I’d put the best of Phil Dick and Gene Wolfe and Ursula LeGuin against Brave New World and 1984. (Not that I think those are bad books, quite the opposite. I just don’t think there’s a huge gulf in quality–however that can be measured–between them and the best of genre-marketed SF.)
I firmly believe that scifi stands shoulder to shouder with great literature (or has the potential to)
That said, I LOVED Pattern Recognition by William Gibson but I fail to see anything Sci Fi about it? The fact that people in the book know how to turn on a computer or use Photoshop? The presence of the Internet/message boards as a plot device? No way, great book but not Sci Fi.
I’ve read 90% of the ones on the list, mostly I’ve skipped the P.K. Dick, I just have never been able to get into his style of writing.
Not at all, in my case. I was making NO judgments about the literary value of the works in question, only observing that having an effect on mainstream culture outside the SF subculture seems to pull heavy weight on this list. “Battlefield Earth” is another example. Few people would call it great SF, but I’m sure the Scientologists have studied it carefully. FTR, I tried to read “The Dispossessed” but found it an incredibly boring piece of Marxist crap gussied up like an SF novel. Not nearly as good as your average Gor novel. Hell, not nearly as good as your average Gor novel wannabe.
Would you say that a person who doesn’t like Marxism would be justified in saying that “Das Kapital” wasn’t an important and influential book?
Clearly we didn’t read the same book…
The Dispossed has more SF veritas in its little finger than all the Gor novels put together. Le Guin has shat and flushed away turds that have contributed more to SF than “Norman” ever has.
Isn’t there a Tuchux message board you could be posting this sort of clearly-delusional opinion on?
I’ve got no dog in either fight, but as a mostly disinterested observer, while not high literature by any means, some of the early Gor stuff was quite entertaining and passably well written in a E.R. Burroughs sort of way, although later books were huge, steaming, mortgage paying literary dumps.
Clearly, we disagree.
What would be the point of posting such a message on a board where everyone would automatically agree with me? Also, I’m not a Gorean lifestyler and the Goreans aren’t really that interested in the books as literary works, which is the way I see them. Not nearly as much discussion to be had there as you might think.
Again, Stephen R. Donaldson’s Gap* books are overlooked.
A lot of people seem to have missed the point of my posts, which isn’t nearly as controversial as has been made out to be.
I observed that a lot of the novels included on the list seem to be included because they have had an effect on the mainstream culture outside the SF community. I don’t think this is a valid criterion. I think the overwhelming criterion should be the book’s quality strictly as an SF novel. By that standard, I don’t think the Gor novels, Battlefield Earth, the Dispossessed and several others belong on the list.
However if you ARE going to have a book’s effect on mainstream culture be an important criterion, you MUST include at least one of the Gor novels, because they undeniably HAVE had an effect outside the SF community, which is more than you can say of many other much better written SF novels.
Where’s Davy by Pangborn?
Where’s Case of Conscience by Blish?
I disagree with your basic premise that the books were included “because they have had an effect on the mainstream culture outside the SF community.” There is no evidence for this at all. People inside the sf community are perfectly capable of realizing that some books are marketed as mainstream but are really and truly sf. More than you are, apparently.
However, even if you grant this premise, the leap of logic you make next is an absurdity. You don’t have to list every book that has had an effect. For one thing, you can limit a list of best books to best books. For another, most people don’t think that the Gor books have had any real effect. A virtually invisible subculture doesn’t compare to the universal acknowledgment of the psychological truths of 1984.
There is no defending the Gor books for inclusion in a list of best 100 books, no matter how flawed the list is.
Of course, anyone who can misread The Dispossessed the way you did is capable of any mistake, however large.
The list lost any credibility with me right away by ranking *The Forever War * lower than Starship Troopers.
People inside the sf community are also perfectly capable of realising that some books are marketed as sf but are really and truly mainstream. More than you are, apparently.
Fair enough but if “Battlefield Earth” is on the list – and it is – then the gates have been swung wide open enough to permit books of almost any quality to enter.
Ah, but much better novels like “A Fire on the Deep” or everything written by much better writers such as Tim Powers, Ian Banks and Roger Zelazny, to name a few, have had almost NO effect outside the boundaries of SF and F, certainly far less than the Gor novels. If having an influence outside the boundaries is important, then these books and authors are unimportant. And of course, they ARE important, they are undoubtedly among the best writers the genre has produced. Therefore, having an influence outside the genre is unimportant.
I would argue the same for a number of titles that ARE on the list.
I read it as “boring drivel.” I know I’m not alone in that.
I think the problem is that you’re assuming something like *The Dispossessed *is on that list because it’s in the popular consciousness. What you fail to account for is that it is also well-regarded within the genre, as one of the undoubted classics of soft SF. It represents a certain school and period, and does it well. It is part of the canon.
I think one of the things that cheesed me off is that you didn’t seem to know what you were reading. The book is not a positive story about Marxism, it’s a more realistic story about Anarchism (hence its subtitle of* An Ambiguous Utopia)*- specifically, a form of anarcho-syndicalism. The two are not the same thing, and for you to dismiss it for what is a strawman reason is a bit of a let-down.
Also, it did win both the Nebula and Hugo in its year. Those are not mainstream awards. And a liust of the winners of both, while also having some forgotten works, is mostly a list of the greats of the genre -
Can you name a single novel on that list that was marketed as sf but are really and truly mainstream?
I’m with you on this Mr Dibble, and not just because the Dispossessed is one of my favourite books.
No, but Das Capital wasn’t a novel. Most people, I believe, would interpet the term “Top sci fi book” to mean the most entertaining or thought provoking or best written, not which had the most influence in the real world. Not unless it was so influential as to overshadow it’s quality, or lack thereof.
Now, if it was a list of the top 100 most influential science fiction novels, that would be different. Although it would still be low on the list; it’s not like these “Goreans” are numerous or important, fortunately.
:smack: Das Kapital, of course.
I would agree with you about about what constitutes a “top sci-fi novel.” Gor woudln’t qualify under those conditions for most people. (I actually found them quite entertaining, but I am willing to admit that I differ from many in that respect, mainly in that I’m willing to admit it publicly). Quite a few other books on that list would fail to qualify as well.
So few SF novels have ANY effect on the mainstream culture that it is inconceivable that Gor wouldn’t make a list of the Top 20 influential SF novels. Hell, Top 10.
I was happy to see Harry Harrison made it on the list. Of course I would have thought Captive Universe or West of Eden would have been a better choice than the Stainless Steel Rat. I guess it’s there because it’s his most well known book.