I’ve doing a lot of thinking since I looked at this article yesterday. It’s a lovely list of the greatest science fiction and fantasy books of all time. I was stoked as I’ve read the first book listed (actually it’s in reverse order so it’s number 100 but I won’t quibble).

Reading through the list gave me food for thought. It has a lot of really good books, some I’ve read and some I’ve only heard about, some I even have ready to list for selling. Some of the authors are in the top of their field. I do have one problem though, I totally object to having so many books by the one author. They’ve got at least three by Neal Stephenson, both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, multiple by Philip K. Dick, a number by Ursula K LeGuin and so many more multiples. I’m not saying they’re wrong but there were so many books left off. If you read the comments you’ll see several people have asked to include Stanislaw Lem, Greg Bear, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, G. J. Ballard and that’s with only getting through a small section of comments. I’d also include Susan Cooper for the Over Sea Under Stone series and Nicholas Fisk, Trillions was awesome and should be included on any top 100 list.

If I could write a top 100 list I’d make it pure science fiction or pure fantasy, not both, there’s just too many possibilities to be looking at and I’d also only allow one book per author, any others by that author would be automatically excluded. It’s just not fair to the other authors and their readers. And they totally missed my favourite book The Nargun and the Stars by Patricia Wrightson, I reckon this would have to be in my top 10 fantasy books.

I think the biggest problem with creating a top anything list of any type of book is that it’s subjective, what I consider the best others will hate totally and consider substandard. I’ve considered writing lists but that would mean rereading so many books and I’m struggling to get through the ones on my To Be Read Pile. I was hoping to get through some of them during my time in New Zealand but events have occurred and who knows what I’ll read now. I’ll write more in a few days time as I’m not counting my chickens until they’re hatched!