Alcohol is a gateway drug to more alcohol!

[freckles_and_doubt]

Darned French. Tinnimentum is in town*, staying with us while visiting jo&stv (on account of how, unlike the Dynamic Duo, we actually have a guest room with visible floor space) and we celebrated her 30th birthday yesterday with a braai and cake and champagne cocktails. French 75. Gin, Cointreau, lemon juice and champagne. Very good, and kicks like a big gun. I got giggly. In a good way. Kudos to strawberryfrog and short_mort, who cunningly got married and had a pre-marriage cocktail party at which somebody** first made me a French 75, thus sealing my fate. Doom! Addicted doom!

In a fit of random somethingorother (probably excess glee at having finished the year's marking), I bunged the last post's list of influential SF classics into Excel, dug up some dates, and analysed the hell out of it. Interesting Observations as follows:

• For a start, it wasn't actually Time's list, it was apparently a book club selection from 2002; the only online ref I can find to it is here. This explains the funny dates: it is, as wolverine_nun points out, an odd choice of period, unless you know that it was a 50-year choice from 1953 to 2002. This also explains its cheerful willingness to consider successful pulp as "influential".
• Considerable weighting towards the earlier part of the period. By decade: 1950s, 14; 1960s, 13; 1970s, 13; 1980s, 7; 1990s, 3. In some ways this makes sense: it's difficult, in the absence of madly high-profile movements such as cyberpunk, to define something as "influential" until it's had time to exert some influence. But I also think that the people who compile this kind of list are (a) quite conservative, and (b) a bit older than I am, or most of you witterers. Lots of Golden Age stuff here.
• Actual gender breakdown, once I'd tracked down a couple of unknowns: 44 male writers, 6 female. This is still a genre in horrible gender-imbalance, although I think the male-heaviness was also exaggerated by the list's reliance on earlier works.
• I'm not sure why, as strawberryfrog rather snarkily points out, "science fiction" is wantonly defined as including fantasy, although it's a common enough blurring of boundaries. There is, however, definitely a tendency to marginalise fantasy in the list: 11 fantasy to 39 science fiction novels. This suggests a notion of fantasy as somehow less serious and literary than sf.
• The non-serious fantasy perception was interestingly reinforced by the process by which I dug up the dates on all the novels: mostly through my Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature. To my surprise, most of the classic, Golden Age sf writers had an entry. The ones who didn't were either one-hit wonders or not madly prolific (Clement, Matheson, Budrys, Cordwainer Smith), or pulp fantasy writers (McCaffrey, Rice, Donaldson, Brooks, Bradley). Note, though, that out of the 9 who were not included in the encyclopedia, more than half were fantasy writers.
• If you cross-reference fantasy writers from the list against gender, fantasy novels are represented by 7 male and 4 female authors, and sf by 37 male and 2 female authors. Fantasy is apparently a girly genre, something which I can't help seeing as correlated to its low status. *foams feministically at the ears*

I'd be interested to see if people have particular texts they feel either should or shouldn't be on the list. I've never even heard of Children of the Atom, for all it's supposed to have inspired the X-Men mythology. John Wyndham? I'd back Triffids or Chrysalids as influential way before some of the things on that list. And if you're going to argue for Terry Bloody Brooks, what about Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser? Pshaw.

* we like her.
** I can't remember who, owing to aforementioned kick.

Comments

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

I have a battered copy of Children of the Atom on my shelves, due to a childhood spent frequenting secondhand bookshops. It's more seminal than stunning, but you can borrow it if you want.
I also did this meme.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Fine, do the meme and hopelessly outgeek everyone, see if we care :>.

I think you've underestimated Timescape. It's one of the few intelligent and scientifically plausible treatments of time travel I've ever read. Benford is a physicist, for heaven's sake! wolverine_nun recommended it to me, and she's a mathematician!

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

Looking through his bibliography, I see I've only read 1/2 of his books, but liked them. I'll consider it next time I come across it at a 2nd hand bookshop.

[khoi-boi.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of stuff I'd leave off, and stuff that should be on - Neuromancer's alright, but I'd say Mirrorshades was more influential in a way, and that list has no prob. with anthologies (Seriously, 2 Harlan E. anthologies?) Also, no steampunk, that's a sad omission. I'd say The Difference Engine definitely belongs on a list like that.

No Cherryh is a crime. Downbelow Station should be there, at any rate.With you on Whyndam, I'd say Triffids, personally.

The '53 cutoff leaves Lovecraft off and that's a sin, he's quite influential. Maybe even a King, the Stand or something. He's had a huge influence in the modern descendant of pulp, the Airport Science Horror Novel (Koontz, I'm looking at you)

Simak

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

I'd put Simak on the list, for sure. City is the one he's most famous for, although Waystation is by far and away my favourite. But then, I rarely run into another Simak fan, so perhaps that's just me...

Memo to self: enlarge Simak collection! (Having lost my previous, large, collection to Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless. (I took almost everything else though, so it's a bit mean me feeling so bitter about the Simak...))

Re: Simak

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

I only got 4, but I think I've read all of his. The public libraries had a lot.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Completely with you on the Lovecraft, I noticed its absence when I first read the list, but at least that's a legitimate omission given the time parameters. And Cherryh as well, although I'm less immediately convinced of her influence. I disagree on Neuromancer, though. I've taught cyberpunk with short stories and no Neuromancer, and I find myself telling students the plot and explaining a lot of its influence time and time again. Definitely King, although I'm not sure which novel, I don't know them well enough. I've always thought he's hopelessly underrated as a science fiction author.

[khoi-boi.livejournal.com]

Cherryh, I like to think, leads to a style of military SF I like to think of as "enlightened" (possibly even "feminised", although that word doesn't convey what I mean, and will probably land me in trouble) - for a counterexample, see "Starship Troopers" (then fling against a wall as per Dorothy Parker's intructions).Or those Draka books by SM Stirling.

Descendants of the Cherryh style of "Hard" SF, IMO, would include Bujold's Vorkosigan stuff and this Honour Harrington I keep hearing glowing fan paens to, but have not as yet encountered.

It's an idea I'm mulling over, these two strands in military SF. Not fully-formed, but I'm the only real Cherryh fanboy I know (and I've read like 5% of her books), so I may be giving her undue credit. But she is one of the Old Guard, and Downbelow Station is a classic. So's Chanur's Pride, IMO. Plus she does really good aliens*, which the South African Judge always gives a 10 to, aspirant xenologist that he is.

*Also one of the main reasons I like David Brin, BTW.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Valid argument for Cherryh influence... as a drooling Bujold fangirl I'd definitely support both the not-only-militaristic hard sf/space opera influence, and that of Pride of Chanur, which I also loved. Also keep meaning to read Honor Harrington :>. Hmmm. David Weber. I actually thought it was also a female author, but apparently not.

French 75

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Seeing as champagne, cointreau and gin are probably, in that order, my three favourite forms of alcohol, I rather like the sound of French 75. I must have one at my earliest convenience.

[(Anonymous)]

What about Ian M Banks? I think he deserves a spot!
everymoment

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I thought about him, but I'm not sure if he counts as "influential". I suppose you could argue that Consider Phlebas, as the first Culture novel, influenced the sort of postmodern, huge-scale space opera written by people like Dan Simmons, although Hyperion is published only two years after Phlebas, so it's a bit tenuous. I can't offhand think of other examples of post-Banksian space opera which might rely on him, but that might just be the extremely early hour of the morning ;>.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

I think it was Francis Bryan who introduced us to the big gun of the French 75

[tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com]

i think you are right...