Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

The editors of SF&HF have announced their list of the top 10 Most Imaginative Science Fiction & Fantasy books of all time:


  The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorn Abendsen


  The Hive Queen and The Hegemon by Speaker for the Dead


  Travels of Jan Farstrider by Jan Farstrider


  Fillory and Further by Christopher Plover


  The Collected Pan-Galactic Stories by Kilgore Trout


  The Complete Poems of William Ashbless by William Ashbless


  A Nighttime Smoke by D. Oswald Heist


  Don't Go out Alone by Simone Kimberly


  In Principio by Ariane Emory


  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by various

I've read only half of the books in which these appear, but that's a nice list.

I've only read one. *hangs head

Never heard of them save for the last.

*cough*
The Red Book of Westmarch!?

The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky: Being a Collection from Printed Sources of Universal Secrets of Such Age That Their Meaning Has Become Obscured of Time?

For those interested in the sources for these Imaginary titles:


The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorn Abendsen is the key alternate reality novel from P K Dick's The Man in the High Castle, one of our Classic SF Novel discussions from 2013. (In Netflix's adaptation it's been turned into a cult movie.)

The Hive Queen and The Hegemon is from Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead & Xenocide, the account of the war in Ender's Game written by Ender Wiggin under the pseudonym Speaker for the Dead. (One of our Classic SF Novel discussions from 2013.)

Travels of Jan Farstrider is a travelogue referenced often in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. (A Memory of Light was a discussion subject after its release.)

Fillory and Further by Christopher Plover is a novel that drives much of Lev Grossman's The Magicians series, a series of children's books about the imaginary land of Fillory.

Kilgore Trout is a fictional scifi author appearing in a number of Kurt Vonnegut's novels (the name is a play on Theodore Sturgeon; both are named after fish, get it?) The "Pan-Galactic" stories are from Breakfast of Champions, although Trout also appears in Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. (Farmer even published a novel using Trout as a psuedonym: Venus on the Half-Shell.)

William Ashbless is a fictional Victorian era poet appearing in novels of Tim Powers, and a primary driver of The Anubis Gates, (one of our Classic Science Fiction novel discussions from 2013.)

A Nighttime Smoke by D. Oswald Heist is a pulp interspecies romance novel which is an inspiration to the starcrossed lovers in Brian K. Vaughan's scifi graphic novel Saga.

Don't Go out Alone by Simone Kimberly is a horror novel often mentioned in Mira Grant's SF/Horror novel Parasite (one of our Contemporary SF novel discussions from 2014.)

In Principio is the magum opus of Ariane Emory concerning genetics & conditioning in CJ Cherryh's Cyteen (one of our Classic SF Novel Discussions from 2014.)

And lastly, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the titular eBook with large, friendly letters on the cover that drives Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (Yes, another of our Classic SF Discussions from 2014.)

no Necronomicon by Abdul Alhazred? (sorry, I slaughtered the spelling)

Lovecraft would be soooo disappointed...