The 100 Essential SF Writers
Lawrence Person
authors in science fiction are. Conscious of my duty as a trend-setter and
role-model to the young, I decided to compile a list of 100 Essential Science
Fiction Authors.
The criteria: The must have written at least some science fiction (or at least
what some people have called science fiction), and their work must have
influenced the field in some way. J. R. R. Tolkein fits the second definition,
but not the first, while Jack London and Rudyard Kipling meet the first
criteria, but not really the second. Also, the works on this list should still
be relevant to readers today, which is why people like Sir Thomas Moore aren't
on here.
Where a writer is influential for a single work, that work is listed beside
their name.
These are arranged in rough chronological order (i.e., I didn't feel like
spending the time and effort to research when their first sales were for a
Usenet post). Where
Are these truly the 100 Essential SF writers? Why yes. I am, of course,
infallible.
THE LIST
Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)
Edgar Allen Poe
Mark Twain
Jules Verne
H. G. Wells
Arthur Conan Doyle
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
Olaf Stapledon
Stanley G. Weinbaum
H. P. Lovecraft
Clark Ashton Smith
Jack Williamson
C. S. Lewis
A. E. van Vogt
Isaac Asimov
Arthur C. Clarke
Robert A. Heinlein
Ray Bradbury
George Orwell (1984)
Frederik Pohl
C. M. Kornbluth
Fritz Leiber
Theodore Sturgeon
Henry Kuttner
C. L. Moore
Jack Vance
Hal Clement
L. Sprague de Camp
Andre Norton
Lester Del Rey
James Blish
Alfred Bester
Brian Aldiss
Richard Matheson
Harlan Ellison
Poul Anderson
Robert Silverberg
Damon Knight
Kate Wilhelm
Cordwainer Smith
Avram Davidson
Philip Jose Farmer
Clifford D. Simak
Philip K. Dick
John Wyndham
Edgar Pangborn
Kurt Vonnegut
Roger Zelazny
Samuel R. Delany
John Brunner
Michael Moorcock
J. G. Ballard
Brian Stableford
Frank Herbert (Dune)
Thomas Disch
Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
Walter M. Miller (A Canticle for Leibowitz)
R. A. Lafferty
Ursula K. Le Guin
Joe Haldeman
Larry Niven
Gene Wolfe
George R. R. Martin
Howard Waldrop
George Alec Effinger
Gardner Dozois
Stephen King
Gregory Benford
Joanna Russ
Michael Bishop
Vonda N. McIntyre
James Tiptree, Jr.
Greg Bear
Tim Powers
Octavia Butler
Orson Scott Card
Douglas Adams
David Brin
C. J. Cherryh
John Crowley
Bruce Sterling
William Gibson
Michael Swanwick
Kim Stanley Robinson
Lucius Shepard
Connie Willis
Walter Jon Williams
Iain Banks
Pat Cadigan
Dan Simmons
Lois McMaster Bujold
Joan D. Vinge
Vernor Vinge
Greg Egan
Stephen Baxter
Neal Stephenson
Ken MacLeod
Mary Doria Russell
Ted Chiang
Just missed making the list:
A. A. Merritt
Murray Lenister
William Tenn
Frederic Brown
Chad Oliver
Gordon R. Dickson
Keith Roberts
Robert Sheckley
Harry Harrison
Barry Malzberg
Two influential writers who may or may not write science fiction, depending on
your definition:
William S. Burroughs
Thomas Pynchon
Still active writers who might make it in the future:
M. John Harrison
Mike Resnick
Nancy Kress
Jack McDevitt
John Kessel
James Patrick Kelley
Ian McDonald
Paul J. McAuley
And, of course, swarms of Young Promising Things.
Others besides Tolkein who would have made the list if I had included pure
fantasy or horror writers:
Bram Stoker (Dracula)
Ernest Bramah
E. E. Eddison
Robert E. Howard
Robert Bloch
Shirley Jackson
William Peter Blatty (The Exorcist)
Barry Hughart
Neil Gaiman
Two women who wrote really popular fantasy disguised as science fiction but
nothing else of note in SF and who I have left off the list because there wasn't
room and/or out of sheer spite because I'm just plain evil:
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Anne McCaffrey
Now, go forth and read the best work(s) of every one of the writers on this
list, and you'll be pretty well versed in science fiction. ;-)
--
Lawrence Person lawre...@hiho.com (remove all "h"s from my e-mail address)
Web Page: www.io.com/~lawrence
Lame Excuse Books, Science Fiction First Editions: www.io.com/~lawrence/lame
Jeff Suzuki
> A few recent threads got me thinking, yet again, of just who the "canonical"
> authors in science fiction are. Conscious of my duty as a trend-setter and
> role-model to the young, I decided to compile a list of 100 Essential Science
> Fiction Authors.
I would argue that Twain doesn't really qualify as an SF author, and neither
do Orwell or Lewis. This does not mean that they weren't influential, but
rather, they were not science fiction writers.
At the same time, I'd argue for the inclusion of E. E. Smith and John
Campbell.
Jeffs
Fred Galvin
> The criteria: The must have written at least some science fiction
> (or at least what some people have called science fiction), and
> their work must have influenced the field in some way. J. R. R.
> Tolkein fits the second definition, but not the first, while Jack
> London and Rudyard Kipling meet the first criteria, but not really
> the second. Also, the works on this list should still be relevant to
> readers today, which is why people like Sir Thomas Moore aren't on
> here.
>
> [...]
>
> Others besides Tolkein who would have made the list if I had
> included pure fantasy or horror writers:
>
> Bram Stoker (Dracula)
> Ernest Bramah
> E. E. Eddison
> Robert E. Howard
> Robert Bloch
> Shirley Jackson
> William Peter Blatty (The Exorcist)
> Barry Hughart
> Neil Gaiman
Surely Robert Bloch meets your criterion of having written "at least
some science fiction"?
Medievalbk
If for nothing else, as an essential role model for later SF authors.
William Taylor
Ryan Costello
author ever (including Gibson).
"Lawrence Person" <lawr...@io.com> wrote in message
news:lawrence-823409...@central.isp.giganews.com...
> A few recent threads got me thinking, yet again, of just who the
"canonical"
> authors in science fiction are. Conscious of my duty as a trend-setter and
> role-model to the young, I decided to compile a list of 100 Essential
Science
David Bilek
>I really think Robert Sawyer should be on this list, the best Canadian SF
>author ever (including Gibson).
>
Robert Sawyer on the 100 Essential SF Writers list? Are you mad?
He's not even the best Canadian SF author ever. Maybe not top 3!
-David
Steve Taylor
> I really think Robert Sawyer should be on this list, the best Canadian SF
> author ever (including Gibson).
I read a couple of chapters of _Starplex_ once. Were his later books
substantially better?
Steve
Michael Sumbera
handy, I'd do it for you.
In article <urh98qd...@corp.supernews.com>, Ryan Costello
James J. Walton
Yes, he is getting better. No, they are not great.
I don't understand why his books keep winding up on the Hugo ballot.
David Bilek
Blame Canada.
-David
Mark Reichert
> infallible.
Right. Please explain to me why John Varley isn't on *any* of the lists presented.
Jack Love
>H. Beam Piper should be on the list.
>
>If for nothing else, as an essential role model for later SF authors.
/black humor alert/ No I'd really rather he wasn't a model. Though I
certainly liked everything he wrote.
>William Taylor
Neil Burton
"Lawrence Person" <lawr...@io.com> wrote in message
news:lawrence-823409...@central.isp.giganews.com...
"canonical"
> authors in science fiction are. Conscious of my duty as a trend-setter and
> role-model to the young, I decided to compile a list of 100 Essential
Science
> Fiction Authors.
How annoying would I be if complained that none of these lists ever seem to
get Iain M. Banks' name right? :)
By the by, first post. Interesting group.
Neil B
Nancy Lebovitz
Lawrence Person <lawr...@io.com> wrote:
>
>Are these truly the 100 Essential SF writers? Why yes. I am, of course,
>infallible.
>
that important as a writer? He's good, but I wouldn't say that he's
major, and his important contribution to the field is as an editor.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com 100 new slogans
I want to move to theory. Everything works in theory.
Ron Henry
> Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)
> Edgar Allen Poe
> Mark Twain
Debatable whether they can really be considered "sf". "Pre-sf" or "made
sf possible" perhaps. Same with Conan Doyle.
Orwell and Huxley I'd classify as political writers whose
allegory/satires spilled over into sf, but not sf writers themselves.
> Gardner Dozois
As an editor, he is crucial, but as a writer?
> Stephen King
Not in the top 100 writers of _sf_, as I understand it. (I tend not to
include horror, and I think his early sf/fantasy stuff is not enough to
make him essential to the field.)
> Mary Doria Russell
> Ted Chiang
It might be a little soon to include these two on a 100 Essential list,
good as they are. If they hold their quality for another decade,
perhaps. And the more I think about Russell's books (having read them a
year and two years ago) the more problems I have with them, both in
terms of their "message" and as sf (i.e., are they really, or are they
religious allegory in sf drag).
> Gordon R. Dickson
> Keith Roberts
> Harry Harrison
> Barry Malzberg
I would have included these four, though it's been a long time since
I've read any of them.
> Two influential writers who may or may not write science fiction,
depending on
> your definition:
> William S. Burroughs
> Thomas Pynchon
Eh. Not sf. Lots of other literary novelists like David Foster Wallace,
Don Delillo, John Barth, Paul Auster, Steve Erickson, Richard Powers,
and maybe parts of William Vollmann verge of sf similarly, but also miss
making the sf rubric (imho). Don't get me wrong, I love these novelists'
work, but it's not exactly sf.
I would, however, include _Christopher Priest_ in the sf Essential 100,
no matter how his books have been getting marketed. A must. I'm really
looking forward to reading his new novel.
Probably Johathan Lethem, too. (Again, despite how he is marketed.)
> Still active writers who might make it in the future:
> Ian McDonald
> Paul J. McAuley
I think these two are already essential as well, actually. McAuley has
impressed me with the range of his novels, always doing something
different and interesting, and I admire McDonald more and more with each
book (and with each old book I dig up in a used bookstore -- recently
read _Scissor Cut Paper Wrap Stone_ -- wonderful book.
Other _definite_ adds to the essential 100:
John Varley
Jack Womack
William Barton
Robert Charles Wilson
Some who will make the essential list if they keep on their current
trajectory:
China Mieville
Maureen McHugh (Mieville and McHugh are arguably ready for the essential
100 now)
Linda Nagata
Melissa Scott
Raphael Carter (who needs to publish more than the one wonderful book, I
guess)
Simon Ings
Alexander Jablokov
Alastair Reynolds
Wil McCarthy
Kage Baker
Geoff Ryman (maybe more in the slipstream category than sf)
Sarah Zettel
Candace Jane Dorsey
Robert Reed
Richard Paul Russo
Severna Park
Whew! Anyone who think there is no good sf being published these days is
either not paying attention, or has a very different taste from mine.
--
Ron Henry
Medievalbk
>>H. Beam Piper should be on the list.
>>
>>If for nothing else, as an essential role model for later SF authors.
>/black humor alert/ No I'd really rather he wasn't a model. Though I
>certainly liked everything he wrote.
>
>>William Taylor
>
Oh hell yes. His universe construction and storytelling. Not his lifestyle.
And today we'd know his Federation would be a nightmare. Giving everyone a
supply of household plutonium?
William Taylor
Niall McAuley
> fantasy or horror writers:
> E. E. Eddison
E. E. "Doc" Eddison?
--
Niall [real address ends in se, not es.invalid]
Lois Tilton
> I really think Robert Sawyer should be on this list, the best Canadian SF
> author ever (including Gibson).
[boggle]
[choke]
LT
Lois Tilton
[re: RObert Sawyer]
> I don't understand why his books keep winding up on the Hugo ballot.
Because he campaigns them like Democratic ward heeler in Chicago.
--
LT
creepygirl
"Ron Henry" <ronh...@SPAMOFFclarityconnect.com> wrote:
>> Mary Doria Russell
>> Ted Chiang
>
>It might be a little soon to include these two on a 100 Essential list,
>good as they are. If they hold their quality for another decade,
>perhaps. And the more I think about Russell's books (having read them a
>year and two years ago) the more problems I have with them, both in
>terms of their "message" and as sf (i.e., are they really, or are they
>religious allegory in sf drag).
Yeah, with Russell, I'm kind of scratching my head on the "influential"
criteria. I thought "The Sparrow" was compelling but flawed, but I
can't think of any SF that I think was influenced by it. Granted, I'm
not a writer and I certainly have read only a fraction of what's been
written in the last few years.
-cg
Christopher L. Taylor
Can someone remind me what science fiction Tim Powers has written?
With the exception of _Declare_, I've read all of his novels, and
all of them at least imply the existence of magic, if not feature
it outright?
Some short stories, perhaps?
Chris Taylor
Peter D. Tillman
medie...@aol.com (Medievalbk) wrote:
For a closer-to-home nightmare along these lines:
http://nuclearno.com/text.asp?3987
Even for politicians, this is a *remarkably* stupid idea.
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
PS: incidentally, IB this is the first political issue where I've seen
Greenpeace & the WSJ on the same side...
--
Physics of the late 20ts century will discover method of
electrical ignition of nuclear fusion - the awkward and
expensive use of fission bomb will no longer be necessary.
Such small ( 100 kT device will have shape of cylinder with
20 cm diameter and no more than 40 cm length), easily
manufactured, very cheap and efficient thermonuclear
explosive devices of variable strength will find many
extremely valuable uses in mining, road, railroad and dam
construction, land cultivation and landscaping [!!].
_The Report from the 21st Century_, Moscow 1958
Prominent Soviet scientists look towards year 2007, the year
of the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution.
Ron Henry
> Can someone remind me what science fiction Tim Powers has written?
> With the exception of _Declare_, I've read all of his novels, and
> all of them at least imply the existence of magic, if not feature
> it outright?
_Dinner at Deviant's Palace_ is straightforward science fiction, with no
fantasy elements.
But to answer your question more generally, I assume the original poster
(Lawrence Person, IIRC) was using "sf" in the sense of "speculative
fiction", which includes fantasy. See also the definition in the
"Introduction" section of the rasfw FAQ at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/sf-written.htm .
Ron Henry
Keith Morrison
>>>>I really think Robert Sawyer should be on this list, the best Canadian SF
>>>>author ever (including Gibson).
>>>
>>>I read a couple of chapters of _Starplex_ once. Were his later books
>>>substantially better?
>>
>>Yes, he is getting better. No, they are not great.
>>I don't understand why his books keep winding up on the Hugo ballot.
>
> Blame Canada.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not accepting responsibility for
Sawyer.
--
Keith
James Nicoll
Keith Morrison <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote:
>
>I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not accepting responsibility for
>Sawyer.
What about Richard Rohmer?
--
"Frankly, Captain, I feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our
depth."
"Ah, hence the nuclear weapons."
Rick Kleffel
Strugatsky.
Like most 100 Best lists, this one while it has many worthwhile
compnents, also seems to include a number of recent and popular
authors. If they've only been published in the last ten years, they
should probably be punted until their worth has been proved by time.
--Rickk
Ryan Costello
sure hope its not based on Starplex which I agree is a very weak novel, (his
weakest one by far). Illegal Alien, The Terminal Experiment and Calculating
God are all extremely good science fiction novels in my opinion.
I don't thing they are winding up on the Hugo ballet by fluke.
Ryan
"David Bilek" <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:60phrugqn1g47fhn3...@4ax.com...
Stayka deyAvemta
masters have to be added:
E.E."Doc" Smith and Edmond Hamilton
But then, I might be biased ^_^
Clear Ether!
Stayka
A.C.
news:urj1bt2...@corp.supernews.com...
> Wow, a lot of people dont like Sawyer at all. That kind of suprises me.
I
> sure hope its not based on Starplex which I agree is a very weak novel,
(his
> weakest one by far). Illegal Alien, The Terminal Experiment and
Calculating
> God are all extremely good science fiction novels in my opinion.
>
> I don't thing they are winding up on the Hugo ballet by fluke.
The only Sawyer book I've read is Calculating God, and it certainly was of
Hugo caliber.
--
nomadi...@hotmail.com | http://nomadic.simspace.net
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand
Russell
Rich Clark
I
> sure hope its not based on Starplex which I agree is a very weak novel,
(his
> weakest one by far). Illegal Alien, The Terminal Experiment and
Calculating
> God are all extremely good science fiction novels in my opinion.
Really? _Calculating God_? One of the few novels I would have physically
destroyed had I not been reading the library's copy. After reading half of
it, and feeling like I'd been transported back to every sophomoric
late-night "intellectual" bull session I ever suffered through in the
Sixties, but all at once and without the benefit of hallucinogenics, I
slipped a note into the copy that said "medically proven to induce nausea"
and returned it to the library.
Not only is there not an original thought anywhere in the book, but it's
also sfnally ludicrous.
RichC
Richard Harter
<Niall....@eei.ericsson.es.invalid> wrote:
>"Lawrence Person" <lawr...@io.com> wrote in message news:lawrence-823409...@central.isp.giganews.com...
>> Others besides Tolkein who would have made the list if I had included pure
>> fantasy or horror writers:
>
>> E. E. Eddison
>
>E. E. "Doc" Eddison?
Yep. It's a twofer.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net,
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
The axes of usenet are ground interminably and are ground exceedingly
fine. Sometimes nothing remains but axe handles and steel filings!
j
> THE LIST
> ...
> Olaf Stapledon> Stanley G. Weinbaum> Clark Ashton Smith
> Henry Kuttner > C. L. Moore> Hal Clement> Avram Davidson
> John Wyndham> John Brunner> Howard Waldrop> George Alec Effinger
> Gardner Dozois> Joanna Russ> Michael Bishop> Octavia Butler
> Lucius Shepard> Connie Willis> Pat Cadigan> Mary Doria Russell
> Ted Chiang
>
after cursory review - i didn't see Stanislaw Lem.
the ones i left above are ones i haven't read -
which book by which one of these authors should i search out next?
last 5 books read - True Names, Vinge,et.al.; Death#2, Robb;
American Gods, Gaiman; Anita Blake-Vampire Hunter#3, Hamilton;
Tristram Shandy, Sterne (rereading now)
--
j
Lee Modesitt
> "Ryan Costello" <ry...@functionpoint.com> wrote:
>
> >I really think Robert Sawyer should be on this list, the best Canadian SF
> >author ever (including Gibson).
> >
>
>
> He's not even the best Canadian SF author ever. Maybe not top 3!
>
> -David
IMO, Terence Green would be a better Canadian representative.
Lee Modesitt
Niven without Pournelle?
John Christopher? (more for No Blade of Grass than for his juveniles)
Algis Budrys?
And Gordon Dickson just missing the list? Isn't that discounting the
merits of Dorsai too heavily for the later mediocrity of Dragon, et
al?
Likewise Harry Harrison?
Among the one-shot wonders, how about:
Pat Frank (Alas Babylon)
Anthony Burgess (Clockwork Orange)
Why does it have to be 100? In perusing the list, it seems to me that
many of the authors of more recent vintage fail (IMO) on your second
criterion (influencing the field in some way). 100 may be too
generous.
Peter D. Tillman
demonk...@hotmail.com (j) wrote:
> Lawrence Person <lawr...@io.com> wrote in message
> news:<lawrence-823409...@central.isp.giganews.com>...
> > ...
> > Olaf Stapledon> Stanley G. Weinbaum> Clark Ashton Smith
> > Henry Kuttner > C. L. Moore> Hal Clement> Avram Davidson
> > John Wyndham> John Brunner> Howard Waldrop> George Alec Effinger
> > Gardner Dozois> Joanna Russ> Michael Bishop> Octavia Butler
> > Lucius Shepard> Connie Willis> Pat Cadigan> Mary Doria Russell
> > Ted Chiang
> >
>
> the ones i left above are ones i haven't read -
> which book by which one of these authors should i search out next?
I'd say the very first should be Octavia Butler's Wild Seed, her best
novel IMO (and her 1st, iirc). This is a wonderful African
power-fantasy, with an immortal body-shifter vs. a long-lived
shape-changer. An A+ book, absolutely not to be missed. Plus, it's just
been reprinted. You have a real treat in store -- I really can't
recommend this book too highly.
Some of her later books are very good, but [IMO] they're all a bit of a
letdown after Wild Seed.
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Book Reviews: http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A3GHSD9VY8XS4Q/
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/iplus/nonfiction/index.htm#reviews
http://www.sfsite.com/revwho.htm
Keith Stokes
<jjwa...@telerama.com> wrote:
>I don't understand why his books keep winding up on the Hugo ballot.
He puts a lot of energy into promotion.
Keith
Thomas Lindgren
creepygirl <creep...@eudoramail.com> writes:
> In article <apbjba$1ge$1...@news01.cit.cornell.edu>,
> "Ron Henry" <ronh...@SPAMOFFclarityconnect.com> wrote:
> >/.../ And the more I think about Russell's books (having read them a
> >year and two years ago) the more problems I have with them, both in
> >terms of their "message" and as sf (i.e., are they really, or are they
> >religious allegory in sf drag).
>
> Yeah, with Russell, I'm kind of scratching my head on the "influential"
> criteria. I thought "The Sparrow" was compelling but flawed, but I
> can't think of any SF that I think was influenced by it. Granted, I'm
> not a writer and I certainly have read only a fraction of what's been
> written in the last few years.
Lordy, don't get me started on THE SPARROW.
Putting Russell on a list of "essential SF writers" would seem
... eccentric, to say the least. Especially when you consider the cast
who "just missed making the list". Well, at least James "A CASE OF
CONSCIENCE" Blish is there too :-)
Best,
Thomas
--
Thomas Lindgren
I'd rather write programs that write programs than write programs-[R. Sites]
Marilee J. Layman
<ry...@functionpoint.com> wrote:
>"David Bilek" <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote in message
>news:60phrugqn1g47fhn3...@4ax.com...
>> "James J. Walton" <jjwa...@telerama.com> wrote:
>> >On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Steve Taylor wrote:
>> >
>> >> Ryan Costello wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > I really think Robert Sawyer should be on this list, the best
>Canadian SF
>> >> > author ever (including Gibson).
>> >>
>> >> I read a couple of chapters of _Starplex_ once. Were his later books
>> >> substantially better?
>> >
>> >Yes, he is getting better. No, they are not great.
>> >I don't understand why his books keep winding up on the Hugo ballot.
>>
>> Blame Canada.
>>
>> -David
>Wow, a lot of people dont like Sawyer at all. That kind of suprises me. I
>sure hope its not based on Starplex which I agree is a very weak novel, (his
>weakest one by far). Illegal Alien, The Terminal Experiment and Calculating
>God are all extremely good science fiction novels in my opinion.
>
>I don't thing they are winding up on the Hugo ballet by fluke.
You thought Illegal Alien was extremely good? The hand of god on the
last page didn't bother you?
--
Marilee J. Layman
Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
David Tate
> Lawrence Person wrote:
>
> > A few recent threads got me thinking, yet again, of just who the "canonical"
> > role-model to the young, I decided to compile a list of 100 Essential Science
> > Fiction Authors.
>
> I would argue that Twain doesn't really qualify as an SF author, and neither
> do Orwell or Lewis. This does not mean that they weren't influential, but
> rather, they were not science fiction writers.
If _A Connecticut Yankee..._ isn't SF, then neither is _1632_. _The
Mysterious Stranger_ is pretty solidly SF, too. Plus many minor Twain
works. He wrote much that was not SF, but then so did Avram Davidson.
David Tate
David Tate
[with snips]
> Kate Wilhelm
> John Wyndham
> Edgar Pangborn
> Thomas Disch
> Howard Waldrop
> George Alec Effinger
> Gardner Dozois
> Joanna Russ
> Walter Jon Williams
> Pat Cadigan
> Joan D. Vinge
and then
> Just missed making the list:
> William Tenn
> Frederic Brown
> Robert Sheckley
> Harry Harrison
> Barry Malzberg
...makes no sense to me. Can anyone really think Joanna Russ or
Gardner Dozois, AS AUTHORS, were either more SFnal or more influential
than William Tenn and Fredric Brown (note spelling, please) or any of
the others above that "just missed"? Ditto the rest of THE LIST that
I preserved above. I may not quibble with their merits (especially in
the case of Pangborn), but that's not enough to get them on the top
100 list under your criteria.
(And I am one of the biggest fans around of _The Sparrow_, but that
alone doesn't push Mary Doria Russell past giants like Tenn. You
might just as well have put Raphael Carter on THE LIST, at that
point...)
Cheers,
David Tate
Lawrence Person
Michael Sumbera <sum...@mac.com> wrote:
> Lawrence, I think it's time to post the Starplex review. If I had it
> handy, I'd do it for you.
>
Oh, if you insist:
Bad Novel. No Biscuit.
(from Nova Express, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter/Spring 1998)
Title: Starplex
Author: Robert J. Sawyer
Publisher: Ace
ISBN: 0-441-00372-9
Price: $5.99
I'll be blunt: Robert J. Sawyer's Starplex is a remarkably bad science
fiction novel. It has serious deficiencies in style, tone, plotting,
characterization, logic, and extrapolative rigor. Though not unremittingly
awful, Starplex has such huge and obvious flaws that publication in its current
form calls into question the editing competency at both Ace Books and Analog
(where it was serialized). That it garnered both Hugo and Nebula nominations is
no credit to the science fiction community.
The plot concerns the voyage of the eponymous starship through "shortcuts"
(i.e., interstellar jump points) in search of new life, under the command of
Keith Lansing. The crew is made up of members of a nascent, three-world
"Commonwealth" of shortcut-traveling sapients: humans and dolphins, Waldahudins
(a brusque, unpleasant race who have earned the derogatory sobriquet of "pigs"),
and Ibs (a rolling, composite-entity race shaped like a living wheelchair).
While exploring a new star system, Starplex is nearly fried when a green sun
passes through the shortcut. After a narrow escape with significant damage to
their lower hull, they pop out for a retrofit, then return to make contact with
a cluster of "darmats," "dark matter" lifeforms the size of gas giants. They
discover that suns are being pushed out of shortcuts into stellar systems all
throughout the galaxy, and that the suns in question are older than the
universe.
Soon Starplex is attacked by a band of Waldahudin fighterships, an attack it
manages to repel with dolphin-piloted probeships using jury-rigged weapons.
Lansing's wife manages to escape through the shortcut in an armed ship, just in
time to pop out and deliver the short-lived war's decisive blow in another star
system. If this weren't enough, Starplex and crew manage to save the life of a
baby darmat who wandered into a shortcut, solve many of astrophysics' most
vexing problems, and communicate with Lansing's immortal future self. The novel
is, to say the least, overstuffed.
Gardner Dozois once said that when many people asked for more "hard science
fiction" in Asimov's, what they actually meant was "stories as close to Star
Trek as possible." Anyone with such a prejudice may well enjoy Starplex. Though
not as elegant a design as the Enterprise, the bridge scenes in Starplex bear a
strong resemblance to TV's most famous SF show. There is even an illustration of
where everybody sits on said bridge (though neither it, nor the diagram of the
ship, are necessary).
The characterization is barely adequate for Campbellian science fiction, much
less work in the 1990s. It's been said that many an aspiring writer takes the
injunction to "write what you know" entirely too seriously, resulting in
numerous bad novels about English professors contemplating adultery. Having a
starship captain (excuse me, "director") contemplating adultery is hardly an
improvement. Indeed, apart from contemplating adultery (which others have
informed me is something of a theme in Sawyer's other books), the only other
character trait Lansing betrays beyond the standard issue "competent yet
compassionate" template (though he acts far more like the assistant dean of the
English department at a small midwestern college than someone who should be
running a starship) is a veiled dislike for Waldahudins, left over from his best
friend getting waxed during a first contact gone wrong. This latter trait seems
to exist so that you can see he's overcome it by novel's end in a scene where
high-level Earth government personnel act like bloodthirsty morons so we can all
see our hero's moral superiority. It's about as subtle as the writer jumping up
and yelling "Look! He's grown!"
The Waldahudins are neither convincing nor interesting as a race, and they
seem to exist mainly to provide the novel's heavies. The Ibs are more believably
delineated, and Sawyer has put a good deal more thought and innovation into
their construction than the Waldahudins. Despite living 640 years, Ibs find
wasting time abhorrent, and in the book's most powerful scenes, Boxcar, the most
sympathetic of the Ibs, "discorporates" as punishment for the crime of wasting
others' time it committed long ago. Though not on par with science fiction's
most memorable aliens, say Octavia Butler's Oankali or Vernor Vinge's Tines,
Sawyer's Ibs are a good, solid, professional effort. Likewise, the scenes where
Starplex makes contact with the darmats (using mathematics) are effectively
handled, even if the communication technique is at least as old as Stanley G.
Weinbaum's classic "A Martian Odyssey" from 1934.
Even if they owe a nod to Star Trek, the action scenes, both during the green
sun's appearance and during the attack, are well handled and reasonably gripping
(though the winning battle tactic is stolen outright from David Brin's Startide
Rising). Sawyer has obvious skill at handling the interactions of characters in
tense situations. However, the book's scientific nadir probably comes during
those same scenes, when one of Starplex's dolphin-piloted craft fires a laser,
and the enemy ship "swerved to avoid contact with the beam." Neat trick, that,
swerving to avoid something moving at the speed of light. (And, for that matter,
just how does a ship "swerve" in space? And just how would you be able to see a
laser beam in vacuum?)
Unfortunately, Starplex suffers from huge lapses of logic and common sense
all throughout the novel, with people doing things in impossibly short periods
of time. For example, after it gets fried by the new sun's radiation, the entire
lower half of the ship (all 34 floors of it) is detached and a replacement put
on in a mere 18 hours. (I wish I could have gotten my transmission fixed that
quickly.) Let's see, they need to remove the old sections (quite a task in and
of itself) without damaging the interlocks linking it to the rest of the ship;
repair any damage to the remaining portions; pressurize and leak check the new
section; mate it with the ship; make sure all the interlocks are working; ensure
all internal and external airlocks and bulkhead are sealed tight (especially
since a single leak could result in death for the crew蟻 more likely schedule is
for the safety checks themselves to take at least a day and probably more);
hookup, troubleshoot, and configure the electronics and electrical systems, not
to mention a dozen other things that would have to be done in order to ready and
flightcheck a starship that's undergone a major overhaul. And all this in zero
gee. Even with the full benefits of industrious Ibs working around the clock,
and without the foreknowledge of how tedious and difficult it has been to do far
simpler zero-gee repairs on Mir, a few moments of thought brings the inevitable
conclusion that replacing half of a starship in 18 hours is not just unlikely,
but downright absurd.
An equally absurd condensation of time occurs at the beginning of the battle,
when Lansing orders his crew to find anything remotely resembling a weapon and
have them mounted on the outside of their probeships in a grand total of fifteen
minutes. Now, think this through. They're going to: a.) remove a laser from its
current mounting bracket; b.) adjust its focal length and power output to work
in a way it was never designed for; c.) take it down to the probeship bay; d.)
mount it to the outside of the ship; e.) string power hookups from the ship's
system to the newly mounted lasers; and f.) hook up communications (wireless,
since only a complete idiot would start drilling holes in a vacuum-sealed
spacecraft hull), complete with a targeting system, between the probeship
control system and the laser. And remember, this is for not just one, but five
ships. In fifteen minutes. One gets the impression that Mr. Sawyer has never had
to swap out a hard drive or change an oil filter.
The tragedy is, these particular lapses could have been corrected with good
editing, or even a few CYA paragraphs to paper over some of the more gaping plot
and logic holes. However, no amount of editing is able to save Starplex from one
of its central absurdities. The entire Waldahudin war plotline stems from their
worry over Earth's economic superiority because Waldahudins don't believe in
mass manufacturing. Why? Because they "never build two things the same" because
doing so would be "an affront to the God of Artisans." The problem is, a race
with such a belief would never develop an industrial society, much less a
starfaring civilization.
Let's take just one example: semiconductors. To manufacture semiconductors, a
silicon wafer (in fact, thousands of identical silicon wafers) are run through a
number of process steps, resulting in a number of identical chips on the same
wafer. Indeed, if the chips were not identical, it would be prohibitively
expensive not only to produce integrated circuits (or even individual
transistors and diodes), but to write software for them. Are we to believe that
two-thirds of the Waldahudin economy is dedicated to crafting individual
computer chips by hand one transistor at a time, as well as writing the unique,
individual software necessary to run on each one? Since their ships are
described as being about the size of Starplex's probeships, we can discount the
possibility that their electronics are made up entirely of individual,
hand-crafted vacuum tubes.
But the absurdity doesn't end there. A few of the other things it is
prohibitively expensive or impossible to manufacture one at a time include light
bulbs, metal cans, hypodermic needles, staples, ball bearings(!), and even
screws and nails. Hell, in Waldahudin society, even candle molds would be
anathema. Yet we're to believe they've achieved starflight.
The are other dramatic flaws in logic, extrapolation, and construction. The
prose is flat at best and at worst is quite clumsy. Nanotechnology is mentioned,
then immediately dropped without any explanation (or evidence) of its effect on
society. The helmsman is a redheaded Norseman named Thor (not exactly a page out
of The Subtle Art of Characterization). Except for some of the prominent used
scenery of interstellar SF, almost no new scientific or social developments seem
to have come down the pike since our time, allowing the central characters of
this one ship to solve nearly all the outstanding problems of astrophysics
(including the location of dark matter, the spiral shape of galaxies, and蟻s an
added bonus逆he origin and fate of the universe. Indeed, the subtitle could be
"How I won an intergalactic war, discovered a new alien race, solved the
greatest scientific mysteries of my day, and got to be a billion-year-old
immortal without cheating on my wife."
Despite all the forgoing, Starplex is not unrelievedly bad. Sawyer clearly
has the desire and instinct for engaging the big "sense of wonder" issues at the
heart of science fiction. However, the novel displays a distressing lack of
basic technical competence, especially for a work so celebrated. It is very
possible that Sawyer's subsequent novels (he's published at least two since this
came out) are better, and even Starplex, in the hands of a good editor, could
have been hammered into acceptable shape. However, in its current form, it
should never have been published.
--
Lawrence Person lawre...@hiho.com (remove all "h"s from my e-mail address)
Web Page: www.io.com/~lawrence
Lame Excuse Books, Science Fiction First Editions: www.io.com/~lawrence/lame
Lawrence Person
> the ones i left...are ones i haven't read...
> which book by which one of these authors should i search out next?
>Olaf Stapledon
Firtst and Last Man or Starmaker (Though I must admit I haven't actually read
either all the way through yet...)
>Stanley G. Weinbaum
A Martian Odyssey and other stories
> Clark Ashton Smith
A Rendevous in Avergnion is a pretty good starting place.
> Henry Kuttner
Robts Have No Tails
> C. L. Moore
"Vintage Season" and the story she wrote with Kuttner (as Lewis Padgett) "Mimsy
Were the Boorogroves"
> Hal Clement
Mission of Gravity
>Avram Davidson
The Phoenix and the Mirror is probably his best novel, but it's hard to go wrong
with the Avram Davidson Treasury.
> John Wyndham
The Kraken Wakes (aka Out of the Deeps)
> John Brunner
Stand on Zanzibar, followed by The Sheep Look Up
> Howard Waldrop
Howard Who or Strange Things in Closeup, if you can find them; also Night of the
Cooters.
> George Alec Effinger
When Gravity Fails (also "The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything,"
"Schrodinger's Kitten" and "Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson")
> Gardner Dozois
The NESFA Press book Strange Days is probably your best bet
> Joanna Russ
The Female Man (in my to-be-read stack)
> Michael Bishop
Maybe No Enemy but Time (another in the to-be-read stack)
> Octavia Butler
Blood Child and other stories (also Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago)
> Lucius Shepard
His important early work is in The Jaguar Hunter; The Golden is pretty swell,
but is a rather atypical vampire novel.
> Connie Willis
Maybe Impossible Things; some will argue for Doomsday Book, but I find her
better at shorter lengths.
> Pat Cadigan
Patterns and Synners
>Mary Doria Russell
The Sparrow
> Ted Chiang
Stories of Your Life
Lawrence Person
"Christopher L. Taylor" <ch...@fcrao2.nospam.astro.umass.edu> wrote:
> Can someone remind me what science fiction Tim Powers has written?
Dinner at Deviant's Palace
An Epitaph in Rust
The Skies Discrowned
The Anubis Gates (which is better than all of the above) does feature some
science fiction elements.
Richard Horton
<ry...@functionpoint.com> wrote:
>I really think Robert Sawyer should be on this list, the best Canadian SF
>author ever (including Gibson).
I can only blink in astonishment that somebody can rank Sawyer ahead
of not only Gibson but James Alan Gardner, Robert Charles Wilson, Sean
Stewart (where DID he put his middle name!), Gordon Dickson, and
Donald Kingsbury. Heck, even ahead of Spider Robinson and Elisabeth
Vonarburg.
Gee, we could add Jo Walton to the list nowadays (on the John Buchan
principle, anyway, though I think Jo will likely end up much more
Canadian than Buchan).
Cripes.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Richard Horton
wrote:
>Ryan Costello wrote:
>
>> I really think Robert Sawyer should be on this list, the best Canadian SF
>> author ever (including Gibson).
>
>I read a couple of chapters of _Starplex_ once. Were his later books
>substantially better?
It's fair to say the _Starplex_ is worse than most of Sawyer's books.
But, gosh, _Starplex_ is worse than most books in the history of SF.
(Only slight exaggeration there!) _The Terminal Experiment_,
_Hominids_, and _Calculating God_ are all better than _Starplex_. But
they aren't good enough to put him in the Top 100 SF authors, not even
close.
Richard Horton
<rdclar...@TRAPcomcast.net> wrote:
>After reading half of
>it, and feeling like I'd been transported back to every sophomoric
>late-night "intellectual" bull session I ever suffered through in the
>Sixties, but all at once and without the benefit of hallucinogenics,
Exactly! That's the problem with _Calculating God_ in a nutshell!
Well, that's a problem!
John S. Novak, III
>> I don't thing they are winding up on the Hugo ballet by fluke.
> The only Sawyer book I've read is Calculating God, and it certainly was of
> Hugo caliber.
Okay, I've read _Calculating God_, too, and I considered it his last
chance to write something interesting, after all the hype I'd heard.
To say I was disappointed would be a massive understatement.
So, in all honesty, what could *possibly* posess someone to nominate
that turkey for a Hugo.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
John S. Novak, III
> Wow, a lot of people dont like Sawyer at all. That kind of suprises me. I
> sure hope its not based on Starplex which I agree is a very weak novel, (his
> weakest one by far). Illegal Alien, The Terminal Experiment and Calculating
> God are all extremely good science fiction novels in my opinion.
God_ and, er... what's the one that's almost as stupid as _Calculating
God_? The one with world souls and the fourth dimension and telepathy
and other badly integrated stuff all rolled up into one quivering
burrito of indigestion? _Factoring Humanity_ or some such?
Ieych.
Karl M. Syring
If you really keep people from reading Sawyer, you should avoid such
over the top trashings. I have never read anything by him, but now I am
interested.
Karl M. Syring
--
What exactly happened in Otoh?
Charlie Stross
as <lex...@yahoo.com> declared:
>> Robert Sawyer on the 100 Essential SF Writers list? Are you mad?
>>
>> He's not even the best Canadian SF author ever. Maybe not top 3!
>
> IMO, Terence Green would be a better Canadian representative.
What about Geoff Ryman? (Yeah, I know he lives in London ...)
-- Charlie
Evelyn C. Leeper
> In article <b89b34dd.02102...@posting.google.com>,
> demonk...@hotmail.com (j) wrote:
>
> > the ones i left...are ones i haven't read...
> > which book by which one of these authors should i search out next?
>
> >Olaf Stapledon
>
> Firtst and Last Man or Starmaker (Though I must admit I haven't actually read
> either all the way through yet...)
Whereas I have read pretty much everything he's written (except for
SECULAR PSALMS, which is unavailable). These are good starters, but
ODD JOHN is also quite a good choice, perhaps more influential in its
own way than STARMAKER.
> > John Wyndham
>
> The Kraken Wakes (aka Out of the Deeps)
But THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS is considered his classic work, and is
probably more available. For young adults, Mark suggests CHOCKY or
REBIRTH. Mark also says THE KRAKEN WAKES is not a very good invasion
novel, and is actually frustrating to read because everything takes
place off-stage. (Sounds like the original Foundation stories,
doesn't it? :-) )
> > Howard Waldrop
>
> Howard Who or Strange Things in Closeup, if you can find them; also Night of the
> Cooters.
Since he writes mostly short stories, you should check anthologies for
anything by him. "The Ugly Chickens" is a classic. So is "A Dozen
Tough Jobs."
> > Ted Chiang
>
> Stories of Your Life
Which has everything he's written so far, so it's an obvious
choice....
--
Evelyn C. Leeper
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
"At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief
that is not founded." --Ludwig Wittgenstein
Matt Ruff
>
> No Piers Anthony, no Kevin Anderson ...
They're on the 100 Essential SF Whores list, which is down the hall...
-- M. Ruff
David Cowie
>
> They're on the 100 Essential SF Whores list, which is down the hall...
>
That could be an entertaining list. Anyone feel like writing it?
--
David Cowie david_cowie at lineone dot net
So high, so low, so many things to know.
Peter D. Tillman
Lawrence Person <lawr...@io.com> wrote:
>
> Bad Novel. No Biscuit.
> (from Nova Express, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter/Spring 1998)
>
> Title: Starplex
> Author: Robert J. Sawyer
> Publisher: Ace
> ISBN: 0-441-00372-9
> Price: $5.99
>
> I'll be blunt: Robert J. Sawyer's Starplex is a remarkably bad
> science fiction novel. It has serious deficiencies in style, tone,
> plotting, characterization, logic, and extrapolative rigor. Though
> not unremittingly awful, Starplex has such huge and obvious flaws
> that publication in its current form calls into question the
> editing competency at both Ace Books and Analog (where it was
> serialized). That it garnered both Hugo and Nebula nominations is
> no credit to the science fiction community.
[snipped fine review]
Thanks, Lawrence. Yes, this one was truly awful -- I think it was the
final straw when my Analog subscription came due for renewal.
What was Stan Schmidt thinking? And -- an award nominee???
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
--
Against stupidity, the Gods themselves rage in vain.
-- Friedrich von Schiller
Rich Clark
"Karl M. Syring" <syr...@email.com> wrote in message
news:apdkd0$iu9i$1...@ID-7529.news.dfncis.de...
> If you really keep people from reading Sawyer, you should avoid such
> over the top trashings. I have never read anything by him, but now I am
> interested.
Oh, I don't want to keep people from reading Sawyer. I wasted my time, why
shouldn't you waste yours? I've read a number of authors just to see what
all the fuss was about, and even if the reading itself was no fun, the
participation in the fuss sometimes was.
I do think we should draw the line at giving him awards, however.
RichC
Samuel Lehtimäki
<snip>
>Are these truly the 100 Essential SF writers? Why yes. I am, of course,
>infallible.
Interesting list, but I can't say that I fully agree with it - Stanislaw Lem,
James White, and Arkady and Boris Strugatski should definitely be on it.
...and perhaps even Ann Maxwell, but maybe I'm biased - I recently read Name of
a Shadow, thanks to Alexlit recommendations, and rated it higher than any book
that I've read this year.
>THE LIST
<snip>
>Howard Waldrop
>Pat Cadigan
>Ken MacLeod
I recognized 97 of the names, but who are these three? I've never even heard
of them...
James Nicoll
Samuel Lehtimäki <.@...> wrote:
>
>>THE LIST
><snip>
>>Howard Waldrop
>>Pat Cadigan
>>Ken MacLeod
>
> I recognized 97 of the names, but who are these three? I've never even heard
>of them...
Cadigan I can't get into. Waldrop is a brilliant writer of short
stories and Ken MacLeod is a very good SF writer from Scotland.
--
"Frankly, Captain, I feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our
depth."
"Ah, hence the nuclear weapons."
Peter D. Tillman
> >
> > I would argue that Twain doesn't really qualify as an SF author, and neither
> > do Orwell or Lewis. This does not mean that they weren't influential, but
> > rather, they were not science fiction writers.
>
> If _A Connecticut Yankee..._ isn't SF, then neither is _1632_. _The
> Mysterious Stranger_ is pretty solidly SF, too. Plus many minor Twain
> works. He wrote much that was not SF, but then so did Avram Davidson.
>
My problem with _A Connecticut Yankee..._ is, I found it unreadable --
though I certainly acknowledge its influence on many later AH. Eric
Flint will no doubt be pleased to hear that I *much* preferred 1632 to
the Twain!
Maybe we need a parallel thread, "100 Best SF Writers Still Readable
in 2002"...
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
--
"I will say this much for the nobility: that tyrannical, murderous,
rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and
enthusiastically religious." -- Mark Twain, Connecticut Yankee
(1889)
[there are some great one-liners here]
Captain Button
"David Cowie" <david_co...@lineone.net> wrote:
>On Sat, 26 Oct 2002 14:41:25 +0000, Matt Ruff wrote:
>
>>
>> They're on the 100 Essential SF Whores list, which is down the hall...
>>
>That could be an entertaining list. Anyone feel like writing it?
I'll start:
Eccentrica Galumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six
Avluela the Flyer
Msgt. Elizabeth Yeager, ECMC
[mumble] from "A Voice is Heard in Ramah" by Spider Robinson
Those poor maimed women in LWE's _ Dragon Weather _.
--
American Express says I'm deceased. Boo! Consider yourself haunted.
Captain Button - but...@io.com
John Pelan
wrote:
>A few recent threads got me thinking, yet again, of just who the "canonical"
>authors in science fiction are. Conscious of my duty as a trend-setter and
>role-model to the young, I decided to compile a list of 100 Essential Science
>Fiction Authors.
>
>The criteria: The must have written at least some science fiction (or at least
>what some people have called science fiction), and their work must have
>influenced the field in some way. J. R. R. Tolkein fits the second definition,
>but not the first, while Jack London and Rudyard Kipling meet the first
>criteria, but not really the second. Also, the works on this list should still
>be relevant to readers today, which is why people like Sir Thomas Moore aren't
>on here.
I have a real problem with the "influenced the field in some way."
*Everything* influences the field in some way.
>
>Where a writer is influential for a single work, that work is listed beside
>their name.
If it's a single work, then it's almost certain the author is on here
for "influence" and not for their body of work...
>
>These are arranged in rough chronological order (i.e., I didn't feel like
>spending the time and effort to research when their first sales were for a
>Usenet post). Where
>
>Are these truly the 100 Essential SF writers? Why yes. I am, of course,
>infallible.
We shall see... ;-)
>
>THE LIST
>
>Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)
>Edgar Allen Poe
>Mark Twain
>Jules Verne
>H. G. Wells
>Arthur Conan Doyle
>Edgar Rice Burroughs
>Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
>Olaf Stapledon
>Stanley G. Weinbaum
>H. P. Lovecraft
>Clark Ashton Smith
>Jack Williamson
>C. S. Lewis
>A. E. van Vogt
>Isaac Asimov
>Arthur C. Clarke
>Robert A. Heinlein
>Ray Bradbury
>George Orwell (1984)
>Frederik Pohl
>C. M. Kornbluth
>Fritz Leiber
>Theodore Sturgeon
>Henry Kuttner
>C. L. Moore
>Jack Vance
>Hal Clement
>L. Sprague de Camp
>Andre Norton
>Lester Del Rey
>James Blish
>Alfred Bester
>Brian Aldiss
>Richard Matheson
>Harlan Ellison
>Poul Anderson
>Robert Silverberg
>Damon Knight
>Kate Wilhelm
>Cordwainer Smith
>Avram Davidson
>Philip Jose Farmer
>Clifford D. Simak
>Philip K. Dick
>John Wyndham
>Edgar Pangborn
>Kurt Vonnegut
>Roger Zelazny
>Samuel R. Delany
>John Brunner
>Michael Moorcock
>J. G. Ballard
>Brian Stableford
>Frank Herbert (Dune)
>Thomas Disch
>Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
>Walter M. Miller (A Canticle for Leibowitz)
>R. A. Lafferty
>Ursula K. Le Guin
>Joe Haldeman
>Larry Niven
>Gene Wolfe
>George R. R. Martin
>Howard Waldrop
>George Alec Effinger
>Gardner Dozois
>Stephen King
>Gregory Benford
>Joanna Russ
>Michael Bishop
>Vonda N. McIntyre
>James Tiptree, Jr.
>Greg Bear
>Tim Powers
>Octavia Butler
>Orson Scott Card
>Douglas Adams
>David Brin
>C. J. Cherryh
>John Crowley
>Bruce Sterling
>William Gibson
>Michael Swanwick
>Kim Stanley Robinson
>Lucius Shepard
>Connie Willis
>Walter Jon Williams
>Iain Banks
>Pat Cadigan
>Dan Simmons
>Lois McMaster Bujold
>Joan D. Vinge
>Vernor Vinge
>Greg Egan
>Stephen Baxter
>Neal Stephenson
>Ken MacLeod
>Mary Doria Russell
>Ted Chiang
Not bad, you combine this with my top 100 Horror list
(www.darksidepress.com) you've got yourself a pretty solid footing in
fantastic fiction...
However, here's my quibbles (and as is often the case with these
things, it's that most folk tend to place a higher value on the very
old or very recent and ignore crucial aspects of the middle-period):
We must have:
Eric Frank Russell
Edmond Hamilton
Robert Sheckley
I'd make a strong argument for Cleve Cartmill, but his fantasy is
better than his SF, though the high points of his SF almost get him on
here. Leaving off Haggard and Merritt seems odd, too. Perhaps we're
considering lost-race as "fantasy"?
Now since I'm disallowing Cartmill, I'd drop deCamp as his only
worthwhile books were fantasy. I'd also drop Ted Chiang, (though I
think he's bloody brilliant), there just isn't a significant body of
work yet. For that same reason, I'd drop Gardner off (though here too,
we have a brilliant writer).
Brin and Card I'd drop (but that's simply a matter of taste)
Okay, that's five drops so we can add Russell, Hamilton, Sheckley,
Malzberg, and Robert Charles Wilson and all's right with the world.
Cheers,
John
>
>Just missed making the list:
>A. A. Merritt
>Murray Lenister
>William Tenn
>Frederic Brown
>Chad Oliver
>Gordon R. Dickson
>Keith Roberts
>Robert Sheckley
>Harry Harrison
>Barry Malzberg
>
>Two influential writers who may or may not write science fiction, depending on
>your definition:
>William S. Burroughs
>Thomas Pynchon
>
>Still active writers who might make it in the future:
>M. John Harrison
>Mike Resnick
>Nancy Kress
>Jack McDevitt
>John Kessel
>James Patrick Kelley
>Ian McDonald
>Paul J. McAuley
>
>And, of course, swarms of Young Promising Things.
>
>Others besides Tolkein who would have made the list if I had included pure
>fantasy or horror writers:
>
>Bram Stoker (Dracula)
>Ernest Bramah
>E. E. Eddison
>Robert E. Howard
>Robert Bloch
>Shirley Jackson
>William Peter Blatty (The Exorcist)
>Barry Hughart
>Neil Gaiman
>
>Two women who wrote really popular fantasy disguised as science fiction but
>nothing else of note in SF and who I have left off the list because there wasn't
>room and/or out of sheer spite because I'm just plain evil:
>
>Marion Zimmer Bradley
>Anne McCaffrey
>
>Now, go forth and read the best work(s) of every one of the writers on this
>list, and you'll be pretty well versed in science fiction. ;-)
John Pelan
Leeper) wrote:
>> > John Wyndham
>>
>> The Kraken Wakes (aka Out of the Deeps)
>
>But THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS is considered his classic work, and is
>probably more available. For young adults, Mark suggests CHOCKY or
>REBIRTH. Mark also says THE KRAKEN WAKES is not a very good invasion
>novel, and is actually frustrating to read because everything takes
>place off-stage. (Sounds like the original Foundation stories,
>doesn't it? :-) )
I'd suggest starting with THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and following up
with NO PLACE LIKE EARTH: A John Wyndham Reader Vol 1. from Darkside
Press. www.darksidepress.com.
I've endeavored to present a selection that will showcase the many
aspects of this really remarkable writer.
Cheers,
John
Fred Galvin
> The criteria: The must have written at least some science fiction
> (or at least what some people have called science fiction), and
> their work must have influenced the field in some way.
So how did Hugo Gernsback miss getting on the list?
Jon Boyer
good. Acutally, I seem to recall meeting her in Borders on Oxford Street.
Dave Langford (winner of the hugo for best fanzine every year since about
1734) gas a rather entertaining history with Ms Cadigan, from what I can
gather. An incident at Worldcon several years ago involving the pair of
them, a lift, some alcohol and a miniskirt has left her referring to him as
"Langford - You Dog!" ever since.
Jon
"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:apeipk$1vs$1...@panix3.panix.com...
Jon Boyer
put him on the whores list.
Sorry, Robert, I loved your early stuff, but then you went a-whoring...
Eric Frank Russell must go on, I'd agree, but I'd like to see Orson Scott
Card stay on there for Enders Game and Hot Sleep (umm....occasionally
entitled The Worthing Saga. Or possibly visa-versa. I think)
Jon
"John Pelan" <jpe...@cnw.com> wrote in message
news:3dbad5c4....@usenet.cnw.com...
John Pelan
<jonme...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>No Piers Anthony, no Kevin Anderson ...
>
>What kind of list is this?
>
A pretty good one, measured in large part by its omission of these
two, who are neither good, nor (thankfully) influential.
John
Thomas Yan
AOL: fine review. I guess RASFW doesn't have a tradition of RASFW
awards, but I'm going to award one anyway: RASFW gold star.
John Pelan
wrote:
>Personally, after about 1980, I'd take Sheckley of the essential list, and
>put him on the whores list.
>
>Sorry, Robert, I loved your early stuff, but then you went a-whoring...
>
>Eric Frank Russell must go on, I'd agree, but I'd like to see Orson Scott
>Card stay on there for Enders Game and Hot Sleep (umm....occasionally
>entitled The Worthing Saga. Or possibly visa-versa. I think)
>
>Jon
I think we put Sheckley on based on his work in the 1950's & 1960's,
there's enough of it and of such a quality that nothing he did
afterwards could detract from it.
Sorry, I must be the only person that thought EG was calculated,
shallow, and essentially a waste of time. To me, reading Card is like
watching a stage magic act where the magician pauses to explain how he
pulled off every trick. Might be interesting the first time around,
but no reason to go back.
Cheers,
John
Nix
> No Piers Anthony, no Kevin Anderson ...
>
> What kind of list is this?
A list of *good* authors...
(is this a troll?)
--
`The tooth fairy teaches children that they can sell body parts for money.'
--- David Richerby
Steve Taylor
> Personally, after about 1980, I'd take Sheckley of the essential list, and
> put him on the whores list.
>
> Sorry, Robert, I loved your early stuff, but then you went a-whoring...
Sad and true. Who knows - maybe ha had to pay the rent. Maybe he just
got tired.
I'd never take him off my top 100 list though. His first couple of
decades of short stories pretty much defines humour in SF for me. (Which
is not to say no one else wrote anything good - but Sheckley feels like
the wellspring.
Steve
Del Cotter
>I've only read one Pat Cadigan novel - Mindplayers - but is was extrenely
>good. Acutally, I seem to recall meeting her in Borders on Oxford Street.
She semi-organises a semi-regular series of author interviews there,
approximately one Monday a month, starting at 6:30pm.
The guests are often interesting if you can actually figure out which
Monday it's on and be there.
--
. . . . Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk . . . .
JustRead:evelationSpace:GregEganQuarantine:KimStanleyRobinsonTheYearsOfR
ice&Salt:BenJeapesHisMajesty'sStarship:BrendaWCloughTheDoorsOfDeath&Life
ToRead:LoisMcMasterBujoldDiplomaticImmunity::RobertCharlesWilsonBios:Guy
Evelyn C. Leeper
And yet all three have been nominated for multiple Hugos--Waldrop six
times, and Cadigan and MacLeod four times each.
Allan Griffith
>Sorry, I must be the only person that thought EG was calculated,
>shallow, and essentially a waste of time. To me, reading Card is like
>watching a stage magic act where the magician pauses to explain how he
>pulled off every trick. Might be interesting the first time around,
>but no reason to go back.
No, you're definitely not the only one who thinks that.
Al
John Pelan
Have you read any of Mr. Gernsback's fiction?
Cheers,
John
Nancy Lebovitz
Captain Button <but...@io.com> wrote:
>In article <pan.2002.10.26....@lineone.net>,
>"David Cowie" <david_co...@lineone.net> wrote:
>>On Sat, 26 Oct 2002 14:41:25 +0000, Matt Ruff wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> They're on the 100 Essential SF Whores list, which is down the hall...
>>>
>>That could be an entertaining list. Anyone feel like writing it?
>
>I'll start:
>
>Eccentrica Galumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six
>
>Avluela the Flyer
>
>Msgt. Elizabeth Yeager, ECMC
>
>[mumble] from "A Voice is Heard in Ramah" by Spider Robinson
>
>Those poor maimed women in LWE's _ Dragon Weather _.
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com 100 new slogans
I want to move to theory. Everything works in theory.
Charlie Stross
> A few recent threads got me thinking, yet again, of just who the "canonical"
> authors in science fiction are.
I see no John Varley anywhere in this list. Shurely Shome Mishtake?
If your list is sufficient to encompass Vonda McIntyre, Varley is
certainly good enough to be here.
Meanwhile, there's a Ted Chiang. One short story collection to date. Is
he *really* that influential or significant?
What I detect here is a bias towards the canonical "greats" at one
extreme and the modern short-story writers at the other. The problem is,
you can't evaluate old and modern authors using the same yardstick; the
critical and editorial norms of the field have changed. For example,
if I was to apply the same standard of style and inventiveness to
an Ian MacDonald and an Isaac Asimov, Asimov would be out on his ear.
(MacDonald is a much better stylist and, if you don't distinguish between
hard-SF originality and literary inventiveness, at least the equal of
Asimov in sheer creativity.) But Asimov has indisputably had a vastly
greater impact on other writers in the field ...
I figure the only way you can effectively hope to defend a list like this
is to draw a dependency graph showing which works by author (X) influenced
work by author (Y) and author (Z). And, frankly, life's too short.
-- Charlie
Fred Galvin
I have read "Ralph 124C 41 +". It is not well written. Did you read
Mr. Person's criteria? Gernsback's "Ralph" is definitely science
fiction. IMHO that one bad novel (to say nothing of Gernsback's
editing and publishing) has influenced the field more than, say,
Douglas Adams, Howard Waldrop, and Kurt Vonnegut rolled into one.
John Pelan
<gal...@math.ukans.edu> wrote:
I would argue that the overall effect of Ralph 124C41+ is moot.
Writers were writing SF before Gernsback (and writing it much more
competently) I might add. Gernsback's influence as an editor and
publisher was tremendous. As to the three authors you cite, I'd say
that Douglas Adams had a tremendous influence, (though much of it was
in televison and film rather than prose), Waldrop is influential in
ways that most readers will never notice but I know that any of us
that write period pieces probably think "What would Howard do?" when
it comes to researching something. Vonnegut is a tough call, I can't
point to a lot of his influence , but there is no question that his
books are SF and are of lasting importance.
Chheers,
John
erilar
cha...@antipope.org wrote:
> I figure the only way you can effectively hope to defend a list like this
> is to draw a dependency graph showing which works by author (X) influenced
> work by author (Y) and author (Z). And, frankly, life's too short.
>
Sounds rather like a one-question essay exam in a lit class I once had:
Who are the three most important writers of the 17th century(English)
and whom did they influence? I thought, "Gee, that could be worse"
because I had totally forgotten one of the four I should have been
picking from 8-) Prof liked my arguments, which was what counted.
--
Mary Loomer Oliver(aka erilar)
Erilar's Cave Annex:
http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo
erilar
Galvin <gal...@math.ukans.edu> wrote:
> I have read "Ralph 124C 41 +". It is not well written. Did you read
> Mr. Person's criteria? Gernsback's "Ralph" is definitely science
> fiction. IMHO that one bad novel (to say nothing of Gernsback's
> editing and publishing) has influenced the field more than, say,
> Douglas Adams, Howard Waldrop, and Kurt Vonnegut rolled into one.
>
I've read some Vonnegut. Whom did he influence? His writing strikes me
as too consciously "literary" to be enjoyable sf except for _Sirens of
Titan_, which is hardly a great book, either.
But then, Gernsback isn't enjoyable, though undeniably influential.
erilar
Pelan) wrote:
I think the question is how one defines "essential" for this list.
Gernsback was influential. He was far from a great literary stylist.
Jeff Suzuki
> If _A Connecticut Yankee..._ isn't SF, then neither is _1632_. _The
> Mysterious Stranger_ is pretty solidly SF, too. Plus many minor Twain
> works. He wrote much that was not SF, but then so did Avram Davidson.
I'm not sure what to call _Connecticut Yankee_, but I would not call it
SF. Yes, it involves time travel, but Lucian's "Extraordinary Voyages" had
a trip to the Moon and Voltaire's "Micromegas" has extraterrestrials.
For that matter, the daytime soaps have had subplots including cloning, evil
scientists, global warming, etc. I haven't actually seen any of the episodes,
but I daresay that they do _not_ qualify as science fiction.
Jeffs
James J. Walton
On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Keith Stokes wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 00:18:18 -0400, "James J. Walton"
> <jjwa...@telerama.com> wrote:
>
>
> >I don't understand why his books keep winding up on the Hugo ballot.
>
> He puts a lot of energy into promotion.
Yes. The Hugo Award is now for the author's personality and not for the
author's work.
David Bilek
>On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Keith Stokes wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 00:18:18 -0400, "James J. Walton"
>> <jjwa...@telerama.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >I don't understand why his books keep winding up on the Hugo ballot.
>>
>> He puts a lot of energy into promotion.
>
>Yes. The Hugo Award is now for the author's personality and not for the
>author's work.
Care to back that statement up?
What book do you think should have beaten, say, _A Deepness in the
Sky_?
-David
Ron Henry
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as <lex...@yahoo.com> declared:
>
> >> Robert Sawyer on the 100 Essential SF Writers list? Are you mad?
> >>
> >> He's not even the best Canadian SF author ever. Maybe not top 3!
> >
> > IMO, Terence Green would be a better Canadian representative.
>
> What about Geoff Ryman? (Yeah, I know he lives in London ...)
He keeps trying to write "lit-ra-chur" (_Was_, _334_ -- wait, am I
confusing the title with the Disch book? --, and _Lust_) which probably
disqualifies him in a lot of rasfw posters' minds.
But yes, I personally agree he is a fine writer.
Ron Henry
Andrew Plotkin
Why do you think the majority of Hugo voters know anything about the
nominee's personalities? I almost never do.
Sometimes an author is nominated who I am acquainted with on the Net
-- I read Charlie Stross's weblog, for example, and Ken MacLeod posts
-- but I'd have to be convinced that that forms a significant
percentage of Hugo voters, for any given author and year.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
James Nicoll
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>Here, James J. Walton <jjwa...@telerama.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes. The Hugo Award is now for the author's personality and not for the
>> author's work.
>
>Why do you think the majority of Hugo voters know anything about the
>nominee's personalities? I almost never do.
I think there's something like Hugo Momentum, where having won
one Hugo the odds of winning another go way up for about a decade. It
is a little like getting struck by lightning where I am told (having no
personal experience of lightning closer than about 20 meters and being
happy to keep it that way) the odds of getting struck a second time are
higher than getting hit the first time.
It might be something as simple as 'Oh, they were up before,
they must be good' or that the tastes of the public settle on a given
writer for about ten years before moving on. Or that a typical author
interesting enough to get nominated moves on faster than public taste
does, although I can't off hand think of an example.
David Tate
> David Tate wrote:
>
> > If _A Connecticut Yankee..._ isn't SF, then neither is _1632_. _The
> > Mysterious Stranger_ is pretty solidly SF, too. Plus many minor Twain
> > works. He wrote much that was not SF, but then so did Avram Davidson.
>
> I'm not sure what to call _Connecticut Yankee_, but I would not call it
> SF.
I daresay that says more about you than about the book.
> Yes, it involves time travel, but Lucian's "Extraordinary Voyages" had
> a trip to the Moon and Voltaire's "Micromegas" has extraterrestrials.
That's interesting, but I'm not sure what it has to do with whether
_ACYiKAC_ is SF or not. Unless you're going to take the tack that SF
is a marketing category (and thus nothing written before books were
labelled "SF" on their spines can be SF). If the content of a book is
what determines whether it is SF or not, I don't see how you can rule
out _ACYiKAC_ without simultaneously ruling out things like _1632_ --
which would seem to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
> For that matter, the daytime soaps have had subplots including cloning, evil
> scientists, global warming, etc. I haven't actually seen any of the episodes,
> but I daresay that they do _not_ qualify as science fiction.
You dare more than I, then. Why can't they be SF? Because they're
soaps? Because they're TV? Because they're not written by
card-carrying members of the SFWAA? None of those seem like good
reasons to me.
David Tate
Keith Stokes
<jjwa...@telerama.com> wrote:
>> >I don't understand why his books keep winding up on the Hugo ballot.
>>
>> He puts a lot of energy into promotion.
>
>Yes. The Hugo Award is now for the author's personality and not for the
>author's work.
Getting on the ballot is not the same thing as winning.
Keith
David Dyer-Bennet
> Here, James J. Walton <jjwa...@telerama.com> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Keith Stokes wrote:
>
> >> On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 00:18:18 -0400, "James J. Walton"
> >> <jjwa...@telerama.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> >I don't understand why his books keep winding up on the Hugo ballot.
> >>
> >> He puts a lot of energy into promotion.
>
> > Yes. The Hugo Award is now for the author's personality and not for the
> > author's work.
>
> Why do you think the majority of Hugo voters know anything about the
> nominee's personalities? I almost never do.
>
> Sometimes an author is nominated who I am acquainted with on the Net
> -- I read Charlie Stross's weblog, for example, and Ken MacLeod posts
> -- but I'd have to be convinced that that forms a significant
> percentage of Hugo voters, for any given author and year.
I don't think the majority of Hugo voters know anything about the
nominee's personalities (just to make it clear).
However...
I think it's reasonable to assume that a strong majority of the voters
are part of the convention-going fan population.
One of the things I noticed when I first got involved in conventions
and fandom (1972) was that I actually *met* and *talked to* authors
and even editors. That was part of the cool part, so to speak.
So it seems to me entirely likely that quite a few of the voters would
have met some of the authors nominated. And that their friends would
know others. If an author's personality or behavior were especially
noteworthy, that would tend to get around. (As would unfounded
rumors and libels.)
Despite this, it's not *my* perception that the Hugo award is largely
slanted towards being an award for "best convention-going author
personality".
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info
Bill Snyder
Tillman) wrote:
>dt...@ida.org (David Tate) wrote in message news:<9d67e55e.02102...@posting.google.com>...
>> Jeff Suzuki <suz...@bard.edu> wrote in message news:<3DB89807...@bard.edu>...
>
>> >
>> > I would argue that Twain doesn't really qualify as an SF author, and neither
>> > do Orwell or Lewis. This does not mean that they weren't influential, but
>> > rather, they were not science fiction writers.
>
>>
>> If _A Connecticut Yankee..._ isn't SF, then neither is _1632_. _The
>> Mysterious Stranger_ is pretty solidly SF, too. Plus many minor Twain
>> works. He wrote much that was not SF, but then so did Avram Davidson.
>>
>
>My problem with _A Connecticut Yankee..._ is, I found it unreadable --
??!! I know mileage varies a *lot*, but that one still puzzles me.
Care to expand?
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
James J. Walton
On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, David Bilek wrote:
> What book do you think should have beaten, say, _A Deepness in the
> Sky_?
I was so overjoyed when I read Deepness you wouldn't believe it. It was
finally a return to nominations based on a single well written book and
not on personality or by being the last book in a huge series.
And considering I've had this conversation so many times in so many other
venues, no, I don't care to continue it here.
James J. Walton
On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Keith Stokes wrote:
> >Yes. The Hugo Award is now for the author's personality and not for the
> >author's work.
>
> Getting on the ballot is not the same thing as winning.
Careful Keith, this is the third time this year we almost agreed on
something.
Richard Horton
<ronh...@SPAMOFFclarityconnect.com> wrote:
>He keeps trying to write "lit-ra-chur" (_Was_, _334_ -- wait, am I
>confusing the title with the Disch book? --, and _Lust_) which probably
>disqualifies him in a lot of rasfw posters' minds.
_334_ is by Disch, the Ryman book you are thinking of is _253_.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Dave Empey
news:lawrence-823409...@central.isp.giganews.com:
> The criteria: The must have written at least some science fiction (or
> at least what some people have called science fiction), and their work
> must have influenced the field in some way.
Hmmph. You don't think 'Doc' Smith qualifies based on these
criteria?
--
Dave Empey
Nicholas Whyte
> What book do you think should have beaten, say, _A Deepness in the
> Sky_?
_A Civil Campaign_. Or _Cryptonomicon_.
Nicholas
Nicholas Whyte
> I think there's something like Hugo Momentum, where having won
> one Hugo the odds of winning another go way up for about a decade. It
> is a little like getting struck by lightning where I am told (having no
> personal experience of lightning closer than about 20 meters and being
> happy to keep it that way) the odds of getting struck a second time are
> higher than getting hit the first time.
I'm inclined to feel that _The Diamond Age_ won the 1996 Hugo partly
in belated recognition for _Snow Crash_ being overlooked for the 1993
award.
Nicholas
Ron Henry
news:I7pv9.931$Vk4.25...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com...
> On Mon, 28 Oct 2002 11:38:12 -0500, "Ron Henry" wrote:
>
> >He keeps trying to write "lit-ra-chur" (_Was_, _334_ -- wait, am I
> >confusing the title with the Disch book? --, and _Lust_) which
probably
> >disqualifies him in a lot of rasfw posters' minds.
>
> _334_ is by Disch, the Ryman book you are thinking of is _253_.
Ah yes. Hazards of posting from work, where I can't just glance over at
the bookshelf to refresh my memory. (I guess I could've gone to
isfdb...)
I still haven't read Ryman's early book, _The Unconquered Country_[1],
which I recently picked up used. What do people think about that?
Thanks,
Ron Henry
[1] Okay, this time I verified the title in ISFDb, so as not to
inadvertently confuse it with the dang Star Trek movie title. ;-)
David Dyer-Bennet
Not crazy.
But I strongly favor Deepness, myself. ACC is the best of the Miles
books to date, and is really excellent. But it doesn't redefine the
playing field and open up new areas to investigation the way Deepness
does.
Cryptonomicon was kinda okay, but kinda incoherent, and not that well
written.
David Bilek
Either would have been good enough to win the Hugo in almost any other
year, but _ADitS_ was better.
-David
wamccabe
"Lawrence Person" <lawr...@io.com> wrote in message
news:lawrence-823409...@central.isp.giganews.com...
> A few recent threads got me thinking, yet again, of just who the
"canonical"
> role-model to the young, I decided to compile a list of 100 Essential
Science
> Fiction Authors.
>
Are there really that many "essential" authors? I could believe that there
might be that many books but to list authors implies that all of their work
is interchangeable or all of it should be read.
> The criteria: The must have written at least some science fiction (or at
least
> what some people have called science fiction), and their work must have
> influenced the field in some way. J. R. R. Tolkein fits the second
definition,
> but not the first, while Jack London and Rudyard Kipling meet the first
> criteria, but not really the second. Also, the works on this list should
still
> be relevant to readers today, which is why people like Sir Thomas Moore
aren't
> on here.
>
> Where a writer is influential for a single work, that work is listed
beside
> their name.
>
> These are arranged in rough chronological order (i.e., I didn't feel like
> spending the time and effort to research when their first sales were for a
> Usenet post). Where
>
> Are these truly the 100 Essential SF writers? Why yes. I am, of course,
> infallible.
>
> THE LIST
>
Considering how few stories there are at this end of the list, I'd stick
Jonathan Swift in for Gulliver's Travels and drop Mark Twain - was there
anything other than Connecticut Yankee?
> Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)
> Edgar Allen Poe
> Mark Twain
> Jules Verne
> H. G. Wells
> Arthur Conan Doyle
After Verne and Wells, Conan Doyle seems like a mistake. He's only written
the Challenger stories in the field and the influence is more likely
Sherlock Holmes.
> Edgar Rice Burroughs
A really good example that needs cutting down. Could you get away with
reading a Tarzan novel? There were certainly enough of them but these were
straight adventures. Then again, weren't the SF novels just the same thing
set on Mars / Venus etc.?
> Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
Huxley may have started writing at this time and even included some of the
ideas from BNW in one of his earlier books (a country house discussion in
Crome Yellow) but he really belongs with the 30's.
> Olaf Stapledon
> Stanley G. Weinbaum
I don't think I've even seen this name before.
> H. P. Lovecraft
> Clark Ashton Smith
You've got Lovecraft, do you really need C A S?
> Jack Williamson
> C. S. Lewis
While I'd admit that the Narnia books are very influential upon the Fantasy
genre, the SF trilogy is just plain awful.
> A. E. van Vogt
> Isaac Asimov
> Arthur C. Clarke
> Robert A. Heinlein
> Ray Bradbury
> George Orwell (1984)
> Frederik Pohl
> C. M. Kornbluth
I don't think I've seen anything written by CMK solo. Was there much?
> Fritz Leiber
> Theodore Sturgeon
> Henry Kuttner
> C. L. Moore
<cut>
Somewhere around here you get into people who have written one series or
just a few books in the same style. They often have no influence except on
the fans that like their books.
> Iain Banks
> Neal Stephenson
> Ken MacLeod
> Mary Doria Russell
> Ted Chiang
>
<cut>
> Two influential writers who may or may not write science fiction,
depending on
> your definition:
> William S. Burroughs
> Thomas Pynchon
>
There are probably a lot more like this although most of them tend to the
fantastic rather than SF.
<cut>
>
> Two women who wrote really popular fantasy disguised as science fiction
but
> nothing else of note in SF and who I have left off the list because there
wasn't
> room and/or out of sheer spite because I'm just plain evil:
>
> Marion Zimmer Bradley
> Anne McCaffrey
I think McCaffrey deserves better than this. Certainly her most popular set
is exactly as described but there are a few others worth consideration. I'd
have left her off as second rate rather than the dressed-up fantasy.
>
> Now, go forth and read the best work(s) of every one of the writers on
this
> list, and you'll be pretty well versed in science fiction. ;-)
>
> --
> Lawrence Person lawre...@hiho.com (remove all "h"s from my e-mail
address)
> Web Page: www.io.com/~lawrence
> Lame Excuse Books, Science Fiction First Editions:
www.io.com/~lawrence/lame
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