…especially coming after the Science
Fiction Book Club’s fifty most significant science fiction and fantasy
books of the last fifty years. I received e-mail from Borders Books
saying that they now had a web page listing
essential science fiction and
fantasy books–and here’s their complete list:

• Wizard’s First Rule, by Terry Goodkind
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
• Dune, by Frank Herbert
• The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan
• The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
• Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
• A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Leguin
• Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

Now, I can’t deny the quality of most of these. I think
Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series has degenerated into
pointlessness, and I have doubts about
Terry Goodkind, as no one has ever recommended his stuff (her
stuff?) to me. But why only nine? And why these nine in particular?
Why The Hobbit, rather than The Lord of the Rings?

And therein lies the answer–every one of the books listed above, except
for poor, lonely Fahrenheit 451, is the first in a series.