how many have you read?
August 9, 2016 10:57 PM   Subscribe

60 Essential Science Fiction & Fantasy Reads. Though you might want to quibble with the "essential" as it's somewhat biased to more recent books but a valuable introduction to the genres nonetheless, the occasional tokenism not withstanding.
posted by MartinWisse (152 comments total) 131 users marked this as a favorite
 
No Delaney.

I'm okay with no Donaldson (because I know he's problematic in a lot of ways).

But no Delaney?

Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand is possibly the best book I have ever read.
posted by hippybear at 11:05 PM on August 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Oh I See. This is a feminist thing. That's why no Delaney.
posted by hippybear at 11:07 PM on August 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


I've read 11½ of them. (I read God Stalk years ago - and loved it - long before there was a Godstalker Chronicles for it to be part of.)

"Essential" is an interesting label here; the list is definitely skewed toward recent works despite the inclusion of some of my teenage favorites.

I really wish people who put together genre-focused lists would avoid implying "these are THE BOOKS you should read for this genre!" The final sentence in the opening paragraph explains it much better: 60 of some important and thought-providing texts from science fiction and fantasy's long history.

That, I agree with 100%. The list has several longtime favorites (aforementioned God Stalk, Cordelia's Honor, A Wrinkle in Time, Dreamsnake, among others) and several on my "I really should read that someday" list (and if they ever show up as non-DRM'd ebooks, I'm there in an instant; until then, I'm probably holding off). Nice talking-points list. Essentials of the genre(s)? Not so much.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:13 PM on August 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think there's a statement being made.
posted by bongo_x at 11:23 PM on August 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


I don't care if this list is essential or not, it has Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire on it, so it's fine by me. It's the best urban fantasy book series I know. But maybe I'm a bit biased because I created the Fanfare post for it :-)
posted by Pendragon at 11:25 PM on August 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


I've read about 36 of the books on this list and other books by many of the authors mentioned. It feels like a good list for a single person to have come up with.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:27 PM on August 9, 2016


Oh I See. This is a feminist thing. That's why no Delaney.

I checked for Banks, Stross, MacLeod, Alistair Reynolds, and Pratchett before scratching my head and checking the context.

I've been meaning to read more female authors, and it's good to have a list of strong books to grind through.

Good to see Bujold and Hambly.
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:44 PM on August 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


N.K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon is pretty good, but The Fifth Season is easily one of the best Fantasy or SF books this century.
posted by eyeballkid at 11:50 PM on August 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


About 20 but can anyone clue me in on why Old Man's War made the cut? One of these things is not like the others, etc.

(and if you're going to have McKinley please be making it The Blue Sword. Thx)
posted by N-stoff at 11:52 PM on August 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm guessing the author thought it was good enough to include, N-stoff.
posted by ODiV at 11:56 PM on August 9, 2016


Old Man War's on the list because the book's merits and because mefi's own Scalzi's been doing some strong feminism spadework including during his presidency of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, iirc.
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:02 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Great list, thank you. Its true some of these are quite, quite inessential, and there's a bit of a sci-fi weighting, but some great titles I had never heard of before, as well as some real favourites.

Also, a part of me lights up every time I see a list without rothfuss, lynch, Jordan, Martin etc on them.

Indeed it's interesting: I feel like when lists like these are comprised of predominantly female writers there is much more diversity in setting, plot and character. Maybe it's just the male side of the field is so dominated by tropey behemoths.
posted by smoke at 12:07 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


N.K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon is pretty good, but The Fifth Season is easily one of the best Fantasy or SF books this century.

Agreed. And it's so cheerful!
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:08 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


And isn't it nice to see that the SF community is broadminded enough to include a book that addressed particularly male issues, even if it can't hold up a candle to books that do address the great human condition?
posted by MartinWisse at 12:09 AM on August 10, 2016 [33 favorites]


N.K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon is pretty good, but The Fifth Season is easily one of the best Fantasy or SF books this century.

And the sequel coming out next week, hurrah!

Though I really love the 100,000 Kingdoms books.
posted by tavegyl at 12:14 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Thank you for posting this, I'm adding several of these to my ever growing "to read soon" list. I found Ann Leckie and N.K. Jesimin from recommendations on Metafilter and like the emphasis on women authors.

Oh I See. This is a feminist thing. That's why no Delaney.

It looks like John Scalzi is the only man who made the list.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 12:21 AM on August 10, 2016


N.K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon is pretty good, but The Fifth Season is easily one of the best Fantasy or SF books this century.

The sequel is coming out next week!
posted by ActingTheGoat at 12:24 AM on August 10, 2016


And the sequel coming out next week, hurrah!

Hoist with his own lack of preview
posted by ActingTheGoat at 12:26 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Six, I think, and I bought the Steerswoman series a few months ago so I should read them some time. The author got the rights back and self-published the ebooks without DRM.
posted by sukeban at 12:26 AM on August 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


The Fifth Season is easily one of the best Fantasy or SF books this century.

I've loved everything I've ever read by N.K. Jemisin, and quite enjoyed The Fifth Season in the end, but the events of the intro faked me out so badly that I found myself really disoriented trying to discover (or track down) their consequences, and getting virtually no feedback from the narrative for most of the book.

There must be a German word for "waiting for the other shoe to drop, but there only ever was one shoe"...
posted by lumensimus at 12:30 AM on August 10, 2016


ANY LIST WITHOUT CONNIE WILLIS IS--

Oh, there she is. Carry on.
posted by tracicle at 1:21 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


I don't think Delany is excluded because it's a "feminist thing" - that would be utterly baffling since Delany is a consciously feminist author and one of the best male writers of female characters in any genre. I assume the blogger just isn't into Delany, or wanted her list to revolve around something else other than Delany.

I have to say, it's rare that I see an "essential SF" list that is so radically different from anything I'd put together - I wish she'd included her rationale for choosing the books instead of just a Goodreads blurb from the publisher.
posted by Frowner at 1:26 AM on August 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


Her rationale is clearly “SF/Fantasy books by women that I like that serve as introductions to their oeuvre”. Plus one bloke, just to tweak the noses of the men.

(If it was going to be a gender reversal of the typical 'essential SF/Fantasy' lists that you find on the net then it would be about 10% men, since that seems to be the usual proportion of women.)
posted by pharm at 1:44 AM on August 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


Frowner, I think what was meant was that all the authors are female, unless I'm mistaken.
posted by greermahoney at 1:46 AM on August 10, 2016


is cj cherryh on there

IS SHE

TELL ME

b/c if she's not imma break shit fair warning k fair wanring fuckin given

ok imma look

PREPARE FOR BEATINGS IF SATSIFACTORY LEVEL OF CJ CHERRYH NOT PERCEIVED
posted by Sebmojo at 1:53 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


hhhhhhmmmmmmmm

foreigner

that's like weak sauce late cherryh and really takes her 'ppl sitting and talking about politics' tic to an arguably unsatisfactory level when placed against her phenomenally gritty and satisfying hard sf work in for e.g. the chanur and faded sun books also the merchanter ones, damn that's the shit jerome

but, still, she is there and therefore shit may remain unbroken AT THIS TIME

that is all, out
posted by Sebmojo at 1:55 AM on August 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


Oh, and Frances Hardinge is kind of amazing if almost over-dense, but absolutely worth a read. Sort of a pratchett/mieville cross, if that makes sense.

Her rationale is clearly “SF/Fantasy books by women that I like that serve as introductions to their oeuvre”. Plus one bloke, just to tweak the noses of the men.


Yeah, Scalzi's just a troll entry, which seems a little undignified but eh. It's a good list.
posted by Sebmojo at 1:58 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Her rationale is clearly “SF/Fantasy books by women that I like that serve as introductions to their oeuvre”.

Yeah, but why these ones? I mean, why Who Fears Death and not other Okorafor? Why Brown Girl In The Ring and not Midnight Robber? Why the Jemisin book from the early-career duology? Etc, etc. And The Door Into Ocean is a really unusual choice - it's a real slog of a book that, IME, not a lot of people manage to finish, and it's pretty subtle and unusual (I found it godawful boring and the ocean people horribly perfect, but it's an interesting book.) The publisher's blurbs are a little misleading, at least about the ones I've read - it would be neat to find out what led her to choose these specific books.

See, everyone's all "why this cherryh" and so on - that's what interests me. Why that Cherryh? A lot of these are kind of offbeat choices that I assume stem from her personal reading preferences and I'd love to hear more about that.
posted by Frowner at 2:00 AM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Like, if you want a troll, telling people to start with Door Into Ocean is a fucking magnificent troll. It's like telling people to start with Dhalgren.
posted by Frowner at 2:02 AM on August 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


If you're going to claim that a list of books are essential you need to qualify your statement. Essential for what, or whom? I don't see any reason to think that this list is more than "books representing authors I like". It's quite telling that the list doesn't contain more than one book by any author: what, there's no room for The Left Hand of Darkness in a list of essential SF?
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:08 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


I bought the Steerswoman series a few months ago so I should read them some time.

Yes. Yes. Yes. You should. Not "some time" but right now. Don't care what you do, drop it, because this is more important.

But telling you why exactly these books are so good is somewhat of a spoiler and you should really go into these blind. Even on a surface level these are such great, satisfying reads that you'll be sucked in by them in no time.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:09 AM on August 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


Yeah, Scalzi's just a troll entry, which seems a little undignified but eh. It's a good list.

It's trolling the Puppies and their sexism, though, presumably. So I approve.

Only 7/60 here, albeit I don't read much fantasy.

I agree with Frowner that I'd prefer to see the blogger's justification for choosing those books, rather than the blurbs. (Also for real how do we crowdfund Frowner to teach a MOOC on sff? Because I would pay for that MOOC).
posted by Pink Frost at 2:10 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


I wish she'd included her rationale for choosing the books instead of just a Goodreads blurb from the publisher.

Yes I wanted more curation, otherwise I couldn't help but wonder if the author used some goodreads filters to build the list.
posted by smoke at 2:14 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes, I would have liked to have seen more of the rationale behind the works selected. For instance, why the first Temeraire book for Naomi Novik, rather than Uprooted? Or Shards of Honour rather than Barrayar? There are actually several books here that I've not read, but given the slightly odd selections for authors I know well, I'd hesitate to use the list to fill gaps in my reading.
posted by tavegyl at 2:15 AM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Actually, the more I look at this list, the more I like it. I'm not sure it's to my taste, but it really orbits around not just SF by women but unrespectable SF by women - nowadays you can come up with a very properly vetted list with classy, read-on-the-bus covers if you stick to Angela Carter, the classier reprints of Russ, old Women's Press books, etc, and you can stake your nerd claim on that. But these are mostly unrespectable - girly, urban-fantasy-ish, "my feelings expressed in space!!!", boringly severe 80s feminist doorstop, books about sexual abuse, etc. The kind of books that are assumed not to be as good as the kind with the Very Serious covers no matter how they're actually written or plotted. (Or else maybe assumed to be too serious, like Door Into Ocean.)

(I should say that after many years of reading, collecting and teaching women's SF, and because I pretty much only read Strange Horizons, Giganotosaurus, etc, it literally did not seem unusual to me that this list was almost all women and I assumed she included one dude because...she only wanted to recommend one dude.)
posted by Frowner at 2:19 AM on August 10, 2016 [16 favorites]


My comments:

Grimspace by Ann Aguirre: Haven't read it. I wasn't that impressed by Enclave, the start of her YA series, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about the rest of her stuff.

Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro — This is an odd book. The middle of it is an absolutely BRILLIANT story about a soldier dealing with PTSD. Wrapped around that at the beginning and end is a not-all-that-great SF romance. Possibly worth reading for that central half, though, and it kicks off a long and well-regarded series.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood — Amazing and a must read. Chilling. Definitely a classic and an essential.

Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear — Haven't read it. I wasn't all that taken with Bear after reading Dust, but my opinion changed after reading Karen Memory. Despite some lurches at the end, that's a strong book, and makes me much more inclined to read more Bear.

Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg — Haven't read it.

Chime by Franny Billingsley — Chime! Chime is on the list! Chime is so good, y'all! Billingsley should be better known, and Chime is probably her best work.

Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop — Haven't read it. I've heard this called "pure idfic".

Tithe by Holly Black — Tithe is fantastic, as is the whole trilogy it begins. A lot of people I know don't seem to care for Black, and I have no idea why; this is one of my favorite books.

The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett — Haven't read it. Love her short fiction; pulpy goodness.

Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold — This is absolutely the right choice for Bujold; her later works are often very good, but her debut achieved a richness she often didn't equal later. (Although she sometimes did; A Civil Campaign leaps to mind.)
posted by kyrademon at 2:37 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold — This is absolutely the right choice for Bujold; her later works are often very good, but her debut achieved a richness she often didn't equal later. (Although she sometimes did; A Civil Campaign leaps to mind.)

Hmm, yes, I thought she was recommending Shards of Honour, the first book in Cordelia's Honour. Barrayar, the second half, is absolutely the right choice for Bujold but I have lots of problems with Shards.
posted by tavegyl at 2:49 AM on August 10, 2016


I've read about a quarter of these and all of them were very good, sometimes great. I'll add the remainder to my to-read list. (And I thought the Bujold and Novak picks were good ones from their oeuvre).
posted by the agents of KAOS at 2:49 AM on August 10, 2016


War for the Oaks by Emma Bull — Good book. This is a foundational work of Urban Fantasy (before that meant "Usually Sex & Guns"), and a classic of the "Minneapolis School" of 80's SF. While I think the genre has some better later examples, this is definitely worth reading.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler — Slightly ashamed to say I haven't read this classic. I do love the Butler I have read, particularly Dawn.

Synners by Pat Cadigan — Haven't read it. Her short fiction is great; Cadigan is one of the founders of cyberpunk and one of its best voices.

Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh — Haven't read it (I know, I know). Love Cherryh, though. The Pride of Chanur is particularly great, and I'm fond of Merchanter's Luck, the Morgaine Cycle, and oh so many others.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke — Big and sprawling and wonderful. One of those transformative works of fantasy that come along every now and then.

Survival by Julie E. Czerneda — Been a while since I've read this, but I remember really liking it. Czerneda does good, rich far future SF.

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean — On my "to read" shelf right now.

King's Dragon by Kate Elliott — Haven't read it. Only read her Spiritwalker series, which I found a bit convoluted. Doesn't necessarily mean I wouldn't like her other stuff, though.

Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman — Haven't read it.
posted by kyrademon at 2:52 AM on August 10, 2016


NB, in the comments the author says: “This list is made up of books I've read and books I've been recced repeatedly (by friends, fans, and SFF professionals) over the last five years.”

I feel the same as Frowner, given that it’s a (mostly?) personal list it would be nice to hear *why* these particular books stood out to her over others. Especially as, of the ones I’ve read, some were great but also some were very, very meh so I’d like to hear what she saw in them that I didn’t.
posted by pharm at 2:52 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Slow River by Nicola Griffith — OK. Slow River. I CANNOT describe how much I love Slow River. This is essential SF. It is amazing. And it's about love & drugs & power & privilege & sewage treatment.

Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly — Dragonsbane is amazing and I highly recommend it. It is not necessarily the Hambly I'd have put on the list, though, but only because The Silent Tower is even better. (It is possible, though, that my view of Dragonsbane is colored by the fact that later books featuring those characters got a bit ... upsetting.)

Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge — Fly By Night! Yes! Everybody go read Fly By Night! I'll wait. Have you read it? Wasn't it AMAZING? Now go read Cuckoo Song. It's EVEN BETTER!

Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb — Haven't read it. I read her Liveship Traders series, and thought it was good but not blow-my-mind awesome. Many people seem to disagree with me about Hobb on that, though.

The God Stalker Chronicles by P.C. Hodgell — Oh my god yes. These. These are the books I reread on a rainy night. These are the books I rave about to anyone who will listen. These are the *only* books I buy in electronic form first to read on my computer, then buy the hardcovers later, because I simply cannot wait. They are that good.

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson — Haven't read it.

Valor's Choice by Tanya Huff — Haven't read it. I like the Huff I've read all right (the Quarters series, mostly), but it didn't blow me away.

God's War by Kameron Hurley — Really good stuff. If you like it grim & gritty, you can't do much better than the God's War books. Would definitely recommend them.
posted by kyrademon at 3:02 AM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin — Huh. Love Jemisin, but this is not the Jemisin I'd put on the list. I''ll echo those above and say, read The Fifth Season.

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones — This one, though, is definitely a classic. Jones has tons of books worth reading, and this is among her best.

Daggerspell by Katharine Kerr — Haven't read it.

The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein — YES READ THE STEERSWOMAN IT IS AMAZING. Won't say more because saying pretty much anything is spoilery for this one.

Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress — This was some really excellent SF. I wasn't as taken with the sequels, but this one is great.

Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz — Oh, wow, memories of childhood. Kurtz was writing big thick doorstopper novels before that was a Thing in fantasy. I loved these a lot, but eventually got tired of the series.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle — Well, this is inarguably a classic. Weird and wonderful.

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan — Haven't read it. The Brides of Rollrock Island was very, very good though.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin — Well, this list would have been worthless if it didn't have either The Dispossessed or The Left Hand of Darkness on it. Genius work by a master at the height of her powers.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie — There's a reason this one exploded onto the SF scene and won Every Award. It fuses classic SF with bold innovation and may be the best 21st century SF novel so far.

Ash by Malinda Lo — I liked Ash a lot, but wouldn't necessarily call it a classic. Her Inheritance/Adaptation duology was quite good, too. Lo is getting better, and I think she's one to watch, but I'm not sure she's written her best work yet.

Warchild by Karin Lowachee — Haven't read it.

Legend by Marie Lu — OK, this is the first one that made me go ... What? Legend? It was TERRIBLE. Clunky and unoriginal and poorly plotted. Why is this here?

Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey — Ah, McCaffrey. Read her when you're young, if you can. The Harper Hall books made me cry. This is a classic indeed, although McCaffrey has some flaws that the other works I've lauded as classics do not. Still, if you read them at the right time, these books can punch you right in the emotions.

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire — I read Rosemary and Rue and ... wasn't impressed. Everyone was raving about it, and I couldn't tell why. I thought I didn't like McGuire, but then I read Indexing and Sparrow Hill Road. So I do like McGuire, and this one just somehow eludes me.

Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre — Haven't read it. I should.

The Thief's Gamble by Juliet E. McKenna — Haven't read it.
posted by kyrademon at 3:17 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Kyrademon, Rosemary and Rue is, in my opinion, the weakest book in the October Daye series. It gets much better.
posted by Pendragon at 3:20 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm reading Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer right now and it's really pretty good so far. it has the tweaked personal gendered pronoun thing which had become a thing, but actually uses it to make some interesting commentary on gender, unlike say Auxiliary Foo.
posted by ennui.bz at 3:21 AM on August 10, 2016


Oh, Patricia Anthony. You were so close to being in the right time.
posted by Etrigan at 3:29 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I read a pile of Katherine Kerr’s Deverry books back in the day. I remember them as being strongly Celtic in feel, but without any of the Arthurian stuff that often comes along with that. I clearly enjoyed them enough to read a whole bunch of them, but at some point I think she ran out of ideas & started re-treading old ground and the series ran into the ground.
posted by pharm at 3:31 AM on August 10, 2016


Sunshine by Robin McKinley — Yes. Yes yes yes. The best vampire novel ever. If you think you don't like vampire novels, read this one.

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik — Huh. His Majesty's Dragon was enjoyable fluff, so it baffles me that her entry isn't for Uprooted, which took her writing to the next level and is a genuinely great book.

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor — Haven't read it.

The Female Man by Joanna Russ — Another true classic of the genre. Try her short fiction too ("When It Changed" is amazing), but this is one to read if you want to dive deep into the feminist SF revolution.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi — Haven't read it. Loved Redshirts, however. Funny book with real things to say.

A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski — Been a LONG time since I've read this one, but I remember it being pretty mindblowing stuff.

The Grass King's Concubine by Kari Sperring — Haven't read it.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater — Haven't read it.

City of Pearl by Karen Traviss — This is an absolute classic of ecological science fiction. The sequels, alas, get progressively less interesting, but this one and maybe the second I'd put high on the must-read list.

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr. — Definitely yes. The best of the New Wave, perhaps the best of Science Fiction, collected for you in one handy book. More great stories than you would have thought possible.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente — I LOVE Valente, and this is great stuff. If middle-grade isn't for you, though, try The Orphan's Tales instead. There's many others I could recommend. Her recent book Radiance is weird and awesome, too.

The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge — Another definite classic. A giant of the genre, worth reading and re-reading.

Farthing by Jo Walton — Farthing is the book I lend to people who don't know whether they'd like the whole alt-history thing. It is brilliant. And chilling.

The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells — Oh, yeah. These books are wildly inventive with characters you'll want to spend time with. Great stuff.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis — This is a good intro to Willis, and is particularly good for fans of Three Men In A Boat, although having read that is not necessary to enjoy it. I'm surprised it wasn't Doomsday Book that made the list, though, that's generally considered to be her strongest. There's a lot of Willis I like, though.
posted by kyrademon at 3:31 AM on August 10, 2016


I really want to like Jo Walton, because her books seem like the sort of thing I would like to read, but I always find her prose incredibly dry and lifeless & end up giving up on them :(

Connie Willis is great in parts. When she’s good, she’s really good & very funny, but I’ve never read a book of her’s where she manages to sustain that all the way through & the bits that don’t work always throw me out.

I’ll have to try the Naomi Novik - the Temeraire books got boring quickly.

Um. Which of these did I actually like? The Emma Bull is great! Ann Leckie’s trilogy was *fantastic*. Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell was a joyous read, but has the weird property that I can never remember anything about the plot once I’ve read it. I watched the TV series thinking “did this actually happen, or have they made it up, because surely I would remember *this* scene?” all the time, went back and read the books to discover that, yes, it was all there & I had simply completely forgotten everything in them.

Will have to try Slow Rover & the Steerswoman books.
posted by pharm at 3:41 AM on August 10, 2016


I was going to list authors I was surprised not to see on the list, but it was growing into the dozens, so I'll just say -- where the hell is Mary Shelley?

(... and C. L. Moore, Andre Norton, Kelly Link, Angela Carter, Hope Mirrlees, Barbara Comyns, Virginia Woolf, Patricia McKillip, Shirley Jackson, Kate Wilhelm, J. K. Rowling, Laurie J. Marks, Meredith Ann Pierce, R. A. Macavoy, Tanith Lee ...)
posted by kyrademon at 3:42 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Which Waltons have you read, pharm? Just asking because there's Waltons I love a lot (Farthing, Tooth and Claw), Waltons I don't like at all (The Just City), and ones in between.

(But yes, do try Slow River and the Steerswoman books!)
posted by kyrademon at 3:44 AM on August 10, 2016


This is an excellent list. many books I'd call "formative" for me even if I probably shouldn't try to read them today (Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong, I'm looking at you).

I've raved about it this before on both the Blue & the Green, but Margaret Mahy's The Changeover would be on my personal list too. Suburban New Zealand, teenage girls and transformational witchcraft. Amazing.
posted by kariebookish at 3:46 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


kyradaemon: In the comments, she says it’s a list of books that she’s read & those she’s seen recced in the last five years so it’s going to be biased to new releases I guess. Not necessarily an *essential* list, but it’s an interesting one at least.

(Personally I really enjoyed “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” recently. Looking forward to the sequel which is out next month.)

Re: Jo Walton: Tried Farthing, tried My Real Children. Couldn’t get into either - I think I finished Farthing but had absolutely no interest in reading the sequels. Gave up on My Real Children a few chapters in.
posted by pharm at 3:50 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I cannot recommend the Steerswoman books highly enough. I have spent 10 years pushing them on various friends and acquaintances. In some circles, that would count me as a dealer.
posted by triage_lazarus at 4:05 AM on August 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Why no Mary Gentle?

(also, I'm a big fan of Jo Walton, although she's a bit prone to characters talking like 21st century feminists when they really wouldn't)
posted by curious_yellow at 4:16 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Twenty, and I'm halfway through Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. There are a lot of books I think could have been included and like Frowner I'd love to see her rationale in more detail - Sunshine is great, but I'd have gone with The Hero and the Crown or The Blue Sword. I'd have included Kushiel's Dart, which was recommended to me heavily enough for years that it's surprising that it took me so long to read it. Marge Piercy and Melissa Scott are notably absent. I'm also a bit meh about the inclusion of so many books that focus heavily on male characters, but that's probably another issue entirely.
posted by bile and syntax at 4:28 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


So, despite the fact that I am a heavy SF reader, I've only read a couple of the books on this list. I read Ancillary Justice, and while I recognize it as being a well-written book, I struggled with the pronoun usage and it became a distraction to the narrative for me. I should try it again, because I thought the story itself was pretty cool.

Which makes me think that I don't read enough SF by women, and I should probably fix that pretty soon.
posted by Thistledown at 4:33 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I am by no means an expert on either genre, but...where's The Lathe Of Heaven?
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:36 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Seems heavily weighted towards the American end of the spectrum to me, although I'll put it down to the relative availability of works by less-visible non-American authors.

Stuff I'd add to mix in some British flavour? Something by Liz Williams, for sure: probably Snake Agent. Also at least one Justina Robson work: probably Natural History or Living Next Door to the God of Love. I think Genevieve Cogman (although a very recent debut) should probably show up on future versions of such a list, obviously with The Invisible Library. There's Zen Cho's Sorcerer to the Crown. And why no sign of anything by Mary Gentle or Gwynneth Jones?
posted by cstross at 4:52 AM on August 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


I am by no means an expert on either genre, but...where's The Lathe Of Heaven?

The selection works on the Noah's Ark system: you only need one boar and one sow to repopulate the earth, and the same goes for each of the other species. Similarly, you only need one book from each author to recreate their œuvre.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:52 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


pharm: I'm very hit-or-miss with Jo's books. Some I can devour, others I bounce off, hard, in the first few pages. (Tooth and Claw, for example: structured as a classic Victorian novel a la Trollope, only with cannibalistic dragons in place of humans -- conceptually it sounds like enormous fun, except I'm violently allergic to the florid excesses of Victorian literary style and was choking on it before I got to the end of the first chapter.)
posted by cstross at 4:54 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Well, I like this list.
posted by jscalzi at 5:18 AM on August 10, 2016 [49 favorites]


NEEDZ MOAR BECKY CHAMBERS
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:19 AM on August 10, 2016


ROU_Xenophobe: disagree, strongly.

(I read the first 40% of ... Angry Planet before I finally hit the point where I'd have thrown the thing at the nearest wall and screamed in anger as I stomped it underfoot if it had been paper rather than electrons. As character studies? It's fine. As SF? This is someone who was raised by astronomers and who gets the most basic aspects of her world-building ass-backwards and upside down, even before we get into the surfeit of treknobabble and tech-the-tech speak. Good characterisation, good prose style, ruinously terrible world-building, rubber-mask aliens a la 1960s Star Trek -- barely one step away from being plug-ins for crude racial stereotypes -- and the worst thing about it is, she could have done so much better. Aaargh!)

((Doubtless this isn't going to hurt her career, and anyway, I have prior form for taking violently agin' stuff that everyone else loves -- I couldn't bring myself to finish Ancillary Justice and offer up a cover quote for it, even though it was obviously going to be huge: I just didn't give a damn about any of the characters and the gender/language games looked like a tired and trite re-hash of stuff I'd run across decades ago) -- but ... how to put this? For Ancillary Justice I simply wasn't grabbed, enchanted, or transported. But Becky Chambers' novel actively sought out all my sore spots and whacked them mercilessly hard with a meat tenderizer. Awful, awful book, and, as I said, it was written by someone who could clearly do much better.))

(((Note: I'm only willing to say this sort of thing in a metafilter discussion thread, which to be honest isn't going to be widely read and is populated by folks who can understand nuance. You will not catch me venting this negative an opinion of another writer's work in a bully pulpit, and I hope you can distinguish between hating a particular book and hating on its author: I think Becky Chambers shows a lot of potential and I look forward to her breaking away from the pursuit of tired and dated cliches and doing something innovative .)))
posted by cstross at 5:42 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh I See. This is a feminist thing. That's why no Delany.

Well, Scalzi is on the list, so it's not a strictly women-only thing.
posted by aught at 5:43 AM on August 10, 2016


MartinWisse: Yes. Yes. Yes. You should. Not "some time" but right now. Don't care what you do, drop it, because this is more important.

Right now I'm halfway through Django Wexler's The Guns of Empire (which was released yesterday) and you can try to pry my ebook player from my cold dead hands.
posted by sukeban at 5:54 AM on August 10, 2016


I've read about a third of these books, and I'm struck by how "lightweight" this list is overall. Don't get me wrong -- I'm more than happy to read Yet Another Fantasy Where "a wealthy young woman, obsessed with a childhood vision of a magical Shining Palace, sets out with her true love to search for a legendary land" but if I were compiling a list of Essential reads I certainly wouldn't include so many of them. There's certainly some strong work on this list, but in comparison to any random essential SF list that includes male authors (e.g., this one) I'm struck by how many more of the books on those lists were more than just entertaining reads.
posted by srt19170 at 6:02 AM on August 10, 2016


In re Angry Planet - it's on my to-read list and was reviewed very, very positively by Strange Horizons, which is usually a place where people are pretty astute about race and prioritize work that deals with racial justice. My friend who read it and loved it has superb judgment about SF, has a strong lived commitment to racial justice and is herself a minority.

I am just wondering, since I notice that most of the people I encounter who don't like Ancillary Justice (and perhaps most of the people who don't like Angry Planet) are white men, whether there is some possibility that these books aren't just shabby con-jobs with trite language, etc, but actually are not especially written for white men and may require a shift of perspective and a little effort to get the best from them.

So that this does not come across as, like, privilege-shaming, I will say that on first read I did not like NK Jemisin's Fifth Season very much at all, and it was a conversation with the same friend who liked Angry Planet which turned me around. She tied its tone, form and some other stuff very powerfully to specific experiences of racism in a way that made me see the book with new eyes and made me realize that I had read it carelessly. I had unconsciously assumed that the author had trite, SF-normative goals and was failing at them.

Now I cannot wait for the sequel. It was a great experience as a reader - I feel like I learned something about how to read.

I find that when multiple people whose opinions I generally respect - particularly people with very different life experience and/or marginalized people - have a really positive reading of book that I think is just total blah (not just a book I'm not especially into but a book I actively think is blah) it's worthwhile for me to consider whether I'm reading the book right, honestly.

I'd say I'm a pretty good reader when I'm in sympathy with a book but I tend to expect books to do what I want them to do, and when they don't, I really need to work to shift my expectations.
posted by Frowner at 6:05 AM on August 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


I'd also like to note that many books are fairly difficult to find outside the USA. I only know God Stalk because of its memetic status in File 770.
posted by sukeban at 6:15 AM on August 10, 2016


Despite the complaints in the thread about how terrible this list is, for me, a woman, it's given me an idea of books by other women (Scalzi excluded) I might like to read in the future. I don't think it's meant to be a definitive list, but it's a good start for a genre I've usually not been much interested in.
posted by Kitteh at 6:20 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]



I've read about a third of these books, and I'm struck by how "lightweight" this list is overall. Don't get me wrong -- I'm more than happy to read Yet Another Fantasy Where "a wealthy young woman, obsessed with a childhood vision of a magical Shining Palace, sets out with her true love to search for a legendary land" but if I were compiling a list of Essential reads I certainly wouldn't include so many of them. There's certainly some strong work on this list, but in comparison to any random essential SF list that includes male authors (e.g., this one) I'm struck by how many more of the books on those lists were more than just entertaining reads.


I think the lightness of a lot of the work is a strength of the list, actually.

There is a particular "respectable" way to read science fiction - respectable science fiction is written a certain way. Maybe the prose is experimental, like Delany's work, or Russ's work, or Hal Duncan's; maybe it is super-duper cutting-edge scientifically or sociologically, as How Like the Lightning seems to be; maybe it is pinned to something intellectually respectable, like Jo Walton's pastiches and philosophy novels; or maybe it's just, like, really really gloomy, like Tiptree. But in general, it does not do family stuff or a lot of stuff about interiority, especially female interiority. (There are exceptions - certainly Delany is very hot stuff on interiority, etc; but I'd argue that those exceptions are allowed to be exceptions because they are difficult in some other way.)

When I look at this list, I feel like it's SF that deals with the kind of women's concerns and experiences that get left out or trivialized in most "respectable" SF and fantasy.

One thing I learned when I read [as much as I could get through of] Door Into Ocean was that it required a different way of engaging with the text, because it's "boring" if you're looking for a contemporary SF novel - it's didactic, it's slow, it's a doorstop. I feel like I ought to look at it again in more detail because it keeps nagging at me, it's so weird.

I end up suspecting that a lot of books on this list would repay a generous, attentive reading - I bet that they work in ways that are not obvious and do things that do not necessarily fit into the SF template we tend to bring to bear.

And as far as the implicit "you need men on your list or it will be lightweight" bit - look, here's a "respectable" list of significant books by women writers that is not "lightweight". It's a bit at random and out of my head, but the pedigree is very, very classy:

Zenna Henderson's People stories
Joanna Russ - all of it
Up The Walls of the World, Tiptree
Always Coming Home, Le Guin
Walk to the End of the World, Suzy McKee Charnas
Lud-In-The-Mist, Mirlees
Kingdoms of Elfin, Warner
The Red Rose Rages, Bleeding, DuChamp
Stranger in Olondria - Samatar
Binti - Okorafor
Mr. Fox - Oyeyemi
Filter House - Shawl
Black Wine and her short story collection - Dorsey
Floating Worlds - Holland
Mindscape and Redwood and Wildfire - Hairston
The Gilda Stories - Gomez
Life - Jones
Blazing World - Cavendish

....anyway, I'm going to stop now, but I could go on until I hit sixty or seventy pretty easily. The linked list is light in some ways, but given the ratio of women writers to men writers in fantasy and SF, I think that if anything there's more serious work by women.
posted by Frowner at 6:22 AM on August 10, 2016 [14 favorites]


If you want to explore more in the genre, SF Mistress Works reviews unjustly overlooked classics (and others) from pre-2000.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:24 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


"The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" hit the same spot that "The Goblin Emperor" did for me (and why is Katherine Addison not on this list, by the way?) Both broke free of some extremely tired SFF tropes in which problems are solved with guns-blazin'-can-do-heroism and said no, most problems are actually better solved by talking and listening and resolving conflicts in a fair and rational manner. I will note that both of these are books I liked quite a lot but wouldn't say I no-holds-barred fanatically adored.

It's interesting to me that I liked "Angry Planet" because it ditched tired SF tropes that I'm particularly irritated by, whereas cstross didn't like it because it didn't ditch *other* tired SF tropes that he's particularly irritated by.

In terms of his comment on nuance, yeah, it's important to distinguish between a book we recognize is by a skilled author that just doesn't do it for us, and writers that actually aren't good. The Invisible Library didn't do much for me, to bring up a different one that's been mentioned, but I recognize that Cogman can write. (And incidentally, that's why I had my one moment of surprise mid-list when I hit one particular author I'd classified differently in my head.)
posted by kyrademon at 6:25 AM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
posted by Beholder at 6:26 AM on August 10, 2016


Well, Scalzi is on the list, so it's not a strictly women-only thing.

Maybe the rule for this list is "SF authors I like who also wear dresses".
posted by 445supermag at 6:34 AM on August 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


Frowner / cstross. Honestly? I almost bounced off TLWtaSAP a third of the way in, at which point I was thinking “this is really fanficcy, very soft-sf & the characters aren’t really grabbing me”. By 2/3 of the way through I was completely hooked. I can see why some people would just bounce off it & if the character drama doesn’t grab then it’s not for you, since that’s the one thing that really stands out.

The Goblin Emperor was ... OK. I’m not sure what it was missing for me, but somehow it didn’t feel very ... Gobliny somehow?

The Ancillary X series were good, but maybe not *great*? I’ll happily read whatever Ann Leckie writes next, so she’s doing something right as far as I’m concerned.

Kitteh: who is saying this is a terrible list? No one is saying this is a terrible list that I can see. People can bring their own ideas of essential SF&F without that invalidating this particular list.
posted by pharm at 6:40 AM on August 10, 2016


(& yes, the omission of Mary Gentle seems fairly egregious from this UK SF&F reader’s POV. But that’s OK - we can all draw up our own essential lists & take inspiration from other people’s. This one was great - it’s given me some books that I haven’t read yet that lots of people really rate. What else could I ask for as a reader?)
posted by pharm at 6:44 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Frowner / cstross. Honestly?

Point of clarification - have not yet read Angry Planet, adore the Ancillaries, could have read about Breq across the galaxy for ever. Sometimes say "Anaander Mianaai" to myself simply for the pleasure of pronouncing all the As.

we can all draw up our own essential lists & take inspiration from other people’s

I cannot even begin to express how much I would enjoy lists of significant regional SF - it's a horrible shame how difficult it is to hear about even Anglosphere books if you're in the US. I would order such books on the internet in a red-hot minute. (I'd say that Jones and Gentle are sorta-kinda well-known in feminist and queer SF circles over here, Gentle particularly. On a side-note, no one has heard of Alistair Gray here. I had no idea that he was kind of a big deal when I read Lanark.)
posted by Frowner at 6:48 AM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's more the initial complaints of there being no classic male authors on the list, and then complaints of there being no more well-known female authors' works on the list. Again, I don't think this is meant to be any sort of definitive list but it's a good start for women who might be interested in dipping their toe into reading this genre, or anyone else interested in female-written SF.
posted by Kitteh at 6:57 AM on August 10, 2016


When I go on and on about the long list of female authors I would add, it is not meant to be insulting to this list. I would say that about any list. Except maybe my own list.

No, I'd probably still say it about my own list.
posted by kyrademon at 7:02 AM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Alasdair Gray (how many possible mispellings are there of that name? At least 6 that I can think of off-hand! I had to go check on Wikipedia) is kind of unknown even in the UK these days. He’s only had one novel published since the 90s and that wasn’t very well received. Lanark is still weird & wonderful & worth reading though.

Also, you should totally read Hal Duncan Frowner, if you haven’t already.

But this is definitely getting off the (implicit) topic of SF&F by women.

Kitteh: Given that neither the poster nor the original author made no attempt to point out that this was a list of SF&F by women (+Scalzi :) ) that confusion is perhaps understandable surely? I mean it’s part of the point obviously, but seems a little unfair to complain when someone gets tripped up in *exactly* the way they’ve been set up to trip by the post writer (for perfectly good reasons).

Other UK writers that might make the cut? I really enjoyed “The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August” by Claire North who has written a ton of urban-ish fantasy under other names IIRC. I should get around to trying some of it...
posted by pharm at 7:05 AM on August 10, 2016


Oh! And hey, let's not restrict our additions to anglophone authors!

I'll start with Élisabeth Vonarburg. In the Mothers' Land is available in English translation, and it's fabulous. Oh, and a translation of Emmi Itäranta's The City of Woven Streets just came out -- anyone taken a gander yet?
posted by kyrademon at 7:08 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


> "I should get around to trying some of it..."

I love her writing under the Kate Griffin nom-de-plume.
posted by kyrademon at 7:09 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Not a single work by Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett.

I say again - not a single work by Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett.

Phooey.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:10 AM on August 10, 2016


A Door Into Ocean boring and slow? Hmm, perhaps my family's quakerism influenced my reading of it more than I had supposed.
posted by joeyh at 7:11 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


How about literary fiction writers who have turned out good literary SFF? Kate Atkinson, Ali Smith, Emily St. John Mandel?
posted by kyrademon at 7:12 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Margaret Atwood?
posted by pharm at 7:33 AM on August 10, 2016


I've read 25 of these titles, and at least 40 of those authors. Since it appears to basically be one person's list, I'd be interested in more about what she finds essential about each of these titles. Clearly our tastes align, and so this is a useful list for me!
posted by asperity at 7:34 AM on August 10, 2016


Frowner, I think what was meant was that all the authors are female, unless I'm mistaken.

It means the actual title and subtitle of the website where this article is LADY BUSINESS:
THIS IS FEMINISM X IT IS NOT SCARY PET THE PRETTY FEMINIST PONY XX
posted by hippybear at 7:34 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Not a single work by Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett.

Well, they're not women and they get plenty of adulation on every other list in every other place.

I'm always looking for things to read and I'm excited to see if I can get ebook versions of some of the books on this list.

I counted about 13 I have already read, although it would be higher if I just counted the authors, because I have read different works by some of them. And I might actually have read more of the fantasy novels but who can tell? The descriptions always sound all the same to me.

I'm always intrigued by the cover art on Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Boys books, but I don't read teen or young adult literature so I've always skipped them.

I have read many of Kate Elliot's books, including the one on this list, and I honestly don't see the appeal. I think her stuff is pretty terrible.

The two books on this list I started and stopped reading for being too boring are Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, and The Steerswoman. I'll give The Steerswoman another chance based on raves here, but I'm not too interested in reading any more books about men, so I won't be trying Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell again.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:37 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Margaret Atwood?

The Handmaid's Tale is in the list.
posted by sukeban at 7:39 AM on August 10, 2016


derail/
Alasdair Gray (how many possible mispellings are there of that name? At least 6 that I can think of off-hand! I had to go check on Wikipedia) is kind of unknown even in the UK these days

Rrrreally depends upon where you are in the UK. /derail
posted by kariebookish at 7:40 AM on August 10, 2016


I don't think Station Eleven is science fiction, any more than The Stand is, really, if that's the Emily St. John Mandel book you mean.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:41 AM on August 10, 2016


No The Sparrow? Shaky sequel aside, that book gets nowhere near the love it deserves.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 7:45 AM on August 10, 2016 [7 favorites]


His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik — Huh. His Majesty's Dragon was enjoyable fluff...

I recently reread this for a reading challenge ("reread a book you last read in high school"), and was sufficiently drawn in to continue on with the series, which I hadn't originally done, and ended up pleasantly surprised by later books in the series being less fluffy than I had expected. They're still fun, fast reads, but Novik engages with her fantasy/alt-history premise in more in depth ways than just "Napoleonic Wars with dragons." Novik isn't afraid to complicate things and tackle some hard issues like imperialism and slavery. Her standalone Uprooted is, well, better as a standalone novel, but the Temeraire series is probably a greater achievement overall.

The Raven Boys series is something of a frustrating read: there's a lot there that I like, mostly to do with the characters, who are prickly teens with complex relationships with each other in a way that you don't always see in YA fantasy, but the worldbuilding/plot falls short for me.

Also, To Say Nothing of the Dog instead of the Doomsday Book? To Say Nothing of the Dog is the easier and more fun read by far, and probably holds together best of all the other Oxford Time Travel books, but Doomsday Book is I think the more crucial read, and the greater achievement.
posted by yasaman at 8:04 AM on August 10, 2016


I've stopped reading SFF written by men. My life has improved immesurably since then. O'malley's Stiletto was the last. Such a trite and tired first chapter- just not worth my time.
posted by superior julie at 8:07 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


* ctrl-F *
"Ancilla"
* sees entry *

I'm satisfied.
posted by numaner at 8:08 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


No The Sparrow? Shaky sequel aside, that book gets nowhere near the love it deserves.

That book got IMMENSE press when it came out. It was on all the lists, and was adored by many many people. The sequel did less well, I believe (and IMO was more flawed, although the intellectual payoff was pretty good).

That said, I wonder if the content has turned people off over time: while it deals straight-on with colonialism in a refreshingly-frank manner, the storyline about rape and recovery is embedded in 70s and 80s tropes that haven't aged as well.

I really loved Mary Doria Russell for that book, but nothing I've read by her since has been nearly as powerful or as well-written, IMO.
posted by suelac at 8:12 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Also, not a book, but I can't recommend it enough: the Worm web-serial, by wildbow, if you're into superhero stories with a touch of very personal heartache among wildly dwarfing world events.
posted by numaner at 8:13 AM on August 10, 2016


Frowner: are not especially written for white men and may require a shift of perspective and a little effort

I can't speak for anyone else, but about 70% of my reading currently is by female authors and I'm happy to identify with PoC or non-male or non-heterosexual viewpoint characters (and to read books where there are no straight white men whatsoever). So: not me. I'm more likely to fail to cope with a book when the protag is an ultra-conservative straight white male asshat:e.g. Feintuch's Seafort books, just about anything by John Ringo, and so on.

However I think you're definitely onto something and while I'm not going to name names I can think of some reviewers who definitely have the problem you describe.
posted by cstross at 8:14 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


> Well, I like this list.
> posted by jscalzi

Expert level: Achievement unlocked!
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:18 AM on August 10, 2016


Having surveyed the list, I've read only 37. Huh.

I've made a note of a few of the ones that look particularly interesting.

I would say that, from my perspective, the most egregious omission is Patricia McKillip, who is a far better prose stylist than, say, Katherine Kurtz, and started writing about the same time. Although it is hard to compare Deryni Rising with The Throme of the Errill of Sherrill, to be fair.

I have read many of Kate Elliot's books, including the one on this list, and I honestly don't see the appeal. I think her stuff is pretty terrible.

Whereas I think she's awesome, but I wouldn't have put The King's Dragon on this list. Crown of Stars is epic, but it gets away from her and gets bogged down more than a little. That said, she finished it in 8 volumes, and tied up an appropriate number of loose ends. (Better than some other epic fantasy writers have done.) I would have recommended Jaran or Black Wolves.
posted by suelac at 8:21 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've only read 11 of these. Ten of those that I've read are fantastic. The other, well, Tam Lin was just a boring, boring book. I read it with the person I was dating at the time after we read Jones's Fire and Hemlock together (which is fantastic, highly recommend). And while we didn't bounce, it was just a slog to get through. I'm not sure why we finished it. Of course, others may feel different.

I would have put Patricia C. Wrede on there instead. One of the first two Dragons books. Or Sorcery and Cecilia (written with Caroline Stevermer). It's a fantastic epistolary novel.
posted by Hactar at 8:24 AM on August 10, 2016


R. A. MacAvoy, virtually anything but especially The Lens of the World (and I had never yet realized that she pretty much invariably has male protagonists)

My vote for CJ Cherryh would be Rimrunner, which is new and different and amazing every time I reread it.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 8:33 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I can't speak for anyone else, but about 70% of my reading currently is by female authors and I'm happy to identify with PoC or non-male or non-heterosexual viewpoint characters (and to read books where there are no straight white men whatsoever). So: not me. I'm more likely to fail to cope with a book when the protag is an ultra-conservative straight white male asshat:e.g. Feintuch's Seafort books, just about anything by John Ringo, and so on.

I don't think that identifying with POC/non-male/non-straight viewpoint characters is really the issue - for instance, anyone who isn't outright prejudiced should be able to read and enjoy a swashbuckling yarn like Nicole Griffith's excellent Ammonite, which has almost no male characters and a bunch of lesbian relationships (assuming the reader likes swashbuckling SF at all, of course).

It's more a matter of the concerns that a novel foregrounds, both in form and content. Consider the controversy over "Things I Didn't See" - a lot of people just haaaaaated that story and could not understand why it was SF at all. Or most of L Timmel Duchamp's short stories - they're really weird, she's regularly blurbed by Delany and a lot of [mostly dude] reviewers think they're dumb and awful stories. (Some of her early stories on her website aren't as strong, IMO, but the ones in her two collections are mostly very very good.)

Joanna Russ makes some kind of comment about how Villette was read when she was teaching it back in the seventies - it was apparently really hard to get copies and critics were very down on it. She talks about how it's an amazing novel that is immediately legible to her as what she calls a "jailbreak" and how she's just wildly going against critical opinion.

Or, to draw an example from my initial reading of Fifth Season, I was all "there are so many changes of tone all over the place and there's this weird super-detailed sex scene that comes out of nowhere and reads kind of like [good] slash fic, and the narrators are all either super-hardcore-affectless or virtually hysterical, this seems like a big pop novel that is not doing all that much". And my friend who got much more out of the novel than me tied all this in very closely to Beloved and novels about slavery, to critical theory about Black womanhood and to all kinds of ideas about pleasure and narrative, plus pointed out that the discomfort and inconsistency of the reading experience was itself an intentional effect. Basically, I feel now like I'd been reading it without either the lived experience of Blackness (which I can't have, being white) or the right lens. If you'd asked me about the novel before I talked with my friend about it, I would have said "I don't see what all the fuss is about, this novel is so much duller than, say, Stranger in Olondria.

I think that books that tend to center women's concerns tend to engage with despised genres (romance, for instance) and tend to be structured differently than canonically great SF. I always think of Aliette de Bodard's blog post about US tropes in SF in this light - not so much that her list maps perfectly onto what I mean about gender concerns but that it is suggestive.
posted by Frowner at 8:40 AM on August 10, 2016 [7 favorites]


the odd thing about the Ancillary books is that people get hung up on the pronoun thing, which is really just used as a gimmick. But the reason why "white men" hate it is the book is really mostly about Breq's emotions and interpersonal relations plugged into something which, in the first book, is basically a tragic love story told backwards. it's a SF book about feelings and love...
posted by ennui.bz at 9:09 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Personally, I can't understand how someone could be more tripped by the pronouns than by the difference between Justice of Toren, One Esk and One Esk 19 / Breq.
posted by sukeban at 9:18 AM on August 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


It's trolling the Puppies and their sexism, though, presumably. So I approve.

Somewhere out there in Taxhavenlandia Vox Faeces is screaming "SCAAAAALZIIIII!!!" Of course he does this every morning and night, so don't read to much into it.

Speaking of sexism...

There's certainly some strong work on this list, but in comparison to any random essential SF list that includes male authors (e.g., this one) I'm struck by how many more of the books on those lists were more than just entertaining reads.

Yeah, looking at that list, with 46 men and 4 women, the only conclusion I can come up with is "Men write serious Science Fiction, and women fluff, but we'll include a few token women authors to prove we aren't totally aren't sexist. " I utterly hate lists that privilege white men as the definition of Science Fiction.

Really, to get away from ideas of science fiction as a boy's club is one of the reasons that lists that focus on alternatives to classic SF are so important. When people keep bringing up old white guys writing tedious technobabble explanations as the definition of "Great", it's important to have some examples of alternatives.

Or, in other words, the more lists and more examples the better, especially if they aren't Classic White Man Fantasy. Especially if they're from kyrademon. Putting Ammonite on my library order list.
posted by happyroach at 9:22 AM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Personally, I can't understand how someone could be more tripped by the pronouns than by the difference between Justice of Toren, One Esk and One Esk 19 / Breq.

Indeed. I was way more impressed by Leckie's ability to tell the story of the riot/battle on the planet from so many perspectives than I was by the pronoun thing. So tricky to pull off without utterly losing the reader, but she did it.
posted by suelac at 9:49 AM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Sukeban - God Stalk and sequels are available as DRM-free ebooks through Baen: P.C. Hodgell works. I believe Baen is international.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:16 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


"So, despite the fact that I am a heavy SF reader, I've only read a couple of the books on this list."

Wow, really? I've read three-fifths of them.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this is all about the subtext. There are some truly "essential" books on the list, but much of it is merely "pretty good" and it's very idiosyncratic. So far, so typical of a casual SFF fan blog list of "essential" titles. Except it just happens to be all women authors with one token man.

This, to me, reads as a parody of how many male SFF fans confuse their own limited reading experience, lack of discrimination, and blinkered privilege with judgment and erudition. This is how you get lily-white lists filled with L. Nivenses and P. Anthonys with a U. Le Guin occasionally thrown in.

As it happens, my taste these days runs toward women SFF novelists with a considerable-but-uneven output that leavens the fluff with the occasional gem. So I nodded along to much of the list. But "essential" it is not. I read Jim Butcher and Jack Campbell, too. Most of these books are not A Stranger in Olondria or City of Stairs.

I don't understand why the joke needs explaining.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:21 AM on August 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


I always get Ancillary Justice (which I haven't read) mixed up with Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi (which I have read.) And get all confused.

Crown of Stars is epic, but it gets away from her and gets bogged down more than a little.

I finished the Crown of Stars series although it mostly a hate read by the end because anything I liked about any of the characters in the beginning was long lost in all the useless wandering around and whatevering of plot bloat, but Jaran was the book that turned me off Kate Elliot completely. For me, the way she writes about social relations, romance, and sex, is off-puttingly naive and immature. Her adult character blush and stammer like characters from Harry Potter fanfics written by 6th graders.
posted by Squeak Attack at 10:26 AM on August 10, 2016


I've read only a few of them because many were published after I stopped reading fiction in print, and I refuse to do DRM. There are several older books that I just never ran across - I knew they existed, and they were on my "want to read" list, but they either weren't available in my area, or were out of my budget.

I haven't read any McGuire because I know her personally, and like and respect her enough not to torrent her books (there are authors who don't mind this; she's not one of them) - but since I don't read DRM'd ebooks and I now find paper books frustrating, I'm hoping that maybe someday one or two of them are released as free promo books.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:29 AM on August 10, 2016


Paper books are only frustrating as long as the power grid remains intact.
posted by hippybear at 10:31 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't understand why the joke needs explaining.

Maybe I've been trolled here, but a list of essential books mainly from female authors must be a joke?

(I think I've read 7.)
posted by ODiV at 10:32 AM on August 10, 2016


Not only do I have about 40 books on my Nook that I have purchased and not read, I have 80 books on my wish-list (that I use as a dumping ground for books that I plan to buy in the future).

So what I'm saying is that lists like this are a very bad thing and you are bad for posting this.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:34 AM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Sukeban - God Stalk and sequels are available as DRM-free ebooks through Baen: P.C. Hodgell works. I believe Baen is international.

Sure, I meant I live in Spain and I had never heard of the author before I read File770's comments. *Many* authors in the list are barely published here (because... Spanish SF fandom is rather cavernary) and others are unknown. I mean, I have a bookshop owner friend who's been pestering publishers for when is The Handmaid's Tale going to finally be in print again. And that's a classic by a world-famous author. The Female Man by Joanna Russ seems to have been published in Spain only in 1987. Octavia Butler has been published in a similarly erratic way, to put another example.
posted by sukeban at 10:37 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Honestly go back to the original FPP link and read the header of the blog on which this list is posted. It's stated quite directly that this all comes from a feminist perspective.
posted by hippybear at 10:37 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


> "Maybe I've been trolled here, but a list of essential books mainly from female authors must be a joke?"

Of course not, but that's neither what this is, what it bills itself as, or what it's implicitly referencing.
posted by kyrademon at 10:40 AM on August 10, 2016


Oh, so I have been trolled. That's fine too. I just haven't read enough on this list or pay attention to these lists in general to know better, I guess. Thanks for answering.
posted by ODiV at 10:45 AM on August 10, 2016


"Maybe I've been trolled here, but a list of essential books mainly from female authors must be a joke?"

This list.

It's not necessarily satire. I'd consider it significant progress if an earnest list of "essential" SFF could be idiosyncratic and mostly mediocre while including almost exclusively women writers without that being a deliberate choice. Yet the male version of this is practically the definition of the critical judgment of the *puppy crowd.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:49 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Jaran was the book that turned me off Kate Elliot completely. For me, the way she writes about social relations, romance, and sex, is off-puttingly naive and immature.

If you don't like her, that's fair, but I will note for other readers that Jaran is, unlike most of her work, implicitly a romance novel wrapped in a space opera. The rest of that sequence is far different in tone.

And Elliott's more recent work, particular the Crossroads trilogy and its followup Black Wolves, is complex, mature, and broad in scope, with multiple types of relationships.
posted by suelac at 10:58 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I got the impression that the gender of the authors was a deliberate choice, but not "idiosyncratic and mostly mediocre". As tonnes of these types of lists have items that people disagree on (it's practically a staple), I wasn't considering it a joke list. It kind of felt like you were saying that lists including "mediocre" books by male authors are fine, but those that include "mediocre" books by female authors couldn't possibly be serious, and that rubbed me the wrong way. But I'll defer to those of you with a deeper knowledge of SF/F and the community surrounding it.
posted by ODiV at 10:59 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ash by Malinda Lo: I might substitute Ash, by Gentle, instead.

The why that book is an interesting question. I'd have picked Downbelow Station (which is a novel about women) over Foreigner (more about culture shock) . Some you can't argue with, the L'Engle or the Slonczewki, but others seem to be rather idiosyncratic picks for best from that author.

Also Tanith Lee? Maureen McHugh? Lisa Goldstein? I guess a few personal favourites will always get left off.
posted by bonehead at 11:20 AM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


"It kind of felt like you were saying that lists including 'mediocre' books by male authors are fine, but those that include 'mediocre' books by female authors couldn't possibly be serious, and that rubbed me the wrong way."

I meant it only in the sense that it's unlikely because male privilege means that men can easily be blinkered about this in a way that women cannot.

"And Elliott's more recent work, particular the Crossroads trilogy and its followup Black Wolves, is complex, mature, and broad in scope, with multiple types of relationships."

Yeah. Her books are deceptive, especially Crossroads/Black Wolves -- there's a lot about them that is pedestrian, apparently just your average epic fantasy fare, but I absolutely love them for how she subverts the romance alpha male trope and the benign slavery trope. In working stylistically well within the epic fantasy tradition and not calling attention to itself with a GRRM-esque grimdark deconstruction, she accomplishes a much more subtle but powerful critique.

BTW, I think that kyrademon turned me on to Elliott and I continue to be amazed at the breadth and depth of kyrademon's SFF erudition. Her judgment is very reliable, I think.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:37 AM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Maybe I've been trolled here, but a list of essential books mainly from female authors must be a joke?

The joke is in the presentation. It's not labeled "Best SF Books By Female Authors", but simply "60 Essential Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reads." It is never mentioned (despite being on a feminist blog) that the list continues (mostly) works by women.

The joke is taken to another level by the inclusion of our beloved jscalzi [side note: recently read Lock-In, loved it]. Because on your average "60 Essential Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reads" list, there would be 58 or 59 books by men and then one or two token women. This blog has flipped the script, included Scalzi as the token, and made a wonderfully subtle statement. A+

/beanplating

In other news, I've only read 5 of these books and clearly have a ways to go. My wife and son are reading the "Raven Boys" series and going crazy for it. Also, no Caitlin Kiernan?
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 12:43 PM on August 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


A lot of people I know don't seem to care for Black, and I have no idea why; this is one of my favorite books.
Wait?! There are people who don't like Holly Black??? I can't wrap my head around that. Seriously at all. She, Brenna Yovanoff, and Claire North/Kate Griffin are quickly becoming some of my go-to authors in a time of need.

And thanks to this list I will finally read Rosemary and Rue. It's been recommended to me a thousand times, and this is the straw that broke the camel's back.
posted by teleri025 at 12:44 PM on August 10, 2016


I think the joke (if a point / joke was intended) would have worked even better if there had been *just* enough men on the list to make the reader think that they hadn’t been totally ignored, just mostly overlooked. About 10% would have been perfect. As it is, it’s a list of SF&F by women that doesn’t call attention to that fact. Plus Scalzi.

(I suspect that’s something The Toast would probably have done absolutely deadpan & then had a joyous time winding up the trolls in the comments.)
posted by pharm at 1:22 PM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


(Which is a totally fine thing to be, obvs.)
posted by pharm at 1:23 PM on August 10, 2016


Yet the male version of this is practically the definition of the critical judgment of the *puppy crowd.

You are entirely too charitable; the problem goes way beyond the puppies. I'm so over seeing what are essentially the next David eddings, Terry brooks, etc feted from site to site.

I've nothing against adolescent wish fulfilment fantasy, but by God I wish people could stop dressing it up as seminal genre ground breaking, especially when so many of these cliché burdened books have some, in my opinion, fundamental problems with basic writing technique eg pacing, plotting, characterisation etc.

I'm so over boysy fantasy novels. Gritty war books have become the new apocalyptic continent crossing trope. Ugh. Wexler is the only one I've read who writes war worth a damn.
posted by smoke at 2:32 PM on August 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


I've read about half of the books on the list and am at least familiar with most of the others. I guess I appreciate what the list is trying to do but, well, I don't think it's a very good list.
posted by Justinian at 3:41 PM on August 10, 2016


Oh, including Scalzi as a giant fuck-you to the Puppies is A++ trolling would troll again though. Great job.
posted by Justinian at 3:42 PM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've read about 17 of these and books by a couple of the other authors.

I'd have to say that missing "Goblin Emperor" was an odd choice, as was skipping over Sheri S Tepper's wide range of work. And while Lessing's "Canopus in Argos" is not quite to my taste (I just find Lessing hard to read in general) it certainly counts as interesting feminist science fiction. I'd also mention Michelle West, whom I found immensely readable, but kept wanting to toss the books out of the window for the weird and unconstrained magical elements.

I'll add an endorsement for "Slow River".

NK Jemison is a great choice but I'd have chosen the second book in the Dreamblood diptych as more feminist though reading the first is essential for the second to make full sense. I'm quite looking forward to "The Obelisk Gate" (next week!).

I'm not persuaded by many of the Goodread's blurbs though and would have preferred a more personal set of notes - some look interesting but lots of the others just don't.

As usual I'm saving this page for future reference.
posted by Death and Gravity at 4:38 PM on August 10, 2016


Ivan Fyodorovich: "This is how you get lily-white lists filled with L. Nivenses and P. Anthonys with a U. Le Guin occasionally thrown in."

Oh, I don't think you're going to find Piers Anthony on list without a title like, "Authors Who Are Giant Creeps."
posted by Chrysostom at 5:10 PM on August 10, 2016


I find it odd that some people think Cordelia's Honor is a good pick for an essential Bujold? Shards of Honor, well, is not very good Bujold. It reads like Bujold was still writing Star Trek Fanfic with Aral in the Klingon role and Cordelia in the Federation role, with prose to match.

Barrayar alone would have been a far better pick, or any of Mirror Dance, The Vor Game, and A Civil Campaign.
posted by Justinian at 5:27 PM on August 10, 2016


Re: are they trolling. Bear in mind that the article doesn't say it's the 60 essential texts, but "here are 60 of some important and thought-providing texts from science fiction and fantasy's long history." So there's no particular reason why they shouldn't all be by women. Saying "these 60 are essential" doesn't preclude thinking that GRRM or PKD or Asimov or Delaney or John Ringo or whoever are also essential.

(Though as we've said, including one male author and it being Scalzi is likely trolling the Puppies specifically).
posted by Pink Frost at 6:01 PM on August 10, 2016


I've read 16 of them, but noted 13 others which I've tried and failed to read. So I'm not sure which of the unfamiliar books to try now.... I'll be reading through this thread to see which books get recommended alongside my favorites.
posted by Margalo Epps at 6:50 PM on August 10, 2016


I grew up in Pinochet's Chile, where English language SFF was hard to come by, and the only Spanish language translations to be found where of Asimov and Bradbury, and there was no Spanish language SFF to speak of.
So I grew up scrounging in sad little second hand book stores with maybe half the bottom part of a shelf dedicated to SFF, maybe.
I read a lot of weird stuff, dogeared '50s paperbacks with far out illustrations on the cover that didn't match the stories inside. Whatever I could get my hands on.
I reread the few books I had 10, 15, 20 times each.
But still, I knew about all these other books that were out there in the wider world, that I couldn't get my hands on. I missed many of the classics. I missed all the fads, didn't read any cyberpunk until 1999.
So now, I have a Kindle, and it takes me maybe seconds to download anything I want, at all. Now, I don't have the time to read all the books I missed out on.
So lists like these make me happy and sad, at the same time.
So many books, so little time.
posted by signal at 8:08 PM on August 10, 2016 [7 favorites]


Current and topical: N.K. Jemisin Has a Plan for Diversity in Science Fiction
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:06 PM on August 10, 2016


Jemisin makes some good points, thanks, Joe in Australia. I also recommend the blog post she links to.
posted by tavegyl at 11:55 PM on August 10, 2016


Oh yeah, while I remember: I loved "The Goblin Emperor" even though I don't like most of Sarah Monette's other work ("Katherine Addison" is a pseudonym). I read it as a magisterial take-down of your classic fantasy cliche of "outsider-boy raised by poor-but-honest folks comes to court and turns everything on its head at the point of a sword, defeats evil before lunch, marries the princess, and is happy ever after". (In TGE, anyone who picks up a sword in order to effect policy change comes to a sticky end very rapidly.) In fact, I liked it so much it was at the top of my Hugo nomination list that year.

But I can quite see a lot of other folks going "meh" over it, because it's also the sort of book I'd have hated 30 years ago (or even 20).

We change, and our definitions of merit change: change is the only constant, and when we stop changing, we're dead.
posted by cstross at 3:55 AM on August 11, 2016


Addendum to my comment above re: The Goblin Emplorer. Like cstross, I loved what it did plot-wise — upending all the usual fantasy wish-fulfilment tropes — but the writing just didn’t grab me & if the act of reading itself feels like a chore then that’s a difficult hump to get over for any novel.

Re : markets & diversity. I suspect this is going to be a *really* hard problem to fix. I read some analysis of submissions to literary journals a while back, when there was some agitation about the (fairly obvious) gender bias in published articles, which showed that, amongst other things, even women who *had successfully published articles already* were significantly less likely to make submissions to editors than the men in the same position. Overcoming both this internal bias as well as the external ones that hold people back is going to be a long slog with no quick fixes. Doesn’t mean that we should sit back and do nothing - just that fixing one flaw {eg, minority publication rates in SF&F magazines} might not lead directly to the expected result {more successful minority published SF&F authors}.
posted by pharm at 4:27 AM on August 11, 2016


I did read this as -- not a joke, not a satire, but simultaneously a very good recommended reading list from a Millennial feminist perspective and also a shot across the bow at the very concept of "canon," of "essential reading." I think it ties in very deeply to this article on the weight of history (by the same Renay who wrote this list), in which she writes:
That clarified the issue for me, because so many of the classic lists I started out with to guide myself are filled with men and the occasional women (I have since vastly improved my lists using personal recs and SF Mistressworks). It's hard to really feel dedicated to a communal storytelling space when the history of it is so steeped in one perspective that people outside the genre only see what floats to the top—those classics by men that everyone knows and that a quick google will help you find. And so that very limited vision is regurgitated over and over, pressing at you, reminding you there's a history you don't know and that not knowing it might be considered a failing. And so, when my friend, a woman with very clear interest in stories by and about women in SF, requests classic SF recommendations, what she gets is a bevy of male writers. Because people outside the genre don't know any better because it's these books that SF fandoms before now beat their drums over, honored, awarded, and remembered. These are our touchstones, but wow, can they be heavy with expectations.

In SF, this pressure feels doubled because it feels like there's a push to value stories by and about men more but also a keen pressure to be educated in the genre, the genre lines, and the fandom's history itself. You don't just need to read Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, Niven, Herbert, Card—I could go on for a while, but let's not get carried away—but you need to be able to contextualize them, too, if you want to have critical chops or be taken seriously.
And this kind of pressure to feel like you haven't read enough unless you've read all the classics (a damn lot of which are, to be honest, mediocre or badly dated!) is used as a kind of gatekeeping that serves to keep people who aren't middle-aged white men -- and young women especially, I think -- out of SF circles.

So this list isn't just saying, "These are 60 essential SFF books," or even "Why should it be so weird if 59 essential SFF books are by women?" -- it's saying, "Look, even if I haven't read every book in the genre, even if I haven't read The Lathe of Heaven or Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, even if the books I read are the books that are coming out now and not the books that came out 40 years ago -- I have the right to construct my own personal canon, to not be beholden to that kind of gatekeeping, to not constantly feel inadequate about the classics I haven't gotten to yet."

That's a really powerful feeling, for me, even as I browse the list and see more than a handful of books that I thought were only okay.
posted by Jeanne at 7:18 AM on August 11, 2016 [10 favorites]


o this list isn't just saying, "These are 60 essential SFF books," or even "Why should it be so weird if 59 essential SFF books are by women?" -- it's saying, "Look, even if I haven't read every book in the genre, even if I haven't read The Lathe of Heaven or Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, even if the books I read are the books that are coming out now and not the books that came out 40 years ago -- I have the right to construct my own personal canon, to not be beholden to that kind of gatekeeping, to not constantly feel inadequate about the classics I haven't gotten to yet."

Holy shit, YES. I'm not likely to read the designated classics that I am absolutely positively supposed to read before I can be accepted as having done my duty before I can move on to more contemporary SF/F, but for a two fingers up summation, THANK YOU.
posted by Kitteh at 7:26 AM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


In re classics: Honestly, I think people should read the classics late, unless they are specifically interested in some of them*.

I've been reading SF now for about a bazillion years (know the power of my age and wisdom, people!) and I'd say it's only in the last five years that I've had much interest in anything but feminist SF classics. Basically, I've read enough feminist SF (with some foregrounding of work by queer and/or POC writers) that I've got a sort of theory of SF, and now when I read The Space Merchants or something, I am actively interested in it because I can see how it flows forward into the SF I've already read. Would I have bothered with The Space Merchants when I was younger? Only in the very early days when I had basically no SF except white dudes from the fifties/sixties/seventies SF available to me.

I mean, to me the point of reading SF-as-genre (as opposed to saying "huh, I like fiction and some of the fiction I like is sometimes SF; one day it's To The Lighthouse, another day it's Book of the New Sun) is to develop one's theory of the genre. I mean that in a low-theory way, not in a "you must have digested all of Darko Suvin before you speak" way** and what I mean is that you read SF and develop an evolving set of ideas about the interplay among different books and writers and about thematic development over time. That's one of the pleasures of SF - realizing that Le Guin's ansible is Card's ansible and that Russ's Alyx runs into Fafrd and the Grey Mouser and has some cutting things to say about them, or that Delany is writing Triton as a wonderful though kind of point-missing response to The Dispossessed.

But to really build up that kind of reading requires delight and emotional investment - slogging through The Space Merchants or (god forbid) Engineer Menni if you don't want to isn't going to make you a good reader.

I think SF is an interesting field in that, more than most genres, it produces amateur scholarship and pop academic scholarship, and that theories of genre tend to be accessible to average fans. (So your average SF fan is, IMO, far more likely to be familiar with some of the big theories of genre than your average non-SF novel reader is to be familiar with recent trends in lit crit.) So certainly, the idea that active engagement with SF-as-genre does require some effort is not totally unwarranted. (Again, as opposed to "I am not especially into SF but I am the world's biggest Octavia Butler fan, so I read her novels against Alice Walker and Hilary Mantel rather than against Jemisin and Russ - the SF I read is situated in a "fiction generally" world rather than an "SF generally" world.")


*Let's assume that "classic" means "clearly influential book that is more than ten years old" for this purpose, and let's assume that "clearly influential" means "we can point to a number of books and writers obviously influenced by it, plus it has been widely read in a particular section of fandom". So Brown Girl In The Ring is a classic, for instance, because it meets these criteria for women's and/or feminist SF; Swordspoint is a classic of queer fantasy; Vellum and Ink are classics of whatever the hell they are...

**Also, some of these puppies should start realizing that they haven't read any SF theory. If you're going to be a frosty old snob about it, you shouldn't really run your mouth until you've read Suvin, Jameson, the fandom history All Our Yesterdays, some good history of Soviet SF - I mean, from a "you must have deep background in order to speak" standpoint, you can't really speak until you can deal with those guys. I think that's nonsense and stifling, but one should at least be consistent.
posted by Frowner at 7:47 AM on August 11, 2016 [7 favorites]


I'm having a problem with the concept of 'the classics' in different sorts of media/genres.

The idea of a meritocracy in the arts, where the best works are magically selected as classics, which just happen to be 99% created by middle and upper class men of european ancestry is bullshit. It's all gatekeeping, class and race and privilege and gender and age and education.

Probably one of the most liberating moments I've had as an adult was realising that, for instance, classic rock is 99% crap. To someone raised in the First Church of English Speaking White Men with Long Hair and Les Pauls, this was powerful stuff, liberating.

The world is larger than (some) people think, there's beauty everywhere.
posted by signal at 8:21 AM on August 11, 2016


I thought The Space Merchants was a lot of fun, actually.

Not that this contradicts any of your points, obviously.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:22 AM on August 11, 2016


Actually, the more I look at this list, the more I like it. I'm not sure it's to my taste, but it really orbits around not just SF by women but unrespectable SF by women

I've been mulling this over since yesterday and it would be wonderful if this list was indeed created with that goal in mind. A few years ago I realised, through actually sitting down and counting them, that only ten percent of the SFF books I read were written by women -- let's not even mention writers of colour -- and when I set out to improve that ratio, I ran into the problem that it was easy to find the worthy books, those approved by the existing gatekeepers, but not so much the 'thrashier' books. Le Guin, Butler, Russ, Atwood, yes, Huff, Moon, Jean Johnson, not so much. Not just actually finding those books, but rather finding out about them, as in my bubble of science fiction fandom these were rarely if ever discussed.

Had a list like this been present back then it would've been an enormous help in helping me figure out which writers to try.

Also, having both Huff's Valor's Choice and Scalzi's Old Man's War on the list got me thinking about the different reception those two books got. Both are light mil-sf novels, the first in a longer series, but Scalzi's novel was taken much more seriously from the start than Huff's one was, or so it seems to me, despite not being noticably better (or worse), got much more buzz going for it. Partially perhaps because he's so good at self promotion, but I think our unconscious biases within fandom also help with this, making it easier to dismiss a similar novel by a female writer as just light fluff whereas this is the second coming of Heinlein.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:52 AM on August 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think "classic" is a vexed concept, of course - "influential" captures what is meant more, maybe, and that itself requires "influential on what".

Octavia Butler's work is incredibly influential - sometimes I feel like I can hardly pick up a recent SF novel and not see her influence. Suzette Hayden Elgin's weird, delightful, poorly-plotted Arkansas books are, as far as I can tell, not especially influential, and they're a bit hard to find. "How has the Lilith's Brood trilogy shaped subsequent SF?" is a much bigger question than "How has the Ozark trilogy shaped subsequent SF?" That's not a criticism of the Ozark trilogy, which should totally be better known; it's a way of thinking about lines of inquiry.

And then there's the interesting situation of something that wasn't a classic and reappears, like Hope Mirlees's Lud-In-The-Mist, which fell through the cracks after its publication in 1926, was briefly revived in the 60s (IIRC) and got a new life when Neil Gaiman talked about it a lot. "Classic" is a shifting term that tells you a lot about a field, and I think it's a contested term - for instance, a lot of people talked up Terry Bisson's unappreciated Fire On The Mountain a few years ago and, through a confluence of events, it got a new edition and is much better known. (Deservedly so; it's fantastic!)

I think there's several separate questions involved in the idea of the classic:

How does what is "classic" reflect the limits on the field? Ie, why would some people talk up, say, a Cory Doctorow SF novel but not talk up Nalo Hopkinson? Why did Nisi Shawl's Filter House get a really disgracefully hostile review from a male reviewer at Strange Horizons? What can we learn about the field from competing "classics"? (That is, The Female Man is a classic, but it's not positioned in the field of SF the same way as The Dispossessed - what does this tell us?)

How does influence happen? You can't be influenced by Lud-In-The-Mist if it's out of print, and why is it out of print? You can't be influenced by the Women's Press SF series if they aren't available anymore.

How do we see and describe through-lines and genealogies? One problem I have with the "nothing is classic, it's all a field of equal points of light" line of reasoning is that it stops us dead in our tracks when we try to recognize the influence of women/POC/queer writers and to construct genealogies of feminist SF/queer SF/SF by writers of color - if there's no "classic", then Parable of the Sower isn't a classic and we can't talk about its immense influence.

One of the most important ways to reconstitute the field of SF is, IMO, constructing these genealogies - both genealogies specifically of feminist/POC/queer SF and genealogies of SF generally which include these works. I think this is particularly true for SF, which is a particularly didactic and intertextual genre.

So while I recognize the critique of the "classic", I think that there's something in what "classic" gets at that is none the less important.
posted by Frowner at 8:57 AM on August 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


I get your point about how the concept of 'classic' can be useful, but the way I see it used currently is 'these artefacts are objectively good for all time, regardless of your gender, education, origin, class or culture'. It freezes the tastes and prejudices of a particular group that happened to be in power when it was being defined as somehow transcendent of the group itself. Which it isn't. It's useful to say 'these people really, really liked these books/movies/music/etc', but not for much more.
The term 'classic' is basically the lynchpin of a linear, vertical and hierarchic view of human endeavours which by an amazing coincidence happens to favor whoever defines what is and isn't classic.
posted by signal at 9:18 AM on August 11, 2016


Frowner:

Very much agreed about reading classics *eventually*, or for specific reasons. SFF is a genre that has always been very much in conversation with itself - you gave a few examples, which i agree with wholeheartedly. One of my go-to suggestions for SFF readers is that they should at some point go ahead and read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - which i think is actually an annoying and terrible book, and i warn people about that - in order to read some much better works that you cannot experience fully without it because they are basically yelling at it. The Panshins' Rite of Passage. John M. Ford's fantastic, bizarre Growing Up Weightless. Barnes' Orbital Resonance. All three of those books are, in some sense, "sequels" to TMIaHM, part of a long argument that SFF is having with itself.

(Of course, all of those books are by dudes, except that Cory Panshin is an uncredited co-author on Rite. So if you're not reading SFF by men at all anymore, for heaven's sake definitely don't torture yourself with TMIaHM!)
posted by adrienneleigh at 8:54 PM on August 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


Suzette Haden Elgin's weird, delightful, poorly-plotted Arkansas books are, as far as I can tell, not especially influential, and they're a bit hard to find.

Yes on all counts. I won't give my copies up because I don't know how likely I would be to be able to get hold of them again if I did.
posted by asperity at 9:31 PM on August 11, 2016


The Handmaid's Tale - I can still remember reading the afterward of the book and feeling my whole body go cold; the world seemed really different after I read it, and sometimes I miss that innocence.

Daughter of the Blood - This is the only series I've ever bought Hard Covers for. I once bought two hard covers because I lost the first one and I needed to re-read the book. The first three are as horrifying as they are wonderful; the sequels become lighter and richer and deeper with each one. I also adore this series for a serious deconstruction of the idea of a Mary Sue hidden in between them.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - I wanted to love it, really I did, but it ended up in the "I loathe all of the main characters" pile. I finished it, but under protest.

Howl's Moving Castle - I own multiple copies of this book and reread it regularly. Sophie's journey is amazing.

Beggars in Spain - Ooof, this one packed a punch. It also led me to understand some of how I think. The reference to Lincoln at the end is one of the better combinations of history and sci fi I've ever read.

A Wrinkle in Time - I was once like Meg, powerful in my sullenness.

Rosemary and Rue - I love this series so hard! It really forces one to rethink ones' view of women who are heros.

Dreamsnake - I came across this almost accidentally and fell in love. It's reshaped how I think of making worlds, how I view science in a world of possible alien life, and how delicately different cultures can brush against each other.

Sunshine - Mark is Reading Sunshine and he captures the delight of the book beautifully. It's a rambling, indirect book which covers so much ground and hints at so much left unsaid, and it sincerely made me wish she wrote sequels. How she uses language in this book is simply unparalleled. It should be more famous than it is.

Books I would add:

Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricca McKillip - I read it when I was young enough that I'm not sure how much it shaped how I viewed myself as a woman, versus how the world would try to shape me - but I feel like it's effect was significant.

The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lacky - I love her earlier books, but this new world she stepped into really refined everything I liked about them another step upwards.

Strands of Starlight by Gael Baudino - This is a dreamy book about transformation and vengeance which I love as much for how it remakes the rape & revenge plot as for how it drove me to rethink ethics and choice.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:33 AM on August 12, 2016


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