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[Bozack]

Bozack, you're young yet.  Have no fear, in ten years or so you'll be just as dorky as the rest of us.

Ha, yeah, I haven't even opened up the list yet. I'm afraid I'll click on it, and my screen will go black. Then, a giant stone head will appear and shout, "HAIL ZARDOZ!!!!"

[arkabee]

I like Phillip K. Dick, but i wasn't top 5 impressed with Man in a High Castle.  maybe because i'd already read a lot of zelazny at the time.  His short stories are prolly the best ever, though.

Starship troopers isn't that good of a book.  i love heinlein, my adolescence would never have been the same without him, and he definitely deserves to be on a "best" list, but, um, not at the top?  i mean, if you want to make a list of "combined importance of total works in regards to making you feel good" then, ya, maybe he'd be number one.  
(addendum: let me make this clear: i _heart_ heinlein.  due to reading him incessantly in my "formative" years, i think of him in an almost grandfatherly way.  he is RAD.)

where the fuck is tolkein?  they put the Upinshads in.  they say
"and most have inspired profound trends in science fiction. ". so, uh, What The Fuck?

Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight?  Sure, i tried to make "klah" or whatever it was called, from the recipe they published.  But, no Moorcock and Elric?  um, ok...
(oops, he's number 25.  apparently that book was quite important.  i don't have it, i haven't read it.  oops.)

I would definitely put Diamond Age in over Snow Crash.

Andromeda Strain? what?


25.

[miles]

What the FUCK? I read sci-fi ALL THE TIME. I just counted, and apparently I read mostly shitty sci-fi, because I've only got 8 on the damned list. EIGHT? ?

Well, only 5 for me.

Ringworld
1984
Fahrenheit 451 (for school)
Cat's Cradle
Hitchhiker's Guide

I really enjoyed all of them, at least to a certain degree.

Is something wrong with me?  I read all the time.  I guess science fiction hasn't really done it for me.

Brave New World will probably be eternally unfinished.  I think it still has a bookmark in it, probably around page 30.

[wombat]

Tolkein surely isn't SF.  But are the McCaffrey dragon books SF?  I never read them because they sounded like dopey sword and sorcery stuff (with apologies to any fans of dopey sword and sorcery stuff).

[V-Adore]

McCaffrey at least had SF ambitions in the early books (the humans on Pern were colonists from Earth and did various SFly things before they decided to ride dragons to destroy the space fungus) but sort of forgot about it quickly, and at no point in the later Pern books is one ever given a reason to think that they don't all happen in some dorky fantasy universe.

I can buy Tolkien on here, because for all of his influence (and quality), he shaped the face of fantasy, not SF as much. It sort of depends how much of a genre uniter/divider you are.

[Bozack]

Finally did the count test. 19.

ZARDOZ!

[arkabee]

Tolkein surely isn't SF.  But are the McCaffrey dragon books SF?  I never read them because they sounded like dopey sword and sorcery stuff (with apologies to any fans of dopey sword and sorcery stuff).

are the upanishads SF?  plus, they were written by multiple persons.  the Silmarillion was writed by just one guy. and etc ad nauseum.

[AlohaDawg]

Holy Cow, usually I can't compete with you guys on books or music but I have 13 kills on that list.

If you haven't read A Canticle for Leibowitz, go get it. It's really good.

It is a little weird to consider Hitchhikers Guide a serious work of Science Fiction, and Alice in Wonderland?? Come on...it is cool to me that HG Wells and Robert Lewis Stevenson are in there, though, that's really where it all began. Many of the books I read on that list are the classic literature ones.

[CortJstr]

It is a little weird to consider Hitchhikers Guide a serious work of Science Fiction

Just because it isn't serious doesn't make it unimportant or take away its influence.

[AlohaDawg]

It is a little weird to consider Hitchhikers Guide a serious work of Science Fiction

Just because it isn't serious doesn't make it unimportant or take away its influence.

Comparing it to the other titles on this list is weird. In terms of literal pop culture reference (and the importance geeky people assign to their towels) there is no other book (series) like it. I'm not sure I can think of examples of influence or importance to the literary genre, though.

[AugustWest]

I think both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman owe a lot to Douglas Adams.

[CortJstr]

I think both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman owe a lot to Douglas Adams.

Indeed. Plus it's kind of a gateway sci-fi for people who would otherwise consider the genre too geeky.

[AlohaDawg]

Conceded....thinking in those terms gives it sense.

[V-Adore]

Alice in Wonderland I can see, too. It dealt with some remarkably complex stuff, and as a speculative "thought-work" it's really quite staggering. Some of its prestige is no doubt because of its eary publishing date, but for pure speculative force it really is in a category of its own, just because it's a front-row seat on a brilliant and confusing mind.

(Now I'm reminded of the paper I wrote for AP English Language comparing and contrasting the treatment of gender roles in Frankenstein and Alice. Curiouser and curiouser...)

[AlohaDawg]

I always considered Alice in Wonderland a flight of opium-induced fantasy. Were Lewis Carroll also not a relatively noted math whiz with a lot of work in other geeky areas, do you think 'Alice' would have gotten this sort of attention? Also, I think the illustration work of Sir Joh Tenniel (himself a prominent illustrator and satirist of the time) would the book have received or maintained it's popularity?

I am not asking rhetorically; I really do wonder. It does belong on the list.