I’ve been looking at lists of people’s favorite science fiction stories since I started reading science fiction in the 1960s. Sometimes I agree with their choices, other times I don’t. The interesting thing about these lists is they change over the generations. Just study all the lists we use as our citation sources for the Classics of Science Fiction. The oldest list we use is from a 1949 issue of the Arkham Sampler. (Full article reprinted below or read the entire issue here.) One of the top titles was Out of the Silence (1925) by Earle Cox, a title I haven’t even heard of before, much less seen or read. Of course, people back in 1949 couldn’t have voted for The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin, but if you study the list, they also didn’t vote for very many books recent to 1949 either. Our favorite books tend to be slightly older books.

It’s my theory that each generation bonds with certain science fiction books in the same way people bond with the pop music they grow up with during their teens and early twenties. However, there is a slight time lag for books. We don’t discover books as timely as we do hit songs. We seem to find them by word-of-mouth, awards, film adaptions, etc. So new books can be from this year, this decade, or even a little before that.

It’s not that each new generation doesn’t discover the favorite reads from older generations or eventually read books from younger generations, but there’s a time-span lump of books we claim for our generation. The Catcher in the Rye is a good example.  Like Baby Boomers favoring Classic Rock, I favor Classic Science Fiction from the 1950s and 1960s. In my generation, Heinlein/Clarke/Asimov were The Beatles of science fiction, but they’re no longer the Big Three for Sci-Fi readers today.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve watched later generations grow up and imprint on different science fiction. Sure, some of their parents might have influenced them to read Classic Science Fiction, but for the most part, each new generation embraces its own books to represent the concept of science fiction. The current generation of science fiction fans seems particularly rebellious against my generation and earlier.

The other day I caught a video on YouTube that made me think it was a Gen-X list of science fiction classics. (If you don’t want to watch the video the list of books is in the comments.)

The creator of this video goes by the handle of Moid Moidelhoff and is 45, making him a Gen-Xer. I’ve read 52 of his Top 100 books, and many of those are my favorites too, and classics to my generation. Moid loves books I haven’t read by authors I haven’t tried – Banks, Reynolds, and Hamilton. I liked his list enough to add it to our citation sources. (By the way, it ended up being only 99 because we list The Foundation Trilogy as a single book and he selected two of the volumes.) His Top 100 list pushed two books onto the Classics of Science Fiction list – Consider Phlebas (1987) by Iain M. Banks and The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger.

It currently takes 12 citations to get on our final classics list, and these two titles only had 11 citations before I added his Top 100. Over time we up the minimum number of citations required to get on the final list, which pushes some books off the list. If you look at this table you’ll see how titles fall out of favor over time.

I can see from this YouTube list a generation shift. If I could find a list by millennials I believe I’d see an even greater shift away from the SF books my generation call classics. From watching this YouTube video I am inspired to catch up. 40 of his books came from the 21st century, and 60 since 1980, but his newest titles stop in 2013. Millennials would pick even newer titles, but I’m not sure they’ve had enough reading time to decide on their classics yet.

In that issue of Arkham Sampler I mentioned above, the feature article was “A Basic Science-Fiction Library.” I feel it was composed by The Greatest Generation SF readers (born before 1924) and maybe some of the older folks from the younger Silent Generation readers (1925-1945). Reading this article will capture a different science fiction generation. Note the stories we still read today as well as the stories that have become forgotten over time. Science fiction generations have changed several times since this 1949 article. In my old age, I love to study the previous generations, but I also marvel at the changes later generations are making. Even though I feel out of touch with the current generation of science fiction fans, I still find the science fiction they love fascinating for how different it is compared to the books I grew up loving.

I feel this article captures a past generation’s science fiction. It’s excellent evidence for my case that science fiction changes with the generations. And I don’t mean just the different book titles, but the focus, feel, and style of science fiction.

Of the books recommended in the 1949 Arkham Sampler article that I have not read but still sound compelling, I want to read:

• The Food of the Gods by H. G. Wells
• When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells
• The Short Stories of H. G. Wells
• The World Below by S. Fowler Wright
• The Second Deluge by Garrett P. Service
• To Walk the Night by William Sloane
• Before the Dawn by John Taine
• Gladiator by Philip Wylie
• The New Adam by Stanley Weinbaum
• The Moon Pool by A. Merritt
• The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel
• Darkness and Dawn by George Allan England
• Out of Space and Time by Clark Ashton Smith

From the YouTube video, these are the books I haven’t read but now feel I should try to read soon.

• Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
• The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
• Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton
• Wool by Hugh Howey
• The Children of Men by P. D. James
• Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
• World War Z by Max Brooks
• Blindsight by Peter Watts

James Wallace Harris, 3/29/20