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''Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1949-1984'' is a nonfiction book by David Pringle, published by Xanadu in 1985 with a foreword by Michael Moorcock. Primarily, the book comprises 100 short essays on the selected works, covered in order of publication, without any ranking. It is considered an important critical summary of the science fiction field.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Lists )〕〔 (【引用サイトリンク】 ''Science Fiction ...'': Editorial Reviews: From ''Library Journal'' )〕〔 〕 Pringle followed ''Science Fiction'' with ''Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels'' (1988). Xanadu followed ''Science Fiction'' with at least three more "100 Best" books (below). ==Scope== In the introduction Pringle offers the working definition, "Science fiction is a form of fantastic fiction which exploits the imaginative perspectives of modern science." In turn, modern science is the "scientific world-view ... as it has come to be accepted by the intelligent layperson", which arguably "first became common property in the mid to late 19th century."〔''Science Fiction'', 9.〕 Within fantastic fiction he distinguishes science fiction from "Supernatural Horror" and "Heroic Fantasy". They may be represented by ''Dracula'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'', featuring "the irruption of some supernatural force into the everyday world" and "set in completely imaginary worlds" respectively. He also names the subclass "Fabulations", which do not belong in this book "unless they have a significant scientific or technological content".〔''Science Fiction'', 11, 16.〕〔Example fabulations are Brian Aldiss, ''The Malacia Tapestry'' (1976) and John Crowley, ''Little, Big'' (1981). Pringle's subsequent book ''Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels'' (1988) covers both of those works and its introduction adds the "Fabulation" category more formally. Briefly, in a fabulation the real world setting is distorted "in ways other than the supernaturally horrific" (''Modern Fantasy'', 19).〕 In contrast, science fiction has a real world setting and "fantastic developments which are explicable in terms of the scientific world-view." World-view does not mean accepted theory or fact: "many sf writers cheat: they use sleight-of-hand rather than genuine scientific knowledge." "The skilful use of pseudo-science and gobbledygook" may be good enough to exploit the world-view.〔''Science Fiction'', 11–12.〕 The time period covered is approximately that for science fiction as a category of book publication, although the selected books were not all published in that category.〔''Science Fiction'', 14.〕 Pringle admits that fewer than thirty selections may generously be called even "masterpieces ''of their sort''". On the whole,〔''Science Fiction'', 15.〕 Some of them are old favourites of my own ... Some are other people's favourites, novels which have been outstandingly popular or influential, or which seem to be especially good representatives of their type. A small minority, perhaps as many as ten, are books for which I have little or no personal enthusiasm: they have been included for the sake of balance and variety. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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