Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy Tales

[Mark Kohut]

I, too, think The Demolished Man is a wonderful novel. However, I 'ain't too read in
science fiction like so many on this list. Because, usually, it is just science fiction. 
 
So, i ask, what science fiction, what other genre fiction if you care to play along is
LITERATURE in your mind?  (I can not forget howlong Dickens wasn't Literature...and 
it was as if Shakespeare was just "popular culture"......)
 
I also hate labels in general; especially hate them about books..so-called genres, etc. When I learned me
some Aristotle back in the day, against the current day, I never forgot that his good Poetics was 
admittedly a philosophical gloss, pattern-finding based on Attic plays, Greek Tragedy, etc.    
 
After. Works always first...Then the world started to use the patterns to judge (almost) ideologically, pre-judge, 
with preconceptions aforethought.....See all the Candlebrow types, with or without a degree, who spent a shame
of words condemning Shakespeare for violating the unities. & He is just a leading example. 
 
So, to start, if not a fight, then a discussion, I ask:
 
Is Ovid 'science fiction"...what is mythology but?
What is Gulliver's Travels? Surely it is 'science fiction'?..or just fantasy?
 
Why is it science fiction, generally, if it is not ranked highly enough to be "literature"? 
What is 1984? What is Animal Farm?  
 
Somebody once wrote that Invasions of the Body Snatchers was one of the few genuinely
new 'myths' created in the 20th Century. Discuss.
 

________________________________
 From: jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
To: Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> 
Cc: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2012 1:56 AM
Subject: Re: Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy Tales
  
These compilation ist much much better than the last list of 100 best
SF novels. Much better. For example it has Brunner, Stephenson,
Simmons. The only book I miss is The Demolished Man.

2012/6/21 Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com>:
> Actually a nice list. I rarely find these interesting. I saw a woman
> reading "Windup Girl" on the train this morning. "The City and the
> City" was something a friend recommended that turned out to be really
> fun.
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 6:05 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
>>
>> http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2012/01/david-brins-list-of-greatest-science.html
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