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Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
Science-fiction & fantasy literature: a critical list with discussions.
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“‘The Observer will decide’, I said.”
– Kiteworld,
Keith Roberts
Why These Are Not Yet in the Lists
Regrettably, I have in recent years been spared little time for further development of this site. While I hope and expect that I will be returning to a heavier commitment to it soon now, in the meantime I thought to augment the site a bit with a list of some books yet-unlisted here but by authors already in the lists.
The attentive visitor to this site will have noticed that the main lists already contain books not yet read by me—all duly marked with a # sign before the title—and so may wonder why the particular unread books here are not also in those lists. Well, there are some authors who are so good that anything by them can be trusted; and there are others who, if not “for the ages”, are both acceptably good and consistent. Works by either sort may, in my opinion, be recommended unread, subject to two provisos: first, that the recommender—me, in this case—makes it clear that the recommendation is based on repute, not an actual reading; and second, that the book eventually be read and, if regrettably it be necessary to remove it, be removed. Such, in my opinion, are the # books now in the lists.
There remain quite a number of authors who can at least on occasion rise to acceptable quality, as evidenced by their being represented in these lists at all, but whose output shows significant variations in quality (“quality” always, of course, meaning “quality as I perceive it”). That category naturally includes a number of writers of middling ability, who can now or then hit the bell; but it also includes a nontrivial number of authors of presumed excellence who nevertheless—to me—seem capable of producing occasional potboilers or worse along with their better work.
Let us get one thing clear: this is emphatically not a list of “marginal” works of dubious quality. It is simply a list of works not yet read and evaluated, and (so far as I can tell) of unpredictable quality. So, while it doubtless contains some marginal work (possibly even some drek), it likely also contains not a few wondrous gems. I put it forth simply so that should anyone come to this site looking for some thoughts on where to expand their current reading acquaintance they can have the regular lists—necessarily limited by what one man can read in a given span—augmented by at least plausible suggestions about authors who have already proved, whether once or repeatedly, that they are capable of producing worthwhile reading. Note also that these are by no means complete bibliographies of these writers, even just with the field of speculative fiction.
I also want to make a second thing quite clear: this is also emphatically not a complete bibliography of each of the authors listed here. Some of these authors have huge numbers of works in our fields, and I have not tried to list each and every yet-unread work by those authors. Rather, I have tried to present a reasonable-length sampling of their yet-unread (by me) output as a suggestion (both to you and to myself) of what of theirs to try next. If you want complete bibliographies, go to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database site.
I have, in a few cases, included some limited comments about the author, but only as an aide-memoire, not as any sort of definitive analysis.
And I say yet again: I really don’t know much about any of these books save that their respective authors have produced at least some work of merit.
(Remember also that there is also a page here about other candidate authors, not yet represented here but pending consideration.)
The standard marks on this site also apply, notably that a * after a book title indicates that it is a collection of tales, not a novel.
The key distinction in these lists is that a title that is not boldfaced is a work that I am not sure qualifies as either science-fiction or fantasy. (It may also happen that a title that is boldfaced is not either, since I am going by general repute, not actual reading experience.)
(It is hard to tell without a full reading—reviews are little help—which, if any, of Ackroyd’s many novels contain material that would justify their inclusion as “speculative fiction”; the list below are those that seem likeliest—about half his novels.)
(Aiken wrote numerous novels, most YA, and frankly the “YA” aspect in them sometimes gets tedious for adults. But her short fiction—whether for children, young adults or not-young adults—simply sparkles; obviously, some are better than others, but none descend to tedium. There is, so far as I can see, no sharp line between her work for children and her work for adults, except the so-called “magic and mystery” books—not listed here—which are for very young children: the rest share a delightful charm, so the category labels below are largely irrelevant (but are included because the Joan Aiken site’s excellent bibliography table is so coded).)
Omnibuses:
All and More * (a two-novel omnibus containing the two collections listed below)
(Auster also has produced some excellent fiction that is nearly but not quite “speculative” as I understand that term; it is listed elsewhere on this site, under the general heading that collects such things, “The Book on the Borderland”.)
(The tantalizingly little information generally available suggests that a fair bit of his oeuvre may well be of interest. His complete fiction oeuvre is 15 novels and a story collection; how many are speculative is difficult to ascertain, as several are virtually invisible on the web. The list below is based in good part on Tartarus Press’s Baker entry of their Guide to Supernatural Fiction, and also on the ISFDB list for Baker [which I think somewhat less reliable as to categorizing what is speculative fiction].)
Speculative:
The Birds[possible inspiration for the Hitchcock movie, the DuMaurier story notwithstanding]
(Brunner’s oeuvre is enormous and of variable quality; the four listed below are generally thought to be his best novels—but if you like them, there’s lots more where those came from.)
(Bryant wrote both speculative fiction—mostly or wholly science fiction—and horror, with which latter I do not deal here. It is difficult to tell just from reviews which of his collections are what, but I daresay those listed here will cover much of his sf output. You can get a complete list of his works at the ISFDB site.)
(Cady’s books all tend to the supernatural, but most seem to transcend the “horror” genre.)
Fairwood Press is in process of issuing all of Cady’s works in a uniform set, “The Jack Cady Collection”, which I recommend.
Story Collections: (The “Collected Writings” series will presumably expand to one or two more volumes; they also contains some stories not collected elsewhere.)
(These—plus the main listings—are nowhere near all of Cherryh’s work. I have omitted much of her “Alliance-Union” set [I am not fond of books largely based on political intrigue], the entire “Foreigner” set, and the “Gene Wars” duology, and some other things; I do not thereby disparage anything omitted, but just feel that they are likely not her best work, albeit some of it quite popular work. If you want to see Cherryh’s full bibliography, it is at her entry at the ISFDB.)
(This is a smattering of her prodigious output; it is what reviews suggested as the most likely of her works to eventually make this site. If you try some and like them, there’s plenty more where these came from—visit the link in the previous sentence—but of what quality deponent sayeth not. Note that much of her work is Young Adult—and possibly not the sort of YA also suitable for adults—or else “supernatural romance”.)
Time-Master: (There are three other trilogies, including a young-adult spinoff, set in the same world as this one; whether any are plausible candidates here is hard to tell just from reviews.)
(Those listed here, with the one exception noted, are “young adult”—her own classification—and, from experience of her other work, quite palatable for adults. I have omitted here her ten or so books expressly for children, but they might also be of interest.)
(None of Dahl’s children’s books are likely to be less than pleasing, but how many, and which, will make the full lists is hard to say; these are some contenders.)
Works for Young Readers:
Roald Dahl Collection: 16-Book Box Set (A boxed set of 16 Dahl books for young readers, comprising the novels linked individually below; it’s not all his young-reader work—there are 3 other books—but it’s a big chunk of it. It’s not cheap, but on a per-book basis it’s quite reasonable. There are other omnibus editions of varying contents, not listed here.)
Works for Adult Readers:(Dahl also wrote distinctly adult work—some creepy, some sexy, all (or most) well-regarded—which I have yet to sample; here is a nice sampler collection with which to get started.) The Roald Dahl Omnibus: Perfect Bedtime Stories for Sleepless Nights * [28 short stories]
(It is hard to be sure from reviews which of her books are “young adult” and which plain adult; I have marked those definitely YA—but those, too, might well be readable for civilized adults.)
(Caveat: it is unclear which of these is or might be speculative fiction. Substantial reading of articles about Davies and his various works does not, for me, lessen the difficulty: one reviewer refers to Davies’ work as “novels suffused with something awfully close to magic.” The ISFDB lists the Deptford and Cornish trilogies, but not the Salterton, which is omitted here. Caveat lector.
The Deptford Trilogy (An omnibus containing the works individually linked below.)
(She started this series with a readable book, Snotty Saves the Day, but—for me—it remains to be seen if she carried that level into the successor books.)
(Davis continually walks the line between realism and fantasy, but each of these has qualities that qualify it for these lists, some more, a few less—for example, in Versailles Marie Antoinette’s ghost is summoned merely as a device to give us a fictional autobiography. But In the other books here, the fantastic is more strongly present.)
The Calandran Tales: (The publishing history of her work is complicated because she re-wrote—and sometimes re-titled—many. This is what there seems to be now, besides what is shown in the main list of her books.)
Wizard’s Destiny [YA]: (Links are to the author’s 2012 revised editions from Amazon’s CreateSpace publishing.)
The Warhorse of Esdragon [YA]: (Links are to the author’s 2017-2020 revised editions from Amazon’s CreateSpace publishing. See also the main list of her books.)
(Dickinson is almost exclusively a “young adult” author. I have tried some other work by him, which is passable reading but not up to the standard I hope these main lists represent. These are the sole potential candidates yet unevaluated here.)
Story Collections: (These are many in number, with a lot of content overlap; the list below is an incomplete sampling that includes most of his better-regarded work.)
Story Collections: (This is only a small sampling of his various story collections; I have omitted collections mostly or wholly of horror stories, as well as those that largely duplicate other collections. You can see a complete bibliography at his ISFDB entry.)
The Alchemy Quartet: (It is by no means clear, from reviews, that any of these novels are truly “speculative fiction”, despite their being listed at the ISFDB. Caveat lector.)
(Friesner has a bibliography as long as your arm. Selecting, from reviews, which of her works might be as good as the few that made the main lists here is virtually impossible, so I list none here. You can examine that bibliography at her ISFDB entry.)
(I have already sampled a few of the books below, and it is my feeling that Gemmell was slipping somewhat, unable to maintain the standard he set with the “Drenai” books. Possibly that is a consequence of his having had the pedal to the metal—his production rate was exceeding high. His segment of the speculative-fiction field is one that requires care and effort in the writing if it is not to quickly degenerate into generic thud-and-blunder, and I suspect he had started skimping that care; he was well entitled to write as he pleased in order to make money from his work (as did, for example, Michael Moorcock), but we as readers need to be selective in evaluating his work. Caveat emptor.…)
(As noted in the main list, Neil Gaiman has written that Gray “is one of those authors I loved as a boy who holds up even better on rereading as an adult.” He also said “he’s the kind of author someone definitely ought
to bring back into print,” and that is because most of his work is now scare and pricey. I have divided the list below into three categories, based on prices [including shipping to the U.S.] as I type in spring of 2021: Reasonable, meaning under $50 for copies in
at least “very good” condition; Expensive for anything over $50—and some go into the three-digit range—and a basket for books for which no VG or better copies are available [again, as I type: those things change by the day]. Whether all of these
will hold up on reading remains to be seen, but I suspect most or all will.)
(Hoban is maddening: he can produce works of genius and works of trash with equal facility. His biggest problem seems to be keeping a rein on his hebephrenic sense of humor. These books, the residue of some extensive review-checking—might all be immortal wonders or all be rubbish. One can only try them one by one. This list omits his numerous children’s books, at least some of which are—some say—readable for pleasure by adults.)
(The “speculative” element in some of Hoffman’s books is significant, while in others it seems—by descriptions, these are unread here—to be light window dressing. So far as I can tell, there is at least some of
what reviewers call “magic realism” in each of the books listed below, though to what extent it matters is hard to say. Also, this list omits her numerous YA/childern’s books.)
(Hughes is a fantasy absurdist, and he is stunningly prolific. Rather than eat half a page with his bibliography—from which I have no criteria yet by which to select—I direct you to his entry at the ISFDB.)
(Irwin is a noted expert on the Orient, and has written respected non-fiction books on the topic. He also writes lush yet crisply written fantasy fiction, often with Oriental settings.
Note that in some of the books below, it is hard to decide if the fantastic things are happening, or are just imaginings of the protagonist.)
(In his time, Jerrold was accounted the equal of Thackery and Dickens; there is a long, interesting contemporary homage to Jerrold from the very first issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine available online.)
A Man Made of Money (Some editions also include “The Chronicles of Clovernook.)
(A lot of Jeter’s work is horror rather than speculative, but it is difficult to sort one from the other in unread books. The list below is is, I think, a fair sampling of his not-explicitly-horror works.)
George Dower (This is—so far—a three-book series; see the author link above for more.)
(Again: her books are all technically “young adult” or, in some cases, classed “juvenile”; I think many reasonably entertaining to adults, but have not sampled these. This list is not a complete Jones bibliography: there are 15 other novels and 7 more story collections.)
(Joyce’s adult fiction is top-notch, and I am sure that all of the adult novels below will wind up on the list; but I have not sampled any of his young-adult works.)
(King’s work is, first off, hard to segregate as between fantasy and horror—see this Salon ezine article [archived]. Second, but almost as important, while King at his best is interesting, all too often—by common report—he evaded some very, very badly needed editing. The “Dark Tower” series I started and gave up on, in doing which I am, I believe, scarcely alone. If you want to try something to see if you want more, you could begin with the novel listed below.)
(Kotzwinkle has written numerous popular children’s books (with titles like Walter the Farting Dog) and “novelizations” of some major movie scripts (such as E.T.), both of which sorts I omit here. The list below is a review-based selection from his many works; I believe all are speculative, but not all of his that is speculative is here.)
(Kress has a copious oeuvre, which you can see at her ISFDB entry. Judging by what her extensive entry at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says, much or possibly even all it seems likely worth attention, so I do not simply copy that list here.)
(Ursula K. Le Guin—I guess the initial is to distinguish her from all the other Ursula Le Guins who write—is famous, or notorious, in speculative-fiction circles for maddening inconsistency, to the extent that the clever phrase “good Ursula, bad Ursula” [coined by Doug Muir] has acquired considerable currency. “Bad Ursula” shows up when Le Guin lets her do-good impulses over-ride her writerly ones, and produces a tract rather than a story. She truly is the little girl with the curl: “When she was good / She was very good indeed / But when she was bad she was horrid.” — H. W. Longfellow. The list below, which is just a scattershot sampling from her huge bibliography, doubtless includes samples of both Ursulas.)
Novels & Novellas: (This is a relatively small selection from her copious output, comprising what seem, from reviews, the most promising of her works, but I may have inadvertently omitted some good things—or included some duds.)
Story Collections: (The contents of the various listed story collections probably overlap a fair bit. These are by no means all collections of her stories: just what reviews suggested might be the better ones; there is available a complete online bibliography of her work that is an absolute model of how to do a useful online bibliography.)
Novels: (Leiber wrote something like ten novels; many were popular, and some won awards, but the one below seems the likeliest—besides the “Change War” works—to be literate)
Story Collections: (There are over three dozen Leiber story collections, but the few below—besides the one in the main lists—are said to capture his best work.)
(Lindsay’s lesser works, after Voyage to Arcturus, share the same vices and virtues—powerful ideas and grand visions struggling to escape from pedestrian prose—but the balance is, by general report, not as favorable in these; nonetheless, they have their articulate defenders, and are worth at least trying.)
(Lively—quite a name for a writer—has a prodigious output of fiction, including books for both adults and children; she has seven different literary awards to her name, with some in both areas. Regrettably, none of her explicitly adult fiction seems—so far as I can tell—to be speculative. Curiously, a good deal of her “children’s” work—probably best classed as YA—apparently is. Mind, I say “YA”—“young adult”—but the nominal target readership seems usually at the lower end of that range; but I include them all here based on the adult-readability of what is in the main lists here. All in all, this woman can write.)
(Lupoff wrote wildly diverse material, much of it humorous or even sarcastic. What quality level is present in each of the works below is impossible to guess.)
(Marks’s specfic books are all nominally YA; but, as John Clute et al. put it in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, “her sf stories – which are more complex, dark-hewed and longer than her non-fantastic work – are almost certainly her best work, and are very nearly indistinguishable, except for the age of their protagonists, from adult fiction.”)
(She has a vast output of books; I list here only those few in a series some parts of which are on the main list, which is not to disparage by implication any of the others.)
Screwtop Thompson *
[Includes the contents of two prior collections, Only When the Sun Shines Brightly and Once in a Blue Moon, plus three more stories.]
(Modesitt’s output is, to put it mildly, voluminous: the ISFDB has his full bibliography. Besides the book in the main lists, I have actually read quite a bit of Modesitt; but I can’t remember just which, so little did each leave with me. Modesitt can pretty well be counted on to be readable, but it is as Nero Wolfe’s cook, Fritz Brenner, said of a certain dinner: Mangeable, mais pas mémorable. If you are interested, hit that bibliography and—figuratively, of course—throw a dart at it.)
(Nathan is not much remembered today, save perhaps for Portrait of Jenny, and he is especially conspicuous by his absence from most lists of speculative-fiction writers—despite which (as with Portrait) he regularly used fantastic elements in his work. Perhaps it is that today we do not much value light, pastel-toned tales: which is a shame, and arguably an indictment of our times, and us. Trying to pick out which of Nathan’s many books have a fantastical element was much eased by the fine capsule summaries at The Robert Nathan Library (but beware spoilers!).
Time Police (co-written by Mel Odom): (A fourth novel in this series, Refugee—original working title Twisted—exists in unedited manuscript, but was never published.)
(Pinkwater’s books are nominally not even “young adult” but actually “children’s books”; well, so were Alice and Looking-Glass. Pinkwater is a serious danger to the health, in that one could asphyxiate from laughter reading his stuff. He is prolific, but much of his better work of the sort that belongs on this site has been collected in the omnibus editions in the main lists; his only adult novel is listed below.)
(This list omits a couple of movie novelizations written under pen names: Short Circuit [as by Colin Wedgelock] and eXistenZ [as by John Luther Novak].)
(Resnick’s output is almost comically copious. Besides the book in the main lists, I have read some other things by him, but so long ago now that I would need to repeat them, and possibly more, before reaching a definite overall-worth conclusion. Generally, though, Clute et al. put it that “the novels and stories themselves are sometimes told with an almost slapstick vigour that can drown out his serious purpose…[but]…[t]hat he was a consistently entertaining author is attested by the esteem granted his short work in particular”. So look at his ISFDB bibliography and—figuratively of course—throw darts at it to pick some samples.)
(Roberts is a heavyweight writer, and I suspect that most or all of these will make the list. Still, when some works of a given writer remain immensely popular while others are almost utterly neglected, I want to make sure.)
Novels: (Many of Roberts’ books comprise a series of linked short stories, and are so tagged below; but they are generally classed “novels”.)
(Rushdie’s reputation is not a guarantee: his fantasy Grimus was one of the worst books trees ever died for. But let’s see. Note that some of these are only marginally “speculative fiction”.)
The Extra: (This was to have been a trilogy, but the third book, Fortress Hollywood, was never written; apparently, however, the first two books can stand alone.)
(It seems likely to me that much—possibly even all—of Shepard’s books would qualify for the main lists; so, instead of simply displaying his whole bibliography, I refer you to his ISFDB page. Pick some and try them.)
(Silverberg is one of the Old Hands at the science-fiction game, and his books total is well over 100 even just in the specfic field. He is generally held in high repute; I think he is a writer who, at his peak, produced some fine work, but he also—especially in his early years—produced a lot of mediocre or worse stuff. The list below, leaning heavily on Clute et al. in “The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction”, seems to me most of his better works. I’ve actually read several of these, but ages ago, so I do not deem my thin recollections sufficient to rate them now.)
Story Collections: (These are seemingly countless. Subterranean Press issued a chronologically ordered series, “The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg”, in 8 volumes; the two listed below probably capture most of his best work.)
(Simak is not a millennial author, but his best is good; unfortunately, that means his less-than-best is only fair, sometimes worse. The books listed below are probably—once again leaning on Clute et al. in “The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction”—likely to be among the best of Simak’s considerable total output.)
Story Collections: (There are many such collections, but probably the best target is the 12-volume set, “The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak”, linked below, book by book.)
(When he forgets to keep telling us, with sledgehammer subtlety, how great sex and drugs are, and how screwed power structures are—cf. Bug Jack Barron—he actually writes quite well; but he rarely forgets. Here are a few possibilities from his large oeuvre.)
(Stockton wrote a few novels classifiable as speculative fiction, but his real forte was the short story; the collections below—plus the one in the main list—seem, by report, to be the best of his work.)
(Sucharitkul/Somtow is capable of good to excellent work, but also of not-so-good work. A lot of his fiction is—whether or not explicitly so labelled—“young adult”, and another lot is horror stuff (I do wish contemporary authors would recover from their acute vampirrhea, fantasy’s answer to the hula hoop and the pet rock). This list is thus far from all his work—just a smattering of what looks plausible.)
Riverrun (an amnibus comprising the three novels listed separately below)
(Tepper reminds me in some ways of Ursula Le Guin: I’m surprised no one has yet referred to “good Sheri, bad Sheri”; Bad Sheri is she who wields The Great Hammer of Obviousness.)
(Thurber, the urbane writer and cartoonist of New Yorker fame, also wrote some children’s books that seem to receive unanimous praise. Neil Gaiman has, probably whimsically, called The Thirteen Clocks “probably the best book in the world”.)
Mary Poppins: (These two are outliers to the Mary Poppins saga: one teaches the alphabet with appropriate Mary Poppins vignettes, the other teaches cooking basics with an associated short Mary Poppins story. They might be of interest to completists.)
Aunt Sass * [a collection of three stories originally written as a Christmas gift to select friends of Travers and published in a limited set of 500 copies, but now widely available; “Aunt Sass” was Christina Saraset, Travers’ great-aunt and the prototype of Mary Poppins]
(VanderMeer is, by all accounts, now one of the exciting voices out there in fantastic fiction; though I have hardly begun on his works, I am comfortable listing here his entire remaining oeuvre to date.
Ambergris, hardcover | Ambergris, paperback (An omnibus comprising the works listed below.)
(Kate Wilhelm is another of those few authors considered here who are both prolific and consistently good. Of her full bibliography, I have read more than just what made it to the main list here, but of the rest it has been decades since I last read any; but, even after hours of scanning reviews, I could find no excuse for omitting anything in that bibliography, so I don’t list any particular works here. If you tried and liked anything of hers in the main list, try anything else whatever by her.)
Story Collections: (All of Zelazny’s short works, plus other stuff, is now available in a 6-volume hardcover set from the NESFA Press, but the total cost of the set is not modest: circa $300. Below are some of the more notable individual collections.)
The Lightstone (The publishing history is confusing. The original all-in-one Book 1 of the cycle was called “The Lightstone”. It was later revised and split into two volumes as “The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom” and “The Lightstone: The Silver Sword” (UK editions), and into “The Lightstone” and “The Silver Sword” (US editions). The links are to the 2006/2007 US editions titled “The Lightstone”.)
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