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Damien Broderick

Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010 Paperback – May 31, 2012

by Damien Broderick (Author), Paul di Filippo (Author), David Pringle (Foreword)

3.5 64 ratings

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Inspired by David Pringle's landmark 1985 work Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, this volume supplements the earlier selection with the present authors' choices for the best English-language science fiction novels during the past quarter century. Employing a critical slant, the book provides a discussion of the novels and the writers in the context of popular literature. Moreover, each entry features a cover image of the novel, a plot synopsis, and a mini review, making it an ideal go-to guide for anyone wanting to become reacquainted with an old favorite or to discover a previously unknown treasure. With a foreword by David Pringle, this invaluable reference is sure to provoke conversation and debates among sci-fi fans and devotees.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publication date

May 31, 2012
Dimensions

6 x 0.65 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1933065397
ISBN-13

978-1933065397
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Stephen E Andrews
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Paperback
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Di Filippo has garnered a reputation as one of the genre's most inventive and quirky stylists." —Booklist

"The versatile Di Filippo (The Steampunk Trilogy) remains consistently inventive." —Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Damien Broderick is a writer whose works include the novel The Judas Mandala and critical studies Ferocious Minds and X, Y, Z, T: Dimensions of Science Fiction. He is a five-time recipient of the Australian SF Ditmar Award and a runner-up for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. He lives in San Antonio, Texas. Paul Di Filippo is a two-time Nebula Award finalist and a Philip K. Dick finalist. He is the author of Creature from the Black Lagoon, Ribofunk, The Steampunk Trilogy, and Top Ten: Beyond the Farthest Precinct and the editor of Freaks in a Box: The Myths of Media. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island. David Pringle is a writer and editor. He is the author of several guides, including Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, and The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction. He served as the editor of Foundation, an academic journal, and founded the English science magazine Interzone.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Nonstop Press (May 31, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1933065397
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1933065397
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.65 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,901,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #664 in Science Fiction & Fantasy Literary Criticism (Books)
- #996 in Science Fiction History & Criticism
- #1,883 in General Books & Reading

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3.5 64 ratings

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John M. Ford

101 Bottles of SF on the Wall

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2012

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This book has an unusually descriptive title. It contains 101 brief (2-5 page) reviews of the "best" 101 science fiction novels published in 1985 through 2010. It is a companion volume to David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels: 1949-1984 . Both books guide readers through the relatively large universe of book-length science fiction. Authors Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo limit themselves to one entry per book author, using this entry to discuss multiple works by that author as appropriate.

The entries include reviews of five of my favorites. They provide a general sense of the way these books are reviewed and evaluated.

Ender's Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card. This novel about human cadets training to fight in an interstellar war launched Card's career. Its success is attributed to the inclusion of a dozen hot-button topics: "...an existential threat to the human race; the nature of alien intelligence and person-hood; genocide; means versus ends; the `great man' theory of history; the limits of government and the proper role of the citizen; the limits and nature of the educational system; the military ethos; the nature of sociopaths and power; family dynamics; sibling rivalry; and schoolboy rivalry."

Use of Weapons (1990) by Iain M. Banks. The review outlines the book's history of protagonist Cheradenine Zakalwe, a perpetual soldier for various armies and causes. It also overviews Banks' other novels set in the "Culture" universe and the primary themes emphasized in its post-scarcity society. There is an insightful discussion of the book's twin helix narrative structure. And there is an *unforgiveable* spoiler for one of the other Culture books.

A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) by Vernor Vinge. This story spans star systems across an entire sector of the galaxy and includes humans, an engagingly-strange collection of aliens, and strange, incomprehensible Powers with... strange, incomprehensible powers. The universe is partitioned into Zones which are concentric regions around the galaxy's center. The laws of physics differ in these Zones, with thought and spaceflight barely possible in the Unthinking Depths and artificial intelligence, faster-than light travel, and other wonders abundant in the Beyond. Bad things can happen when denizens of different Zones interact. The review discusses Vinge's the relationship between this work, its prequel A Deepness in the Sky , and the Singularity concept introduced in Marooned in Realtime .

Perdido Street Station (2000) by China Miéville. This book introduced readers to the author's Bas-Lag series and to its central city, the sprawling, overcrowded, mucusy metropolis of New Crobuzon. The book is named for its largest train station, only one of an incredible set of locations that includes an enclave of cactus-people and an embassy of Hell. The story is about a scientist who accidentally looses deadly slake-moths on the City. But the story is just an excuse to explore the people, places, and improbabilities of New Crobuzon. There is also some discussion of Miéville`s subsequent Bas-Lag books, The Scar and Iron Council .

The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger. This book isn't really about time travel in the traditional sense, nor may it "really" be considered science fiction. But it is close to both. Clair and Henry are friends, lovers, spouses, parents who have a life together, but many parts of it are out of sequence. Henry is an involuntary time traveler who jumps to different points in the past and future without will or warning. He knows Clair as a little girl, a teenager, a woman. And she waits for him, never knowing how old he will be when he appears. We see the implications across the span of their lives, if span is the right word. The review gives us a bit more of the author's perspective on her unique book.

The reviews of books I am familiar with describe their characters and plots accurately and are reasonably free of spoilers--with a few exceptions. Reviews of books I have not read have convinced me to pick up some overlooked gems, including Cyteen, The Diamond Age, and The Handmaid's Tale. I recommend this book as a reference and reading guide to recent, higher-quality science fiction.

15 people found this helpful

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From Handmaid's Tale to Quantum Thief

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2012

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In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit that I am a big fan of book lists. I have used the Modern Library fiction and non-fiction lists to find referrals and lists by Pringle and Moorcock to locate works of fantasy. The CWA British and US lists have suggested a number of mystery gems I would not likely have found on my own. For science fiction ideas, I have utilized a list of the 100 best novels from 1949 to 1984 by David Pringle.

Broderick and Di Filippo have updated Pringle's work by compiling a new list of SF novels from 1985 through 2010. A foreward by David Pringle provides continuity with the earlier list.

The new collection resembles the earlier one in that it is chronological rather than providing a countdown to the best novel of the period. It covers a shorter time by ten years and includes a much larger selection of female writers than the earlier book given the work produced in the period from which selections were made. I find this new list to be better written and to have more value than the prior one. Broderick and Di Filippo spend far less space than did Pringle on plot summary and provide more context regarding the subject matter in each book. For example, the plot of Handmaid's Tale is compared to 1984 as well as to the way power relationships in society actually developed. There is also more discussion of how some volumes came to be written. The authors explain that Orson Scott Card expanded Ender's Game from a short story by changing the narrative viewpoint to that of an adult telling his story in retrospect. The authors also take the time to think through where each work and author rests in SF history. Ender's Game is compared to Starship Troopers, A Case of Conscience and The Female Man while China Meiville is expansively mentioned in the same breath as Mervyn Peake.

The authors demonstrate their considerable genre knowledge by recounting the literary history of certain tropes in the works represented. In discussing Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, they talk about the development of stories dealing with black market body parts from Niven's Known Space in the sixties to current works. Broderick and Di Filippo also show some courage in evaluating the overall output of some of the authors contained in their list as when they suggest that Card would be regarded as "a minor, respectable, forgotten craftsman" if not for the Ender series.

The true value of the list, of course, is not in the reading pleasure it delivers but in leading the discerning user to new books and authors. Even though I thought I had consumed modestly in the SF field in recent years, I still found 87 books I had not read, many of which I had not come across in any other forum. There are actually far more than 101 books considered as the authors list all 3 of Meiville's Bas-lag books when discussing Perdido Street Station and 4 of Gene Wolfe's series in the entry for Nightside the Long Sun.

In using lists as sources for reading referral, not only have I located hidden classics but I have found that virtually all recommended books reach at least an acceptable level of literary merit. In a genre such as SF, where there is a very large range of quality exhibited in what is published, lists like those of Pringle and Broderick/Di Filippo can improve and enrich the reading selection process.

12 people found this helpful

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As a reader of SF I accept this book as a collection of interesting book reviews.

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2019

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Science Fiction the 101 Best Novels 1985-2010 - Damien Broderick & Paul Di Filippo [review 0795 - Book Reviews - February 28, 2019]

Two gentlemen with credentials selected their 101 best SF novels published during 1985-2010. The other criteria was that the books were English language not translations. I am certain other editors would of selected different books and included and excluded some authors.

As a reader of SF I accept this book as a collection of interesting book reviews. You have to judge if the books are "the best" or not. Who knows I may be motivated to read an author I never had before. In fact of the 101 books included I have read only 2.

I have to ding this book one star for the glaring omission on not including the authors names in the table of contents and the lack of an index. A reference book of this type should of included these items.

For those who need an author's name along with the title of these 101 books you can drill down and find one on the ISFDB [Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base]. I cut and pasted the list printed it out and include it within the book. Now someone did the drudge work to created a useful table of contents - should of been included I contend.

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Mr. Robert A. Gilmour

Great sequel guide

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2020

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This is the sequel to David Pringle's brilliant Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. Don't know why I delayed so much in getting this because I loved all the other similar genre guides. Main differences with Pringle's earlier guide is that it adds an extra book more, Pringle always used 2 pages per entry and this uses 2-3 pages (Gene Wolfe was the only one to get 4 pages if I remember correctly). No author gets more than one book (or book series), while Pringle was quite happy to choose multiple books by the same author. It could be said that Broderick and Di Filippo cheat by cramming in lots of other recommendations as tangents (Attanasio's Radix is given a strong recommendation in the entry for Zindell's Neverness, they lament that he was overlooked for the previous book) and career run-throughs for lesser known authors (Liz Jensen gets a bundle of her books profiled). Some reviewers disliked all this extra cramming but I really appreciated it.

Like other reviewers I sometimes suspected some books were included for being important and representative (perhaps to discuss developments in the genre) rather than the best, a surprising number of bestsellers are chosen and I wondered if this was a crowdpleasing move. Some later successes by the SF elders are chosen (including Poul Anderson, Vance, Vonnegut, Ballard, Moorcock, Le Guin, Aldiss) and many other reviewers felt these entries were just out of respect to the legends of the genre. Possibly some writers were chosen out of respect for their short fiction?
Since I haven't read a single one of these books and cant read the minds of Broderick & Di Filippo, I cant say how honest the choices were.

I normally welcome dense writing but when I read reviews, I rarely have the patience for it and sometimes feel like a traitor for this. But a lot of the descriptions are really confusing. They insist that science fiction rarely has much actual science in it but I was frequently lost with the mentions of singularity, quantum sciences and other such things. In a guide like this, which will probably attract newbies as much as huge SF fans, I felt they should have been more accessible like Pringle was. But I enjoyed the writing more than most people seemed to, I thought there was a glee to it.
My biggest complaint is that the type size is too small, making the book much more difficult. Even if you're not fond of ebooks you might want to consider the ebook version to save your eyes.

There was quite a lot of epic Hard SF and that's a hard sell for me despite my admiration for the scale of such stories, but Broderick and Filippo did quite a good job getting me to consider getting some of them. Half way through I was wondering how many women wrote this sort of thing and the entry on Linda Nagata answers that.

I never thought I'd be interested in Michael Chabon or Orson Scott Card's Ender series but they also sold me on those. I recently passed by Cherryh's Cyteen in a charity shop and assumed it must be one of her lesser works but according to this guide it's one of her best!

The book entries I was most excited by were...

James Morrow - This Is The Way The World Ends
Pamela Sargent - Shore Of Women
Joan Slonczewski - A Door Into Ocean
Paul Park - Sugar Festival
David Zindell - Neverness
Gwyneth Jones - Aleutian trilogy
Richard Calder - Dead Girls trilogy
Walter Jon Williams - Aristoi
Michael Moorcock - Second Ether trilogy
Christopher Priest - The Separation
John C Wright - The Golden Age (Strange to see him featured here considering what he done to his reputation since. 2012 was such a different time in the genre!)
Ian McDonald - River Of Gods
Ian R MacLeod - House Of Storms
David Marusek - Counting Heads
Geoff Ryman - Air
Liz Jensen - My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time (along with a bunch of her other works discussed)
Carol Emshwiller - Secret City (the crazy sounding The Mount even moreso)
Ekaterina Sedia - Alchemy Of Stone
Hannu Rajaniemi - Quantum Thief series (seemed to do interesting things with the references)

Please don't be put off by some of the drawbacks of this guide. I cant verify how good the choices are but I haven't found many better ways to aquaint myself with what has been going on in science fiction during the period covered. Speculative fiction (and maybe other genres) are perhaps getting too big for anyone to cover comprehensively and perhaps people wont be able to do this kind of thing convincingly anymore. But I pray there will be more guides like this. Fantasy really needs more top 100 guides like this because the last really good ones were in the 80s.

3 people found this helpful

David L. Pulver

Best of its Kind

Reviewed in Canada on July 3, 2018

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I've read an awful lot of science fiction, but the detailed, thoughtful reviews in this book introduced me to a number
of excellent authors and works from the 90s and 00s who I had overlooked.

I found it the best "best of" SF book I have read in terms of actually paying of by introducing me to authors in a fashion that made me want to read them, and generally proving correct in its judgement. Unlike some of the fussier books by certain British authors, it does not feel compelled to name check literary classics of dubious readability, and instead focuses on books that are still of broad interest today.

The book's only flaw is that the table of contents is very inadequate: it lists only book by title and not by author. While this doubtless saved a page or two, this is so annoying in context when using the book as a reference as to warrant the reduction of one star from the total

Kenneth Wilson

Worser than Pringle

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 20, 2021

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I previously reviewed David Pringles book and commented on his misguided idea that readers of Sf wanted literary excellence as an essential ingredient of their reading8 have to tell you that thiso overpower us with his verbosity. O

Derek Smith

Spot on for someone coming back to scifi after 30 years

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2015

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It is just a list with comments, but for someone like me, who's been away from scifi for some years and has recently retired, it was, in fact still is, very useful. The reviews are not in depth, despite there being only 101 of them, but for me, expecting to buy/borrow the books and read them, it had just enough information.

It's not for someone wanting in-depth knowledge about the books.

2 people found this helpful

Mr P Baker

It's OK

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 11, 2013

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Very good for perhaps exploring other authors in this genre. Arrived fairly quickly in very good condition. Think the reviews are a bit flowery and maybe could have included: - "If you like this then you might like this".

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