That SF/F book meme

[willowgreen]

Finally, the list we've all been waiting for is out: NPR's top 100 adult fantasy and science fiction books. (They're doing children's and YA SF/F next year.) And, somewhat to my surprise, it's a pretty good list. Of course it contains a few writers I can't stand and others I've never heard of. Also, I think it's a crime that Joanna Russ and Samuel

Comments

[keswindhover]

Ooh, you made the effort to find the original rules. I should revisit my entry, really.

Recommend 'A Canticle for Leibowitz', though admittedly it is dystopian.

[willowgreen]

I don't actually dislike all dystopia -- I loved the "Hunger Games" trilogy, which I just read a couple of months ago. It's just that most classic dystopian SF, particularly Orwell, seems not only bleak but hopeless. I remember reading the first page of my brother's copy of "Canticle for Leibowitz" when I was in high school, and although it didn't attract me enough to read it at the time, hopelessness didn't seem to be its primary mood. And from what I've heard about it since, it sounds like it might even be somewhat enjoyable.

[keswindhover]

The bit I loved most was the monks, with medieval levels of comprehension, trying to understand blueprints.

A recent analogy is Rosmary Kirstein's Steerwoman series, where you have a low technology culture trying to understand stuff left behind by a space age culture. I recommend them too, btw. I love the intellectual effort of putting yourself in another's place that both represent.