The Gollancz fifty

This year it will be fifty years since Gollancz started publishing science fiction and fantasy. To celebrate the publisher set up a website listing its fifty best science fiction and fantasy novels (or at least the ones it still has the rights to) and is asking us, their readers to chose our favourites out of these. Twentyfive science fiction and twentyfive fantasy novels are listed and you get to choose one of each. The top five choices will be published in a special “collectable retro-look edition”. A nice idea to celebrate a very important British science fiction and fantasy publisher. I can’t be the only fan who quickly learned to associate yellow covers in the library’s bookcases with proper science fiction….

Given that these lists had to be created out of the books Gollancz still had the rights to, they’re somewhat biased towards contemporary authors, but unfortunatly also heavily biased towards male authors: of the twentyfive science fiction novels, only two are by women. The fantasy list is slightly more balanced, but still only has five novels written by women. Both lists are also very white and anglosaxon. Of course you can argue that given the constraints of having to work from their own backlist meant that these lists would always be imbalanced, but than that only moves the argument to why Gollancz hasn’t had a more diverse publishing list in these fifty years…

Apart from that, these lists are a good excuse to play the usual “bold if you’ve read it, italicise if you own it” game. First the science fiction list, which seems to be the stronger of the two and from which I’ve certainly read the most. On the downside, there are no real surprises in this list either: a mix of obvious classics always present in these lists and contemporary bestselling authors. Many of these books have had special editions recently as well, e.g. in the Science Fiction Masterworks series. Which probably explains why I read so many of them…

• A Case of Conscience by James Blish
• Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
• Brasyl by Ian McDonald
• The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Fairyland by Paul McAuley
• The Female Man by Joanna Russ
• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
• Flood by Stephen Baxter
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
• Gateway by Frederik Pohl
• Hyperion by Dan Simmons
• Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
• More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
• Pavane by Keith Roberts
• Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
• Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
• Ringworld by Larry Niven
• Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
• Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
• The Separation by Christopher Priest
• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
• Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts

The fantasy list seems to be more heavily biased towards contemporary books, with some odd choices: the complete Book of the New Sun but Stephen R. Donaldson is represented by the first book of the third trilogy in the Thomas Covenant series? Why Eric of all Discworld novels?

• Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper
• Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie
• Book of the New Sun (Vol 1&2) (Vol 3&4) by Gene Wolfe
• The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg
• Conan Volume One by Robert E. Howard
• Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
• Elric by Michael Moorcock
• Eric by Terry Pratchett
• Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin
• The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
• The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
• Graceling by Kristin Cashore
• Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
• I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
• The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
• Little, Big by John Crowley
• Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
• Memoirs of a Master Forger by William Heaney
• Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• The Runes of the Earth by Stephen Donaldson
• Something Wicked this Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
• Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance
• Viriconium by M. John Harrison
• Wolfsangel by M. D. Lachlan

I’m not sure which books of either list I’d choose as my favourite, but I’d think in the end I’d go for Stand on Zanzibar and Mythago Wood, both books by British writers who died too soon and who deserve a bit more attention.