Meme: The Guardian List of Best SF/F
Peggy over at Biology in Science Fiction brought to my attention this meme of the Guardian’s list of 149 best science fiction and fantasy novels. Being the good little bookworm, I decided to join in on the fun: 1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)5. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)6. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)7. J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)8. J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)9. J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)10. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)11. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)12. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)13. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)14. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)15. Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)16. William Beckford: Vathek (1786)17. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)18. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)19. Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)20. Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)21. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)22. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)23. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)24. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)25. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)26. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)27. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)28. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)29. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)30. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)31. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)32. Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)33. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)34. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)35. Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)36. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)37. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953)38. GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)39. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)40. Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)41. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)42. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)43. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)44. Samuel R Delany: The Einstein Intersection (1967)45. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)46. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)47. Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)48. Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum (1988)49. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)50. John Fowles: The Magus (1966)51. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)52. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)53. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)54. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)55. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)56. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)57. M John Harrison: Light (2002)58. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)59. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)60. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)61. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)62. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)63. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)64. Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)65. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)66. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)67. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)68. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)69. PD James: The Children of Men (1992)70. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)71. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)72. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)73. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)74. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)75. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)76. CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56) (not all of them)77. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)78. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)79. Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)80. Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)81. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)82. MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)83. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)84. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)85. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)86. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)87. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)88. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)89. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)90. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)91. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)92. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)93. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)94. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)95. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)96. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)97. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)98. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)99. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)100. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)101. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)102. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)103. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993) (part of it)104. Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)105. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)106. George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)107. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)108. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)109. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)110. Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)111. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)112. Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) (A few of them)113. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)114. Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)115. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)116. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)117. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)118. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)119. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)120. Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)121. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)122. Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)123. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)124. José Saramago: Blindness (1995)125. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)126. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)127. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)128. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)129. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)130. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)131. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)132. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)133. JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)134. JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)135. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)136. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)137. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)138. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)139. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)140. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)141. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)142. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)143. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)144. Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)145. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)146. Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)147. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)148. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)149. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924) And another list where I did poorly! Twenty novels from this list (well, twenty three if you count