npr Top 100 Sceince-Fcition, Fantasy Books--how many have you read?

npr Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books

I didn't really follow this, and thus didn't vote on anything.  I did look at the results, and thought I would at least figure out which ones I had read.  Their rules on series is a little odd, and so there's cases where I had read one or two of a group.

For the listing below, those in red are ones that I've read, those in blue are series where I've read some, while those in black are unread.

 

1	The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy	J.R.R. Tolkien
2	The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy	Douglas Adams
3	Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card
4	The Dune Chronicles	Frank Herbert
5	A Song Of Ice And Fire Series	George R. R. Martin
6	1984	George Orwell
7	Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury
8	The Foundation Trilogy	Isaac Asimov
9	Brave New World	Aldous Huxle
10	American Gods	Neil Gaiman
11	The Princess Bride	William Goldman
12	The Wheel Of Time Series	Robert Jordan
13	Animal Farm	George Orwell
14	Neuromancer	William Gibson
15	Watchmen	Alan Moore
16	I, Robot	Isaac Asimov
17	Stranger In A Strange Land	Robert Heinlein
18	The Kingkiller Chronicles	Patrick Rothfuss
19	Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt Vonnegut
20	Frankenstein	Mary Shelley
21	Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?	Philip K. Dick
22	The Handmaid's Tale	Margaret Atwood
23	The Dark Tower Series	Stephen King
24	2001: A Space Odyssey	Arthur C. Clarke
25	The Stand	Stephen King
26	Snow Crash	Neal Stephenson
27	The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury
28	Cat's Cradle	Kurt Vonnegut
29	The Sandman Series	Neil Gaiman
30	A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess
31	Starship Troopers	Robert Heinlein
32	Watership Down	Richard Adams
33	Dragonflight	Anne McCaffre
34	The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress	Robert Heinlein
35	A Canticle For Leibowitz	Walter M. Miller
36	The Time Machine	H.G. Wells
37	20000 Leagues Under the Sea	Jules Verne
38	Flowers For Algernon	Daniel Keys Moran
39	The War Of The Worlds	H.G. Wells
40	The Chronicles Of Amber	Roger Zelaznz
41	The Belgariad	David Eddings
42	The Mists Of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley
43	The Mistborn Series	Brandon Sanderson
44	Ringworld	Larry Niven
45	The Left Hand Of Darkness	Ursula K. LeGuin
46	The Silmarillion	J.R.R. Tolkien
47	The Once And Future King	T.H. White
48	Neverwhere	Neil Gaiman
49	Childhood's End	Arthur C. Clarke
50	Contact	Carl Sagan
51	The Hyperion Cantos	Dan Simmons
52	Stardust	Neil Gaiman
53	Cryptonomicon	Neal Stephenson
54	World War Z	Max Brooks
55	The Last Unicorn	Peter S. Beagle
56	The Forever War	Joe Haldeman
57	Small Gods	Terry Pratchett
58	The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant	Stephen R. Donaldson
59	The Vorkosigan Saga	Lois McMaster Bujold
60	Going Postal	Terry Pratchett
61	The Mote In God's Eye	Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62	The Sword Of Truth	Terry Goodkind
63	The Road	Cormac McCarthy
64	Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell	Susanna Clarke
65	I Am Legend	Richard Matheson
66	The Riftwar Saga	Raymond E. Feist
67	The Shannara Trilogy	Terry  Brooks
68	The Conan The Barbarian Series	R.E. Howard
69	The Farseer Trilogy	Robin Hobb
70	The Time Traveler's Wife	Audrey Niffenegger
71	The Way Of Kings	Brandon Sanderson
72	A Journey To The Center Of The Earth	Jules Verne
73	The Legend Of Drizzt Series	R.A. Salvatore
74	Old Man's War	John Scalzi
75	The Diamond Age	Neil Stephenson
76	Rendezvous With Rama	Arthur C. Clarke
77	The Kushiel's Legacy Series	Jacqueline Carey
78	The Dispossessed	Ursula K. LeGuin
79	Something Wicked This Way Comes	Ray Bradbury
80	Wicked	Gregory Maguire
81	The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series	Steven Erikson
82	The Eyre Affair	Jasper Fforde
83	The Culture Series	Iain M. Banks
84	The Crystal Cave	Mary Stewart
85	Anathem	Neal Stephenson
86	The Codex Alera Series	Jim Butcher
87	The Book Of The New Sun	Gene Wolfe
88	The Thrawn Trilogy	Timothy Zahn
89	The Outlander Series	Diana Gabaldan
90	The Elric Saga	Michael Moorcock
91	The Illustrated Man	Ray Bradbury
92	Sunshine	Robin McKinlez
93	A Fire Upon The Deep	Vernor Vinge
94	The Caves Of Steel	Isaac Asimov
95	The Mars Trilogy	Kim Stanley Robinson
96	Lucifer's Hammer	Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97	Doomsday Book	Connie Willis
98	Perdido Street Station	China Mieville
99	The Xanth Series	Piers Anthony
100	The Space Trilogy	C.S. Lewis

Some general notes/comments:

"The Thrawn Triolgy" by Timothy Zahn?  A nice addition to Lucas' Star Wars universe (and one of the last things I paid attention to, particulary after the disappointing prequels) but they aren't great literature.

Sigh...outside of the first couple, why include Anthony's Xanth series?

Is Robin McKinley's "Sunshine" held in that high of regard?

Wow, lot more Neil Gaiman books on the list than I would have expected.

After a tasty dinner, getting ready to see Delbert Mcclinton at the Crighton in Conroe...last Sounds of Texas show for the season

Vernon's Kunty Katfish in Conroe...good eating...

Preview for another Mission Impossible movie...why does Brad Bird feel he needs to direct an entry in an exisiting action series...

Fun but tiring weekend in Memphis. Back home, and ready for Tex-Mex at Gringo's

At wife's 40th High School reunion....sometimes it's fun being a 5th wheel...

Ok...now i can say that Graceland is tacky...

Correction...the Elvis museum complex is tacky...not seen Graceland yet...

Graceland is very tacky...

Recently read: "Long Eyes and Other Stories" by Jeff Carlson

This was my first introduction to Carlson.  There's three stories here:

"Long Eyes" a story about a human/spaceship hybrid, and what makes someone human.

"Planet of the Sealies" about future archaeology, and the skills necessary for survival of the species

"Pressure" about a human/sea creature hybrid.

I've said before that I don't read a lot of short fiction, and I know that it's my loss, since so much interesting work (and new authors) first show up in the shorter length.  I assume Carlson is more know for his Plague novels (Plague Year, Plague War and Plague Zone).  Based upon these shorter works, I may have to try Plague Year.

I've also heard good things about The Frozen Sky, so I should try that.

Recently read: "Moon Flower" by James P. Hogan

I really didn't want to read this.  I first read Hogan in high school, starting with Thrice Upon A Time.  That book, along with Inherit the Stars help cement my interest in SF.  I followed Hogan for a long time, until he starting going off the rails (my last book of his was Cradle of Saturn, which I knew was bad, but read just to see how bad it could be).

One of my book groups picked this one to read (I think partially because Hogan died last year, and this one was in print and easily found) so I read it to see how bad it was.

Ugh...Earth is a mess, being dominated by massive corporations (ok, nothing new here) and "developing" new worlds (there's a FTL drive which allows us out of the solar system).  On the planet Cyrene, Terrans from the base are disappearing.  Myles Callen, a facilitator for the Interworld Restructuring Corporation is sent to find out what is going on, and to find physicist Evan Wade, one of the humans that has left the base.

Marc Shearer, an idealistic physicist who was a colleague of Wade's, is given the chance to go to Cyrene (the corporation hopes Shearer will lead Callen to Wade).  Once there, Shearer finds that Wade has laid the groundwork for him to follow, with help from the Cyreneans.

Once on the planet, most humans find themselves becoming more like the Cyreneans, less interested in being selfish, and more about "doing the right thing".

****Spoilers****
I guess this is a spoiler, though the once you start the book the title gives a bit of it away, but there's a flower on Cyrene which somehow (handwaves quantum physics) allows some communication backward in time.  This allows people to make the "correct" decisions.  (This occurs on Earth, but is too faint for anyone to recognize.  Shearer has been doing research into this.  The flower acts as a sort of antenna for the waves).

One of my biggest problems with this story is that, given that humans are screwing up the planet, the solution is through a "magical flower".  It's very depressing.

Well, that's one problem  The book is also badly written, with most of the characters being bland, despite some background information.  There's also bad science (including a bit of Velikovsky, which really serves no purpose in the plot) including some wonky orbital dynamics of the Cyrene system.

***Spoilers over***

Hogan isn't the first author to lose his way as he got older, but really stands a an excellent example of such.  I saw him a few years ago at an ArmadilloCon, and got him to autograph a couple of books.  He asked "why none of the new books..." which I was able to laugh off (I really didn't want to go into that with him at an autograph table).

Recently read: "Leviathan Wakes" by James Corey

So, does this qualify as "the new space opera"?  Given that it's confined to our solar system, I suppose not.  I did enjoy the book a lot, though.

We have alternately chapters, told through the viewpoints of two characters. 

Jim Holden is the XO of an ice miner.  His ship investigates a derelict, and while aboard his shuttle, his mining ship is destroyed.  Based upon evidence found aboard the derelict, he broadcasts that Mars may be responsible.  This causes an immediately increase in tension between Mars and the Belt, with violence of various levels starting to break out.

Miller is a detective on Ceres.  Given a side assignment to find a missing girl (who's parents have money and pull) he realizes that she may be the key to what's actually going on.  He may be too good (or too determined) for his own good, since he's ordered to drop the missing girl case.

There was a time, about 3/4 of the way through the book, when I thought that maybe the authors (Corey is the pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) had stretched the story out too long, but it picked back up, and had a bang up ending.  Miller and Holden are both well written characters, I think, and some of the secondary ones are interesting also.  It's not quite "hard sf" (the Epstein drive is sort of a magical space drive, though I think they were right in not trying to explain it) and it's not clear that the economic situation makes sense (Earth and Mars are the two major powers, with the Belt a minor third one).

It's book one of a trilogy...I certainly plan on seeing how the second one comes out.

Recently read: "Feed" by Mira Grant

Well, the last thing I expected to be reading was a zombie novel....

First, it gets nominated for a Hugo, and then someone in our book club recommends it, so I took a chance on the Kindle version.

We get somewhat traditional zombies (very slow moving, mindless creatures trying to eat you) with a scientific origin (a virus, originating with a vaccine).  We also get bloggers, in this case twins Georgia and Shaun Mason, along with their colleague Buffy (yes, a reference to that Buffy).  The trio is picked to be the official bloggers covering the presidential candidate of Senator Peter Ryman. 

Grant has built a world where humans are dealing with a deadly virus, with all the checks and controls that would be necessary, including a very powerful CDC.  Partly because of this, social media rules in 2039.
Bloggers are even slotted in categories ("Irwins" are ones that like to poke things with sticks).  The book is first person, from Georgia's viewpoint, with blog posts heading each chapter. 

Our heroes deal with politics (infighting for the Republican nomination) and find that what appears to be accidentical infestations might be murder instead.  The tension is ratcheted up through the book, and ends with a fairly explosive climax.

There's two more books coming, and I was impressed enough that I have already grabbed the Deadline in a Kindle edition.

Recently read: "The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi

I've been waiting for this book every since I've heard rumors of it, and the author (I first heard of him in a blog comment from Charlie Stross).  I even bought it in hardcover instead of Kindle, since I wanted a permanent copy.  I enjoyed it a lot...

...but I wanted to love it.

In a way, the book's plot is a caper novel (interesting, since I read Richard Stark's "Comeback" immediately before it) with the protagonist an amnesiac thief, so it's not that it's a difficult read from that standpoint.  From a world building standpoint, it's very confusing for an initial read.

The book opens with Jean le Flambeur being confined in a Dilemma Prison, where he is playing the Prisoner's Game daily, and has been shot numerous times.  He is broken out of prison by Mieli, an Oort solider, and taken to the Oubliette, a city on Mars that is moving across the surface (and home to the only baseline human population left in the solar system).  He is given the chance to win his freedom if he steals something for Mieli's boss (one of the Sobornost, part of the posthuman upload collective)which he failed to do before.

On Mars, time is a currency, and memories are held tight, and gogol piracy (cloning minds and enslaving them for specific tasks) is a problem. In the Oubliette, we have Isidore Beautrelet, a young (ten Martian years) architecture student and amateur detective, who must try and figure out who Jean le Flambeur is, and what he is doing on Mars.  Isidore is also dating a zocu, who are posthuman warriors (descended from members of MMORPG guilds).

This all can be very confusing, and it's the last book someone should give to a new SF reader.  Rajaniemi throws the reader into the story, and expects him/her to pick up the background from spare clues (most of which are just naming of items).  This book is sort of the anit-infodump example.  There is a handy glossary on Wikipedia, though I think it would have been nice to have included it in the book.

There will be two more books to come, and I'll certainly read them (though depending on the time between releases, I may have to do a re-read of this one), and I look forward to seeing how Rajaniemi develops.  This is a good book, I just don't think it's a great one.

Recently read: "Comeback" by Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)

After 1974's Butcher's Moon (reviewed here), Westlake didn't return to his Parker character for nearly twenty-five years.  He apparently started Parker stories several times, but always hit a wall.  He finally started one, and apparently the story flowed easily, and we got this book, followed by several others.

Here, Parker teams with two other criminals to rob a "Christan Crusade" of cash collected at the door.  His team is helped by an insider, who feels that he will take his share of the money and do good, since he has lost faith in the Crusade leader, who appears to be a typically sleazy televangelist.

As with much of Westlake writing, the heist goes wrong.  Here, it's one of the partners trying to kill Parker and escape with the entire take.  Parker is forced to run, and try and find both the money and the traitor.  We get the Crusade's security chief and the city's police dedective on the hunt also.  Thrown in the mix is also a trio who knows about the heist, and is intent on stealing the money themselves.

Parker is Parker, and despite the gap between books he still feels pretty much the same.  The world has changed somewhat (it's going to be harder to find large amount of cash money to steal) and I'm interested in seeing how Westlake handled the rest of the series.

Rumor is that there is a picture of next year's Apollocon chair wearing a tiara...