USA Today lists the Science Fiction Book Club‘s top 10 works of science fiction (and fantasy):
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1953-54) is the “most significant” science fiction and fantasy book of the past 50 years, say editors of the Science Fiction Book Club. The rest of the top 10:2. Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy (1963) traces the life of Hari Seldon, a “psychohistorian” who attempts to map the best course for the next millennium after the fall of the empire.
3. Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) creates a desert planet whose sole commodity, the intoxicating spice Melange, drives its inhabitants to greed and destruction in the year 10,991. David Lynch directed the 1984 film.
4. Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) features a child from Mars who adapts to life on Earth and founds his own church, which resembles a swinger’s club.
5. Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) introduces a boy named Sparrowhawk who becomes a wizard’s apprentice.
6. William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) introduced cyberspace in the story of a young cyberspace cowboy challenged to hack the unhackable.
7. Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End (1953) tells of aliens who offer peace to humans, who sacrifice greatness in accepting.
8. Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) imagines the world in 2021 after a war has destroyed most species and they are replaced by robotic clones and human-like androids; inspired Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie Blade Runner.
9. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon (1983) retells the story of King Arthur from the female point of view. Became a 2001 miniseries on TNT.
10. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) creates a futuristic world in which books are banned and burned; remains a staple of high school reading lists and favorite of free speech advocates. A 1966 Fran?ois Truffaut movie.
First, I can’t believe I still haven’t read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Mists of Avalon. Second, a list like that demands debate. How can Brave New World, for instance, not be in the top 10? How can it not even be in the top 50?
(OK, I should’ve read the article a bit more closely. It’s the top 50 science fiction works from the last 50 years. Since these things always skew toward recent works anyway, what’s the point of cutting it off at 50 years? To eliminate Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea, and Brave New World?)