The One Hundred Best Fantasy Books Of All time - Time Magazine
Steve K
Posts: 3,235
The 48 Hour Film Contest assigns random genres from a list of about 20 - drama, comedy, martial arts, scifi, etc. - one being fantasy. I'm always looking for stories I can steal get inspiration from, and this list seems like a gold mine. A few old favorites - Le Morte D'Arthur, Lewis Caroll's Alice books, The Princess Bride, Neverwhere, Tolkien's Ring trilogy - but most I've never heard of. I was surprised that Don Quixote is not on the list, but maybe not strictly a fantasy?
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I will have to go through the list. Here is a standard source of inspiration across time and cultures. Online Joseph Campbell archives and collection.
https://www.opusarchives.org/joseph-campbell-collection/
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8rx9j4g/admin/
...and so many missing off that list, nothing by Anne McCaffrey or Marion Zimmer-Bradley
They do have Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. Didn't see any by Marion Zimmer-Bradley.
Nothing by Homer?
overlooked that
Marion Zimmer Bradley has fallen from grace lately. You can read about it on Wikipedia if you're curious, but the short version is that she turns out to have been not a good person.
There's room for debate about whether the quality of an artistic work should be judged independently of the artist (and, to be honest, if we demanded that all our artists should be ethically-flawless, we wouldn't have much art left). Still, it's possible that the creators of that list left MZB off it because she's a bit radioactive.
Or they might have left her off simply because they had too many other names on the list already. I don't see E.R. Edison, for example, or Lord Dunsany, or Andre Norton, or Lloyd Alexander, or a dozen others who people might think should be on there.
I'm glad to see that a lot of current authors made the list, like Kelly Link, Nora Jemisin and Nalo Hopkinson. And I'm especially pleased to see C.L. Polk got a mention for her debut novel. We shared the same editor (I write SF), and she's super-nice. And I'm glad that Susan Cooper -- who I think isn't nearly as well-known as she deserves to be -- got a mention too.
Oh wow I had no idea and read nearly all her books before her death
I tend to not research the real lives of authors just read their books as many are less than perfect people
that is really awful though and rather disappointing as a reader of her books
I didn't know any of the Zimmer-Bradley personal stuff either. In general, I am interested in the personal trivia of authors/creators in the same limited way I enjoy other trivia. The Wright brothers who helped pioneer powered flight may or may not have been good people, and I'd be curious if they had affairs with famous people or committed fraud to finance their test flights, but I'm not going to let that affect my decision to use airplanes to cross the continent instead of a train or an automobile. However, if I was going to have one personal issue be the exception, the Zimmer-Bradley Wikipedia page has the one.
yes leaves me very torn
Indeed. An example that comes to my mind is Richard Wagner, who was anti-Semitic and whose music was admired by Hitler. Still, " In 1981 Zubin Mehta, as an encore at an orchestral concert in Tel-Aviv, played extracts from Tristan und Isolde, after offering those who wished (including two members of the orchestra who had asked to be excused) the opportunity to leave. Despite a few vocal protests, most of the audience stayed to the end of the piece."
Nothing Sherri Tepper, C J CHerryh and no so many others - the ones in that list I have never hdardof must be damned good books!
I love both of those two's books, hope they were nice people
Yes I was surprised to see authors like Robin McKinley and the
paedso called author who wrote the books from which the game of thrones was based and then others who I have read have been left out. There lots there at the top half of the page that I have read and enjoyed though.Given the overall importance of the book, I'm appalled that Lord Dunsany's Gods of Pegana didn't make the list.
Robin McKinley is there, for Spindle's End. No Barbara Hambly though.
Yes, I was surprised to see Robin McKinley there, especially with that particular book, and others left out.
Sorry, I thought you were saying she wasn't.
I saw that name and looked at my bookshelf which has Irving Chernev's book "The Chess Companion". There is a bookmark on one particular story that has been there for a long time, reminding me of a short story that could be a short animation. It is "The Man Who Sidetracked His Brains" by Lord Dunsany. It would fit on one page, and so a good candidate for a 5 minute +/- animation. There is also a second story by him, "The Three Sailors' Gambit", about seven pages, so maybe a longer video.
He was a chess champion of Ireland who played the great Capablanca, World Chess champion for six years. Boris Spassky, World Champion from 1969 to 1972, considered Capablanca the best player of all time. The game was part of a simul in London: "I made for my fourth move one that should have come later, not realizing how much it mattered. Of this simple blunder Capablanca naturally took immediate advantage, and I looked very unlikely to hold out for half an hour. But then I began to play, and by sacrificing a pawn got out of the muddle into which I had strayed, though playing with a pawn down against Capablanca did not seem a very hopeful proposition. Curiously enough my blunder saved me, for in the complications of an ordinary Ruy López as played by Capablanca I should no doubt have been easily beaten; but the clock went on and I was still playing, and at last I got the pawn back, and at the end of four hours when play ended, I had an obvious draw, and Capablanca conceded rather reluctantly ... " So sort of like boxing Ali to a draw.
There's a whole section in my "Ideas for 3D Images" notebook on my phone for images inspired by "Gods of Pegana". For arresting visual imagery, it has few equals.
I think the list is interesting and has many good entries in it. Is it really the 100 best? ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think I might have wanted them to pick one book per author to widen the field a bit. Maybe Bradley Beaulieu's "The Winds of Khalakovo" should be included, and perhaps Kameron Hurley's "The Mirror Empire" (not actually my favorite of Hurley's works, but a worthy contender all the same). And Zelazny's "Nine Princes in Amber". And why not Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell"? And if we can ever work out if Tamsyn Muir's "Gideon the Ninth" is sci-fi or fantasy, maybe that belongs on the list. (By the way, if you haven't read "Gideon the Ninth", do yourself a favor: it's dark and funny and moving and Gothic as all get-out and generally brilliant).
And Michael Moorcock probably belongs on the list, and so does Kai Ashante Wilson and ... and ... and ...
Reminds me of the trouble I got in with a friend who managed a bookstore. I was complaining about their policy of grouping "Scifi & Fantasy" on the shelves, and she let me have it about too many fine distinctions among the genres. I elected to hold my counsel about "hard scifi" vs "magical fantasies". (She was pretty serious)
(But Larry Niven's "Inconstant Moon" is one of the greatest hard scifi stories ever) (The title is from "Romeo and Juliet") (And its not Fantasy)
Some books I missed and want to read now, thanks for posting Steve K!
Maybe these aren't listed for a reason, but anyways I found the language, themes and writing of these to be inspirational:
Stephen R. Donaldson - "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" + "The Mirror of Her Dreams" " and its blockbuster, cliffhanger part 2 - "A Man Rides Through"
John Christopher - "The White Mountains" "The City of Gold and Lead" and "The Pool of Fire"
Interesting list - like a lot of these lists it skews toward more recent fantasy while including some early proto-fantasy (books that today would be considered fantasy but at the time they were written and published there was no such genre) but skipping most of the late 1960's through the 80's (when the foundations of what most of today's fantasy readers consider "modern fantasy" were laid down) entirely, as if they didn't exist. There is also a lot of "young adult" books and a number of what I would classify as "kids" books (aimed at young readers between 8-12 years old) rather than adult fantasy on here. I've read all but three books on the list and many of them I would definitely not consider "best of all time" by any measure.
There are some goods books on here but if the list had been called "some classic favorites filled out with some of the most popular current authors in order to make a full list of 100 because the author hasn't read a lot of fantasy" I'd have agreed with the list more.
Wow, I doubt many can say that. Certainly not me, since as I mentioned I've never heard of most of these, being more into hard scifi. Care to offer a few favorites?
I can't take it any more.
Dragonflight is science fiction - first appeared as a serial in Analog.
Books that should be there - Silverlock by John Myers Myers; Nifft the Lean by Michael Shea; or The Dying Earth by Jack Vance. Or just about anything by Roger Zelazny - mayhap Dilvish the Damned or Nine Princes in Amber.
Definitely agree on Zelazny, one of the best and most influential fantasy writers of all time and he never appears on any of these lists. I'm not sure how you can have a best of all time fantasy list without Michael Moorcock either. I'd also add The Compleat Enchanter by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp and it really makes me mad that the first Thieve's World anthology never makes these lists - not only does it create one of the great fantasy settings of all time, but some of the biggest names in fantasy contributed and it basically invented (not really, but sort of) the shared-world anthology.