Twenty Core Speculative Fiction Works It May Surprise You To Learn I Have Not Yet Read Every True SF Fan Should Have On Their Shelves

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4 comments

Here are twenty core Speculative Fiction Works it may surprise you to learn I’ve never read, chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance to the field¹. No implication is intended that these are the only twenty books you or for that matter I should consider².

I’ve owned copies of some of these for a significant fraction of my life to date.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Galactic Sibyl Sue Blue by Rosel George Brown
Bone Dance by Emma Bull
Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrellby Susanna Clarke
The Start of the End of It All by Carol Emshwiller
Hild by Nicola Griffith
Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson
Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta by Doris Lessing
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
England Swings SF edited by Judith Merril
The Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce
Unquenchable Fire by Rachel Pollack
Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin
Among Others by Jo Walton
The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny

Persons unfamiliar with one or two of the works, congratulations! You’re one of today’s Ten Thousand! SO AM I. ALWAYS NEW FRONTIERS TO EXPLORE.

1: There are two filtering rules:

Only one work per author per list
Any given work by a particular author can appear on only one list. A given author may, however, have works on various lists but each instance of their work will be unique.

2: NO IMPLICATION IS INTENDED THAT THESE ARE THE ONLY TWENTY BOOKS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER.

Comments

InterestedObserver99

James - You read almost 200K words a day, and never read Oz? Do yourself a favor, suspend your cynicism, and read the first three or four. There are "better" books on the list (e.g., the Le Guin & Windling), but Oz underlies many American fairy tales in the same way (that Tolkien pointed out) that "fairie" is part of the European tradition.

Chris Jordan

Oz is much better read aloud. Find some young relation and go read it to them. Also, be careful what editions you read. Part of the charm of all the books after the first is the wonderful artwork by John R. Neill, which is not included in some later printings (I assume the text went out of copyright first).

You may have missed your window a bit for enjoying the later books. I was a little sad when my much loved copy of "Lucky Bucky in Oz" was swept out to sea in a hurricane, my parents, not so much.

Juliet SutherlandChris Jordan

I tried to read The Wizard of Oz out loud to my children. I did quite a lot of reading aloud, but I found that one very hard to read. The writing was very choppy and didn't follow well. It's the only book I've ever read where the movie is Better than the book. I remember from my childhood that many of the later books were full of really awful puns but haven't gone back to verify that.

Sarapen

Hild isn't speculative fiction, it's entirely historical. It's told from the perspectives of characters who strongly believe in the supernatural and thus they ascribe intentionality to events we might call random chance. The book is careful not to answer the question of whether the supernatural doings are real but it's an unimportant distinction for the story. The belief of the characters is real and thus their world experiences real effects from things that may have no objective existence.