All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

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WildGorillaMan
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by WildGorillaMan »

And some of the authors on that list, like Robert Jordan should not only be struck from the list, they should be erased from the public record.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by Schlegel »

My first post in the thread was what shouldn't be on the list- a full 30% of them.

Jordan being an egregious example. Diana Gabaldon, I have been assured by a female friend who reads romances and science fiction, is terrible at both. There are many big name works as well that just aren't top 100 material. C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, for example, is historically important, but unreadable. The Simarillion is an Encyclopedia, not a novel, and was really just a pile of notes by Tolkien pounded into book shape by others. Sorry, fans, but it's not even really a novel, let alone a top 100.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by The Crawdaddy »

No criticism (even though I have some as well, but anybody can bitch), just some additional personal favorites:

Frank Herbert's The White Plague
Robert Heinlien's Job: A Comedy of Justice
John Steakley's Armor
Glen Cook's entire Black Company series
C.J. Cherryh The Faded Sun series
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by WildGorillaMan »

Can I get a holla for Lois McMaster Bujold's Barayar Saga?
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

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WildGorillaMan wrote:Can I get a holla for Lois McMaster Bujold's Barayar Saga?
Those were certainly better than the 30 I nixed.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by WildGorillaMan »

Here's a great book that not a lot of people seem to have read:

http://www.iain-banks.net/us/against-a-dark-background/
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

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I smell nerds!

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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by Shafpocalypse Now »

Edgar Rice Burroughs

His Mars, Tarzan, and Pellucidar series are better than 99% of stuff out there, even now. I was reminded of "The Mucker" recently, and that is a great book as well.

Robert Jordan is terrible. If you can actually get through the Wheel of Time, you'll realize how much time you've actually wasted on him. Dude had to have died a virgin.

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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

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Shafman wrote:Edgar Rice Burroughs

His Mars, Tarzan, and Pellucidar series are better than 99% of stuff out there, even now. I was reminded of "The Mucker" recently, and that is a great book as well.

Robert Jordan is terrible. If you can actually get through the Wheel of Time, you'll realize how much time you've actually wasted on him. Dude had to have died a virgin.
What don't you like about the Wheel of Time? One of my main complaints is that Jordan stretched out that story line into too many books.

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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

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Shafman wrote:Edgar Rice Burroughs
I devoured those Mars books when I was a youngun.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by dingleberry »

Through this list I have found and read several of the books I wouldn't have know existed.

Neil Gaimen is especially good. I read "Nevermore" and several of his short stories. On the library's wait list for "American Gods."

Reread "The Stand" by Stephen King.

Read the Kingkiller Chronicles by Rothfuss.

Slowly working through the list by downloading this stuff from the library.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

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Edzekiel Zachariah wrote:1. Starship Troopers
2. Dune

The rest are details.
Quoted for truthiness.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

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Still no love for Phillips K. Dick?
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by Batboy2/75 »

SCiFi Fans are gigantic fags

The top three that matter.

Lord of the Rings
Dune
Starship Troopers

Only pointy headed, pasty faced, skinny fat, sexually confused idiots would rate Ender's Game so high or even in the top 100.

Not one mention of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan and John Carter. What about Henry Rider Haggard's "She"? That list is a fucking joke.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by Schlegel »

Batboy2/75 wrote: That list is a fucking joke.
I think disagreed with more than 50% if the list.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by vern »

msr2112 wrote:Still no love for Phillips K. Dick?
The I Ching for the win!

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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

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Shafpocalypse Now wrote:Edgar Rice Burroughs

His Mars, Tarzan, and Pellucidar series are better than 99% of stuff out there, even now. I was reminded of "The Mucker" recently, and that is a great book as well.

Robert Jordan is terrible. If you can actually get through the Wheel of Time, you'll realize how much time you've actually wasted on him. Dude had to have died a virgin.
Just read Tarzan of the Apes and liked it very much. It's young adult level literature at best, but was enjoyable in its innocence.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by Turdacious »

I found this a while back and enjoyed it:

http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/The_Moon_of_Skulls

Moon of Skulls, by Robert E Howard (from 'The Savage Tales of Soloman Kane') . I read it as a kid and liked it. Got a different perspective on it as an adult.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by Holland Oates »

Gawddamn I love REH. That mother could write e'ry thing.

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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by Fat Cat »

Turdacious wrote:I found this a while back and enjoyed it:

http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/The_Moon_of_Skulls

Moon of Skulls, by Robert E Howard (from 'The Savage Tales of Soloman Kane') . I read it as a kid and liked it. Got a different perspective on it as an adult.
An excellent story. I still remember the G.K. Chesterton quote it begins with:

The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God may die.

-The Ballad of the White Horse
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by vern »

Ed Zachary wrote:Gawddamn I love REH. That mother could write e'ry thing.
Just a heads up that there was a good movie about his life from 1996 called The Whole Wide World.
It stars Vincent D'Onofrio and Rene Zellweger.

There's no action, but you may want to netflix it if you're a fan.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by DrDonkeyLove »

msr2112 wrote:Nary a mention of the great Phillip K. Dick! Only one in the top 100.
Recommendations:

Probably his most accessible: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (on the list)
Somewhere between really fucked up and pretty fucked up: A Scanner Darkly
Extremely fucked up (and that's putting it mildly): Ubik
Redefines fucked up and paranoid: Radio Free Albemuth
Just picked up Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and wasn't too many pages into it before I realized that I was reading Blade Runner.
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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

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"30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess"

Reading it right now. In English \:D/
At first was distracted by Russian words, tried to find them in English dictionary :)


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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

Post by Wild Bill »

Ed Zachary wrote:1. Starship Troopers
2. Dune

The rest are details.
Recently re-read Dune and was dissapointed.
Сame to the conclusion that it is better not to re-read books which you liked in youth :(


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Re: All right you nerds-- NPR Top 100 SF & Fantasy books

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tough old man wrote:WARHAMMER 40,000 all 75 books in the series.
YES
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