Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Forums

• Trillion Year Spree - Aldiss (1986) - a wonderful history/critical SF standard, albeit somewhat dated by now.
• The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of - Disch (1998) - a more recent history/critical SF work - shorter and less systematic.  Disch is nothing if not acerbically opinionated - sometimes entertainingly so, sometimes appallingly so, but it's compelling stuff.
• Imaginary Worlds - Carter (1973) - an enthusiastic history of classic fantasy by the editor of the famed Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.
• What Makes This Book So Great - Walton (2014) - passionate and entertaining - your read (or reread) list will grow astoundingly after reading this.
• James Tiptree, Jr.:  The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon - Phillips (2006) - a wonderful and insightful biography.

I have added it for you. If there are more requests please put them in this thread: Can't find the book you want? Make your book requests here! Part II

I'm much more likely to see it then.

I'm running this challenge again this year - the fact that last year  I wasn't the only person willing to spend their precious reading time in order to learn more about the field was heartening - hopefully there'll be a few more people joining me this year!

I had excellent luck with my reading last year, highlighted by the outstanding The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series .  Hopefully 2017 will be even better!

Engelbrecht, we should discuss creating a new genre nonfiction list for the site to complement your reading challenge and make it easier for folks to see what we have in the database.  A new list will also generate a bunch of requests for new non-fic books to be added too.

That's a great idea!

We do have partial functionality towards this in that people can view books published by year, filtered by Non-Fiction (here 's 2016).  I can't remember if adding a multi-year selection criterion for this feature is in the works, but that would be a helpful addition.

A full-fledged list would be even better though!

Figuring out what to include would be the hard/fun part...

I suppose that for starters, the Pringle/Moorcock/Broderick & Di Filippo list books would be a must.  After that, other types of non-fiction could be represented as well:

• Lists - The above, plus possibly add Jones & Newman's Horror: 100 Best Books as well as Andrews & Rennison's 100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels & 100 Must-Read Fantasy Novels?
• History, Criticism & Critical Analysis - Aldiss' Trillion Year Spree is a classic standard.  Lots & lots to choose from here - it might be hard to know where to stop
• Essay Collections - I'm not familiar with any that seem strikingly compelling, or "canon".  I do like Orwell's essays, and Swanwick's Postmodern Archipelago deserves to be canon, but it's somewhat obscure.
• Review Collections - perhaps Budrys' Benchmarks series - dated, but important.  I guess that Walton's What Makes This Book So Great fits in here.  Clute's review collections SHOULD be represented, but to me, they're a bit too inaccessible to include.  There are various others that might be included.
  
• Biographies/Autobiographies - Phillips' James Tiptree, Jr.:  The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon for sure.  Again, lots of possibilities - Tolkien books alone will fill several bookshelves!
• Interviews - Possibly Platt's Dream Makers books.
• Correspondence - Another category where I'm not familiar with anything canonical.
• Art - Should we include this?  If so, perhaps something like Hammond & Scull's J. R. R. Tolkien:  Artist and Illustrator.
• Topics - Feminist, LGBTQ, Mythology, Children's Lit, etc. - Perhaps Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing & Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces for starters. Have a book on genre movies?
  

I've read around 60 non-fiction genre books, but there are hundreds & hundreds of others I've not read or am not familiar with, so I know I still have huge gaps to fill - hopefully others can chime in with some worthy additions.