I'm currently working my way through this list of the top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy novels of all time. The task of narrowing down two fields like that is a daunting one and by no means do I treat NPR's effort as a definitive one. As a way of further understanding what should actually be at the top, I've been paying attention to other, similar lists. While the first list is driven by a wide poll, this list here (top 100 Science Fiction) has been put together by a smaller group. Yet another list came to my attention this week, a top 50 science fiction one, which is here.
The latest list is brand new, having come out in the past week. The Stacker one is from 2020. The NPR list, which started this all, is from 2011. I think they illustrate an interesting thing when it comes to recency bias. (Please note: none of this is meant as criticism of the lists or list makers.)
The two later lists, Stacker and Esquire, both came out about the same time. Esquire has 14 (out of 50) titles come from the decade before it the list was published. Stacker has 23 (out of 100). Only eight pieces overlap. This is where I'd start with if I was trying to determine the best of the 2010's. If you're curious, they are:
- This is How You Lose the Time War
- Rosewater
- An Unkindness of Ghosts
- The Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet
- The Fifth Season
- Three Body Problem
- Annihilation
- Station Eleven
Stacker had 15 books that didn't make the cut on Esquire's list. That includes two of their top ten, 'Ancillary Justice' at #9 and 'The Martian' at #2. (I've read 'The Martian' and it's excellent.) Four of Esquire's titles in that time span, weren't highly regarded by Stacker, though none of them were in Esquire's top half. Again, all of these books may be excellent, but apparently they weren't obviously excellent enough to be a consensus pick.
The books that NPR had in the decade before they published didn't fare any better. Of their 15 books in that range, only one of them, 'Old Man's War', made one of the other lists. This isn't a great comparison, though, because many of the NPR lists are probably more fantasy than science fiction. Some are science fiction and it's interesting that they didn't make the cut for the other lists.
How about the ones from the 20th century? There we see much more agreement. Of Esquire's 28 such books, only three of them aren't on the other lists. These titles, given more time to think about them, have a much greater degree of consensus about them.
What I'd love is to see a list where the creators (poll, panel, single author) simply didn't consider any book written in the ten years prior. That would give the reader enough time to really think about each one. They could see which ones other people were talking about. See which ones they wanted to re-read. (Fwiw, I'd like the same thing with movies!)
Interesting (to me at least), is that there are five novels that both Esquire and Stacker liked in the 20th century, that didn't crack the NPR list. I'll be putting these on my personal 'to read' list. They are:
- Ammonite
- Re: Colonized Planet 5, Shikasta
- Dhalgren
- A Wrinkle in Time
- Solaris
I've read 'A Wrinkle in Time' before, but not the others. In time, I'll fix that.
