# NPR's top 100 SF/Fantasy list **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 14, 2011, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676 "2011-08-14T13:12:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/81 "2011-08-17T17:25:10Z")
> [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](#): > > Harry Potter and Narnia were omitted because the list [excludes Young Adult (YA) books](http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/08/11/139346998/nprs-top-100-science-fiction-and-fantasy-novels-parsing-the-results). That’s probably a good thing, else \*The Hunger Games \*would likely have been voted on. > > I agree with the poster who mentioned the absence of Sturgeon. I recently read _More than Human_ and it is one of the most unique concepts I’ve ever seen. The only problem is I think it may be out of print and somewhat hard to find. And in the vein of different strokes and folks, I thought MtH was one of the worst _science fiction_ books I’ve ever read. Would have worked a lot better as a fantasy 'cause I kept thinking “Dammit, mutations don’t work like that, dammit!” ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/82 "2011-08-17T17:44:33Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > I thought MtH was one of the worst _science fiction_ books I’ve ever read. Would have worked a lot better as a fantasy 'cause I kept thinking “Dammit, mutations don’t work like that, dammit!” Sounds to me like it _is_ fantasy, then. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/83 "2011-08-17T17:48:48Z")
I got in a huge argument with a guy at a science fiction reading club about this book… he was amazed that I thought it horrible science and that the bad science kept me from enjoying the book. He got so upset that he never came back, and he was a founding member! ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/84 "2011-08-17T18:41:41Z")
> [@lisiate](#): > > Any such list that can include three Neal Stephenson entries but none by Jack Vance is worthless. Came in to mention the fact that Vance wasn’t on the list; it’s just not a serious list without him represented. ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/85 "2011-08-17T20:24:32Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > I got in a huge argument with a guy at a science fiction reading club about this book… he was amazed that I thought it horrible science and that the bad science kept me from enjoying the book. He got so upset that he never came back, and he was a founding member! The fact that Sturgeon flipped our knowledge of “science” on its head is probably why I think it’s such a unique concept. The reader would find many a sci-fi/fantasy book displeasing if he couldn’t help from thinking, “that’s not how things work!” ETA: Also consider that MtH was written in the 50s, I believe. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/86 "2011-08-17T20:40:46Z")
Yeah, I’m pretty sure they had enough ideas about how mutations work in the 50s for people back then to say “This is _science_ fiction?” in regards to the muties in MtH. ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/87 "2011-08-17T20:49:34Z")
I’m curious, does the genre classification of a book really contribute to your enjoyment of it? If MtH were labelled “Fantasy” would you like it more? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/88 "2011-08-17T21:02:05Z")
Naw, the book was boring. And it was bad science. But the bad science part of my argument was what drove the group guy crazy. As a reader of the genre I expect a certain amount of hand-waving in regards to liberties taken with science - _The FTL drive was invented by Robert Thomason as he was investigating quantum fluxes…_ - stuff like that, I don’t have a problem with. I don’t even have a problem if future discoveries make the science out of date, no big deal. But to get concepts so unbelievably wrong as Sturgeon does in MtH… yeah, that bothers me. Why even make it a science fiction book if you’re not even going to attempt to have the science work in any realistic fashion? IMHO, if he wanted to write a story about outsiders and cultural changes and didn’t give a shiite about scientific accuracy, he should have written a book called _More than Black_ or _More than Asian_ or _More than a Cancer Survivor_. ---
**Author:** ![irishgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@irishgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irishgirl)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/89 "2011-08-17T21:13:12Z")
The Princess Bride- seriously? It’s funny and cute and all, but hardly a great work of literature. Pterry first makes 57 with Small Gods- are you kidding me? Discworld should be considered in its entirety like the other series, and ranked much higher. Terry " Let me just throw in a big passage of BDSM in here for no good reason" Goodkind is 62. Which is … better than he deserves. No really, I’m just annoyed about Pterry. The Belgariad, ASOIAF, Sandman, Dune, Foundation, Wheel of Time are all considered as series, and for some of them the latter books have a serious drop-off in quality. Discworld is one of the most richly developed worlds in fantasy, and the quality of the series improved as the texture and depth increases- but no, they choose to assess each book separately. Boo. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/90 "2011-08-17T21:43:05Z")
> [@irishgirl](#): > > Pterry first makes 57 with Small Gods- are you kidding me? Discworld should be considered in its entirety like the other series, and ranked much higher. Two possible arguments: 1. Discworld isn’t as much of a _series_ as those listed as such, more a collection of many stories in a more-or-less self-consistent universe with _direct_ ties only between some of them. 2. The Discworld volumes are of highly variable quality. Looking at them all together would bring the average ranking down. Now, I’ve only read three or so of them, so I don’t know, but this is what I’ve gathered. I did like _Small Gods_ very much. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/91 "2011-08-17T21:45:49Z")
Discworld isn’t really a series, though. The Watch books are a series, the Death books are a series, the Tiffany Aching books are a series, and so on, but those series are, for the most part, only barely connected to each other. A lot of the Discworld books, it’s almost as though Pratchett just wrote a completely stand-alone novel, and did a find-and-replace of “disc” for “world”. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/92 "2011-08-17T21:52:59Z")
No Earthsea? No Gormenghast? Tish and pish! ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/93 "2011-08-17T22:01:26Z")
Yes, but at least Le Guin is on the list twice (\*The Left Hand of Darkness \* at 45 and _The Dispossessed_ at 78). ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/94 "2011-08-17T22:05:22Z")
> [@lisiate](#): > > Yes, but at least Le Guin is on the list twice (\*The Left Hand of Darkness \* at 45 and _The Dispossessed_ at 78). Right, and those are both volumes of the Hainish universe but not a series as such. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/95 "2011-08-17T22:19:04Z")
I’m only good for 32 of these. There’s a lot of crap on there that I would never read. Most of it is fantasy. ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2011, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/96 "2011-08-18T01:09:03Z")
> [@Scissorjack](#): > > No Earthsea? No Gormenghast? Tish and pish! Earthsea falls victim to the YA label. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2011, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/97 "2011-08-18T03:37:59Z")
I think Asimov was treated way too kindly; I expect people may have voted for I, Robot and the Foundation trilogy because they’re famous, or because you remember them positively from when you were a kid and had had no sense of good writing versus bad at the time. Asimov eventually learned to write characters that weren’t totally wooden, but that was clearly well after both of these works. I didn’t notice that when I was 15, but sure did when I revisited these books a couple of decades later. Ouch. I think a number of other titles that I bet almost nobody re-reads more than once wound up with high rankings because they’re famous and people read them in school, from _1984_ to _Flowers for Algernon._ I can see these books garnering a lot of votes from people who don’t actually read much fantasy or SF. Other than deserving YA books, David Brin was the omission that bothered me most. Both _Earth_ and the first Uplift trilogy deserved to be well up this list. I was less surprised by the absence of Joe Haldeman’s _Worlds_ and _Worlds Apart_, which IMHO is right up there with _The Forever War_ in quality, but for whatever reason has never attracted nearly as much attention. The motif of potentially unbridgeable separation between star-crossed lovers that drives the later parts of both stories is, again IMHO, much better done and more integral to the story in _Worlds/Worlds Apart_. > [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](#): > > Harry Potter and Narnia were omitted because the list [excludes Young Adult (YA) books](http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/08/11/139346998/nprs-top-100-science-fiction-and-fantasy-novels-parsing-the-results). That’s probably a good thing, else \*The Hunger Games \*would likely have been voted on. I disagree - whatever might’ve been let in that shouldn’t have been, IMHO, doesn’t justify the artificial exclusion of Potter, Narnia, A Wrinkle In Time, and other YA books that can duke it out at this level. > [@Chronos](#): > > Discworld isn’t really a series, though. The Watch books are a series, the Death books are a series, the Tiffany Aching books are a series, and so on, but those series are, for the most part, only barely connected to each other. A lot of the Discworld books, it’s almost as though Pratchett just wrote a completely stand-alone novel, and did a find-and-replace of “disc” for “world”. I agree - and the Watch series especially should have been in as a series, and pretty high up at that. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/98 "2011-08-18T03:42:05Z")
> [@](#): > > I think Asimov was treated way too kindly; I expect people may have voted for I, Robot and the Foundation trilogy because they’re famous, or because you remember them positively from when you were a kid and had had no sense of good writing versus bad at the time. Asimov eventually learned to write characters that weren’t totally wooden, but that was clearly well after both of these works. I didn’t notice that when I was 15, but sure did when I revisited these books a couple of decades later. Ouch. Dr. Susan Calvin, wooden? Would you prefer swords at dawn, or pistols at noon, sir? ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2011, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/99 "2011-08-18T07:10:19Z")
Does Tad Williams ever make these lists? Because I really like his work. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2011, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676/100 "2011-08-18T11:14:23Z")
I thought Memory Sorrow and Thorn was pretty good by Williams, but not read anything else from him since. Not top drawer tbh but worth finishing. Didn’t it have the same character-based chapter structure as aSoIaF? Julian May is a suprising omission from these sort of lists I think. Not that she’s awesome or anything but she’s readable and I think the Pliocene exile series was a big seller in SF terms. It was early 80s though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nprs-top-100-sf-fantasy-list/592676.md?page=6)