The Best SFF Book Titles

Following on from my previous posts about SFF Novels with the Best Opening Lines and on Crafting Great Book Titles, the latter based on some recent posts by Mike Flynn, below we look at some favorite titles using Flynn's posts as a jumping off point.

In Mike Flynn's Entitlement Part II he asks 9 authors to list their favorite titles, both of their own books and other writings, and of the writings by others.

Their own books and writings:

1. Michael Swanwick
1. “Mother Grasshopper”
2. “‘Hello,’ Said the Stick”
2. Geoffrey Landis “Sultan of the Clouds”
3. Juliette Wade “Cold Words”
4. Ed Lerner “Dangling Conversations”
5. Bill Gleason “Into That Good Night”
6. Harry Turtledove
1. In the Presence of Mine Enemies
2. The Man With the Iron Heart
3. “Lee at the Alamo”
7. Jack McDevitt
1. The Engines of God.
2. Time Travelers Never Die
8. Nancy Kress
1. “Out of All Them Bright Stars”
2. “The Price of Oranges”
9. John Wright
1. Null-A Continuum
2. Last Guardian of Everness
3. “One Bright Star to Guide Them.”

Other author's books and stories:

1. Michael Swanwick
1. Terry Bisson’s “Bears Discover Fire”
2. Geoffrey Landis
1. Roger Zelazny Creatures of Light and Darkness
3. Juliette Wade
1. Michael Flynn “Where the Winds are All Asleep”
2. Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness
4. Ed Lerner
1. Vernor Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep
2. Vernor Vinge A Deepness in the Sky
5. Harry Turtledove
1. For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway)
2. Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)
3. Lest Darkness Fall (deCamp)
6. Jack McDevitt
1. Glory Road (Heinlein)
2. “Out of All Them Bright Stars” (Kress)
7. John Wright
1. The Dying Earth (Jack Vance)
2. Well at the World’s End (William Morris)
8. Mike Flynn
1. As the Wolf Loves Winter, by David Poyer
2. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, by Lawrence Block. 
3. Cordwainer Smith “The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All"
4. Harlan Ellison "‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman"
5. R.A. Lafferty “The Groaning Hinges of the World”

There are some excellent examples above. I especially like Vernor Vinge's titles.

To these I would add:

1. Alfred Bester The Stars My Destination
2. Robert A. Heinlein Have Spacesuit, Will Travel
3. C.S. Lewis Out of the Silent Planet
4. Robert A. Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

What else am I missing?

In John C. Wright's blog post referencing Flynn, he also asks and answers the following question:

Which science fiction or fantasy title was the biggest turkey you ever heard tell of?

Titles are supposed to be evocative. The title is supposed to be a hint of magic to lure the reader in, to set the viewer wondering. For my money, the two most evocative titles ever penned are: WELL AT THE WORLD’S END. I don’t think any book can live up to the eerie sense of awe that title evokes.

The second: THE DARK IS RISING.

You see, the title THE DARK IS RISING sounds so much more unchancy and supernal than, say, a book titled THE NAZIS ARE INVADING or THE NORSEMEN RAID or MARS ATTACKS or even THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. There is something unspeakable and unnamed in the Dark, so that way before you know what or who it is, you sure don’t want your lifetime to be the time of the rise. You do not want to peer out the window over the snow and see the lampposts being extinguished one by one quite silently, or the stars.

Harlan Ellison once wrote an essay on evocative titles — my memory cannot dredge up the title or the year — where he proposed a great title would be something like THE OTHER EYE OF POLYPHEMUS. He liked the title so much he promised in the essay to write a short story with that title (a promise he has since kept). But he contrasted this with the lest evocative title he could invent: THE JOURNEY.

It tells you it is a story about someone going somewhere.

Harlan Ellison then confesses that coming up with a title as bland and meaningless as THE JOURNEY was difficult. It had taken him hours and driven him to the bottle and caused him to sweat drops like blood. It takes true anti-genius to be able to invent a title so unimaginably unmeaningful.

Well, someone matched that genius, or at least came close. When Hollywood made THE DARK IS RISING into a film, they changed the title to THE SEEKER.

It tells you it is a story about someone looking for something. Or playing quidditch.

I defy anyone, even a mad genius like Harlan Ellison, to come up with a title even more bland, unappealing, uninformative, unevocative, unmagnificent, unmagical.

THE SEEKER! A guy looking for something!

To take the most evocative title in fantasy-dom and turn it into the least is noteworthy, if not awe inspiring, for the same reason seeing corpses of cows spilled out of a train wreck of cattle cars and flung across bundles of smashed and burning freight is noteworthy.