500 Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Books You Should Read Before You Die - Members' Version

[Rodders]

73. IT by Stephen King
74. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.
75. Weaveworld by Clive Barker

 

[Trollheart]

Hey don't worry about it. Happens. It's sorted.

Forgive me if I sound pedantic, but could we straighten out what a "trilogy" is?

The Lord of the Rings is not a trilogy, but a single romance published in three volumes. On the other hand, the three Gormenghast books are a trilogy. I'd prefer that those three books -- Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone -- be listed as separate novels, which they are. This allows one to identify which, if any, of these three books belong on the list. I doubt that I would include Titus Alone on a list like this. It was written when Mervyn Peake's premature senility had affected his creativity, or so I understand -- it is over 40 years since I read it. We should be able to vote for A Wizard of Earthsea, and/or The Tombs of Atuan. and/or The Farthest Shore, and/or Tehanu, and/or the other two Earthsea books. My impression is that Le Guin so radically changed Earthsea that it is quite possible for someone to prize the first three and have little taste for the other three.

I haven't read more than two of the Vorkosigan books, but surely the individual volumes should be identified, rather than the whole set of books lumped together, right?

But I can't speak about very many of these series books, since I avoid them.

You make a good point, young Paduan. I certainly don't know a lot of these trilogies-which-may-be-ten-or-more-novels, so I can't speak to whether this one or that one should be included.

I'm open to either. Majority rules. It certainly complicates matters when someone throws in the entire, say, Discworld series as one choice! Not to mention all the extra writing I have to do! So yeah, if people want to do individual books that's fine, just be aware the list will fill up faster. Then again, we can always change it to 1000 books if some kind mod changes the title...

 

[Extollager]

"Majority rules" -- so I guess people should be able to advocate for "the XYZ series" as a unit rather than for certain books within the series, if they want to. It would just be nice to see the case actually made, and to see what the extent of support for that view was.

Well, you've seen my opinion: LotR is one work; the six (I think it is) are six books, and someone might very much want everyone to read A Wizard of Earthsea but not care if everyone read Tehanu; Peake's Gormenghast books are three books and someone might think everyone should give Titus Groan a try while Titus Alone could be safely skipped.... and so on. (Incidentally, I think some people regard Gormenghast, the middle book of the trilogy, as the best.)

I'll add that I would prefer seeing C. S. Lewis's cosmic trilogy as three books -- Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, and the Narnian books as seven books. I'll nominate the three cosmic books for our list. I like all the Narnian books, but I'm not sure The Horse and His Boy is something everyone should read before he or she dies.... so I'll have to think about which of these to nominate, unless someone wants to nominate all seven.

 

[Trollheart]

Yeah, let's hold the choices and take a vote. Trilogies (and more) as one choice or each separate book?

 

[Rodders]

I think a series should be counted as one, rather than individual titles.

 

[Vince W]

76. Slan by A. E. van Vogt

77. The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. van Vogt

78. City by Clifford D. Simak

79. The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

80. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

81. A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

82. Way Station by Clifford D. Simak

83. The World of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt

84. The Players of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt

85. Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr.

86. The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison

87. Deathworld by Harry Harrison

88. The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

89. The Xeelee Sequence by Stephen Baxter

90. The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

91. The Space Merchants by C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl

 

[Extollager]

The Owl Service, by Alan Garner
Laurus, by Eugene Vodolazkin
The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton

These are not just books I like, but ones I think really are worthy of the attention of anyone interested in sffh.

 

[Vince W]

The Owl Service, by Alan Garner
Laurus, by Eugene Vodolazkin
The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton

These are not just books I like, but ones I think really are worthy of the attention of anyone interested in sffh.

Okay, Ex, you win. Chesterton should have been mentioned ages ago.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

I will leave Gormenghast as a trilogy here. It is regularly referred to as such, books 1 and 2 clearly belong together, and 3 very much has its merits, despite the critics. Peake intended a fourth book, but he very much saw it as a series. Besides, if the ten volumes of the Malazan series can occupy one slot, so can the three volumes of Gormenghast. Also, it has been published as a single volume.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

So... 95? I'm counting Extollager's as 92-94.

95. John Crowley, Little, Big

 

[Extollager]

Since we're all -rightly - complaining about how these lists are compiled, why not do our own?

Trollheart, would you be willing to amend your original posting to change "books" to "works"?

A great many of the best sf stories are short stories and novellas. I don't want to nominate some collection or anthology for the sake of the one or two stories that I really care about, where some of the other stories might leave me cold. For example, in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame volume on short stories (edited by Silverberg), I find several stories that, I suppose, almost everyone who has read widely in classic sf would say should be read -- but also one or more duds. For example, I have always disliked Lester del Rey's "Helen O'Loy."

Frankly, I doubt that there are 500 books in the sf, fantasy, and horror fields that everyone interested in those genres should read before he or she dies. But there might be 500 such stories -- short stories, novellas, novels.

My understanding is that we're not talking, here, about a bibliography of books we have liked, but about books (preferably -- stories) that "everyone" should read, or at least try. I suspect a lot of work that isn't all that good will get named if we go for five hundred books.

?

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

A few in translation:

96. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

97. J.H. Rosny ainé, Les Navigateurs de l'infini (1924, translated as The Navigators of Space by Brian Stableford in 2010. An absolute classic of French SF.)

98. Gérard Klein, Les Seigneurs de la guerre (1971, translated by John Brunner as The Overlords of War, 1973. Probably the best novel to come from the French SF New Wave.)

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Trollheart, would you be willing to amend your original posting to change "books" to "works"?

A great many of the best sf stories are short stories and novellas. I don't want to nominate some collection or anthology for the sake of the one or two stories that I really care about, where some of the other stories might leave me cold. For example, in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame volume on short stories (edited by Silverberg), I find several stories that, I suppose, almost everyone who has read widely in classic sf would say should be read -- but also one or more duds. For example, I have always disliked Lester del Rey's "Helen O'Loy."

Frankly, I doubt that there are 500 books in the sf, fantasy, and horror fields that everyone interested in those genres should read before he or she dies. But there might be 500 such stories -- short stories, novellas, novels.

My understanding is that we're not talking, here, about a bibliography of books we have liked, but about books (preferably -- stories) that "everyone" should read, or at least try. I suspect a lot of work that isn't all that good will get named if we go for five hundred books.

?

Just listing short stories would make it too heterogeneous, in my opinion. We should be able to list single-author collections of short stories, though.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

How about some SF by "literary" authors?

99. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

100. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Anyone care to make a case for Marukami? I haven't really read him. (Well, I've *started* a couple of his books.)

 

[tachyon]

Now that there's 100:

30 read
4 DNF

Significantly fewer than the other lists, due to fewer recent authors.

 

[Extollager]

We should be able to list single-author collections of short stories, though.

Even if we don’t think everything in the book actually does need to be read? That’s my problem. There could be a book with Asimov’s “Nightfall” — a story one might well think everyone should read; but Asimov wrote a lot of stories hardly worth reading, too. And so on.

I think Lovecraft’s “Colour Out of Space” belongs in a list of stories “everyone” should read. But I would not recommend any collection of his stories for this kind of list. He wrote a lot that only Lovecraft fans need to bother with. Take it from me, someone who’s read it all.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Even if we don’t think everything in the book actually does need to be read? That’s my problem. There could be a book with Asimov’s “Nightfall” — a story one might well think everyone should read; but Asimov wrote a lot of stories hardly worth reading, too. And so on.

I think Lovecraft’s “Colour Out of Space” belongs in a list of stories “everyone” should read. But I would not recommend any collection of his stories for this kind of list. He wrote a lot that only Lovecraft fans need to bother with. Take it from me, someone who’s read it all.

Well, obviously, no. If you think a collection is not good enough, then just don't list it. But I imagine someone will list The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, if they haven't done so already. I have one collection in mind, but I feel I've listed too many things already. I'll wait a bit.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I have to say that one thing that puts me off lists like this one is the word "should." I don't like being told what I should read, especially when so many of the books on the list are books I either have no wish to read, or else started and did not finish.

I have no problem with a list of suggested or recommended books, but that "should" makes it sound like those who don't read them all have somehow failed. Which is nonsense. There are so many worthy books out there, SFFH books to suit a variety of tastes, that it seems ... I don't know ... a bit arrogant to tell people which books they ought to have been reading.

 

[Pyan]

What Teresa just said.

He wrote a lot that only Lovecraft fans need to bother with. Take it from me, someone who’s read it all.

And as a Lovecraft fan that became a Lovecraft fan by reading just everything he wrote, I'm a little concerned with such a sweeping statement. Personally, I really dislike Erikson's Malazan series, ditto GRRM's Game of Thrones books - but I'm not going to recommend that people don't read them.

 

[Extollager]

Pyan, I'm trying to keep in mind the idea that I take the original posting as advocating, the compilation of a list of 500 books or works that some people -- readers in general? fans of sffh? -- owe it to themselves to read or at least to try during their reading lives.

I regard HPL as a favorite author, but "The Colour Out of Space" is, I think, his masterpiece, the one in which he did what he tried to do again and again and evoked tragedy. Why should anyone bother with Lovecraft if this story doesn't seem worthwhile to him or her? But I'd even be willing to consider that "everyone" should try also At the Mountains of Madness, which exhibits Lovecraft's evocation of time in a way that wasn't suited to "Colour." But I don't think anyone needs to bother with a whole book of Lovecraft's stories unless that reader likes HPL and wants to read more. Lots of people would find that they could "get" Lovecraft by reading "Colour" and perhaps Mountains.

So much for HPL. Further on this topic of "works" vs. "books" --

I don't think anyone "needs" to read a whole book of Saki's stories as a bucket list goal. I'd be happy to nominate his "Sredni Vashtar" (horror) for this list. If someone liked that one, he or she could read others.

Take William Hope Hodgson. I'd nominate "The Voice in the Night" (sf/horror) for this list, but there is no other short story by him that I think belongs on the list.

Take Bob Shaw's "Light of Other Days." That's a classic, a wonderful sf story. But when I set myself to read a whole book of his slow glass stories, I found it unfinishable.

I wouldn't say there is any entire book of Fritz Leiber's stories that should be on this "bucket list" compilation; but no one should miss "A Pail of Air."

Katherine MacLean's "Contagion" is an impressive short story. Does it appear in a collection of her stories in which each is as good?

Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s novellas "Conditionally Human" and "Dark Benediction," but not necessarily everything in The Best of Walter M. Miller, Jr. would qualify (in my opinion) for a bucket list.

J. L. Borges -- several short stories, such as "The Aleph." But I know of no collection of his stories about which I'd say everything in it needs to be read. His gaucho knife-fight stories do nothing for me, at least, and are certainly not sf or fantasy.

So much in the sffh genres is not novel-length.

My 2c worth.