james_nicoll ([info]james_nicoll) wrote,
@ 2009-06-01 14:27:00
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Things one finds by accident: The NESFA Core Reading List of Fantasy and Science Fiction
I am going to resist the urge to turn this into a read/didn't read meme [1].

I notice that it is dated 1997. A considerable number of books have come out since them: which ones would you recommend NESFA add to this list?

[Note: not a member of NESFA and don't speak for them]



1: For as long as I can.

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[info]mrbankies
2009-06-01 06:38 pm UTC (link)
Re [1], please don't. It would only depress me. That's an impressive list, and I only made it down to L Sprague DeCamp.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Mantra of resistance
[info]james_nicoll
2009-06-01 06:45 pm UTC (link)
idonthavetimeidonthavetimeidonthavetimeidonthavetimeidonthavetimeidonthavetime

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Re: Mantra of resistance
[info]slrose
2009-06-01 07:00 pm UTC (link)
You definitely don't have time. I counted 300 authors -- and that was just as far as Heinlein.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Mantra of resistance
[info]twoeleven
2009-06-01 08:38 pm UTC (link)
My friend grep -c tells me the list has 726 authors and 3742 works.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Mantra of resistance
[info]kd5mdk
2009-06-02 02:52 am UTC (link)
I especially like the arcane coding listed to the left of each work and not defined either at the top or bottom.
HNom and NNom I can deduce are Hugo Nominated and Nebula Nominated and the 4 digit number is presumably the year of publication, but WTF does
Ackroyd, Peter
[k,Pf] n 1985 Hawksmoor

mean? This approximates the epitome of newbie-hostile fandom.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Mantra of resistance
[info]twoeleven
2009-06-02 03:42 am UTC (link)
I have no idea about the bracketed letters, but the letters just before the date appear to be code for the length of the work. At a guess: s - short story, nt - novelette, nv - novella, n - novel, a - anthology. There are some I can't decipher.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: Mantra of resistance
[info]ravenskyewalker
2009-06-01 09:22 pm UTC (link)
No, you don't! And neither do I! LOL

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: Mantra of resistance
[info]martin_wisse
2009-06-02 09:55 am UTC (link)
Go on....

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[info]derekl1963
2009-06-01 07:02 pm UTC (link)
A list that large isn't a list of 'core' anything.

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[info]fridgepunk
2009-06-01 07:13 pm UTC (link)
It doesn't list "goodbye, and thanks for all the fish"! Or "The long dark tea-time of the soul"! And then asserts that "restaurant at the end of the universe" is less good than the first book!

That's a really really CRAP list.

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[info]agrumer
2009-06-01 07:42 pm UTC (link)
Aka list of every SF/F book that a member of NESFA has ever liked.

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[info]mishalak
2009-06-02 04:23 am UTC (link)
Beat me too it.

It is about as useful a list as if I pointed to my library and said, "This is authoritative."

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]icecreamempress
2009-06-01 08:06 pm UTC (link)
A considerable number of books have come out since them

I refuse to believe this, because Isaac Asimov died in 1992.

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[info]icecreamempress
2009-06-01 08:07 pm UTC (link)
Note: I had meant to put faux-html around that indicating I was turning on the NESFA-member code, but LJ was too wily for me.

Note: I am not a member of NESFA.

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[info]ross_teneyck
2009-06-01 08:27 pm UTC (link)
You have to trick LJ by escaping the angle brackets; if you type this:

<foo>Blah blah blah</foo>

then LJ will render it as

<foo>Blah blah blah</foo>

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[info]wdstarr
2009-06-01 10:25 pm UTC (link)
Okay, now how did you just get LJ to not angle-bracketize things in the second of those four lines?

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ceci n'est pas une &
[info]twoeleven
2009-06-01 10:45 pm UTC (link)
It is a picture of an ampersand. Where you see "&" on screen, he wrote &amp;, which is displayed in your browser as an ampersand. So, your browser writes a picture of an ampersand, followed by "lt;".

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