The Jones Chair of Science Fiction Studies (Thought Experiment)

[Extollager]

Suppose that Jones, a wealthy lifelong reader of sf, has an agreement with (we'll say) a major British university to endow a Chair of SF Studies. Jones stipulates that the focus of the professor's academic work as long as he/she holds the chair shall be in sf in written form, not movies, comics, etc.

You are on the committee that seeks and evaluates the credentials of applicants for the Chair. Jones had also stipulated that candidates for the position shall write an essay under controlled conditions on a topic devised by the committee and on a date and at a location selected by the committee so as to elicit from candidates evidence of their deep and wide reading in sf. Jones does not want the position filled by someone who has a narrow specialty within sf, although it's expected that the great majority of authors whom the candidates will need to know by their writing will be writers in English.

What would be sf story collections and novels that you would think it reasonable to assume that applicants for the position could be expected to know?

I solicit novel titles and titles of story collections (and so far as I'm concerned it would be okay to say "major stories by Harlan Ellison," etc.).

I'm asking for titles of novels, though, rather than just "the works of Ursula Le Guin," etc., because probably most of us would not feel that it would be appropriate to write a question requiring detailed knowledge of City of Illusions etc.

 

[Gonk the Insane]

Well... if it was me in charge (there are many good reasons why this is unlikely) I'd go more broad than specific titles, e.g. compare and contrast the works of Ray Bradbury and E. E. Doc Smith. I'd also throw in some less well-known authors and titles to see how broad their knowledge was - for example Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay. However...

Second Variety by Philip K. Dick - a great collection of short stories

Novels:
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Foundation by Isaac Asimov

 

[hitmouse]

I would want the applicant to be able to demonstrate fluency in the subject with a broad and deep understanding of the major eras and genres within SF and their development, in chronological and literary context. This would include both books and magazine publishing. There would have to be an appreciation of the contribution of SF magazines and of SF criticism, and serious fandom.
To be able to do this properly would require years of enthusuastic browsing through both high and low brow SF.
It is easy to generate lists of "the 100 core SF books" etc. That might be useful, but a more discriminating question might be to compare and contrast 2 of the major pre-internet encyclopaedias of SF:
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1979 edition) ed. Peter Nicholls
and
The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1977) ed Brian Ash

or alternatively, New Maps of Hell by Kingsley Amis and Billion Year Spree by Brian Aldiss