Top 100 Science Fiction & Fantasty Novels

I stumbled across "The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List' on an ancient Geocities site. The list is dated July, 2003, so it's getting a bit long in the tooth. Apparently, it resulted from votes by 3,316 people, which is hardly a great statistical universe, but not a bad sample size. I was surpised at how many books on the list did not ring a bell, and there were quite a few that I thought should be there, but were not.

Here are the top 10 from the list:

1. A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. Martin
2. Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
3. The Vorkosigan Series, Lois M. Bujold
4. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
5. The Wiedzmin Stories, A. Sapkowski
6. Dune, Frank Herbert
7. The Discworld Series, Terry Pratchett
8. Roadside Picnic, A & B Strugatski
9. Hard to be a God, A & B Strugatski
10. The Hyperion Cantos, Dan Simmons

Okay, I can understand Herbert, Tolkien, and Orson Scott Card. I've read and thoroughly enjoyed Dune, the various Ender stories, and The Hobbit. But Terry Pratchett? Gimme a break. I'd put him in with David Eddings. I don't even recognize a couple of these names. I'll have to do a bit of research into this, and see what I've been missing.

I think a more salient point here is the fact that there are more than a couple of moderately well known names conspicuous by their absence. Say, Robert Heinlein and Philip K. Dick for instance? Heinlein doesn't even make the list until number 25, and then not again until 59. And it's for two of his books that I wouldn't even have considered for the list. Dick makes it at number 79, after Mercedes Lackey.

Right. That's discriminating taste.

I think I'll work up my own list. I won't go so high as a hundred (I do have to make a living, after all), but I think I can come up with a better list than those 3,316 people.