(Definitely not) the 100 greatest science fiction or fantasy novels of all time

Top 10 or top 100 hundred lists are always interesting, and via io9 I came across a new list claiming to be the 100 greatest science fiction or fantasy novels of all time.

Former io9 boffin Alex Carnevale posts his selections for the top 100 science fiction and fantasy books, and it's a pretty compelling list. What do you think? Does he capture the canon? [This Recording]

As Carnevale's list features the cover art for all 100 (a nice touch) it is difficult to reproduce the list, so follow the link above to have a look at it.

How do we assess greatness? Critical response, influence on future writers, commercial success, skill as a writer, or general popularity within the reading community. Top X lists are always good fodder for argument, as subjective choices often replace the harder work of collating and assessing the quantitative criteria I have just mentioned.

Carnevale's list, in my opinion, is a classic example of an utterly subjective and badly flawed list. It might accurately represent his favorite 100 books, or 100 of the books he owns, but its idiosyncrasies, omissions and biases render it useless as an attempt to compile the best 100 speculative fiction books of all time.

What is so wrong with it?

Lets start with the omissions of historical greats. It is supposedly a list of the best science fiction of all time, remember?

There is no Jules Verne (a major influence on the field, and who wrote many great book: Journey to the Center of the Earth; From the Earth to the Moon; 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, etc etc).

How about Arthur Conan Doyle (The Lost World)? Not in the list. Yet Carnevale includes Crighton's "Jurassic Park" in his top 100, which was hardly original and only famous thanks to the special effects of the movie version.

Robert Howard not on the list. You know, the guy who created that obscure and unpopular character Conan the Barbarian.

H.G. Wells at least gets a single mention, for the "War of the Worlds". Certainly a great book, and very influential, but one might also mention "The Invisible Man"; "The Island of Dr Moreau"; "The Shape of Things to Come"; and "The Time Machine".

I might not mind a single mention per author if Carnevale stuck to single mentions per author, but he doesn't. His list is full of multiple Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, George R.R. Martin and Heinlein mentions, quite a few Haldeman, Stephenson and Crighton books at separate rankings. Yet other good or influential authors, such as Niven or A.C. Clarke get only a single mention. (OK, Clarke was not a good writer in general, but Childhood's End was decent and if we're putting Crighton in because his stuff got turned into movies then 2001: A Space Odyssey counts too).

Speaking of the exercrable Michael Crighton, he gets mentioned for Jurassic Park and Sphere, but not The Andromeda Strain. WTF? Crighton was a terrible writer, despite his commercial success, and his characterizations (especially of scientists) were the crummy 1-dimensional cardboard cut-outs that are typical of bad SciFi (and form a valid if stereotypical criticism of the genre by outsiders). Here is Carnevale's description of Sphere (at position 85):

The slightly better book, Sphere had a really strange Barry Levinson movie. It's basically a sub movie recast as a alien movie recast as a psychological fantasy. I have always found its claustrophobic environment enhancing. Crichton's remaking of adventure novels with science fiction was prescient.

OK, I see he liked it. I think it was one of the worst pieces of dross I've had the misfortune to read: terrible characters with typical Crighton anti-scientist bigotry at full display, terrible plot, total trash.

And don't get me started on discussing why Carnevale thought to include Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" at number 49.

Guy Gavriel Kay makes the list twice: once for the Fionavar Tapestry (17th best in Carnevale's list!) and once for Tigana (5th!). I must admit I haven't read Tigana, but that was because I heroically read the entire Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, and it was the worst piece of stale, turgid, boring, badly-written Tolkien emulation I've had the misfortune to suffer through.

Another major problem with Carnevale's list, and strong evidence of its flawed subjectivism is the obscurity of many of the books. I don't claim to have everything ever written in the genre, but it is my favorite book genre, and I've read a lot of it over the last 25+ years. Yet I've never heard of half of the book on this list. In other top 100 or top 50 lists (e.g. this one) I've at least heard of the vast majority of the books, even when I may not have read them all.

Top 100 lists tend to be weighted toward the last few decades, and yet there are glaring omissions from this list of recent authors that are famous, popular and have positive critical reception. There is not a single Iain M. Banks book in the list (seriously, WTF!), not a single William Gibson (Neuromancer is without doubt one of the top 100 speculative fiction books of all time), not a single Greg Bear (Eon, Anvil of Stars, Queen of Angels, Infinity Concerto). Carnevale seems unaware of great or influential fantasy authors such as Keith Roberts (Pavane, admittedly semi-obscure) or David Gemmel (George R.R. Martin's recent fantasy work is refreshing gritty, but Gemmel did inspiring and gritty fantasy decades ago and certainly deserves credit for helping reinvent the field from the cheap Tolkien imitation that plagued it, ala Guy Gavriel Kay and Terry Brooks).

Commenters on Carnevale's highlight other authors worthy of mention: Terry Pratchett, Phillip Jose Farmer among them.

This is not meant as a comprehensive analysis and critique of Carnevale's list - I don't believe it worthy of more effort - but it should give you an idea of the major shortcomings of this list.

Coyne reviews Robert Wright's "The Evolution of God"

Jerry Coyne (author of "Why Evolution is True") has a lengthy review of Robert Wright's latest book "The Evolution of God" (Amazon link).

In short: Wright cherry picks examples in an attempt to demonstrate "moral" progress mediated by historical (supposedly evolutionary) changes in (monotheistic) religions, as his previous books attempted to show progress in biological evolution towards greater complexity (and hence mankind). In short this is a classic religious attempt to ascribe purpose and direction to the Universe.

Nevertheless Coyne's review itself is worth reading.

Bérubé reviews Sokal's "BEYOND THE HOAX: Science, Philosophy and Culture"

Michael Bérubé has an interesting review, dare we say critique, at the American Scientist of Alan Sokal's latest book "BEYOND THE HOAX: Science, Philosophy and Culture" (Amazon.com link)

Here is a snippet of the review to whet your appetite:

When some people hear the term Western science, they think first of Hiroshima, Agent Orange and the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal—and not, say, of the discovery of neutrino oscillation. This mordant skepticism about the benefits of Western science is then underlined by a dogmatic conviction that the Enlightenment was little more than a stalking horse for imperialism. As for why postmodern intellectuals would champion “local knowledges” and the “heterogeneity of language games” against the universalist aspirations of the Enlightenment, my sense is that when academic leftists in the humanities speak glowingly about “local knowledges,” they’re thinking of all the warm and fuzzy feelings we lefties have about “the local”—from our local independent bookstore to our local independent food co-op. These are good things by every measure (local and universal), but they seem to have obscured the fact that many of the world’s “local knowledges” are parochial, reactionary and/or theocratic. Likewise, the defense of the “heterogeneity of language games” has proceeded as if it is the moral equivalent of a defense of species diversity—when, in fact, it is morally neutral, agnostic with regard to the question of whether the language games of charlatans or fascists should be preserved alongside the language games of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

However, while there is much that is good about Sokal's book, it is not all good. Bérubé does a good job of explaining to lay-people like me where Sokal (and Sam Harris, before him) has gone wrong.

[Update 12/26/08: Hopefully have corrected the weird font problems.]

Anathem. You either get it or you don't.

If you know what this figure is, then I think you might like Neal Stephenson's Anathem. If you don't know what this is, or worse, know but don't think its cool, then you're not going to understand Anathem. Sadly PZ Myers is in the "I don't get it" camp.

The figure is of course Euclid's famous but overly complicated geometrical proof of the Pythagorean Theorem (the image from the Wolfram web page on this subject, which is worth reading).

Forget the later half of Anathem - its just an extended action scene - the real meat is in the first half and if you're not hooked by the dialectical discourse between Theors by half way through then you're not going to get it.

Anathem is a exploration of math, physics, and metaphysics, OK? Square root of two demonstrated by cutting cakes. Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Platonic forms. Etc.

If you don't know much math, physics or metaphysics, you might not be able of appreciating it. The same way Cryptonomicon is best appreciated by people with *nix experience (and OSX doesn't count, apple dweebs!), Anathem is best appreciated by people similar to the Theors it describes.

Anathem's ending?

I finished reading Anathem last night.

For the first 400 pages I thought this was the most intellectually interesting and stimulating book that Neal Stephenson has written to date, although I wonder whether someone not in the physical or mathematical sciences would find it so interesting. As a venue for a discussion on metaphysics its brilliantly written.

The ending? I'm a little confused by the last 100 pages, in particular the last 20 or so pages. Stephenson's endings to his book have always been the weakest part of his writing, so in perspective this is better than most of his endings. Maybe I'll have to read it again...