Via SF Signal:
Guardian has been running a series called 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read and has recently published their 124 149 science fiction and fantasy picks. (Links to intro. For the list, see Parts One, Two and Three.) They've also listed a couple of interesting articles: The Best Dystopias by Michael Moorcock, Imagined Worlds by Susanna Clarke, and Novels that predicted the future by Andrew Crumey.
So I have marked bold the titles I have read from the list. Plenty of reading left for me to do. Feel free to copy the list and post which ones you've read.
- Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
- Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
- Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
- Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
- Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
- Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
- J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
- J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)
- J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)
- Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
- Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
- Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
- Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
- Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
- Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
- William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
- Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
- Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
- Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
- Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)
- Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
- Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
- Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
- Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
- Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
- William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
- Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
- Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
- Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
- Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
- Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
- Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
- Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
- Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
- Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
- Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
- GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
- Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
- Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
- Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
- Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
- Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
- Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
- Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
- Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
- Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
- Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
- Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
- John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
- Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
- Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
- William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
- William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
- Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
- M John Harrison: Light (2002)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
- Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
- Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
- Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
- Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
- James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
- Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
- Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
- Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
- Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
- Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
- PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
- Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
- Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
- Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
- Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
- Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
- Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
- CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56) (Book 1 at least)
- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
- Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
- Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)
- Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
- Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
- MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)
- David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
- Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
- Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
- Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
- Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
- Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
- Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
- Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
- Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
- China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
- Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
- Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
- David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
- Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
- William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
- Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
- Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
- Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
- Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)
- Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
- Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
- Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
- Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
- George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
- Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
- Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
- Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
- Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
- John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
- Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) (A few of them)
- Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
- Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
- François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
- Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
- Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
- Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
- JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
- Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
- Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
- Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
- Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
- José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
- Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
- Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
- Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
- Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
- Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
- Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
- Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
- Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
- JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
- JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
- Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
- Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
- Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
- Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
- Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
- Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
- HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
- HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
- TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
- Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
- Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
- Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
- John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
- John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
- Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)
And, my poor showing is ...
ReplyDeleteDouglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)
J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)
Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)
Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
M John Harrison: Light (2002)
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56) (Book 1 at least)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)
Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)
David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)
Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) (A few of them)
Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)
Missed one ... read the Famished Road too
ReplyDeletewend,
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily agree with the whole list, but you really have to read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglass Adams. His writing is amazing, not to mention really funny.
I read my first Angela Carter, Bloody Chamber and other stories, last year and was very impressed. I am glad to see this larger list, the original list was 124 and definitely had some glaring problems, including not having Tolkien on the list.
ReplyDeleteMaria, I've been toying with getting Hitchhiker's Guide on audio for years. I'd love to give it a go in the original format. Think I'll look in the library as I'm sure an unabridged version would cost a fair bit.
ReplyDeleteMay be an interesting question for readers ... which is best ... the audio versus the reading experience? I'd love to know if anyone did the audio route on Hitchhiker's Guide?
Do you often get audiobooks? Personally, I find it hard to listen to audiobooks, I tend to miss parts as I get distracted by something my eyes are looking at and it's just no the same as reading to me.
ReplyDeleteBut since Hitchhiker's Guide was actually in the radio form originally, it's very well suited for an audiobook and I have a feeling the listening experience would be excellent.
Ooops ... sorry for the late reply Maria. I need to find a systematic way to remember where I've posted over the blogosphere!
ReplyDeleteAudio books are great for long drives and long soaks in the bath :o)
Maybe it reminds me of old oral storytelling, or unconsciously offers a comfort in a vague nod to childhood ... especially if listening to fairytales, legends etc. I'm not sure, but audio works for me.
I do have stipulations to the audios I'll buy though. For one, I have to like the narrator(s) voice(s). Second, it must be unabridged (I don't want to miss anything!). Listening to favourite authors read their own stories is bliss ... recently listened to Neil Gaiman read The Graveyard Book [it was free online :o) ] and it was sublime. He fully transported me into Bod's world.
Poetry becomes clearer to me when read well. And, Dylan Thoma's Under Milk Wood read by Richard Burton with the beautiful rhythmic Welsh accents has been played to death - afterall, it's meant as a play for voices, so audio is the way.
Similarly to Hitchhiker's I'd like to listen to Welles War of the Worlds one day. I'd like to imagine all those first radio listeners experience it as real, and go along for that ride. The medium offers a completely different flavour to reading it ... and, I'm not a big Sci Fic reader so this may get me more interested in that genre.
I love books first and foremost, but I think audio comes into its own in certain areas. I'm still meaning to download some to my ipod as iTunes store has a massive inventory now. But, the price has to be right too.
Thanks for the reply :o)