While caught up in an unexpected uproar last week, I missed the release of NPR’s Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books.
Well, it really wasn’t NPR’s picks; rather, listeners and visitors to the NPR website nominated and voted on the top books. A “panel of experts” — John Clute, Farah Mendelsohn and Gary K. Wolfe — sorted through the nominees and weeded out those that didn’t meet the criteria.
NPR set five guidelines:
- You could nominate only five titles per post.
- No young-adult or children’s titles.
- No horror or paranormal romance titles.
- It was okay to nominate a series.
- That meant a series of books, not simply books by the same author or on the same topic.
I was happy to see pulp stories represented among the top 100 books. (That sort of goes against the general notion that stories in the pulp magazines weren’t very good, doesn’t it? But we all knew that anyway.)
Here are the books that originated in the pulps, where they ranked and their authors:
- “The Foundation Trilogy,” by Isaac Asimov
- “I, Robot,” by Asimov
- “The Martian Chronicles,” by Ray Bradbury
- “The Conan the Barbarian Series,” by Robert E. Howard (Mark Schultz is also credited here, but he was the illustrator in some of the newer editions.)
- “The Illustrated Man,” by Bradbury
- “The Caves of Steel,” by Asimov
Did I miss any others?
(Tip of the hat to Mike Glyer over at File 770. His “Results of NPR Top 100 SF&F Survey” led me to the rankings.)
I looked over the list and it looks like you have the ones that appeared in the pulps. CHILDHOOD’S END originated as a short in the pulps under another title(Guardian Angel?). Also CAVES OF STEEL was a serial in the digest GALAXY in the 1950’s, so it’s not part of the pulp era which was approximately 1900-1955 in the 7 by 10 inch format.
Thanks, Walker. I missed “Childhood’s End.”
I was sort of letting “The Caves of Steel” slide in sideways since John W. Campbell was involved. But you’re right, Galaxy was really a digest.