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NPR: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books
We have published the controversial NPR Top 100 list of SF/F books in the WWEnd database.
From NPR: "More than 5,000 of you nominated. More than 60,000 of you voted. And now the results are in. The winners of NPR’s Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy survey are an intriguing mix of classic and contemporary titles. Over on NPR’s pop culture blog, Monkey See, you can find one fan’s thoughts on how the list shaped up, get our experts’ take, and have the chance to share your own."
Where a series is involved, we show the first book in the series. You can refer to the original list to see which were nominated as series rather than single volumes. Some series are as yet incomplete in our database, but they will all be added soon.
Science Fiction & Fantasy Series
Most Science Fiction and Fantasy fans like a good series. Once we find a book we like we want to return to that universe time and again for more great adventures with the characters and settings we already know. Of course, Science Fiction and Fantasy authors and publishers are only too happy to indulge our obsession. Indeed, single stand-alone books are becoming a thing of the past with trilogies or better being the norm. More is more these days.
Our new list of Science Fiction & Fantasy Series contains all of the series in the WWEnd database for your easy perusal. So whether you’re looking for a trilogy, tetralogy, pentalogy, hexalogy, heptalogy, octalogy, ennealogy or decalogy you’ve come to the right place. We’ve even got a trigintoctology for you serious gluttons.
Of course, if you’re a WWEnd Member you’ll be able to use BookTrackr™ to monitor your progress with the series you’re reading and tag those that you want to read later. Check it out and let us know what you think of the list. What series have we missed that you’d recommend to your friends? Which series are your favorites? Full points if you can tell me how many books make up a trigintoctology and the name of the series we’re referring to. Enjoy!
Banned Science Fiction & Fantasy Books
A recent blog post about Slaughterhouse-Five being banned (yet again) got us to thinking: How many other SF and fantasy books have been banned over the years? How many are banned right now? Then, we looked at all of the lists we maintain and realized there might be one list that doesn’t yet exist… perhaps the most necessary list of all: Banned Science Fiction & Fantasy Books. To celebrate the launch of our new list, we thought we’d discuss just a few of them.
There are many reasons a book might get banned. Here are three examples from our list.
Politics
Animal Farm had problems getting published from the very beginning. George Orwell tried to publish it in the early 1940s, but publishers were loath to print anything that might threaten the British alliance with Russia. When Orwell finally did publish it in 1945, his preface on the English self-censorship was itself censored from the print runs.
In 1963 the John Birch Society challenged its status in Wisconsin schools, despite its anti-communist stands, simply because it contained the phrase "masses will revolt." Just in case that wasn’t ironic enough, a district in Georgia received challenges to the book because it had objectionable "political theories." The same thing happened in New York state because, a study concluded, "Orwell was a communist." At least the Russians understood what Animal Farm was about when they suppressed its presentation at their 1977 book faire!
The most recent attempt to ban Animal Farm was in 1987, in a fascinating case where the banning of one book (for obscenities) led to the district having to ban 64 classics out of consistency, which also included (or should we say excluded) 1984. The embarrassment led the district to eventually reinstate all of these books.
Today, it’s more autocratic regimes that tend to proscribe the book. In 1991, Kenya quashed the stage adaptation of Animal Farm, because it criticized corrupt leaders and Kenya’s one-party rule was, well, corrupt. Most recently, in 2002, the United Arab Emirates banned it for "contradicting Islamic principles."
Sex
It came as no surprise to me that Stranger in a Strange Land is often banned for sexual content. It is, after all, a very sexy analysis of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. What did surprise me was that Brave New World is challenged even more for the same reason. It was banned right out of the gate in Ireland in 1932, for being "anti-family" and "anti-religion." Today, parents are far more likely to object to the fact that it addresses sexual promiscuity. Nevermind that Huxley himself was depicting the sexual acts as a negative example of disconnecting love with the act.
In many ways, his novel’s ban confirms Huxley’s own predictions. In this classic dystopian novel, all pain is eliminated so that citizens won’t have to deal with the burdens of knowledge. One California school board might have been thinking the same when they decided the classic contained too many "negative activities." Apparently, students were only supposed to think happy thoughts. Perhaps it is incidents like these that lead Huxley to proclaim, in 1959, that the dystopia he foretold is developing far faster than he originally predicted.
Religion
The second most challenged book(s) in 2010 was Philip Pullman’s very popular His Dark Materials Trilogy. Far from being sorry about it, Pullman must be thrilled. It wasn’t too long ago that he expressed surprise that so many people were objecting to Harry Potter, yet weren’t more upset about his books. After all, he exclaimed, "My books are about killing God." Well, Mr. Pullman, you got what you wished for. Bill Donahue, of the Catholic League, has called for a boycott Pullman’s works, describing it as "atheism for kids." A boycott isn’t a ban, however. In fact, it’s democracy in action. If you don’t agree with a book, then don’t buy it.
Making decisions for your whole community is another matter. The Halton Catholic school district went that extra step in 2007, when they pulled the His Dark Materials series from their shelves (while still allowing students to request the books from behind the counter). Shortly thereafter, the Calgary Catholic School district also pulled books from their library shelves. To their credit, after reviewing these decisions, both districts restored His Dark Materials to the shelves. The Calgary board noted, "There is no doubt that the text is harsh in terms of its language about organized religion and that it presents a consistently negative view of church, clergy and faith-based institutions; however, there are glimpses of light with opportunities for positive reflection." Criticism of the Church, they added, can be better answered without censorship, so that Catholic teachers can answer the criticism.
Although the Catholic districts (and there were far more than these two) got a lot of attention for trying to ban His Dark Materials, they were private institutions (albeit, ones that received government funding). Public districts, however, have received challenges so often that only a book about gay penguin dads beat it out for the most challenged book of 2010. Better luck next time, Mr. Pullman.
Lest you think we’ve told the whole story of banned SF/F books, know that we have merely scratched the surface. No doubt there are other SF/F books that have been banned or heavily challenged so if you know of any that we should include here please let us know, and we’ll add them to the list.
Baen Reader’s List of Recommended Military SF
Late last year I set out to do someting about the shortage of Military SF on WWEnd. I looked around the internets for an award or a "best of" list but could not find anything of significance. At the time I was reading the Starship: Mutiny by Mike Resnic so I wrote to him for help. He very kindly gave us permission to post his essay, Military Science Fiction: A Brief History, which contains a large number of books that I added to our database. It was a great start but I was still looking for more so Mr. Resnick suggested I ask David Drake, the Dean of Military SF, for advice. Mr. Drake sent me the Baen Reader’s List of Recommended Military SF. Huzzah! I finally had what I was looking for.
The Baen list is the result of a poll conducted by Toni Weisskopf, Editor of Baen Books, the leading publisher of Military SF in the industry. Participants of Baen’s Bar, THE forum for fans of Military SF, came up with the list after much discussion and Miss Weisskopf hammered the list into a top 100 with one additional book added at the request of David Drake. Told you he was the Dean. With the list comes an excellent introduction that goes into more detail on the selection process.
Take a look and let us know what you think. Are you a MilSF fan? There’s enough military action in this list to satisfy the hard-core fans and will provide some much needed guidance for us novices wanting to explore the sub-genre further. Many thanks to Mike Resnick and David Drake for their help and to Toni Weisskopf for putting it all together.
Recent Additions: The Guardian List
Back in January of 2009 The Guardian published a list of "1000 novels everyone must read," which included 149 Science Fiction and Fantasy novels. Yesterday the WWEnd team finished adding these 149 books to the database, creating our most literary-minded book list yet, Guardian: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels.
When I say that this list is literary-minded, I’m not exaggerating. Even though the list contains such genre fan favorites as Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ringworld and Dune, the Guardian’s review panel also chose to include novels like The Master and Margarita, The Trial and Lord of the Flies, all of which are widely acknowledged masterpieces, but which are arguably not genre fiction.
The Guardian’s list blurs the line of division between genre fiction and "literature." It may be that The Monk doesn’t have supernatural monsters or futuristic technology, but it was certainly a formational Gothic novel, inspiring what would become Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees may not be straight-up Fantasy, but its Magical Realism is a close cousin to the more popular genre. The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse (better known for his Buddhist novel Siddhartha) is set in a post-WW2 Europe but maps the projected future of philosophy and education rather than technology, but it’s important to remember that philosophy is ignored at technology’s peril.
So give the new list a look. There’s something for just about everybody, and enough intriguing new possibilities to catch anyone’s interest. I never thought I’d be adding books like The Naked Lunch and The Castle of Otranto to my reading list, but I’m genuinely curious to see what they’re like.
What’s caught your eye from the Guardian list?
Mistressworks Project
You may remember a few months back we posted a new list of books called the SF Mistressworks to WWEnd. The list is an effort by Ian Sales to bring to light some excellent science fiction books by women authors that have not gotten the attention they deserve. Certainly not as much as books by their male conterparts.
The list has proven to be very popular here at WWEnd and elsewhere on the internets and now Ian is back to up the ante with a new blog dedicated to women SF authors called the SF Mistressworks Blog:
"…I’ve set up the SF Mistressworks blog. Which will comprise reviews of classic and twentieth century science fiction by women writers. It will offset all those “classic sf” and “50 sf novels you must read” and “best sf novels” lists you see all over the internet which have few or no women writers on them. It will demonstrate that women have been writing sf since the genre’s beginnings, and that many of their books are as good as, if not better, than many sf “classics”."
The Mistressworks list is intended to be part of the conversation about women sf writers – not to direct it – so the site won’t be limited to just books from the list. In addition, the blog is a real community effort. So far, Ian has gotten over a dozen volunteer reviewers and has posted 14 reviews with many more waiting in the wings.
Definitely a site worth following. Check it out and let us know what you think of the effort.
SF Mistressworks
One thing that science fiction fans love is a good list of great books. There’s something very satisfying about poring over a list like the SF Masterworks or The Classics of Science Fiction to see which ones we’ve read and which we’ve missed. We get to determine for ourselves if the list creators got it right with their selections and there is endless opportunity to speculate, and argue about, the books we’d have put on the list if only we’d been consulted.
There are some great lists out there for us to choose from and many are covered here on WWEnd for your edification. Each list has its own slant and biases built in and because we often don’t agree with their contents, or we just want to fill a particular niche that’s underserved, we just keep making more.
I’ve been making an effort to read more women authors this last year or so and the first thing I did was go looking for a list. I found many to choose from but ultimately none were quite what I wanted. The answer was to make my own list: Award Winning Books by Woman Authors. Like the name indicates it’s just a simple list of all the winning books by women from the 10 awards we cover here on WWEnd. Of course, that’s a pretty easy list to make. All I had to do was poll the database and post the results. A useful list and good start but I wanted more.
Then along comes this great list called the SF Mistressworks by SF/F writer and blogger Ian Sales on It Doesn’t Have to be Right…. This list is exactly what I was looking for and a great fit for WWEnd. The goal of his list is to highlight great works by women authors that are worthy of the attention given to those books on the SF Masterworks list – which is a bit thin on women authors. Ian turned his list into a meme and it took off across the internets – a clear indication of the quality of the list and of the un-tapped desire for such a list.
Says Ian: "I’ve used my own taste in novels, awards shortlists, recommendations by various folk, and some judicious online research to generate the list." He goes on with this caveat: "I can’t guarantee I’ve picked a writer’s best book, or indeed that any of the books on the list that I’ve not read myself are in any way ‘classic’." Fair enough. As with all lists it’s not perfect but some real effort went into it and the result is pretty impressive. All the usual suspects are in there but there are many authors and titles you’ve probably never heard of too. Plenty of room to branch out and try someone new.
The list of 90 books is restricted to SF works with only one book per author and a cut-off date of 2000. He’s got a 21st Century SF Mistressworks list in the works so don’t get too upset if you don’t find the most recent authors and books in the list. We had about half of these books in our database already and I spent the last week adding the others – not to mention some 30-odd new authors!
Take a look at the list and see how you fare. If you’re a WWEnd member you can use BookTrackr™ to tag the ones you’ve read. What books would you add to it? What books would you replace for your favorite authors?
Many thanks to Ian Sales for the great list.
Award Winning Books by Women Authors
We’ve just added a new book list to WWEnd: Award Winning Books by Women Authors.
This list contains all the award winning books by women authors for the 10 awards we cover on Worlds Without End: Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Locus SF, Locus Fantasy, John W. Campbell, BFS, World Fantasy, Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke. (You can see the complete list of winners for all 10 awards here.)
Novels written by women account for only 65 of the 305 award winning novels across all 10 awards. That’s only 21.3% since the first Hugo award was given in 1953. Seems a bit low to me and, no doubt, many others out there. In any case, what they lack for in quantity they make up for in quality.
So how many have you read from this list? Which ones would you recommend? For me, you have to read The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. One of my all-time favorites.
The Classics of Science Fiction
We’ve just added a new book list to WWEnd: The Classics of Science Fiction.
The Classics of Science Fiction list, compiled by James Wallace Harris and Anthony Bernardo, is an attempt to create a definitive list of the best Science Fiction books. Harris and Bernardo collected 28 different recommended and "best of" lists by noted fans, critics and writers and then cross-tabulated the lists to see which books showed up with the most frequency. The result is a ranked list of 193 books, each having seven or more citations.
This is a really extensive list with most of the usual suspects represented along with a few surprises. Check out the list and use our BookTrackr to see how many you’ve already read.
Also, be sure to visit http://classics.jameswallaceharris.com for more information including an extensive essay on the methodology used to create the list.
Lock ‘n Load! – Military SF at Worlds Without End
One of the most frequent requests we get here at Worlds Without End is for more Military SF. You military fans have been after us from the get go. “Why no Mil-SF?” “Where are the Davids?” (Weber, Drake and Feintuch) “You guys must hate Military SF, America and kittens too…”
No, it’s nothing like that I promise. While I freely admit we’ve been under-budget on our “Davids” we did have a decent selection of Mil-SF in the bag: The Forever War, Ender’s Game, Starship Troopers, Downbelow Station, Old Man’s War and Dorsai! to name a few. Some of those books got added to our DB as a result of the awards we cover. Others got added when we started paying attention to the Book Lists as well.
Those books weren’t enough to stop the emails though, so I went looking for a Military Science Fiction award to bolster our military cred. I wanted to add the best Mil-SF available instead of just dumping in a bunch of books from a sub-genre that I don’t know much about. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find a single award dedicated to Mil-SF. That just blew me away. It’s a huge sub-genre with a massive following, surely there was an award…. No? Well, OK, how about a “best of” list from some fan organization or genre luminary then? Nope. Nada. What’s a guy to do?
Luckily, I came across an article by SF author Mike Resnick called Military Science Fiction: A Brief History (posted here with the author’s permission) that gave me some direction. It’s an overview of Military SF from E.E. “Doc” Smith to Mr. Resnick’s own Starship Series and I determined that I’d add all the books he mentions in his article to the WWEnd DB. So far I’ve added over 40 new books across 10 Military SF series. Not a bad start methinks.
So, what do you think? Are you a fan of Mil-SF? What books or authors am I missing? If you know of any awards or authoritative lists let me know.
