Lou Anders' 'Most Significant SF' meme

Via Lou Anders of Pyr Books, writing on his (always worth reading) Bowing to the Future blog, a list-meme based on the Science Fiction Book Club's list of the fifty most significant science fiction / fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002.

The Key:

Bold the ones you've read.
Strike-out the ones you hated.
Italicize those you started but never finished.
Put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien [*]
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett [*]
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. ~~The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson~~
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams [*]
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson [*]
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip JosÃ© Farmer

So I've read, what, fourteen of the top 50? Hated one of them - sorry, but Thomas Covenant just pushed all the wrong buttons, although I absolutely loved Donaldson's The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through - and yes, I also loved the (probably predictable) formative teenage-reads: LOTR, HHGTTG, The Colour of Magic... oh, and Snowcrash, which is the novel that switched me on to the idea of SF being about so much more than robots and spaceships... and perhaps that attitude is why I haven't been anywhere near some of the titles on the rest of the list.

And no, I didn't finish The Forever War; don't think I was in the right frame of mind at the time. But I have got a copy of the new Gollancz omnibus edition of Forever War, Forever Free and Forever Peace [Amazon], so at some point I'll sit down and read all three.

Also in my defence, the selection does have rather a US-flavoured slant to it, albeit as you'd expect from the US SF Book Club; and there are a few titles in there that have been out of print in the UK for years, so I can probably claim lack of exposure to quite a few of them (although as an excuse it's a pretty poor one; sf transcending mere geographical boundaries etc. and seeing as we have, like, the Interweb and stuff these days).

And I have read other stuff by Clarke, Moorcock, Dick, Matheson, Bradbury, Asmiov and Gibson. Oh, and I do have a copy of John Crowley's Little, Big [Amazon] on my 'to be read' shelf, in fact it's been there for the past six years (I know, I know, but I'm saving it for a special occasion and besides, the print in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks edition that I've got is really small...)

And of course it's tricky without knowing the original criteria for assessing their 'significance' (I did find the original list, but there's no mention of the process it's based on), so I'm obviously in danger of straying into the realms of purely subjective opinion, but there are a few titles that I'd argue were ripe for inclusion on the basis of their importance to the UK market, starting with:

Legend, David Gemmell [*]
Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock [*]
Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks

And there would be more if I put my mind to it, I'm sure. But it's Monday morning, I've just spent most of the weekend decorating, and my head is full of paint fumes, dammit...

[edit December 4th-7th] And here they are...

Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks [nominated by Ed Ashby]
Midwich Cuckoos, John Wyndham [nominated by Joe Gordon]
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Alan Garner
Hyperion, Dan Simmons [nominated by Ed Ashby]
The Malazan Books of the Fallen, Steven Erikson [*]
Drowned World, J.G. Ballard [nominated by Brian Ruckley]
Swords and Deviltry, Fritz Leiber [nominated by Brian Ruckley, seconded and fact-checked by silvereel]

Feel free to make your own nominations in the comments there, folks.