TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

[Mercurius]

No. I don't usually follow news about authors or participate in fan discussion groups.

I think Rothfuss may have too many distractions, growing family, the TV adaption of his show, and other books he's published in the mean time. We may have a situation like Game of Thrones, where the TV show overtakes the books.

As a fan, I don't care. I would rather not have a third book than a disappointing third book. If he is stuck in writers block, I would rather him wait until he has inspiration to write a great book.

I know it is different for the publishers. If it were me and if I had other sources of income, I would avoid entering a contract for the book before it was done. It would also avoid a situation like this, where he may be stuck with an editor who is disparaging him publicly. I found Wollheim's actions here very unprofessional and I would not want to continue working with someone who acted like this. Perhaps she is so good that he feels the need to keep working with her, maybe contractually he has to, but if it were me, I would want to find someone else.

I believe the tv series and movies were cancelled, or at least post-poned.

 

[Haffrung]

It isn't THAT hard to make a list of the 100 most influential fantasy books today and have most of the books as something most would recognize, or one that those in the hobby would recognize almost every book as being an important facet in the hobby.

It's pretty clear that the intent of the Time list is to present the fantasy genre as it ought to be, rather than the genre as it has been. I'd hazard several of the panelists have not read any fantasy novels written between 1950 and 1990, and many of the authors and works that fans would expect to see on the list were omitted due to being 'problematic' from the perspective of the enlightened intelligentsia of 2020.

The fact there's not a single sword and sorcery work, or any action-oriented fantasy by hugely popular and influential authors like Gemmell, Erikson, Abercrombie, and Lawrence, reveals the bias at work here.

Imagine if Time put together a list of 100 greatest films of all time, and almost half of them were from the last 15 years and fewer than a quarter were films from the 1950s through the 80s. The list would be ridiculed by film critics and Time readers alike.

 

[Cadence]

It's pretty clear that the intent of the Time list is to present the fantasy genre as it ought to be, rather than the genre as it has been. I'd hazard several of the panelists have not read any fantasy novels written between 1950 and 1990, and many of the authors and works that fans would expect to see on the list were omitted due to being 'problematic' from the perspective of the enlightened intelligentsia of 2020.

Imagine if Time put together a list of 100 greatest films of all time, and almost half of them were from the last 15 years and fewer than a quarter were films from the 1950s through the 80s. It would be ridiculed by film critics and Time readers alike.

Probably owing the youth of many of the readers and authors, the Fantasy genre seems peculiarly vulnerable to these sorts of contemporary trends and biases.

In some cases to me it does feel like part of it might be them being problematic.

I wonder for some others how much of it is the balance between influential, great for its time, and viewed as great now. Elric is influential, but the first two books seem awful in terms of writing. Would the Harold Shea novels be published today? (In the last few anthologies of short stories I've picked up, it feels like they'd be in the bottom few).

For the list of 100 Best Novels they made in 2005, they restricted themselves to starting in 1923 (when Time was first published). That list had 16 from 1923 to 1935, 11 from 1936 to 1945, 20 from 1946 to 1955, 21 from 1956 to 1965, 13 from 1966 to 1975, 6 from 1976 to 1985, 6 from 1986 to 1995, and 7 from 1996 to 2005. That one looked like it was just made up byt the two authors!? The top 100 movies list was also made up by just two authors.

I guess that makes this fantasy one stand out for having the authors help. But I wonder if (like using sportswriters to help judge athletes) if they would have benefited from some critics in the pool for this one.

 

[Haffrung]

In some cases to me it does feel like part of it might be them being problematic.

I wonder for some others how much of it is the balance between influential, great for its time, and viewed as great now.

Authors like Mervyn Peake and Gene Wolfe have never stopped being regarded as influential and great. And few of the works on the list published in the last decade have had enough impact to be regarded as great, and they certainly haven't had time to be regarded as influential.

Elric is influential, but the first two books seem awful in terms of writing. Would the Harold Shea novels be published today? (In the last few anthologies of short stories I've picked up, it feels like they'd be in the bottom few).

Brandon Sanderson's books are awful in terms of writing - that didn't stop Mistborn from making the list. J.K. Rowling and Cassandra Clare aren't exactly master prose stylists either. A lot of popular fantasy is poorly written. And if the quality of prose was a major criteria, the absence of Peake, Wolfe, Patricia McKillip, and Robin Hobb is even more baffling.

For the list of 100 Best Novels they made in 2005, they restricted themselves to starting in 1923 (when Time was first published). That list had 16 from 1923 to 1935, 11 from 1936 to 1945, 20 from 1946 to 1955, 21 from 1956 to 1965, 13 from 1966 to 1975, 6 from 1976 to 1985, 6 from 1986 to 1995, and 7 from 1996 to 2005. That one looked like it was just made up byt the two authors!? The top 100 movies list was also made up by just two authors.

I guess that makes this fantasy one stand out for having the authors help. But I wonder if (like using sportswriters to help judge athletes) if they would have benefited from some critics in the pool for this one.

Agreed that critics tend to have a better sense of the history of a genre or medium that most authors do. But still, I think if you tasked several contemporary film directors with drawing up a list of the greatest films of all time, they would demonstrate far greater appreciation of the history and breadth of film than this panel demonstrated for fantasy. You wouldn't see entire genres of film excluded the way this list excludes entire genres of fantasy.

This Time list is a deliberate 'corrective' of popular and critical opinion on the history of the Fantasy genre. It's essentially a political statement.

 

[Eltab]

Imagine if Time put together a list of 100 greatest films of all time ...

I suspect that the current staff of Time would - deliberately or not - adopt the unofficial unwritten rule the Oscars have been using for the last few years: the great films are those that never get a large audience. (Whether because the films are released on only a small scale, or because the first people who saw the film told their friends not to go see it too.)

 

[Cadence]

<deleted by poster>

 

[Gradine]

Some additional thoughts I've had on this list:

Recency Bias
I'll come right out and say it: I'm actually quite impressed with the recency bias in this list. Often when you look at a Top whatever list of whatever you'll find that the list has been dominated by the views of the elitist of the elite critics (old, white dudes, primarily) and the lists look like they were made by somebody who firmly believes "All the best _____ was written before ______" and list contains only the most well-trodden and storied creators.

Then you've got this list come out, and say "you know what, actually there is a ton of amazing fantasy fiction being written right now by people you've probably never heard of. We're serious, it's really really good stuff". I actually like that. We could imagine a Top 100 Fantasy Novels list written in, say, 1979, and every grog is probably going to come up with a relatively similar list with the same familiar names that used to dominate the genre.

What this list says is that Fantasy, truly great Fantasy, is more accessible than ever, both as a reader and as a writer. That's pretty awesome, frankly. It says that Fantasy, both as a genre of fiction and its audience, is exploding, in far more directions than we ever thought possible.

Curious Omissions
The list neatfully steps over the Sword & Sorcery subgenre for what one could assume to be any number of reasons. I'm sure the most controversial (and probably most true) reason is that a lot of its simply doesn't hold up anymore. The un-stated goal of any list like this is to send eyes to more books, and I'm sure the list's author-creators (or its Time editors) didn't want to send modern readers to be puzzled over some celebrated work filled with racist and sexist caricatures which, like or not, tended to dominate the subgenre from its heyday. You try finding a well-written, well-regarded work of S&S that wouldn't raise a single eyebrow from the average modern day fantasy reader (which, if we were to go by the mode, would probably be a 16-year-old girl who either already has or has given significant thought towards dying their hair a non-standard color).

There's the other issue, sidestepped: the dominant delivery mode for fantasy at the time; we can read collections these days but a lot of the best S&S of the time was serialized. The Witcher no doubt suffers here as well; the first "novel" being both the most well-known and rather more a collection of short stories than a traditional "novel".

I'll stand by that at least one early Shannara novel should've seen this list (maybe Wishsong?) as well as Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron; I still think these probably got less attention due to some underwhelming adaptations. Maybe this is what hurt The Hobbit too? You'd think Tolkien would get a pass at the very least. Then again, City of Glass still made the list, so who knows.

Curious Entries
I'll begrudge that Harry Potter belongs on this list; its influence on both the genre at large and on its readers is undeniable. You don't get to where Harry Potter is and has been without some measure of greatness. But the books themselves are... not spectacularly well written? Still, one should be on here, and that one is almost certainly The Half-Blood Prince. Prisoner of Azkaban might have the best written (which is no mean feat, considering it's the one with time travel in it) but The Half-Blood Prince was the moment when HP briefly became good, daresay great, adult fantasy. The problem, as has been discussed ad nauseum over the decades, is that HP is rubbish at grand scale worldbuilding; but kept within the confines of Hogwarts there's a lot there that constantly delights the youthful soul. That said, there's probably (hopefully) some distant future that treats Rowling with the same kind 10-foot-pole we keep Lovecraft at now, so we'll see how long this last.

Yes, The Name of the Wind is widely loved and probably deserves a spot just for that, but dear lord is it an excruciatingly painful read. Terrible pacing, insufferable protagonist, and enough cringy faux "feminism" to fill at least two Wheel of Time novels, which is really saying something. Rothfuss seems like a chill dude and he does some stuff really well but I will never understand the fascination people have with this book.

City of Glass and The Night Circus are also well-beloved novels in certain circles, for... some reason. City is boilerplate YA fantasy as far as these things go; not exactly an exceptional example of the craft.

Which reminds me...

YA Fiction
Some of the best fantasy fiction being written right now and in at least the past decade and a half would be classified as "YA". If you read fantasy and you don't read YA... get off your . To quote Nick Hornby: “I see now that dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and as a consequence, I’ve discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that’s filled with masterpieces I’ve never heard of.” He was speaking generally but it's absolutely true within fantasy as well. It's neither a mistake nor an accident that many of the books on are YA, and many of the older works on the list would've been classified that way in the first. I mean, while we're all complaining about The Hobbit not being on the list.

 

[ART!]

At the risk of tangenting things: what's the best sword & sorcery out there, old or new? - with (like the Time list) a bias toward diversity/representation, and therefore probably newer stuff.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Based on that criteria, the recently deceased Charles Saunders' Imaro (and other works) springs to mind. As does the Thieves World series, though whether it's properly Sword & Sorcery or dark fantasy, that's up for debate.

At the risk of tangenting things: what's the best sword & sorcery out there, old or new? - with a bias toward diversity/representation, and therefore probably newer stuff.

 

[Gradine]

At the risk of tangenting things: what's the best sword & sorcery out there, old or new? - with a bias toward diversity/representation, and therefore probably newer stuff.

The thing is- is that the best inclusive S&S stuff is similar in nature to the best S&S stuff in general - it's all anthologies of short stories and novellas rather than the types of novels that would show up on a list like this.

The Sword and Sorceress series is the example that tends to come up the most, being primarily female led S&S stories that attempt to subvert the more classically sexist tropes found in a lot of older S&S. Then again, that series' editor, Marion Zimmer Bradley, turned out to have been a horrific monster in her own right (you'll note her very well-acclaimed novel The Mists of Avalon also don't appear on Time's list either). I'm sure there are better recommendations elsewhere.