The Meme History of Genre

Even if John Klima didn't do my last meme, I still owe him a good dozen-or-so, and thus I'll do one of his. I tried not to look at his list before doing mine, but I'll go back afterward and see where we agree.

Instructions: Starting with 1890, list one book from each decade that you think represents the genre and the way it's moved from then to now.

I tried to pick the most influential and important book I could think of from each decade, rather than the one I liked the best, but that wasn't part of John's instructions; if this does attain meme status, I could see people doing it either way.

Decade	Year	Title	Author
1890s	1898	The War of the Worlds	H.G. Wells
1900s	1908	The House on the Borderland	William Hope Hodgson
1910s	1912	A Princess of Mars	Edgar Rice Burroughs
1920s	1928	"The Call of Cthulhu"	H.P. Lovecraft
1930s	1932	Brave New World	Aldous Huxley
1940s	1948	Nineteen Eighty-Four	George Orwell
1950s	1950	The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury
1960s	1961	Stranger in a Strange Land	Robert A. Heinlein
1970s	1973	Rendezvous With Rama	Arthur C. Clarke
1980s	1985	Neuromancer	William Gibson
1990s	1996	Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone	J.K. Rowling
2000s	2001	Perdido Street Station	China Mieville

(I will note that I used the Ultimate Science Fiction Timeline to refresh my memory of what was when, and to keep from forgetting everything.)

I seem to have created an almost entirely science fictional list; that wasn't my intention, but it's the way things looked to me while I was doing the list. (I'm sure some of these would be different if I did it again tomorrow, though.)

Checking John's list, I see that we agreed on The House on the Borderlands and Neuromancer, but not otherwise. That's about par for the course.