I think it'd be fun to post our top five choices and your favorite book from each. Though, please try to base your choices on overall work instead of just one particular novel.
1. Philip K. Dick - aside from the sheer volume his work (which was massive), he introduced us to so many foriegn concepts and ideas. Where William Gibson might have invented the matrix, Philip K. Dick was questioning the very existance of a real reality decades prior. He's a visionary and a real mind bender. I never read anything by PKD that I didn't like, and I've read it all.
Book: The Man in the High Castle
2. Sam Delany - I refer to him as the Shakespeare of SF. He has the most poetic prose style I've ever read. Everything he writes, even when the situation isn't meant to be, is riviting. That, combined with his literate nature really makes his sf seem more than pulp entertainment.
Book: Dhalgren
3. William Gibson - Co-creator of cyber punk. The literary equivilant of John Woo. Reading this guy is always fun for me. Aside from his flash cut prose style which always keeps me on edge, his ideas and the way he exacutes them really leave me thinking after I close the covers.
Book: Neuromancer
4. Orson Scott Card - The simplest reason: plain fun to read. A literate core surrounded by a pulpy crust, truly the best combination in my opinion. His work is accessable to anyone, kids and adults and makes both think just as hard. Reading almost any piece of his work, you can expect a good time.
Book: Ender's Game
5. Ray Bradbury - Though he only wrote only one sf novel (an amazingly superb novel), that along with his short stories has made him one of the greatest living authors of today. Terrific grasp of emotion and a simple prose style that pull a reader in, not to mention brilliant ideas that inspire even today, this guy lives up to his title.
Honorable mention:
Assimov - Terrific author and visionary, but idea's got too dated over time. However, that in no way dilutes the power of his work, in my opinion.
Herbet - Loved his ideas, and I really do think that the Dune novels are terrific, I simply can't stand his writing style.
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My top 5 (I might add in explanations later but don't feel like it now):
1) Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game 2) Isaac Asimov - Foundation 3)Octavia Butler - Wild Seed 4)(Not sure if this is SF) Kurt Vonnegut 5) Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama
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1) Orson Scott Card-No writer has hooked me and kept me coming back to his books like OSC. Whenever a new OSC book comes out, I just have to read it, especially if its an Ender, Bean, or Alvin book. OSC is just my all-time favorite author right now!
Book: Speaker For the Dead--an amazing novel and MUCH better then Ender's Game, imo. Not only does it have a great sci-fi concept, but it also has some really great characters here. Especially Ender. Old Ender is great.
2) Frank Herbert-Before I read any OSC book, I read Frank Herbert's Dune books and I was blown away. With the Dune books, Frank Herbert created a really amazing sci-fi universe. Not only that, but his books have tons of philosphy in them. Just an amazing writer.
Book: Children of Dune--there's so much I love about this book, from the story, to the main characters, to all the philosphy of the book. Its just the best Dune book, imo.
3) Ray Bradbury-What would we do without Bradbury? The man is a genius imo. He has created so many great works in the sci-fi genre. No list is complete without him, imo.
Book: The Martain Chronicles--This is, without a doubt, my favorite Bradbury book. Its a collection of short stories, but all of the stories are connected with each other in that they all take place on Mars and some of them even reference each other. Just an amazing book!
And those are my three favorites. I admit that I haven't read as much sci-fi as I should have. I've mainly read these three authors. My other readings include fantasy books like Harry Potter. I also like to read books like Huck Finn.
I hope to read more sci-fi books in the future and add to this list!
DF2506 " I do have some other favorite sci-fi writers, but they work in the field of comics and tv mostly. Rod Serling (Twilight Zone) and JMS (Babylon 5) are big favorites! "
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"Ray Bradbury-What would we do without Bradbury? The man is a genius imo. He has created so many great works in the sci-fi genre"
Really? What other SF books has he written besides Chronicles? I've never read any other SF books from him but would love to if I knew some.
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Jack Vance, esp. The Dragon-Masters Larry Niven, esp. The Mote in God's Eye (w Pournelle) Gregory Benford, esp. Foundation's Fear Connie Willis, esp. To Say Nothing of the Dog Orson Scott Card, esp. Speaker for the Dead
But it's hard to leave out Octavia Butler (Xenogenesis), Samuel Delaney (Triton), Isaac Asimov (legion), David Brin (Startide Rising), Jerry Pournelle, Walter Jon Williams, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, L. P. Davies, C. S. Lewis (Out of the Silent Planet), Ursula K. LeGuin (The Lathe of Heaven), and probably several others I should remember.
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Oh yah, I read that one. I thought it was pretty good but the fact that I had to read it for school kind of took away most of the pleasure...
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Isaac Asimov for the Foundation series Tolkeen, for LotR OSC for EG, ES, SP, SoTh, SotG, SftD, Xeno, CotM Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman: Various DragonLance books Don Perrin (for chagning my fav DragonLance race from Kender to Draconians) RA Salvatore for inventing Drizzt Hubbard for Battlefield Earth Sun Tzu: The Art of War
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The Illustrated Man is a good book too and Fahrenheit 451 is a book I really need to read. Its supposed to be a classic.
Bradbury is a great writer, imo. He continues to write and continues to be the inspiration of many different sci-fi writers out there. He is definitly a writer that anyone who likes sci-fi at all should read.
The Martian Chronicles gets my highest recommandation. Its a masterpiece, imo. Just a great book!
Btw, it should be noted, as far as Tolkien goes (for the person who mentioned him) he does not count.
LOTR is FANTASY, not sci-fi. Many people get those two genres mixed up. lol. They are two seperate genres though.
On that matter, we should do a thread about Greatest Fantasy writers. I'd put Tolkien on that list even though I don't care much for the books (can't get into them). I love the movies though and I know without the books, there would never have been the movies.
Anyway, getting off topic.
I need to read some Heinlein. He wrote some great Twilight Zone episodes and wrote some great stories that I have not yet read (like Starship Troopers and the story that Stir of Echoes was based on. Oh and the Shrinking Man).
Maybe after I get down with reading Magic Street and Enchantment by OSC, I'll try out Heinlein. Possibly.
DF2506 " I also need to read Wild Seed by Octavia Butler because when OSC mentioned that in his How to Write books that sounded really good! Maybe I should read that and a Heinlein book after Enchantment! "
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OSC: Ender's Game & Pastwatch Clarke: Rama series May: Galactic Milieu Donaldson: Gap series Ben Bova & Greg Bear: Both of them just have some really cool work.
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Ray Bradbury - I love some of his short stories because they invoke beautiful imagery and incredible scenarios. I read fahrenheit 451 for school and I loved it.
Best Book: Fahrenheit 451
Orson Scott Card - I really enjoyed Ender's Game for multiple reasons, the battle room, the ideas presented in the book and all the psychology and relationships were what made it a good book for me.
Best Book: Ender's Game
Robert Heinlein - One of the best Sci-Fi action writers for me. His books always seemed to have a way of playing like a movie inside your head as you read each page.
Best Book: Starship Troopers (very different from the movie)
Stephen King - I wasn't too into his work until very recently. Most people classify his books as "horror" which I think is a mistake, if anything he deals with fiction or sci-fi with a slight horror undertone. I thoroughly enjoy how easily the stories flow and jump out of the page as well as how he actually makes me care about the characters, I also enjoy how most of his stories weave together to make one cohesive universe.
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The Pixiest, which story did Butler disown? If you had a link to an interview or something where she talked about it, I'd love to read it.
Sid, you liked Battlefield Earth? What did you like about it? It's been about 15 years since I read it, but I've often held it up as the worst SF I've ever read (and me a sucker for "humanity pulling itself up from the ashes" type stories).
Hm, five best SF authors? If you take SF to mean "speculative fiction", and include fantasy in the list, I'd probably go with:
Maureen McHugh - China Mountain Zhang Octavia Butler - Xenogenesis trilogy Orson Scott Card - Speaker for the Dead George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire Dan Simmons - Ilium
I have to say, though, that while the first 4 were pretty easy, I dithered for quite a while on number 5.
If you were to ask for my five favorite short story authors, the list would be slightly different:
William Sanders - The Undiscovered Ursula K LeGuin - Mazes Howard Waldrop - One Horse Town (written in collaboration with with Leigh Kennedy, it should be noted) Octavia Butler - Bloodchild Orson Scott Card - Unaccompanied Sonata
With the short stories much more than the novels, which story I would pick for each author varies depending on my mood, the weather, or whathaveyou. The list of authors itself is pretty consistent though (except that really I need to make it 6 and include George R. R. Martin on there).
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Sun Tzu is not Science fiction I agree but I had to put it up there anyways. Noeman I just liked it, both the movie and the book, the movie well because its sci-fi as for the book I really did like the whole aspect of Humanity rising out of the ashes, and saving the universe from a really big war by introducing open market capitalism to the other aliens. Though I don't understand Hubbards whole anti-shrink philosophy. Like I don't like the idea how you can compare an animal to a human either. *shrug*
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If I went over to Josh Grobans site and asked them to name the best singers ever, how often would Josh Groban show up? Posts: 9754 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Thanks for the information, The Pixiest. I had actually forgotten about Survivor's existence until you linked to it. I read that one years ago, when I first discovered Butler, and it's one of the few books of hers that I don't actually own a copy of. Very cool that she's got a new one coming out soon. I can't wait to read it.
Sid, that's interesting. To me the aliens were so poorly drawn, and so completely unbelievable in the choices they made, as to render the book almost unreadable. To each their own though. I didn't bother to see the movie.
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I really need to read Robert Heinlein. As soon as I finish my Asimov reading spree I will. But every single person reccommends a different 5 books by him. I don't know who to listen to and it'd take me forever to read the ones everybody mentioned. I'm going to try to limit the number of books by him to 4 for now and I'm probably going to read a couple of the ones OSC mentioned in his recent article.
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1. Orson Scott Card. Once you and an author have duct taped a ziploc bag of hair to a man's chest, there's no going back.
Book: Hard, hard to pick one. If I really, really, had to pick just one, I'd probably say XenocideLostBoysPastwatchPrenticeAlvin.
2. Bradbury and Asimov. Also duh. For me, the ABC's of sci-fi aren't Asimov, Bradbury and Clark, it's Asimov, Brabury and Card. Bradbury's metaphor rings so true to me it's emotionally draining to read--it's an incredible experience. And Asimov is as close to flawless as sci-fi comes.
Books: A Graveyard For Lunatics and Prelude to Foundation.
3. Robert Silverberg. While I've never really fallen in love with any of his novels, besides maybe Lord Valentine's Castle, his short stuff is fantastic. I had a hard time picking just one for my list in the short story thread. When he's hot, he's fire.
Book: Just about any short story collection, but for novels, Lord Valentine's Castle.
(On a side note, I would have thought this would be The Alien Years, before I read it. The short stories that make it up are all fantastic individually. However, they didn't congeal well, and this book is an unsatisfying mess.)
4. John Varley. He's clever. He's subtle and in your face all at once. He publishes far too infrequently, but he reminds me over and over how simultaniously immediate and out there science fiction can be.
Book: Demon
5. Dean Koontz. Yeah, he's popular, but he earned it.
Book: Cold Fire
I'm probably missing a real obvious one, that my wife will call me on later. Ah, well.
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Asimov - the Foundation trilogy Roger Zelazny - Doorways in the Sand Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age Nancy Kress - Beggars in Spain OSC - Speaker for the Dead
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Yeah, I'm not a huge Niven fan. He has great ideas, but his execution is often almost painfully bad. Of course, you could make the argument that I just prefer character driven fiction to idea driven fiction, and you'd probably be right.
When Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes collaborate, though, they're greater than the sum of their parts. Legacy of Herot is probably my favorite thing that Niven has had a hand it.
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quote:Originally posted by blacwolve: Nancy Kress- It's so hard to pick just one. Probably Beggars in Spain. I can't believe no one else has mentioned her.
I have a hard time sticking with her. I'm trying to read Probability Moon right now and while the hook grabbed me right from the beginning, I can't stay with it.
I think her style is too simplistic for me. I'm not sure.
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: When Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes collaborate, though, they're greater than the sum of their parts. Legacy of Herot is probably my favorite thing that Niven has had a hand it.
I'll keep it in mind. I see many people praising his collaboration books.
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Heinlein of course, anybody without him at the top is simply not well read.
Asimov for making it all mainstream
Card for making it soft and personable
Wells for doing it first
Doc Cook for giving us the Galactic Patrol
Edgar Rice Burroughs for being the best ever at creating fantasy adventure. Nobody has ever come close.
What you have to realize is that you cannot pick up a science fiction book in the modern era that does not have underlying it what these men created. They laid down rules for machine intelligence, galactic conflict, sexual growth in society, and the archetype of the fantasy hero. If you missed them then how lucky you are to still have them before you to experience.
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