Silenus, Well, any list that doesn’t have Delany on it is suspect. (Smith over Delany. :smack: )
Tamerlane, Connie’s first solo novel wasn’t until 1987, so she’s too new. Same with Nancy Kress, as her first sf (as opposed to fantasy) novel wasn’t until 1988. (Yet both are earlier than Tepper’s Grass but I had to set some limit.) I only looked at novel dates, not short stories. That would put both of them earlier, but since the list is only reprinting novels (for the simple reason that collections of short stories don’t sell) I didn’t see the point.
What Exit?, your not knowing half of a list of the best classic female sf writers speaks volumes about the field and its audience. It’s little wonder that C. L. Moore hid behind initials (so did U. K. LeGuin for her first publication in Playboy) and James Tiptree Jr. behind a pseudonym. Nor it is surprising that so many females turned to fantasy so they could compete on equal terms. The reality is that there’s a stigma among the audience for sf which means that they won’t read anything with “girl cooties”* on it.
Not my term, but one used by female sf writers to describe their plight.
You think Anne McCaffery is a more “great” author than C. J. Cherryh? I mean, I ain’t saying I didn’t read an awful lot of her books, when I was a teenager. But man, if the list includes A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Stars My Destination, etc., then we’re talking about grownup books here.
Looks like a pretty good list to me - but not perfect. Asimov wasn’t that skilled at characterization, true, but any list which omits him from the SF Greats is automatically suspect. I would add I Robot, The Caves of Steel or The Foundation Trilogy (unless that would count as three?).
Didn’t see any Ray Bradbury. Where’s The Martian Chronicles or The Illustrated Man?
And a personal favorite, which I wish everyone would read: George R.R. Martin’s Tuf Voyaging. Masterful.
So basically, it’s a decent enough list but there’s PLENTY more out there. Go read all of them, and then all the other ones mentioned here. When you’re done, start a thread called ‘what obscure but fantastic SF book should I read now’ and another reading assignment will be set…
As I type there is a Google ad for “Quality Lesbian Fiction”
I’m guessing too there is no place on the list for books that are part of anthologies where its more important than not to read the next book in the series.
Yeah. Some of her short stories are among my favorites. BTW, I heard a very funny version of “Even the Queen” as a Harlan Ellison produced radio play. The pacing of the overlapping conversations at the brunch were really well done. If you started listening in the middle of it, it might take a bit before you realized it was a play and not a recording of a group of women in conversation. In fact the dialogue seemed quite faithful to the original story; it translated really well into a script.
What Exit? I definitely recommend that you check out Tiptree’s short stories. I read “The Screwfly Solution” recently and couldn’t sleep afterwards. It’s hands-down one of the creepiest stories I’ve ever read. Unlike some of her other work, this one doesn’t come off as at all dated.
Zelazny’s Lord of Light and Herbert’s Dune are two of my favorite books. I found Lord Of Light tough to read the first time (actually Dune too) but the second read made it all worth while.
