Man, that's an apples-and-oranges list! And I ended up voting for Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh. It should have been Cyteen, but they didn't have that, and I'm damned if I'm going to vote for the Foreigner series. It's popular and it's not bad ... but it's not her greatest work.
And much as I loved the two volumes of Jemisin's that I've read so far, I am not going to vote for the whole trilogy when the last volume isn't even out yet!
I know! And I agree with one of the comments that wondered why Jack Vance didn't make the list. The Dying Earth was such an influential book it seems odd.
And then there's the problem of trying to decide on the canon vs. individual books - I feel that Terry Pratchett's canon is one of the best of all time, but individual books less so.
Or the problem of books that are influential but not necessarily that good - much as I like Neal Stephenson's early works, they tend to suffer from being very good for about 5/6 of the way, and then Stephenson realizing he needs to finish and winding up any old how. I ended up not voting for any of his books, although if they'd been discussing best/influential authors I'd have voted for him.
I like how The Valdemar series is listed in place and The Last Herald-Mage series is another. WOOO, your expert panel bites, people. Also? There's a lot of tripe in there. (The Black Jewels series nominated? Seriously? That... isn't something I'd want on a list that some parent would look at and think: hey, it's about a little girl! My daughter will love this! There are unicrons and stuff!
I think a lot of the original nominators went for "my favorite books" instead of "the best books." There seems to be a lot of that sort of confusion out there.
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Man, that's an apples-and-oranges list! And I ended up voting for Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh. It should have been Cyteen, but they didn't have that, and I'm damned if I'm going to vote for the Foreigner series. It's popular and it's not bad ... but it's not her greatest work.
And much as I loved the two volumes of Jemisin's that I've read so far, I am not going to vote for the whole trilogy when the last volume isn't even out yet!
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And then there's the problem of trying to decide on the canon vs. individual books - I feel that Terry Pratchett's canon is one of the best of all time, but individual books less so.
Or the problem of books that are influential but not necessarily that good - much as I like Neal Stephenson's early works, they tend to suffer from being very good for about 5/6 of the way, and then Stephenson realizing he needs to finish and winding up any old how. I ended up not voting for any of his books, although if they'd been discussing best/influential authors I'd have voted for him.
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