For those who didn't know, The Guardian has been posting a list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read, and this morning they posted their 124 selections in the SF, fantasy, and horror genres. As memed by SF Signal, here are the ones I've read, with occasional (bitchy) commentary. Boldface means I've read it; an asterisk means it's on my voluminous to-read shelf (though admittedly some of these have been there for nigh unto 15 years); italics mean it's discussed in The Gospel According to Science Fiction; a link means it's been reviewed on this very site.
- Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
- Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
- Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
- Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
- Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987) -- Which has the distinction of being more depressing than The Road.
- Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
- Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987) -- This is very high on my track-down-a-copy list.
- Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
- Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
- Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
- *Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
- Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
- Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992) -- I generally don't get embarrassed about books I've read, but Poppy Z. Brite might just be an exception. I mean, I'm not saying vampire porn can't be fun, but—really, Guardian? You're saying everyone should read this, and not just goths between the ages of 15 and 22?
- Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
- Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
- Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
- Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
- Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
- William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
- Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
- Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
- Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
- Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
- Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
- Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
- Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
- Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
- Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
- GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) -- Maybe it's just me—or the fact that I was told this was SF before I read it, when it's really more metaphysical fantasy—but I don't think this one has aged too well.
- Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
- Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
- Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
- Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000) -- One of the scariest books I've ever read. I wholeheartedly agree with the must-readness of this one.
- Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
- Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967) -- But shouldn't I get bonus points for getting all the way through Dhalgren?
- Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
- Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
- *Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
- Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
- John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
- Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001) -- I didn't like this that much. But with the exception of a few short stories, I haven't liked much of Gaiman's post-Sandman output. He's a much, much better author of short fiction (which, of course, doesn't count toward anything on a list of must-read novels.)
- Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
- William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
- *William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954) -- I haven't read this since I was about 13, so this one is also on the to-read shelf.
- Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
- M John Harrison: Light (2002)
- Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) -- This shouldn't be on the list, but Starship Troopers should. Though maybe it should only be read by those without fascistic tendencies.
- Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
- Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
- Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980) -- Have only British people heard of this book? It's an exception (along with A Clockwork Orange above) to the "don't-write-your-novel-in-an-invented-dialect" rule.
- James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
- Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
- Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
- Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
- Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
- Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
- PD James: The Children of Men (1992) -- I haven't read this, but I've been meaning to, mainly because I consider the film of it to be one of the best SF movies ever made.
- Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
- Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
- Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925) -- If you haven't read Kafka, start with the short stories. They're much, much better.
- Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966) -- I've read the short story, but that probably doesn't count here. Do I get any bonus points for having read it in its original context—the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction? (Which has a great Emsh cover illustrating the story, by the way.)
- Stephen King: The Shining (1977) -- Like Neil Gaiman, I think King is much, much better at short fiction than novels.
- Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
- Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
- Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
- David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
- Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
- Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
- Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
- Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
- Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
- Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
- Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
- Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
- China Miéville: The Scar (2002) -- Perdido Street Station gets discussed more, so kudos to the Guardian for recognizing that The Scar is the superior novel.
- Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
- Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
- David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
- Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
- William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
- Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
- Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
- Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
- Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) -- This is a really, really, really good book. Really.
- Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970) -- This one, not so much. For my money, Rendezvous With Rama is a much better Big Dumb Object novel.
- Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
- Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
- Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
- Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
- Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
- Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946) -- Which is the one with the flood, this or Gormenghast? 'Cause that's the best one.
- John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
- Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995) -- The movie was good; the novel is great.
- François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
- Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
- Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
- Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
- JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
- Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988) -- I think I tried to read this when I was 13, but I'm not counting it here.
- Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943) -- Bonus! I've read it in English and French.
- José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
- Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
- Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
- Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
- Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
- Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
- Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
- Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
- Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
- Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
- Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
- Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
- Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
- Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
- HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
- HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
- TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
- *Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83) -- I'm about 20 pages into Shadow of the Torturer, but that's probably not enough to count this one as read (yet).
- *John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
- John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
- Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)
That's 45 of the 124 read, if I'm counting correctly.
I was trying to figure out why Lord of the Rings wasn't on this list, and it seems there are a few more Fantasy/SF novels on the list under subheadings. So, first up, these are under the heading "Imagined Worlds." (Why Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, which is also a series, isn't on this list instead of the other one is a mystery to me.)
- *CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56) -- I've read the first two.
- JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
- JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
- Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
- Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- )
- Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990) -- I've read the first book and possibly part of the second.
The "Best dystopias":
- George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
- Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
- *Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
- Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
- Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968) -- Which left me cold. I much preferred Echo Round His Bones, one of the earlier, funnier ones.
- Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
- Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
- Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
- Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
- Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) -- Never got this one. The Dispossessed is better.
- Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
And "The Best of J.G. Ballard." I groaned a bit when I saw this, I haven't actually read any of the books they're citing, so maybe these are the non-pretentious ones. Heh. (I kid, really. I want to like Ballard, I really do. But he's on thin ice with me, given that I, y'know, like plots.)
- The Drowned World (1962)
- *Crash (1973)
- Millennium People (2003)
There's also a list of 10 novels that predicted the future, but this seems to be outside of the thousand-novel list, and a list of gothic novels, but I don't think any of them are fantasy or horror per se.
More philosophically—is all this novel-fetishization leading people to ignore short fiction? I sure hope not. There are a few writers on here—Franz Kafka, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman—who are much better at short stories than novels, and a few truly, unchallengably great writers who aren't on here at all because they're only known for short fiction (Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft spring to mind). Why "1000 novels everyone must read" rather than "1000 authors everyone must read"? Novels ain't everything.
As an enthusiastic and long-time fan of Kafka, I have to vehemently disagree with you about the relative merits of his novels. The short stories are probably a better place to start, I agree, but I just recently re-read The Castle (in a newer translation which was very different stylistically from the Muirs' standard) and re-affirmed it as one of my favorite books ever. And The Trial is an undeniable masterpiece. Undeniable, I say!
Posted by: Michael N | January 22, 2009 at 10:24 PM
Granted, it's been a few years, but I really just think "In the Penal Colony" (for instance) is more satisfying.
I've been realizing lately that I just plain enjoy short fiction more than novels, across the board. Hence my repeated soapboxing.
Posted by: Gabriel Mckee | January 22, 2009 at 10:26 PM
Hey, Gabe
"Titus Groan" is the one with the flood, yes. And also the best one. As you like plot, I can't see you being too interested in "Gormenghast", and "Titus Alone" is too..... fractured. Perhaps as a result of being partially written by Peake's wife from his notes after he passed away.
Posted by: Kathleen Chadwick | January 26, 2009 at 09:31 AM
I dig Steerpike, though, so I remember liking "Gormenghast" quite a bit. I don't think I got more than 30 pages into "Titus Alone," though I want to give it another chance sometime.
Posted by: Gabriel Mckee | January 26, 2009 at 09:52 AM
Hey, I know about Riddley Walker, and I'm Canadian (though I did hear about it from a British essayist.) I even have a copy sitting on my 'sf-with-religious-connections' shelf. Brilliant and bleak and strange.
How the heck is Beloved on this list? It's a ghost story at most. And I thought Affinity was the same, but with lesbians.
I keep hearing very good things about both The Master and Margarita and The Glass Bead Game, from literary types.
But listen, stop blogging and go read more Gene Wolfe. The Book of the New Sun and the Book of the Long Sun. Also, the second and third Earthsea books. Right now, chop-chop, you'll thank me for it!
Posted by: Elliot | January 31, 2009 at 10:56 PM
PS: Or, if you really do enjoy short fiction better, then read The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.
Posted by: Elliot | January 31, 2009 at 10:57 PM
just a quick comment - I highly recommend Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004), but I wouldn't go into it thinking, "this is Sci-fi!" maybe, at the most, "this is sorta steam-punk! without the steam. or the punk."
and also, thank you so much for including Neil Gaiman as one of those author's who is much better at short fiction than novels - i tend to get a lot of flak for thinking that his novels suffer from a lack of editing and unravel at the end - but i love his short stories, everything Sandman, and his kids stories.
Posted by: jenn/hippygoth | February 02, 2009 at 10:07 AM
Did I miss Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead somewhere in that list? I mean, I like the Foundation books and all, but you can't leave Orson Scott Card off a list like this!
Posted by: Chris Smith | February 08, 2009 at 11:07 PM