Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Top 100 Books”
The second book in Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy The Subtle Knife is a roaring good read, and a sophisticated modern fantasy. Originally I bought the edition here for my son, 12 at the time, but he was rather less interested than I was, mainly, as I now discover, because he didn’t share my taste for science fiction and fantasy. Fantasy for Children? …
Arthur C. Clarke demands to be taken seriously. His fiction operates on the grand scale, employing meticulous scientific knowledge to create a series of “what ifs?” based on plausible technological, psychological or ecological events. Sometimes he offers too much detail, and forgets about the storytelling part of his fiction – I re-read the RAMA series recently, and struggled with its …
Philip K. Dick. Just his name conjures excitement and imagination. There are so many books and short stories to choose from his extensive, brilliant output, but this The Galactic Pot-Healer is the one I remember with great fondness from a particularly creative period in my life when I painted, wrote, played in my first bands, and earned enough money to …
Poul Anderson is a seriously under-rated sf writer. If you want aliens, spaceships, intergalactic adventures, then he’s your man. He wrote a great deal of fantasy (including a pretty decent Conan the Rebel story in 1980), having been born in 1926 just as the Golden Age of pulp magazines began to influence a generations of school kids. He wrote dozens …