50 SF books

[amyirene_40]

Better late than never. My, I have read a decent amount of SF over the years.

50 Significant SF novels list from the SFBC
Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk* beside the ones you loved.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (shamefaced admission: I like LotR, but

Comments

[bedii]

Years ago in Locus Algis Budrys had a series of columns called "On Writing." Sadly they've never been reprinted, but somewhere in the files of stuff from the old house is my copy of the one explaining the experiment he made in writing Rogue Moon. It's admittedly an odd book: in the article he said a friend asked why he'd written a story populated with gravely deteriorated psychotics. While he was writing it he decided to tell the story the way it would be seen by a cameraman in the room: everything feels concentrated and compressed like he's hooked a firehose into your head and turned the hydrant on. Well worth the read, however.

What shocks me is that Davy or A Mirror for Observers didn't make the cut...

[amyirene_40]

Andre Norton is the one whose absence is strange - I'd have expected Three Against the Witch World to make it.

I suppose I should have marked I Am Legend with italics - I did pick it up 'way back when, read the first couple of pages, and decide, "Nope." The Algis Budrys is the only one that I've never actually seen. I've heard of it, but when I was in my period of reading everything sfnal, that one didn't happen to be available at the library or the used bookstore. I should try it someday - maybe the same time start in on Gene Wolfe....

[bedii]

I haven't read I Am Legend but will probably do so someday because when he's not on the money Matheson's stuff is readable and when he's on the money he's almost electrifying--look at Hell House for example.

As far as Wolfe goes I'd recommend starting with the "Soldier" books. The setup is that someone who Wolfe knows ended up with some ancient scrolls that when X-ray'd show writings on them made with a sharpened lead rod: they belonged to "Latro," an amnesiac foot soldier in Mesopotamia with a head wound who has to write down what happened each day or he forgets it the next day. Unfortunately, Latro is a plaything of the Gods...