gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Gregory J.E. Rawlins) (09/11/85)
["Bibliography? Naaaah, I can't even spell it"]
Well the Poll is at last ended! The votes are all tallied and
you are about to be regaled with the results. I am incredibly
enthusiastic about the way it turned out; aside from the direct
information about "good" recent books, i created, by accretion, a
list of almost 5,000 books which i and the, shall we say, crazier
of my friends (those who own in excess of 5,000 books) have found
extremely useful as a base list to keep track of our respective
collections.
Among the many, many books you're about to see the following
are diamonds in the rough brought to my attention solely through
my running this poll - Delany & Steigler's _Valentina_, Forward's
_Dragon's_Egg_, the incomparable _Neuromancer_ (Gibson), the
lovely and utterly understated _Tea_With_The_Black_Dragon_ (buy
this book! i'm sure MacAvoy could find some use for the money)
Vernor Vinge's _The_Peace_War_, Haldeman's _The_Forever_War_,
Hogan's _Code_Of_The_LifeMaker_, and Stasheff's flawed but
ultimately rewarding _The_Warlock_In_Spite_Of_Himself_. Lest you
come away with the impression that everything i bought was gold i
should mention Pratchett's _The_Colour_Of_Magic_ which, while
amusing in spots, pales into a well-deserved limbo besides such
better works as Sheckley's _Dimension_Of_Miracles_, Adam's
_The_Hitch_Hiker's_Guide_To_The_Galaxy_ and de Camp & Pratt's
incomparable _Compleat_Enchanter_ all of which i had read prior
to Pratchett's opus. Besides which the ancient dictum is: "To tell
how odd things strike an odd person is to have one oddity too
much" (or something like that anyway). <sigh>.
The Authors who have joined my buy-on-sight list are David
Brin, John Crowley, Gregory Benford, Michael Bishop, Joanna Russ,
Gene Wolfe, James Tiptree Jr., D. G. Compton, Christopher Priest,
John Varley, Joan Vinge, Vernor Vinge, Kate Wilhelm and Evangeline
Walton. Others i'll keep track of (with a little less intensity!)
are Barbara Hambly, Katherine Kurtz, Joy Chant, Patricia McKillip,
Steven Brust, John Bellairs, Thomas Disch, Robert Forward, Steven
Donaldson, Randall Garrett, Vonda McIntyre, Diane Duane and on
and on and on.......<pant pant pant>
I can unreservedly recommend the first 100 books in the Poll,
some of the other 300 are very good (in my opinion), and others
are pretty bad (in my opinion), i won't presume to decide which
you will prefer (for example someone who was unfamiliar with
Sheckley, Adams and de Camp & Pratt's work would be ecstatic over
_The_Colour_Of_Magic_). Although i was disappointed with the
(relatively) low _ordering_ of some of my favourite books
(_Flowers_For_Algernon_ etc.) on the whole i'm quite pleased with
the way everything turned out.
I've had little response on my suggestion to make this an
ongoing thing, so i've decided to release all the information
in my possession. This is the zeroth of ten postings containing
0/ this file
1/ the poll results (sorted by number of votes, done by
hand so may be slightly off)
2/ list of all the people who helped and all the people who voted
3-7/ the complete list of books i generated (in five parts)
8/ all the anthologies voted for
9/ the old poll (run on arpanet several years ago)
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A SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL PROSPECTIVE USERS OF THE LIST:
If you find the Poll results or the List at all useful please
"put something back" and send me any information not in the List
as it now stands. Anything will be much appreciated, but i'm
especially interested in all books by an author (including non-sf
stuff) arranged so as to give series information, biographical
data about authors (especially pseudonyms!), birth/death date,
spouse (if sf-oriented), degrees, country of origin etc etc. (just
call me nosy.....)
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Explanations of some of the more obscure symbols used in the List:
nee - meaning "normal name" (eg see Anthony or Wyndham)
as - this work was written under a pseudonym and it is... (see Kuttner)
/ - the previous name is a shortening or a made up name for the following
(eg see Niven or Norton etc)
also in - part of the logical work but either too new or not yet
series published or most people didn't like it (eg Douglas Adams and Asimov)
aka - also known as - meaning that the work has appeared under alternate
titles (usually retitled for UK (or US) version or if from an earlier
set of stories in the magazines etc.) (eg see Bester, Clarke etc)
col - this work is a collection of short stories by the author
ed - this work is a collection of short stories edited by the author
trans - the author was only the translator of the work cited
Hugo - this work won a Hugo
Nebula - this work won a Nebula
JWC - this work won a John W. Campbell Award
BFA - this work won the British Fantasy Award
ADFA=BFA - this work won the BFA prior to 1976 (it used to be called the
August Derleth Fantasy Award)
WFA - this work won the World Fantasy Award
The numbers in round brackets after a book title is the book's vote,
if only one person voted for the book then the "(1)" is ommitted.
Note that series have votes and parts of series (typically the first
book) also have votes, this means that the parts should have the
entire series vote added to their respective votes (eg the Hitch
Hiker's Guide should really have a vote of 16 since 8 people voted for
it directly and 8 people voted for the entire series)
To forestall moans about various books/authors not belonging in a
list of sf books/authors - just think of the outre ones as my
votes (most of the list is anyway.....in a sense.....)
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--
gjerawlins%watdaisy@waterloo.csnet Gregory J. E. Rawlins
gjerawlins%watdaisy%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa CS Dept., U. Waterloo
{allegra,utzoo,inhp4,decvax}!watmath!watdaisy!gjerawlins Waterloo, Ont. N2L3G1