Flowchart Guides Readers Through the 100 Best SF Books 222
Hugh Pickens writes writes "T. N. Tobias writes that over the summer, over 60,000 people voted at NPR to select the top 100 science fiction and fantasy books of all time. The result? A list of 100 books with a wide range of styles, little context, and absolutely no pithy commentary to help readers actually choose something to read from it. Now SF Signal has come to the rescue with a 3800 x 2300 flowchart with over 325 decision points to help you find the perfect SF or Fantasy book to meet your tastes. Don't like to scroll? There's an interactive version that let's you answer a series of questions to find the perfect SF book."
Not too bad (Score:2)
You can't read everything, so this would be a good place to start.
Of course, it's going to suffer from "Why didn't they put X on the list?", but it has a limit of 100 and that's actually kind
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It's pretty much the same as lumping "Sci-fi and Romance" genres together.
Don't like "City on the Edge of Forever" ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_on_the_Edge_of_Forever [wikipedia.org]
Note "romance" is theoretically distinct from pr0n, otherwise we've got tons of slash fiction with spock and kirk, all of the "spandex wearing women" from the 90s era trek TV, etc.
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Wait, whaaaat? (Score:3)
Er...
"I don't mind a few chuckles between explosions" leads to the Culture series (fine) but "I don't have a sense of humor that I'm aware of" and "I just like my action intense" goes to the Vorkosigan Saga? What the hell? Bujold is funnier than most sf on her worst day. And sure, there's _some_ intense action, but just as much, well, character comedy and romance. I'm, er, not sure if the person who did that bit of the flowchart ever actually read the books at all...
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Er...
"I don't mind a few chuckles between explosions" leads to the Culture series (fine) but "I don't have a sense of humor that I'm aware of" and "I just like my action intense" goes to the Vorkosigan Saga? What the hell? Bujold is funnier than most sf on her worst day. And sure, there's _some_ intense action, but just as much, well, character comedy and romance. I'm, er, not sure if the person who did that bit of the flowchart ever actually read the books at all...
Definitely agree, Bujold is awesome. Banks' books have far less humour, much of it limited to naming of ships (and some of there conversations, particularly in Excession). I'm rather surprised Bujold's fantasy works didn't make the list as well (Curse of Chalion books, anyway; I never could get into The Sharing Knife series).
There are some very questionable decisions on that flowchart that suggest whoever put it together isn't actually familiar with the material. For example, to get to The Wheel of Time you
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Why keep lumping? (Score:2)
I mean, The Lord of the Rings was a good book, but sci-fi it ain't, and it's not the same kind of book as The Martian Chronicles or real sci-fi.
The interactive selection was a joke. There are so many places where you are asked "A or not A" an
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Alternate History too (Score:2)
It's pretty much the same reason Alternate History is considered part of SF, even ones that don't depend on time travel or something like that to cause the difference. Traditionally, AH was written by SF authors, so it's part of SF.
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I think the reason is that they do have much in common, and a large overlap in readers.
Compared to just about any other genre of literature, science fiction and fantasy present an author a blank slate, and let them construct any setting, scenario and backstory they want. Want to explore what relationships would be like in a world where peoples gender changes with the seasons? Go for it. Want to examine what happens to humans when omnipotent Gods choose to be terrifyingly real? Have at it.
Those kind of f
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I personally prefer the "it's this world allright, but there is something sinister/secret you don't know about it." Types.
Lovecraft was good for that part, but I eventually wanted yo scoop out my eyes after the umpteenbillionth time I read the word "cyclopean." (That and "fungoid". Really, what's so scary about fungi? Well.. other than the 9ft tall 'stuff your brain in a jar' kind anyway.)
To me, good fantasy and good science fiction do all they can to obey the normal world around the reader, but with a plot
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Why is it that people keep lumping science fiction with fantasy?
-- Arthur C. Clarke
Re:Why keep lumping? (Score:4, Informative)
1) They are the two main ways of doing "imagine if the world was different" fiction.
2) Because of this, there is a large amount of very good fiction (less so in literature perhaps, which seems to attract the purer forms of each, but certainly in media generally) which combines the two. Drawing a line between them would be impossible.
3) And combining the two is actually a quite good idea, because each counters the weaknesses of the other. Science fiction which gets too hard can lose drama by becoming unrelateable and missing dramatic opportunities which don't seem plausible enough, and fantasy which gets too soft can lose drama by making cause and effect too arbitrary, which undermines narrative.
Glad to see some on there (Score:2)
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Given how much I liked most of the books I *have* read on the list, it makes me feel good about reading a lot of the others. I see it not as a way to find what I like, but rather to find new things to like.
Science Fiction vs. Fantasy (Score:2)
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Different Expectations (Score:2)
Am I the only one who was hoping for something like this: http://xkcd.com/657/ [xkcd.com]
No Illuminatus Trilogy? (Score:2)
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Someone's been raiding my bookshelves (Score:2)
I was hoping to find some good things to read, but I only found a handful of titles on the list that I don't already own. And most of those I won't.
I was surprised to find some rather - um - lower quality pulp on the list, but I suppose this sort of "everyone vote for your favorite" thing is bound to have a smattering of that.
Oh well. Back to my lists of Hugo and Nebula nominees - that's a much better selection, frankly.
Poorly Named (Score:2)
As has been pointed out numerous times already, it's really "The 100 most popular science fiction and fantasy books among listeners of NPR that could be bothered to vote".
As for the flowchart, which is really the point of the post, they did a pretty good job of it, considering what they had to work with.
SciFi != Fantasy (Score:2)
Fantasy is pretty much the opposite of science. Can we stop grouping it with SciFi?
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I used to think this too... (Score:2)
I used to wonder why Fantasy was grouped in with SF. But futuristic SF involves things that are not possible (at least by our current understanding.) Why should we limit "Science Fiction" to Starships and Lightsabers? Why not Swords, Sorcery, and Magic? If we strip current tech from a "hard" SF book, you are left with more-or-less magic anyway.
Really, my yardstick for good Fantasy (at least, Fantasy that I enjoy reading) is that it presents a system of magic that is methodical and is internally consiste
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I'll address all 3 responses in one post if that's okay.
SciFi is the extrapolation of technology based on science. It's fiction because it's not a true story, but it's still an educated guess based on fact.
Fantasy is based on nothing more than imagination, and doesn't claim otherwise. Spells, sorcery, and anything else based on supernatural (i.e., non-scientifically explainable) phenomenon.
Most SciFi doesn't have fantasy elements, and most fantasy doesn't have SciFi elements. If a particular book overlap
Nice if I could do some filtering (Score:3)
It'd be nice if I could make it re-list by weighting the votes.
I like Vernor Vinge, Neil Gaiman, Bujold, George RR Martin, and Neal Stephenson.
I don't like Kim Stanley Robinson, Anne McCaffrey, David Eddings, Dan Simmons, or Arthur C. Clarke (blasphemy! I know!)
If you feel the opposite, kudos to you, but don't complain, my idea will work for you too.
I'd love to be able to have it weigh the votes of the people who liked the same stuff as me more heavily and the people who like the stuff I don't like less heavily and then see what the new top 100 looks like, and maybe pick out the highest placed book/series that I haven't already read from the new list.
Glory Road (Score:2)
Given the choice between Fantasy and Science Fiction, I've always been a Science Fiction guy. My one Honorable Mention in Fantasy would have been Heinlein's Glory Road -- for some reason, the kind of book I can read over and over.
Pity that it didn't make the cut.
Gormenghast?! (Score:3)
Vorkosigan comes after no humor, really? (Score:3)
Clearl omissions due to ignorance (Score:2)
Cough, choke, hack (Score:3)
Seems people are simply not aware of the classics very well
Classics like Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, those kinds of classics? You surely can't be talking about this stuff. Please tell me Slashdot's readership is more enlightened than this...
shame on NASA for making space boring
How old are you? NASA put a man on the moon. Think about that for a moment. They put a man on the moon...over FORTY YEARS AGO. You seriously can't see THAT and get goosebumps? There's something wrong with you.
Where is the man! (Score:2)
Nothing by Glen Cook?
And the half-serious series from Jim Butcher? WTH?
an advertisement (Score:2)
this is just an Amazon ad, every selection you make in that 'interactive' char ends up with an Amazon link.
Why So Serious? (Score:3)
I know that people get very passionate about their Science Fiction writing, but reading some of the responses here you'd think that there was some massive, genocidal weapon aimed to exterminate SF readers.
Get a grip, people.
It's a list. Did you vote? Remember, your favorite author, well, it might not be everyone else's favorite author. The list is based on what people voted for.
Personally, although I've heard of many of these titles, I've read only a small handful, the rest being on my list of things to do when that precious free time returns at some point in the unknown future. And I thought the flowchart was really very entertaining and insightful. Well done, I say! Hear, hear, I say -- perhaps this list will result in a few more people picking up a classic Science Fiction book and reading it, perhaps even enjoying it. Is that really so bad?
My theory for lack of modern authors... (Score:3, Informative)
I see a lot of complaining about the lack of newer Sci-Fi and Fantasy books in the list. This can be easily explained. It's not specifically because the older authors and series are more well known, though that is definitely part of it. The reason is simply that this was a NPR poll. If you stop for a second, you would realize that NPR's audience trends towards an older demographic. As such, they are more likely to select authors that they have enjoyed over the years. When you get older, you tend to have less time to read (unless you are and avid reader and make time) and are more likely to select books based on proven authors.
Personally, I read a lot of Sci-Fi and fantasy when in university. I went to the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, NB, Canada and they had one of the largest Sci-Fi collections in Canada, if not the Northeast (ranked 10th in the world in 2009). I even got to read the special collection books as I worked as a temp in the library to make some money. It was cool having access and it is only recently, with the development of the kindle and the amazon bookstore, that I've gotten back into reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy as I now have access to more interesting stories than the popular Vampire/Magic/Star (Trek/Wars) that lined the shelves in most book stores.
Re:Let me guess, a bunch of stuff from 40+ years a (Score:5, Informative)
You should try looking at the list - there are plenty of contemporary Sci Fi and Fantasy authors on it.
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No, there are few. How many released in the last 5 years 10 years??
and any kist with "The Silmarillion" on it as the best is clearly a waste. It's interesting if you are interested in following the history in LotR, but greatest fantasy sci-fi in the top 100? no.
Re:Let me guess, a bunch of stuff from 40+ years a (Score:4, Insightful)
Not just the Silmarillion, two Stephan King books.
Good to know the middle school (and middle school reading level) was represented in this poll.
Also the red/green mars drek. At least that was low on the list. Stephan King was in the top half for fucks sake.
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To be honest, having read them a few times, I find they have pacing issues, where Red Mars drags everything out, in some cases hours by hour. And yet when you get to Green Mars he races through years and presents significant historical events in a paragraph or two. I understand that you built relationships with the earlier characters and many of those have passed by the later books, but the ending seems rushed and consquently poorly thought out and 'unfinished'.
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I can suspend disbelief regarding time travel, warp drive etc etc.
But a space mission staffed by people recruited in the parking lot of a dead show? The explanation for that group is simply nonsensical.
Kim Stanly Robinson's characters are simply unbelievably dumb. They would have died for sure.
Technology unworkable or trivial. Social changes undesirable and unworkable.
It went from hard science fiction to fantasy about page 1.
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Stephen King is popular because he knows how to tell a good yarn. It doesn't matter if it is "Literature" in the snooty, elitist sense.
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He is popular for the same reason USA today was once a popular newspaper.
Simple stories, no big words.
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His vocabulary is extensive, but besides that, "big words" don't make something worth reading. In fact, it's just the opposite when authors go out of their way to use uncommon words. His stories are compelling, as are his characters. Snooty elitists look down on King just because he rights popular stories, and not "high art".
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Stephen King is popular because he knows how to tell a good yarn
He used to, long time ago, but he lost the knack - now he mostly just tells a long yarn
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True enough (though I greatly enjoyed it). I was sad not to see anything by John Ringo in the military fiction category. Easily my favorite still writing author (the ghost series is excellent and free from Baen books).
-nB
It's a shame really... (Score:2)
It is indeed a shame Ringo Clancy-fied himself.
The March Upcountry series (which he co-authored with Weber) is excellent, the first four books of the Posleen Wars is solid military SF (as is the Cally offshoot that was co-written) and the Council Wars were also good. (As a side note, Weber has also Clancy-fied himself, but in the "I don't need an editor" way, as opposed to the "I assume all my readers will share my political views and will present them uncritically" way.)
It's kind of funny, the downright b
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Have you really read Heinlein?
You and I obviously differ, as I enjoy the authors viewpoints coming through their work, so long as it isn't also prothletising, which neither Heinlein nor Ringo are really guilty of.
If the book seems preachy then I quit. But in Palidin of Shadows, while obviously Right leaning, the bias does not harm the storyline, in fact I would argue it helps develop the ghost/kildar character.
Clancy, he gets preachy...
If the sex in PoS get to you then do not ever read Phillip Jose Farmer.
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Here's what I was going to write:
It's hard to get into a "top 100 ever" list in less than 5 years (it takes time to build up a following) but there are a lot from the last 20 years on that list: Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson (both multiply), Iain Banks, Vernor Vinge, Connie Willis.
But then I looked through the full list. You're right, it's full of crap and old stuff. My list above is too short.
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Because it's a list of what people expect to say is the best.
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William Gibson is on there.
And yes, you're overestimating the new stuff, and underestimating the old stuff they chose.
You're also not recognizing that the new stuff is far less widely read than the old stuff. SF&F is rarely bestseller-list material, and spreads through osmosis.
Re:Let me guess, a bunch of stuff from 40+ years a (Score:5, Informative)
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Current Sci-Fi hasn't been around long enough for it to be influential. It's also not been around long enough for the crap to be forgotten by history. For a neophyte if they pick something new off the shelf it's likely to be crap. If it's not crap, it's likely to borrow heavily from the classics. If it's completely novel (no pun intended), they won't have any context in which to appreciate that. In all these cases the reader benefits from being introduced to the classics first.
Notice that nothing abou
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Perhaps they should have a top 100 of each decade, as well as a top 100 of short stories.
The early Asimov stories seem timeless, like the one about the kid who avoids the "transporters" that have replaced school buses, and prefers to walk home along the sidewalk and past robotically maintained gardens. Then his parents take him to a psychologist, who gives some common sense advice, and decides himself to walk home to see what it is like.
Different era's were framed by the different war and social situations.
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Aficionados might rejoice that science-fiction finally matured and could claim to be great literature, but casual readers don't want to tax themselves with the challenging prose and labyrinthine plot of, say, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun [amazon.com]
Even that review describes itself as one of the best "science fantasies". Sorry, that means its not sci fi, its just princes and knights having swordfights for control of the kingdom, am I guessing right? I'm betting there is swordfights and horseback riding, right? Claiming on the back cover that the date is 9000 AD instead of 900 AD doesn't magically make it scifi instead of fantasy, sorry.
It may be an excellent book, but its probably not an excellent sci fi book.
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The term "Science fiction" is commonly used to encompass a wide range of genres
Yeah, most recently as seen in video, Sci Fi is now wrestling, ghost hunting, and giant monster horror B movies. I am unimpressed.
Much like "begging the question" is commonly used completely inappropriately, mostly as a pompous "filler" rather than what it actually means. Again, an emphatic and vigorous "eh".
So back to Wolfe... am I right or wrong, the only thing sci fi about his book is likely to be playing with numbers so the date is in the future, and Maybe some Heinlein style wordprocessor search and
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Anything relying on magic is de facto fantasy. Anything relying on 'unknown forces' completely under control is fantasy. Not to mention contradictory.
Likewise, telekenisis and telepathy are fantasy as there is not a damn thing about the brain that could provide the power for the latter - far, far less for the former.
Opinions may vary.
Re:Let me guess, a bunch of stuff from 40+ years a (Score:5, Insightful)
Well of course. Otherwise we would have nothing to talk about, friend. :)
I think you're treading dangerously close to a definition that's going to give you a nasty conclusion: that it's all fantasy and no work of hard SF has ever been written.
For example: got space colonies? Then you must have some magical economic force in your story.
Got highly-accurate genetic predictions? Oh please, your characters have magically accurate embryology models and magically powerful computers to run simulations of those models in better-than-real-time.
My point being, you're going to always be drawing a line somewhere, saying that isn't believable enough to be anything other than magic, whereas this is believable enough so that it doesn't need to be explained in detail. And yet ultimately, that lack of detail is what makes it fiction rather than a patent application. Somewhere within those glossed-over details, there is very likely a Devil. The position of the line is subjectively intuitive.
Let's say we have a 600-page story with apparent telekinesis in it.
In one version of the story, on the last page, the "telekinetic" character finally confesses his fraud to another character and shows the gullible fool the electromagnet under the table and the control switches under the toes of his shoe. The gullible character exclaims, "Damn, you sure fooled me! I'm a little angry, but since the same trick bluffed the spacebugs and ultimately saves all our lives, I guess I ought to be glad." You'd agree this story could be hard SF, right? (Could be, as long as I don't mention the spacebugs are actually dragons and that one of them was slain with a "laser sword.")
In another version of the story, everything is the same, except the fraud is never revealed. The gullible character, and the reader, never find out about the electromagnet. It's left unexplained. Not hard SF? It's the same story!
In a third version of the story, the author is a total bastard. He doesn't reveal the fraud or leave it unexplained. Instead, he lies! And not just to the character, but to you the reader. "Oligonicella looked under the table, and to his surprise, there was no electromagnet. 'It was real magic all along!' he exclaimed with amazement." Damn, what a fucking lie. Fortunately, you the reader don't believe it (even if the gullible character did), because you know there's no such thing as telekinesis. Does the author's damn lie make his story not hard SF? Well, maybe. That's a tough one. What if he sprinkles in a clue or two, such as somebody noticing on page 532 that the table had a scratch mark, as though possibly from the end of a wire?
Shit. That scratch mark could have been left by anything.
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Here's something that can be highly frustrating. When a work fantasy has more hard rules that govern how the magic of the world works (which aren't typically broken) than some of the science fiction that is written.
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Yeah, I don't read all that much SciFi and the chart quickly lead me to a whole bunch of softcore SF classics, all of which I've read.
Here's a question: How does it make a SF title any better to have been written in the last hundred million seconds out of 100,000 years? Isn't keeping up with the present the domain of the Twitterverse?
I'm a well-aged consumer of scotch, cheese, movies, and books. If I'm going to consume something fresh, it's probably a documentary that took ten years to finance and film.
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Here's a question: How does it make a SF title any better to have been written in the last hundred million seconds out of 100,000 years? Isn't keeping up with the present the domain of the Twitterverse?
Because part of the purpose of the SF genre is to explore what authors think may be the eventual outcome of current trends. Obviously, in doing so, those who are exploring the latest trends are likely to be writing stories that are more relevant to the thoughts of their readers with regards to the same trends. So when I read, say, a Charles Stross story, I might find the authors thoughts about the future importance of virtual economies insightful, and it might provoke me to think myself about what is like
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For the most part, "modern" stuff hasn't been around long enough to see whether it stands the test of time.
Frankly, picking a book/movie/whatever for a "best of all time" list that is only four or five years old is silly...
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They have Lois McMaster Bujold, whose Vorkosigan saga is quite young ("Cordelia's Honor" is in the list).
It's quite modern, and quite good as well. Dates to the 90s and 00's.
And one minute you're reading Cordelia's Honor and the next you're hunting around for the rest of the series. Thankfully, it's from Baen. They have almost every book for free download if you can find the CD site. (The missing one, Memory, is probably one of the best in the series and unfortunately has to be bought. It's an unfortunate o
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Try googling "The Fifth Imperium".
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Actually, the series is about as old as I am: its beginning dates into the early eighties. (Though the Book of Ivan has yet to be published.)
What amazed me is the path you have to take to get to it – if you really have no sense of humor, you won’t much enjoy the books.
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My first time through the interactive version, it pointed me at "Cryptonomicon." I took another spin and it suggested "Neuromancer." I tried one more time and went through a much longer maze and eventually landed on "I, Robot." 2/3 ain't bad. I agree with you that modern SF is underrated, but from what I've seen so far, these guys aren't guilty of that.
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Modern == mostly crap (Score:2)
There are. But there are even more hacks than ever before. I find most contemporary sci-fi and fantasy books to be unreadable. The signal to noise ratio has gone way up from the golden era. Because these genres have become much more mainstream fare, the barrier to entry has gone way down and so a lot of authors that wouldn't have even gotten published 40 years ago are now cranking out trilogies of garbage.
To aspiring writers out there:
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Er, way down, not up. Note to self: spend more time proof reading my posts ranting about crappy writing......
Re:Let me guess, a bunch of stuff from 40+ years a (Score:5, Informative)
The lack of PKD on this list should be considered an embarrassment to the NPR marketing staff.
I realize that clicking links in the submission is considered bad form here, but Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is in the upper right corner of the flowchart.
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Maybe that's on purpose.
LotR really is just one big story, and only a halfwit would pick up The Two Towers and read it on its own, but the Silmarillion -- i can't really imagine someone wanting to read it without having read LotR,.. but it is a virtually completely standalone work.
Meanwhile I read Robots of Dawn years before I found a copy of The Caves of Steel, and reading them out of order is no real issue... they really are stand alone works.
Ender's game as a singleton makes sense; I read speaker for th
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'Ender's Game' the novel is butter scraped over too much bread.
'Ender's Game' the short story was much better. IIRC it was in Pornelle's first 'There Will Be War' collection.
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But I like Iain Banks...
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How did you arrive at that conclusion?
Show your work.
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So you already work in Hell.
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But no "Lord of Light". How you can rate the Amber stuff and not include "Lord of Light" is beyond me..
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Ian Banks (as Iain M. Banks) is listed, specifically aggregating all his Culture novels into one list entry. An odd choice to aggregate them, given the listing of, say, two separate Discworld novels.
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Yeah, there's a lot of questionable choices on the list.
Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy (I'm a fan, but it shouldn't be on the list in lieu of some others...)
World War Z (I really don't get why people love this one so much.)
The Wheel of Time (I'm a huge fan OBVS, but it's not even FINISHED yet. Likewise Song of Fire and Ice by GRRM which also is not finished.)
The Xanth series (Maybe the first few, but who the hell over the age of 13 can make it through the whole series? And Incarnations of Immortality was bett
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Includes Stephen King and Kim Stanley Robinson. Horrid, horrid list.
Also the most distorted summary for Animal Farm anywhere ('horrors of totalitarianism', really?). Definitely NPR defending their political philosophy.
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I once had to read The Simarillion for a class. It was my first exposure to the fantasy genre and I was quite confused, although I had already *not* read so many books for that class I had to continue. I slogged through literally the first quarter of the book before the scales suddenly fell off my eyes and suddenly I grokked it.
I closed the book, reopened it to the first page and breezed through the whole thing. It's still one of my favorites.
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