Roundtable on All-Centuries Novel Polling
F. Brett Cox
I truthfully don’t have much to say about this particular topic. Anything I listed would be simply what sprang to mind at the moment, and a serious effort at listing what I think are the best sf/f/h works would require months of rereading. So I’ll just note that, if you’re talking about influence on the world at large and not strictly literary influence, you’re talking about 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 and maybe Stranger in a Strange Land, and then you’re talking about everything else.
Fabio Fernandes
Ok, here I go:
20th century SF:
Gibson, Neuromancer
Lem, Solaris
Bester, The Stars My Destination
Herbert, Dune
Zindell, Neverness
20th Century Fantasy:
Crowley, Little, Big
Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun
Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
LeGuin, EarthSea
Peake, Gormenghast
21 SF
Mieville, Perdido Street Station
Reynolds, Revelation Space
Robinson, 2312
MacDonald, Brasyl
Scalzi, Old Men’s War
21 F
VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen
Abercrombie, The First Law trilogy
Sanderson, Mistborn
Kadrey, Sandman Slim
Gaiman, American Gods
Ellen – sorry, but you don’t get to cite “Alice”, published in 1865, as a 20th century book. (Otherwise I would have put it top of my list as well!) In fact, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz barely qualifies, published in 1900, but the Oz series extended well into the 20th century so that should be allowed.
But you panelists are bending the rules like Gumby so I guess you can cite whatever books you want! Certainly the “Alice”‘ books could be considered as the most widely known and influential fantasy in English literature.
Dan -going over my list (before seeing your comment) I suddenly realized-oh sh-t! wrong century. It was me being bad.
A Horror/Dark Fantasy category? Where are those lists of novels and stories?
Space27–Ellen Datlow and Jeff Ford sort of created that category on their own. The overlap (two votes) between the two of them are:
The Wasp Factory (1984) Iain M. Banks 2
The Haunting of Hill House (1959) Shirley Jackson 2
It’s nestled between 20th C Fantasy and 21st C SF.
Oh, that list. Just two items? I’m a little bit disappointed. But I did vote for The Wasp Factory.
Speaking of the wrong century, I know two novels from the 1800’s that I could have put in the 20th Cent. vote and got away with it:
Star, C.I. Defontenay (1854, in french)
Two Planets, Kurd Lasswitz (1897, in german)
They were first published in english in the 1970’s.
Great lists and remarks from everyone, but the focus on the almighty novel slights so many superb writers, from Cyril Kornbluth to Willam Tenn. to Fredric Brown to Harlan Ellison. One of my top ten SF books of all time is Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr/Alice Sheldon. I can’t think of a single SF novel, however fine, that I would be willing to give it up for. It’s as essential as Dune or Neuromancer or any other that I can think of. So Tiptree wasn’t comfortable with the novel form – so what?
Thomas – I think Karen felt it would be hard enough herding the cats on the panel to make their picks for novels, without trying for all the short fiction categories. You make a good point that there are short form masters like Ellison and Tiptree, and some of those masters are reflected in the short fiction lists: Ellison with 6 entries, Tiptree with 5. Both of them ranked as high as #3 in a category for the whole 20th century – not too shabby. (Harlan had both #3 and #4 in the 20th Century Short Story category.)
My favorite example of a short form master is, of course, Ted Chiang, who seems to have no interest in publishing a novel but knocked down the top spot in three different short fiction categories. Nobody would consider him slighted because he can’t show up on the novel list.
How can you not put REH on the list if not at the top? Best story teller ever. No Michael Morcook? YOU PEOPLE ARE INSANE.