Brain Candy #71 - A Science Fiction Summer Reading/Viewing List

It happens sometimes that I get a bit desperate for a topic for this column as the deadline draws near. One usually successful strategy to prime the pump is free-style web browsing - something often comes along. One search I worked on was whether Nelson Eddy's rendition of "The Ballad of Rodger Young" was available on CD, which a reader had asked "Mr. Candy's" help in finding (Brain Candy #48.) The answer to that was "maybe" - I pointed him toward someone who seems to be compiling a CD of Nelson Eddy's patriotic works. That didn't yield anything of substance for this column, though.

Another flight of fancy was to see if there had been any progress in making a movie from one of my favorite books: Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination." There was a rumor a year ago or so about the existance of a screen play, but apparently there hasn't been any progress lately, if the rumor was even true. In looking for information, I found a site that has an interesting book list called "The 100 science fiction books you have to read!" at www.phobosweb.com/features/100books/index.php After a few minutes of contemplation, I jumped to the Akron-Summit County Public Library system (ascpl.lib.oh.us/dynix.html) and started reserving some on the list that I'd never read. The quality of the books I had read from the list suggested great promise for those books on the list which I hadn't read.

Many of the books on this list are old and one is ancient, but all stand out in their time. If you're fond of science fiction at all, you will have definitely read some of them. The first three books on the list are books I've read: Clarke's "Childhood's End," Asimov's "Foundation" and Herbert's "Dune," but #4 was Philip K. Dick's "Man in the High Castle" which I haven't, but soon will, library willing. A fair number of these books, I've never heard of, while others, like Wyndham's "The Midwich Cuckoos," I've heard about and looked for, but never been able to find. Still others I read long ago, and so are prime candidates for another go. The hundred books list can be viewed as either a linked list, or through an index, showing the entire list. Each book has a very short paragraph describing the book in some way.

You can also find a list of "The 50 science fiction films you just have to see!" at this site. In this case, not everything on the list is there as an example of quality - fame or infamy clinched some of the spots on the list. "Plan Nine From Outer Space" is present for instance, as is "Zardoz" (read the blurb for it!) and "Barbarella." This implies to me that there have not been fifty good science fiction movies made, at least not yet. Based on my preferences, I think I would rearrange this list a bit, as I would the book list - some of my favorites aren't at the top of either, but they are both in the main, very good lists of the seminal science fiction books and movies produced to this point.

Just to give you a feel for the diversity of the two lists, I consider myself to be a moderately well-read science fiction reader. I've read about one-third of the books on the list, and consider almost all of these to be stellar examples of the genre. There are at least ten on the list that I've never read that I plan to read soon, and perhaps others further out. On the other hand, I've seen at least 35 of the 50 movies, and don't plan on hunting up any of the ones I haven't seen, at least any time soon. Maybe 20 on the list are what I would call top-notch movies. The movie list isn't big on honoring sequels, although there are some present. I think that in the future, we'll see more good quality science fiction movies, but science fiction literature definitely has the edge today.

I've mentioned before, that when you find a good page, it's often valuable to probe pages higher up in the site hierarchy. I haven't spent a significant amount of time (yet) looking at the parent page, www.phobosweb.com, but it looks like they are fledgling multimedia publishers (movies, books and games) who also are quite free about sharing their favorite interests, which seems to be an effective attractant, at least to me. If you like the book and movie lists, I suggest you check out what else this site has to offer.