SFBC's Top 50
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This entry was posted at
19:39 GMT on 5 March 2003
The Science Fiction Book Club has posted its Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years.
Now, by "significant," let us presume that they mean something like "had a major influence on the wider culture, or within the SF&F community."
That right there knocks one of their top ten right out. Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, while being one of his better novels, had no influence until it was filmed as Blade Runner some 14 years after it was published. Some of Dick's other works were far more influential.
Now let's peruse 11 through 20. I read SF avidly, and am utterly unfamiliar with The Children of the Atom (number 14), or Cities in Flight (number 15), though the title of the former sounds familiar, and I've read some stories by the author of the latter. But then we have number 16, Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic. I've never gotten into Pratchett, but isn't this one of his lesser works?
I could nit-pick different entries in the 21-30 realm, but they've all had an impact, so I won't.
31-40 is mostly a strong batch. I'm unfamiliar with Little, Big, but know of John Crowley, so perhaps this is his most influential book.
And finally, 41-50. First of all, what in the world is The Silmarillion doing here? Lord of the Rings is here already, and The Silmarillion has an impact only because of the preceding work, there is no other reason to read it. Then The Sword of Shannara, for pete's sake? Why not just put Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time mega-series in spots 1-23 (or however many have been churned out so far)?
Other complaints:
Heinlein's only on the list twice, and probably should have at least had The Moon is a Harsh Mistress on the list too, for its sheer political impact. This completely ignores his "juveniles," which introduced many future astronauts and scientists to science. That's significant, I would think.
Philip Jose Farmer's The Lovers was an earth-shaking event when it was published, at least within SF, though To Your Scattered Bodies Go is a superior book.
Where's Poul Anderson? Granted, his impact is tough to pin down to a single book, but it can be done. Tau Zero is frequently cited, but you could easily include Brain Wave or Three Hearts and Three Lions instead. There were literally dozens of choices here, one would have sufficed.
Other than that, and some of the ordering, this is a strong list on its own terms.