Via Mr. Schwartz. With alterations.

1. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
   • What the fuss was about then: Hope and glory.
   • What the fuss is about now: Class anxiety, xenophobia, Anglo-Saxon racialism, reactionary pastoral nostalgia. A close reading of Tolkien will still teach you more about epic fantasy than anything written by anyone else ever.
2. Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy
   • What the fuss was about then: Gibbon, Toynbee, the Wonders of Atomic Energy.
   • What the fuss is about now: Economics, complexity, the inadvisability of trying to retcon all your books together at the end of your career. Plus: Space battle!
3. Herbert, Dune
   • What the fuss was about then: Eugenics, ecology, knife fights.
   • What the fuss is about now: Eugenics, ecology, knife fights. But also: characterization, worldbuilding, description; believable cultures and strong female characters. Dune still holds up better than almost anything else from its era.
4. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
   • What the fuss was about then: A hippie manifesto from a man who hated hippies.
   • What the fuss is about now: Heinlein begins the long fall into the depths of Late Heinlein.
5. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
   • What the fuss was about then: Wizards! Dragons! Pirates!
   • What the fuss is about now: Sui generis fantasy, maybe the last of the real worldbuilders; a protagonist you can believe in. I read the second book first, The Tombs of Atuan, and you know, I’m not convinced that isn’t still the best way to do it.
6. Gibson, Neuromancer
   • What the fuss was about then: The glamour: chrome, neon, black leather and dexedrine.
   • What the fuss is about now: Hyperrealism. Pitch-perfect prose. The exact metaphorical capture of the human-machine relationship. The absolute refutation of all the values and aesthetics that came to define pop cyberpunk.
7. Clarke, Childhood’s End
   • What the fuss was about then: Benevolent aliens, mystical evolution, God.
   • What the fuss is about now: From the generation that gave you the generation gap.
8. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
   • What the fuss was about then: Who are you? Who am I? What am I?
   • What the fuss is about now: “Do you make up these questions, Mr. Holden, or do they write them down for you?”
9. Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
   • What the fuss was about then: Evil patriarchal Christianity destroys beautiful matriarchal Pagan culture. Plus: Witch sex!
   • What the fuss is about now: Look, the Matter of Britain’s been done. Definitively. By T.H. White. If you want to comment on it or react against it, write a short story.
10. Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
    • What the fuss was about then: If this goes on….
    • What the fuss is about now: OMGWTFBBQ.
11. Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun
    • What the fuss was about then: Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles.
    • What the fuss is about now: Eschatology and genesis.
12. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
    • What the fuss was about then: We, the memorizers, we, the bookleggers, keeping alight the flickering flame of civilization through the dark ages….
    • What the fuss is about now: The march of folly. Writing that holds up almost as well as Dune’s. A surprisingly nuanced view of religion and science, probably too nuanced for the Richard Dawkins era. (The sequel is readable but nothing special.)
13. Asimov, The Caves of Steel
    • What the fuss was about then: Robots!
    • What the fuss is about now: Robots?
14. Shiras, Children of the Atom
    • What the fuss was about then: A Pinocchio story for the nuclear age.
    • What the fuss is about now: Ongoing legal disputes between Shiras’ estate and the estate of Osamu Tezuka.
15. Blish, Cities in Flight
    • What the fuss was about then: Flying cities!
    • What the fuss is about now: Would going into space be enough to save Scranton, Pennsylvania? Were the Vegans really that bad? And did Blish realize that the focus on benevolent technocratic despot characters like Mayor Amalfi was undermining the theme of independence and self-reliance that the Okie cities personified? We’ll never know. The image of Manhattan Island floating in interstellar space is hard to get out of your head, though.
16. Pratchett, The Colour of Magic
    • What the fuss was about then: Best Conan parody ever.
    • What the fuss is about now: Watching Pratchett develop into a serious novelist over the course of the next ten or twenty books.
17. Ellison (ed.), Dangerous Visions
    • What the fuss was about then: He’ll have those introductions done real soon now. Honest.
    • What the fuss is about now: No, really.
18. Ellison, Deathbird Stories
    • What the fuss was about then: Doesn’t include the “all women love giant ape cock” story.
    • What the fuss is about now: Still doesn’t.
19. Bester, The Demolished Man
    • What the fuss was about then: A hilarious send-up of everything John W. Campbell believed in.
    • What the fuss is about now: Okay, maybe not, but I think Bester would agree that it should have been. Plus, it inspired Walter Koenig’s finest role.
20. Delany, Dhalgren
    • What the fuss was about then: Race! Sex! Class! Violence! More sex!
    • What the fuss is about now: An evocation of contemporary irrealism so unutterably, unrepeatably brilliant that everyone trying to write urban fantasy today should just shut t.f. up. (That said, the last third or so, when the Kid is happily settled into his polyamorous gang leader lifestyle, kind of drags.)
21. McCaffrey, Dragonflight
    • What the fuss was about then: Life hiding out as a scullery maid in the castle that’s rightly yours while the man who murdered your parents runs the place is almost as hard as the life of a teenage fan. But someday a handsome hero will come along and recognize your true greatness and also you will get a magical talking pony dragon.
    • What the fuss is about now: You’d think when it had been done once, no one would need to do it again. Ever. You’d be wrong.
22. Card, Ender’s Game
    • What the fuss was about then: Life as the least popular kid in supergenius space battle academy is almost as hard as the life of a teenage fan. But someday your teachers will trick you into committing a horrible crime and thereby saving the human race only probably it would have been okay anyway.
    • What the fuss is about now: Will the movie ever get made? Is Ender Hitler? Could Card have more thoroughly destroyed EG and Speaker for the Dead than he did with Xenophobe if he’d wanted to?
23. Donaldson, Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
    • What the fuss was about then: Post-Tolkien fantasy’s first antihero.
    • What the fuss is about now: How many people stop reading when they get to the rape scene.
24. Haldeman, The Forever War
    • What the fuss was about then: A Vietnam vet tells it like it was.
    • What the fuss is about now: Except, he kind of lost me when he tried to integrate women into combat units as both shooters and sex slaves.
25. Pohl, Gateway
    • What the fuss was about then: Killer robots from outer space.
    • What the fuss is about now: Oops. I always get Pohl and Saberhagen mixed up.
26. Rowling, Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone
    • What the fuss was about then: Life as the orphaned child of magical parents is almost as hard as…
    • What the fuss is about now: Plotting. Characterization. Envious whining.
27. Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
    • What the fuss was about then: “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is!” Also, when I was in fourth grade I had an awesome Zaphod Beeblebrox costume.
    • What the fuss is about now: But I don’t think I really appreciated Zaphod as a character until fairly recently, when I reread Young Zaphod Plays It Safe. (Even if it is, or rather was, a little too topical for my taste.) And I liked the movie. Even the happy ending. I like to think it was true to the later, less nihilistic Douglas Adams. And while its plotting was kind of shaky, given the source material not exactly what you’d call an honest accusation.
28. Matheson, I Am Legend
    • What the fuss was about then: “I was kind of like a one-man force, eh, like Charleton Heston in ‘Omega Man’. You see it? Beauty.”
    • What the fuss is about now: Even now that vampires have been done absofuckingcompletely to death, this one still sticks in your head. (And yeah, it did inspire “The Omega Man.” Cue “Theme from A Summer Place…“)
29. Rice, Interview with the Vampire
    • What the fuss was about then: Wow. Vampires are, like, so cool.
    • What the fuss is about now: Louis was right. Lestat was an asshole.
30. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
    • What the fuss was about then: Gender. Duh.
    • What the fuss is about now: Take out the gender and the plot, characters, worldbuilding, and of course the writing still work. Which may be why there hasn’t been another gender novel as influential since.
31. Crowley, Little, Big
    • What the fuss was about then: Elf sex.
    • What the fuss is about now: Fairy fucking.
32. Zelazny, Lord of Light
    • What the fuss was about then: Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles.
    • What the fuss is about now: Big-canvas Zelazny in a nutshell, in case you haven’t got time to read all five books of the original Amber series. The marriage of the poetic and the hard-boiled, of futurism and nostalgia, mysticism and practicality; the three-dimensional yet larger-than-life characters; the slightly dated gender roles… it’s all there.
33. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
    • What the fuss was about then: The only alternate-WW2 story you ever need to read.
    • What the fuss is about now: The only alternate-WW2 story you ever need to read except for Christopher Priest’s The Separation. If the insatiable Dick-novel-devouring maw of Hollywood ever wants to film this one, they could do worse than give it to the Coen brothers.
34. Clement, Mission of Gravity
    • What the fuss was about then: T3h SCIENCE!
    • What the fuss is about now: “Dude, Where’s My Storytelling?”
35. Sturgeon, More than Human
    • What the fuss was about then: So, Thomas Disch claims he once turned down an invitation to a threesome from Theodore and Mrs. Sturgeon. When I first read that it at least made me blink, but these days I don’t think any story about that generation would really surprise me. Was the SF world just more swingin’ in the 70s than it is now, or am I just not seeing it? I suppose it’s an AIDS thing.
    • What the fuss is about now: On the plus side, when we put together an anthology these days we don’t have to patronize the best authors in our field in order to get a token woman into the table of contents.
36. Smith, The Rediscovery of Man
    • What the fuss was about then: “Cordwainer Smith.” Isn’t that a great pulp-adventurey sort of name? One of those archaeologist / gunfighter sort of names. “Smith. Cordwainer Smith.”
    • What the fuss is about now: Okay, I just like to say “Cordwainer Smith.”
37. Shute, On the Beach
    • What the fuss was about then: I’m still not sure if the Kirsty MacColl song has anything to do with the book, or with the movie.
    • What the fuss is about now: They’ve both got Australia in ‘em, so maybe there’s something going on there. But it’s basically from her speed-pop period — save your money and just get Kite.
38. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama
    • What the fuss was about then: It’s big! It’s dark! It’s full of weird robot-animals!
    • What the fuss is about now: And it doesn’t give a damn about you. The one thing Clarke does well, that nobody bothers to do any more, is bring you face to face with the incomprehensible. Rama looks like the archetypal hard-SF novel on the surface, but really it’s the hard-SF novel’s antithesis: an unsolvable problem. (Naturally this is totally undermined by the sequels.)
39. Niven, Ringworld
    • What the fuss was about then: It’s big! It’s really big! No, I mean, like, huuuuuuge! Plus: sexy bald women.
    • What the fuss is about now: Another classic that deserves classic status but that’s undermined by its own sequels — although Ringworld Engineers isn’t bad. A bit dated, but does a nice job of disguising a science problem as a plot. (Still, if I was the Puppeteers, I wouldn’t bother with attacking the superconductors — one STD would go through that ring like a bad yam through a short Protector.)
40. Budrys, Rogue Moon
    • What the fuss was about then: A satellite in musth is a dangerous thing.
    • What the fuss is about now: Still, given how poaching, farming, and general human intrusion have destroied their habitats and their social structures, what should we expect?
41. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
    • What the fuss was about then: It was a long, long wait between the publication of Return of the King and the appearance of Sword of Shannara.
    • What the fuss is about now: You’ve got to appreciate the scope of what Tolkien was doing. You’ve also got to want to slap him silly for setting the precedent that would let his son spend the next forty years putting all his scribbled notebooks and discarded drafts into print.
42. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-5
    • What the fuss was about then: Kurt Vonnegut: Science fiction writer, or satirist making heavy use of science-fictional tropes? Discuss. Use examples.
    • What the fuss is about now: Kilgore Trout: Science fiction writer, or satirist making heavy use of science-fictional tropes? Discuss. Use examples. Be prepared to define your terms and show your work.
43. Stephenson, Snow Crash
    • What the fuss was about then: D00d! 5n0w cr45h is t3h r0xx0r!
    • What the fuss is about now: How a post-cyberpunk parody came to define pop cyberpunk. How many young VR researchers were unhealthily influenced by Stephenson’s Metaverse at a young age. How Stephenson’s become a much more sophisticated writer while staying entertaining but also continuing to have trouble with endings.
44. Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
    • What the fuss was about then: The 1960s, on fast-forward.
    • What the fuss is about now: If Philip K. Dick had been sane, he would have written Stand on Zanzibar. Once you get past the made-up slang, it’s fucking brilliant. And it’s not really about overpopulation. For maximum effect, read it with The Jagged Orbit and The Sheep Look Up.
45. Bester, The Stars My Destination
    • What the fuss was about then: I’m telling you, Walter Koenig’s finest role.
    • What the fuss is about now: Finest role.
46. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
    • What the fuss was about then: Armored space paratroopers!
    • What the fuss is about now: So if the humans can talk to the Skinnies, and the Skinnies can talk to the Bugs, how come the humans can’t talk to the Bugs? And is smacking your dog really the best way to train him not to pee on the rug?
47. Moorcock, Stormbringer
    • What the fuss was about then: Conan meets Lovecraft meets the illegitimate love-child of Aubrey Beardsley and David Bowie.
    • What the fuss is about now: Watching Moorcock mellow out over the last forty years.
48. Brooks, The Sword of Shannara
    • What the fuss was about then: Finally, something to fill the yawning void left by Lord of the Rings!
    • What the fuss is about now: Prefigures such luminaries as Eddings, Weis and Hickman.
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
    • What the fuss was about then: You know, I could swear I read this once. I can remember the cover.
    • What the fuss is about now: I just can’t remember a damn thing about the book.
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
    • What the fuss was about then: Famous dead people! Also, sex with blue aliens!
    • What the fuss is about now: Chimp sex! — No, wait, that was a short story. Nursing home sex! — No, that was a short story, too. God, did I really read all that Farmer in high school? I must have.

* The question being: Which ones have you read? Which ones have you read and hated? Which did you start but never finish? Which do you love?

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