Fantasy and SF novels since 2000 that Might Be Essentials One Day

Inspired by the thread about the 50 Essential SF Novels that every library should have on its shelves, I thought it would be fun to introduce a new twist: what are the SF novels and fantasy novels written since 2000 that will be forcing themselves onto the list of the 50 Essentials lists for both SF and Fantasy in the future?

After all, a 50 essentials list for all time is pretty easy to construct: just grab a few classics from every decade and bob’s your uncle. But what novels written/published in the last 14 years are worthy of being on the list? You don’t have to name 50 candidates, just the few you think are worthy of consideration. Who are the new kids on the block who have The Right Stuff?

I’ll kick off the list with a couple of nominees:

For the SF list:

  1. Accelerando by Charles Stoss. This may be the best novel dealing with the concept of the Singularity since Vernor Vinge’s “Rainbow’s End.” It details how the human psyche might be change into a cyborgish organism linked to computer programs and hardware of increasing degrees of complexity as human being struggle to keep pace with technological change rates that go faster and faster, driven in part by those very changes in the human psyche. The ideas come at you in this novel at a furious rate in this story, a brilliant extrapolation of what the near future might be like for many of us.

For the fantasy list:
Declare by Tim Powers. Published in 2001 it just makes the list, but damn, does it ever deserve to be on it. A brilliant melding of Cold War history combined with what it might be like if djinn really existed, and were powerful and strange beyond human imagining. Powers’ djinn are like nothing you’ve ever encountered in fantasy before, entities that are truly alien and unknowable and yet involved in human affairs. Definitely a classic, I believe.

So what are your candidates?

Maybe Flint’s 1632, if only for greater exposure of it’s premise’s type of scenario, and the gargantuan scope of the franchise.

Fantasy: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. A great novel by anty measure.

Science Fiction: Enclave by Kit Reed. Absolutely brilliant book and serious criticism of American child rearing.

Holy crap, that’s fascinating! Never heard of it, but definitely gonna take a look at it. Not very interested in alt history stories, but VERY interested in the way this one was produced.

I read the Amazon preview on this one, and it’s definitely on my “to get” list. Interesting setup, engaging characters, looks like a lot of fun.

I just went to Amazon to check out 1632, and found that the Kindle edition is available for free - downloaded it.

Thanks for the heads-up, it’s on my Kindle too now.

Baen has done this with several of the books they publish (with the author’s permission). They’ll make early books in a series available for free on the principle that readers will go on to buy the more recent books by the same author.

Revelation Space and its sequels, by Alastair Reynolds. Excellent modern, hard sf.

James S. A. Corey’s “Expanse” series (Leviathan’s Wake, Caliban’s War and Abaddon’s Gate) Modern Space Opera.

That would have been my second nominee, actually. However, I think it falls well short of “Accelerando” because the characters in it are standard present day people in a post-scarcity society, unaugmented by computer aids to cognition. I do not regard this as realistic any more. His characters seem, well, dumb, compared to Stross’ characters.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. Hard SF, and the first book in a good series.

You and a lot of other people think very highly of this book. I just don’t get it. I consider it an epic failure. It creates a brilliant setup and then totally fails to follow up on it. The way in which the older people just easily and seamlessly become generic space marines just hit all kinds of wrong notes for me. I so wish a writer with a better understanding of human psychology had written that book.

As you can guess, it’s not on my list of essentials.

Perdido Street Station is from 2000, so it just comes in under the bar; not sure it’s the best of Mieville’s books (I like The Scar better, though Iron Council isn’t as good; The City and The City was very good but possibly not science fiction/fantasy depending on your definitions) but it’s the first of his most famous series.

Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson

Storm of Swords by George Martin.

Malazan Book of the Fallen, which is an epic to make A Song of Ice and Fire look like a YA short story.

Neal Stephenson’s Anathem.

I was just about to say Anathem, but BrainGlutton beat me to it. I think it’ll hold up better a few decades on than Stephenson’s other stuff will.

Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others. Chiang only writes short stories and only 13 in the last 20 years but they’re consistently the most inventive and thoughtful explorations of the space. He basically wins a Nebula or Hugo for every story he writes.

Great idea for a thread, EC.

I haven’t read Anathem, so I can’t opine on that, but I think Cryptonomicon may fare very well over time.

Speaking of Stephenson, I wonder how cyberpunk as a subgenre will be regarded. It already seems kind of 1990s to me. It’s like we thought we were moving toward a virtual reality world and now that idea is passe. Maybe we aren’t so interested in going into the computer’s world because the computer is suddenly so ubiquitous in our world what with the advent of smartphones and tablets.

Why do you think my list of 50 was “easy to construct” or was assembled by “grab[bing] a few essentials from every decade?” Your statement is absurd. The list took an astonishing amount of work. No need to insult things because you personally don’t like them and/or don’t understand the methodology behind them.