Daily Archives: December 9, 2025

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 SF Books (Special Mention: Classic) – Preamble & Preview

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“As president, I would demand a science fiction library featuring an ABC of the overlords of the genre – Asimov, Bester, Clarke”. “What about Ray Bradbury?” (Dismissively) “I’m aware of his work.” (Martin Prince running for class president in The Simpsons, “Lisa’s Substitute”, Season 2 Episode 19)

 

 

TOP 10 SF BOOKS

(SPECIAL MENTION: CLASSIC)

 

I’ve ranked my Top 10 SF Books, but science fiction is too prolific – and phantasmagorical – a genre to be confined to a mere top ten books or even my usual list of special mentions.

Instead, as I do for fantasy books, I have two lists of special mentions – one classic and the other cult and pulp.

This is obviously the former – for those classic SF books or works that have iconic status or recognition within popular culture and imagination, albeit perhaps less so (or more niche) than their fantasy counterparts.

Top Tens – Heroes & Villains: Top 10 Villains of Mythology (Special Mention) – Preamble & Preview

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The villainous bottom part of Raphael’s 1506 painting St George and the Dragon, featuring the dragon of course – boo!

 

 

TOP 10 VILLAINS OF MYTHOLOGY (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

Few things are as fundamental to mythology as heroes, but what often distinguishes mythic heroes is the depravity and destructive power of their antagonists, the villains of mythology.

I’ve counted down my Top 10 Villains of Mythology but there’s more than enough mythic villains and villainy for my usual twenty special mentions per top ten, given all the various villains of all the various mythologies.

Just a reminder of my criteria of villainy from my Top 10 Villains of Mythology – firstly, there’s the scale of how villainous they are in their moral character or ethos, and secondly, there’s the scale of how powerful they are, ranging up to villains capable of damning or destroying the world.

Finally, iconic status – and above all my idiosyncratic preference – tends to trump all, although of course iconic status is usually gained from other criteria in the first place, with the most evil and destructive villains being most iconic in popular culture or imagination. However, iconic status is qualified by my greater familiarity with European or Western mythologies, which might overshadow iconic status within non-Western mythologies.