Round the List

Phantastes/ George MacDonald (1858) Journey to the Centre of the Earth/ Jules Verne (1864) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/ Lewis Carroll (1865) Flatland/ Edwin Abbott Abbott (1884) The Time Machine/ HG Wells (1895) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz/ L Frank Baum (1900) Voyage to Arcturus/ David Lindsay (1920) We/ Yevgeny Zamyatin (1921) The Worm Ouroboros/ ER Eddison (1922) The King of Elfland's Daughter/ Lord Dunsany (1924) Lud-in-the-Mist/ Hope Mirrlees (1926) Last & First Men/ Olaf Stapledon (1930) Brave New World/ Aldous Huxley (1932) The Circus of Dr. Lao/ Charles G Finney (1935) The Foundation Series/ Isaac Asimov (1942-93) The Gormenghast Trilogy/ Mervyn Peake (1946-59) Nineteen Eighty-Four/ George Orwell (1949) Earth Abides/ George R Stewart (1949) Conan the Conqueror/ Robert E Howard (1950) The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe/ CS Lewis (1950) Cities in Flight/ James Blish (1950-62) The Dying Earth/ Jack Vance (1950-84) The Day of the Triffid...

What is the point of b-sides? In this day and age, when albums are cannibalised for individual track downloads and playlists chopped and changed on streaming services, probably not much. But back in the hoary old 20th century artists were obliged to fill both sides of a small disc of vinyl, and this created both a problem and an opportunity. What exactly should go on the b-side of a high profile young band's latest potential hit? If you were a group with talent and creativity to spare, like the Beatles, you just whacked out a double aa side where both songs just so happened to be stone cold masterpieces (Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane) but instances where musical genius and commercial viability neatly dovetail prove few and far between. For a lot of artists the b-side was a mere dumping ground for silly doodles or half-hearted cover versions. But artists with a bit of vision and ability could plonk more experimental, less chart friendly work on the vinyl's flip...

She is the biggest selling novelist of all time; only beaten in total by the Bard and the Bible. Her literary style is a byword for veronal in the brandy glass, bodies in the library and grandstanding revelations in country house drawing rooms. She is the creator of Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Captain Hastings, Inspector Japp, Superintendant Battle, Ariadne Oliver and countless other sleuths, spies, sidekicks and stooges. She is reknowned for the intricacy of her plotting, the subtlety of her clues, the power of her misdirection. She is, quite simply, the Queen of Crime. But is Agatha Christie actually any good? The American critic and novelist Edmund Wilson certainly didn't think so. His diatribe 'Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?' was echoed by Raymond Chandler, purveyor of hard-boiled gumshoe fables and by latter day literary favourites like John Banville. They decry the wooden prose, the stock characters, the relentless formula,...