When the science fiction community isn't involved in lengthy soul-searching over the Jonathan Ross fiasco – there's a sentence I never expected to type – its most assiduous members are currently reading up on novels first published in 1938, in order to vote on the 1939 Retro-Hugos. The Hugos are, arguably, science fiction's most prestigious prizes; every now and then, organisers of the World Science Fiction Convention also gives out retrospective awards for years when no awards were given.This time, they're going back 75 years, to 1939.

I'm not a member, so can't vote. But my money is on TH White's The Sword in the Stone for best novel– a stand-out childhood read. I vividly remember my confusion at trying to understand how Merlyn – "close inspection showed that he was far from clean" – could possibly live life backwards, and my delight at White's humour as he told of the childhood of the Wart, bedevilled by the obnoxious Kay. Also – and I can't believe any reader wouldn't feel the same – how much I wanted to join the Wart as a hawk.

Merlyn's owl, Archimedes, was my most desired possession for some time ("perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come and easy-go"). And I understood how the Wart felt, about how grown-ups speak to children.

"He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas."

I suspect, as a child, I was reacting to a novel which is far more sophisticated than I remember it being, in a similar way.

I'm surprised to find I've also read a couple of other books on the list : CS Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet, and, quite randomly, because my grandparents had a copy and because I'd loved The Wizard of Oz, Ruth Plumly Thomson's The Silver Princess in Oz. The Hobbit, first published in 1937, just misses out on making the line-up, which also includes an intriguing-sounding novel from a writer I'm a big fan of, Towers in the Mist by Elizabeth Goudge.

I'm less tempted by Dorothy Quick's Strange Awakening, in which the author "offers us a young woman kidnapped from Earth by the ruler of Venus (the Great Mind)", writes Claire Brialey in LonCon's Retro-Hugos briefing; it's " been described as an erotic fantastic adventure novel", she says. Hmm. Ditto August Anson's When Women Reign, a novel "depicting the misfortunes that might be observed in future centuries when such unnatural social conditions apply". God help us all.

How about The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune – a pseudonym, apparently, for a prominent British occultist of the time, writes Brialey, which "was arguably intended at least partly as a teaching guide to practical ritual"? And I like the sound of Josephine Young Case's At Midnight on the 31st of March, which "describes how a village in New England finds itself alone in an apparently uninhabited America", and is "an early exploration of themes which continue to engage not only science fiction but many of the other stories that we tell about humanity".

I think I'm going to have to track some of these titles down, if only for the strange and wonderful covers they display (Tarzan in the Forbidden City looks remarkably and bizarrely Grecian, as a lion nibbles his shoulder). But then I'm a sucker for vintage SF. The shortlist is set to be announced at the same time as the 2014 Hugos, on Easter Saturday, so we can let you know then what has been voted on. In the meantime – any other TH White fans out there? And anyone read anything else on this list they'd recommend? I'm off to dig out my copy of White's continuation of The Sword in the Stone, The Once and Future King, meanwhile …