

Two of those books stick out in my mind...I think it was Tarzan and the Ant Men where he gets into a world beyond an impenetrable thorn barrier a plane crash sticks in my mind...but he came across docile men with brutish women who herded them and used them only as sex slaves. It was Burroughs commentary on the suffragette movement of the time.

Another book was about his African home... being burned to the ground and he finding in the ashes he finds a female body with Jane's ring on the finger and he then tracks down the Germans and their native accomplices and exacts revenge.

I also had a bio of Burroughs and it explained that this was an attempt by him to kill off Jane as he felt it was not right (or was under pressure to stop) a woman from living unmarried with a man (Victorian attitude of the time)...these books were first printed as serials in magazine and his readership was so outraged at him killing her off, he had to figure out a way to write her back into the story (sort of like the dream sequence in the tv show Dallas) I won't spoil how it was done for those that haven't read the book.

Not really juvenile books but reading the comments on "A Princess of Mars" jogged my memory.

>31 Lynxear:

Hilarious. I've only ever read the first two ERB Tarzan books (Tarzan of the Apes and The Return of Tarzan) so I was unaware of these later developments.

Burroughs' politics were sort of ridiculously conservative even by early 20th century standards, weren't they? I recently read a piece on him by Junot Díaz (his introduction to the Library of America edition of A Princess of Mars) that suggested if you doubt this, you should go back and read the dialogue of the African-American characters in Tarzan of the Apes aloud and see how that works out. :D

As a side note - I've been meaning to read Philip Jose Farmer's Tarzan biography Tarzan Alive for ages but am wondering if I shouldn't read all the ERB Tarzan books first. Anybody have any thoughts on this?

32>

I once had a flea market book stall at the old Harbour Front antique market in Toronto, Ontario from 1982 - 1984. It was there that I met THE expert on Edgar Rice Burrough...a fellow by the name of Bill Dalgleish...I think it is his name. He was once on the TV program "To Tell the Truth".

He is the one who introduced me to Edgar Rice Burroughs and recommended Big Swingers as the best inside biography of the author.
It is another of the books I lost in my move from Toronto but it was a great read, documenting Burrough's history and juicy bits on the books.

I recall him coming up to my stall with a big grin on his face...he was clutching a picture frame, saying he had a great find that day. I looked at the print and it was nothing special...just a garden variety landscape....but he smiled and opened up the back and someone had used part of the original Tarzan Of the Apes movie poster with Elmo Lincoln to back the picture. How he found it I never knew.

At that time we developed a weekend relationship as I became a book picker for him. He was collecting "photo play" books from the early 1900's. These are books that were about a story that had been also seen in a play and photographs of the play were inserted into the books. At that time they were easy to find for me and I could pick them up for $0.50 - $1.00 from many sources and he bought every one for $3.00. Apparently he had so many in his apartment he was forced to move out as they were deemed a fire hazard.

He eventually disappeared shortly after telling me to stop looking for the books as he had sold his collection to some Hollywood producer. Interesting fellow, I met many such people in that short stint selling used books at that market.

#33 by @Lynxear> More stories like this, please.

34>

Glad you like my Edgar Rice Burrows story and Bill Dalgleish...I have several stories about life as fleamarket book seller in the Harbour Front Antique market in the early 1980's. It was a true fleamarket and had standards...they did not let junk into the stalls. I was an industrial salesman back then and newly married. My wife (now ex) was an assistant at that market and worked there on weekends...I of course was busy with my sales career during the week so we never saw eachother. So we came to the conclusion that we should open a stall at the market and since we both liked books we opened up a stall selling used and out of print books.

We had a 10' x 10' stall rented for Sundays at a cost of $50. She went to Philips Ward Price and Waddington's auction houses during the week and purchased libraries. On average our cost for books back then was $0.10 to $0.25 per book and initially we sold them for $3 - $5 each...pretty good margin by any seller's standards and were targeted to be about 50% less than used bookshops in the area.

We displayed about 1000 books in our 10x10 stall, mostly hardcover, on collapsible shelves that I designed. We also had storage for another 2000 books on another floor. I would divide the 3000 books into 3 batches and then mix them all up into new 1000 batches every 3 weekends .... in addition we guaranteed 100 new books (from my wife's auction efforts) so if you visited my stall you would always see new books...a bone to pick with me when I go to fleamarket book stalls now (same books every visit).

A lot of work as the Sunday started at 6:00am...arrive at the market at 7:00am...set up the stall and deal with book dealers until 9:00am when the market officially opened...close at 5:00pm pack everything away and get home for 7:00pm....but we cleared about $300 per day...pretty decent money back then...I wondered at times why I worked as a salesman back then LOL

It was hard work though and physically demanding...but I learned a lot about books from my customers. Soon we were pricing the good books at realistic prices and we didn't get ripped off...as if making 300 - 500% per book was being ripped off :)

If you are interested in more stories I should move the conversation to another thread...it isn't really a sci-fi topic.

If you are interested in more stories I should move the conversation to another thread...it isn't really a sci-fi topic.

I'd also love to hear more. Why don't you join Used Books -- http://www.librarything.com/groups/usedbooks -- and continue there?

36>

Yes, that looks like a good spot for such a discussion here is the link to my thread there

Stories from a former fleamarket used and out of print bookstall owner...1980 -1982: http://www.librarything.com/topic/149919

The list is very good, but for me, a very personal essential is the first science fiction that I ever read, back over 50 years ago. "The Star Seekers" by Milton Lesser induced me to read everything else I could find labeled with the purple dot and the rocket ship in the Junior High School Library. Thank you Ms. unknown librarian for making available in your stacks Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton, Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Theodore Sturgeon, E.E. "Doc" Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs and many more.