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Oct

30

Steve Andrews on the 100 Must-Read SF Novels

Posted in: UKSFBN Talks To on 30th October 2006 by UKSFBN admin

Back at the end of September, the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide series published 100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels [Amazon], a tome co-authored by Steve Andrews and Nick Rennison. A brave venture; surely any attempt to narrow down the vast field of science fiction literature to a list of just 100 must-read titles was a venture that only the most thick-skinned and foolhardy editorial team would dare to undertake? We dropped Steve Andrews a line to ask a few pertinent questions about the book.

We started out by asking how the project initially come about? "The idea stemmed from some consultancy work on SF I undertook for Nick Rennison when he took over editorship of The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide back in 2000." Steve told us.

"Nick and I had worked together on and off since 1988 as booksellers – when we first met he was sceptical of the literary value of SF, but as he revealed an interest in crime novels I felt that this sympathy for genre fiction could be turned to SF; I managed to convince Nick that some experience of SF was essential for anyone claiming to be well-read. Now, of course, he's an avid SF reader.

"By 2000 we had collaborated on several writing / editing projects and he commented that one day he hoped to collaborate with me on something devoted to SF alone. In April 2005 Nick rang me up out of the blue to say that A & C Black were looking to commission a number of genre-based Good Reading Guides and was I still keen on collaborating?

"I honestly don't know if the idea came from Nick originally or if our editor Jenny Ridout conceived it independently. I think we can claim the first case by default as Jenny originally wanted us to cover Fantasy as well, which we vetoed on the grounds that there was no way the two genres could be covered in one book and that we believed the mass markets for both are more often than not quite different."

A tricky mission though; narrowing sf down to that all-important 100. So what, we wondered, were the criteria for deciding which titles got to be classed as 'must read' ones?

"Our book is not a best of, although people have assumed that... was our intention.""Our book is not a 'best of';" Steve was keen to stress, "although people have assumed that creating a qualitative ranking was our intention. We actually based our selection on the idea of devising a roster of titles which, if read in their entirety, would provide an excellent overview of SF as a whole.

"Issues like theme and influence coloured much of our thinking: we wanted to cover all the classic subject matter of SF as well as the various historical schools and stylistic approaches. This is why we excluded numerous canonical books from our 100. A fuller explanation of everything we considered when making choices can be found in the book itself or on my website, www.stepheneandrews.info.

But still, surely any 'top 100' list is bound to be far too short to please all of the people all of the time. We asked whether the two of them had been made aware of any particularly vehement reactions to your selection. "Not yet, as we've only just started working on library and bookshop events to promote the book.

"I think we will have some strong responses and I welcome these positively, as something I really want the book to do is encourage the debate around which selection of novels would provide a representative overview of the genre.

"I think all serious SF readers love a good argument (in the intellectual sense of course) about which titles are of lasting value. It's an ongoing question as far as I'm concerned, as I'm a great believer in challenging anyone's canon: far too many popular opinions are regarded as facts these days and I love the idea of the book stimulating debate, even if not everyone agrees with the authors. I'm sure that many SF readers will find as much to champion in the book as to challenge."

"I think all serious SF readers love a good argument,"Having seen the list of titles that are included in the book, we put it to Steve that it does seem to be somewhat biased towards 'classic' science fiction rather than more modern material. Is this, we wanted to know, a commentary on the state of current science fiction, or is there another reason for the apparent slant?

"As the aim of the book is an historical overview, it is naturally weighted in volume toward older works as we wanted to represent the different epochs of SF history as proportionately as possible." he told us. "It's also difficult to judge contemporary writing effectively without having examined its historical context, so we make no apologies for including plenty of vintage material.

"Having said that, a fifth of the titles we have included were published within the last twenty-five years, so I feel we've represented contemporary SF more than adequately. If the list seems to be inclined toward classic novels, I think this perception only reflects the admirable zeal that serious fans always display toward the current development of the genre at any given time – the SF zeitgeist if you will.

"However, I will admit that I personally don't believe SF is going through one of its most vital periods at present in terms of its impact on culture as a whole: it's a sweeping generalisation that SF appears to be preaching to the converted at present, but that is my basic feeling.

"The new radical hard SF of the last fifteen years or so is inaccessible to many readers and I think this is a problem, as I firmly believe that genre SF needs to be part of the dialogue between different audiences. That's not to say I think the predominant trends in SF writing are misguided – they have emerged naturally from the twists and turns the genre has taken in the past."

"...genre SF needs to be part of the dialogue between different audiences."So if Steve had to pick his own, personal, all-time top three from the list, what would they be? We almost had him stumped there. "Picking only one hundred books and aiming to be reasonably objective was hard, but selecting three in a mode of total subjectivity is almost as difficult!" he protested. "My favourite trio are probably Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Glamour and Ubik, but if we'd gone for a Bester collection, The Dark Side of the Earth would have usurped even PKD.

"No-one has surpassed Orwell in his creation of a satirical yet utterly plausible world that proved both remarkably predictive and consistently relevant. Chris Priest is to my mind the finest writer per se who can arguably be claimed for SF aside from Ballard, whom I'm excluding from this triptych as his short fiction is undeniably his finest work. Chris' ability to balance terseness with humanity takes my breath away. Dick has been an idol of mine since adolescence and I find it difficult to be objective about him as he's been part of my consciousness since years before Blade Runner. All of these writers are fundamentally concerned with the dichotomy between objective and subjective reality and the difference between truth and facts, which is without doubt my favourite theme in SF."

And finally can we expect to see the fantasy and horror volumes any time soon? "Not before 2008 and maybe not from Mr Rennison or myself. Nick is very busy with other projects, although we are talking about collaborating again at some point. I've read my fair share of Fantasy and Horror, so you never can tell.

"There is another title in the series being written by a friend of mine for publication in 2007, the Crime and Classics guides have also just appeared, but at present I have other plans for a different kind of 'must-read' project with A & C Black for 2008, as well as another couple of other non-fiction ideas I want to realise before committing to the inevitable aspiration of (wait for it) writing an SF novel..."

As Steve said, more information about the project can be found at his website, www.stepheneandrews.info, and 100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels, published as part of A&C Black's Must-Read series, is available now from all good booksellers.

Source: Steve Andrews

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