starexplorer wrote:

Ok, I went through this. Of course making any such list is a losing battle, and people are going to be irritated by some of the choices. I was.
What I want in any such project is to understand the process. Is this someone’s personal back-of-the-envelope opinion? Have they read everything on the list personally or did they solicit opinions? How did they decide what qualified as science fiction? What does “best” mean? Most enjoyable to read? Influential?

Off the top of my head, as much as I love Huxley, Brave New World is not one of my favorites of his, although it’s highly influential. Same with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The film versions of Dick’s work were often more enjoyable than his written work, despite his creative and paranoid genius. 

Parenthetically, The NY Times recently came out with their “top 100 books of the new millennium”, and whatever else you might say, they explained that 100s of writers were surveyed, you can examine the lists of various writers whose opinions went into the making of the list, etc. I found that much less annoying.

One way to proceed, as a group exercise, might be to take the selections and discuss their inclusion and placement. We’d need to undertake the same process I described. For instance, Frankenstein is #1. Is it science fiction? (Maybe) Does it belong atop the list?

As much as I often recoil at these lists, they do tend to be the raw material for discussion or dismay!

I agree with many of your points here (particularly about the process and the meaning of 'best' in this context), Star, and I'd be happy to be part of such a group discussion.