Mrs. Watson, all your children have been certified insane

[sovay]

Got from thistleingrey: the Guardian's science fiction and fantasy novels everyone must read. Bold if you've read the book, italicize the author's name if you've read three or more long texts by them. I have some very weird gaps in my reading. I also have a fever. One of these is much more easily remedied than the other.


Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
Brian W. Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
JG Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
JG Ballard: Crash (1973)
JG 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: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
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. Delany: 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)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968—1990)
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950—56)
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—)
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)
Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
Antoine de Sainte-Expéry: 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)

Comments

[sovay]

Not sure what I think of the list, but I'd expect The Grauniad and I wouldn't have quite the same notions of what to list.

Speak to me of The Grauniad?

Can't decide if I'm pleased that they're including stuff from mainstreamish authors like Atwood of "spaceships and talking squid" fame and Rushdie and Toni Morrison, or if I'm a bit put out that they're taking up space that might be given to "our people."

I don't have that kind of tribal loyalty: if you worry too much over "literary" versus "speculative," you may feel compelled to throw out Bulgakov or Nabokov or Sylvia Townsend Warner, and then I may feel compelled to hit you repeatedly with Charles Dickens.

(Seriously, where was A Christmas Carol on this list? Where do they think children learn about possible futures and causality, anyway?)

Not sure why Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is included, but I suppose I can't look at that book rationally since it pressed all my borderline-mediaevalist buttons.

Because it's fantasy (or science fiction: although mostly what it is is bitterly black satire) and not much else of Twain's work is?

I'm a little puzzled that Discworld and Earthsea are reduced to series, whereas Harry Potter isn't.

As a series, Harry Potter is wildly inconsistent in quality; and if impact on the wider world is a factor, the first book is what really kicked off the phenomenon. They probably should have picked a couple of Discworlds, but at least the Earthsea books can be read all as a cycle (before some of us go off into corners and fight about Tehanu).

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Popping into someone else's thread to note that "Grauniad" is a humorous rearrangement of "Guardian," to point up that newspaper's habit (so it is said) of misspelling things. They did put a second "e" in "Delany," e.g.

And for my part, though I'm interested to see what ap_aelfwine will say as well, Connecticut Yankee pushes buttons because it is terrible medievalism. Like, there's reshaping and remastering (in the music-recording sense as well as the literal one), as William Morris did, and then there's being smugly convinced that one's own era is Right and writing from that position, as Mark Twain did. Morris offers a lofty bar, but he's the first example coming to mind. Even Wordsworth's dabblings in medievalism are okay compared to Mark Twain's, and Wordsworth dripped gory druids and ruins all over a few pages....

[sovay]

Popping into someone else's thread to note that "Grauniad" is a humorous rearrangement of "Guardian," to point up that newspaper's habit (so it is said) of misspelling things.

Gah. I shouldn't even try to interact with people when I'm sick.

Even Wordsworth's dabblings in medievalism are okay compared to Mark Twain's, and Wordsworth dripped gory druids and ruins all over a few pages....

I will, however, point out that I love the image of needing to mop Wordsworth off a mythos.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Speak to me of The Grauniad?

thistleingrey's explained it already. Sorry for that.

They strike me as being self-consciously intellectual, perhaps a little bit like the New York Times. I might agree with about a fair number of things, but when they start talking about sf/f I prepare myself for... well, stuff like the above. ;-)

I don't have that kind of tribal loyalty: if you worry too much over "literary" versus "speculative," you may feel compelled to throw out Bulgakov or Nabokov or Sylvia Townsend Warner, and then I may feel compelled to hit you repeatedly with Charles Dickens.

No worries, I'd not put them out--I don't want you to hit me with Dickens. ;-)

I try not to be too tribal, but it's very deep in my wiring.

Besides, as I said, the fact that some of the writers--and definitely a substantial part of their fans*--would be disconcerted by their inclusion on an sf/f list makes it all good. I want to see the whole lot of them reprinted with Frank Frazetta or Boris Vallejo covers, me. ;-)

(Seriously, where was A Christmas Carol on this list? Where do they think children learn about possible futures and causality, anyway?)

A very good point.

Because it's fantasy (or science fiction: although mostly what it is is bitterly black satire) and not much else of Twain's work is?

I suppose so. Me, I'd rather see Tom Sawyer and the Airship here, even though it was mediocre even from the perspective of a ten-year-old who was obsessed with dirigibles and read paperbacks of both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to pieces.

The sheer cultural arrogance of CT Yankee and the massive case of Did Not Do the Research is hard for me to forgive. I suppose what Twain was really targeting was mediaeval-setting fiction, of the Sir Walter Scott variety, but still...

As a series, Harry Potter is wildly inconsistent in quality;

This is all too true. The last couple of books, in particular... well, I think Rowling's a casualty of too much fame, too quickly. Or at least that's the charitable explanation.

and if impact on the wider world is a factor, the first book is what really kicked off the phenomenon.

True. I thought Prisoner of Azkaban was the best of the lot, myself, but Philosopher's Stone is probably the most necessary one, if they're being read as examples.

They probably should have picked a couple of Discworlds, but at least the Earthsea books can be read all as a cycle (before some of us go off into corners and fight about Tehanu).

This is true.

*I once got into a borderline-argument over whether or not The Road was science fiction, with a friend whose criterion for not calling it science fiction seemed to boil down to the fact that he thought it was worth reading and therefore it couldn't be science fiction. ;-)