gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Gregory J.E. Rawlins) (05/31/85)
Well the poll is going along famously, i've received over 200
distinct books (about 30 repeaters), written by about 75 authors
in 15 mail messages. However i suspect i'm not getting much
reponse from the "grassroots". Many of the books recommended are
esoteric in some way (not that i have a problem with that - but
this is supposed to be a "canonical" list, that is a list which
contains books which an appreciable subset of you out there think
*SHOULD* be read). The reason why they should be read is
immaterial - excellent story, first use of some interesting idea,
creator of a sub-genre, superlative writing, etc. Ideally a
canonical list of SF books should contain all books which are in
"most" people's collection (or memory for that matter). So get
those keyboards working and continue to deluge me with responses.
This is going to be a _monster_ of a poll.
Greg.
Here are the 15 most often cited authors so far (in alphabetical
order) try and guess the associated books (some authors have several).
Asimov, Isaac
Asprin, Robert
Beagle, Peter S.
Brin, David
Clement, Hal
de Camp L. Sprague and Pratt, Fletcher
Eddings, David
Heinlein, Robert A.
LeGuin, Ursula K.
Niven, Larry
Niven, Larry and Pournelle, Jerry
Tolkien, J.R.R.
Vance, Jack
Vinge, Joan D.
Wolfe, Gene
Who's your favourite? And which book(s) did s/he write? How
would you classify the work?
--
Gregory J.E. Rawlins, Department of Computer Science, U. Waterloo
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