A little list of the must-reads and lesser-known SF authors...

[drscott]

At the request of one of last night's dinner guests (a school principal), I went over my SF library for less-known classics, plus neglected and newer authors she might not have encountered but which I can recommend as worthy in some way, by quality of writing, characterization, or interesting ideas. I tend to like harder SF, so this list is skewed in that direction, but if something's really good, genre doesn't matter. And of course I'm leaving out more than I'm listing, but time flies...


Post-1970 classics one might have missed:

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age.

Orson Scott Card's Ender series.

Vernor Vinge.

Greg Bear, particularly Blood Music.

Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan stories, which while inhabiting a space-operatic framework are really masterful works of characterization. Her fantasy efforts are similarly character-grounded.

Dan Simmons, for both the Hyperion series and Ilium.

China Mieville, notably Perdido Street Station.

Alastair Reynolds.

Scottish post-socialists: Iain Banks (Excession) and Ken MacLeod.

Wil McCarthy: Bloom, The Collapsium series.

Walter Jon Williams: Aristoi, Metropolitan, the Dread Empire's Fall series.


Less well-known or new authors with a lot of promise:

John C. Wright, The Golden Age and sequels.

Charles Stross, aka autopope.

Karin Lowachee for Warchild and sequels, which are interestingly energetic adolescent novels.

Karen Traviss, notably for City of Pearl and sequels.

Kristine Smith, aka kaygo, who -- gasp! -- has no Wikipedia entry, for Code of Conduct and sequels.

Elizabeth Bear, aka matociquala.

Tony Daniel, for Metaplanetary.

Comments

[bearringsd.livejournal.com]

Here's a question for you: does it bother you when you like an author's work, but you find out that in real life they are bigots or close-minded?

I *really* liked Orson Scott Card's work (the Ender series, the Alvin Maker series and other stuff he wrote) but then I encountered some characters in his books that were gay, but behaved in very non-empowered ways. I also read some of his views on homosexuality and...well, READ FOR YOURSELF. Scary, no?

[bearringsd.livejournal.com]

oh yes...where was I going with that? OK, that given his views on gays and their role in society, that I honestly wouldn't recommmend his work for any school setting, y'know?

[mt-yvr.livejournal.com]

I had the same reaction. His books... well I loved Ender's Game. But the man himself just turned out to be a bloody great disappointment. Especially around his spouting off around gay marriage a while ago, which you point to. Another of his articles is flip and incredibly snide.

Anyway, in a VERY rare move, his books were removed from my home.

[mt-yvr.livejournal.com]

Oh, to explain : I liked his writing, I don't think he should be silenced for his views. But I refuse to support his writing to give him a] the fame and b] the money to go out and spout off his ideas in larger settings like his websites.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Ooh, controversy! Yes, he has a huge Mormon blind spot. But the Ender books somehow manage to be great anyway. Buy them used or check them out from a library if you want to avoid contributing to his wealth.

[mt-yvr.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've read most of his work at one point or another. Calvin the Maker series, Ender (including the late addition years later), several of his collections. He's a good writer, no doubt. I still think Ender's Game is an amazing book, I still see resonances of it in various cultural references to this day. Hell, South Park did a riff on it with Kenny in Heaven, if anyone remembers that one.

The disconnect between him and his writing is a hard one. I generally try to disassociate the artist from the art, as much as possible. But when that art is used to fund or fuel or provide the kind of notoriety to further a personal agenda that, as an average unknown, they normally wouldn't have the ability to further in quite the same way? I get crankyish.

Admittedly I do believe a portion of any good artform - literature or visual or whatever - can be to make statements of a personal or philosophical nature. Fair enough.

I even recognize that the "major" problem here is my own dislike of his message. Otherwise he's done nothing at all wrong, just puts out a message I don't agree with. Big whoop.

Though I will note it darkly amuses me that Ender's Game can be seen as a discussion of "difference shouldn't equate to hate" and this book granted him the fame to get a column, and the ability to write in that column whatever he pleases, including a riff on gay people wanting the right to marry just like everyone else.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

You're right...that's truly scary. I did enjoy reading OSC in the 70s and early 80s, especially the Ender series. The bothering part was knowing that he is Mormon, and all the baggage that entails.

Yes, he's right. I did have a choice. I did marry a woman in the 70s, and I could have procreated to ensure that my DNA stream was passed on. But we divorced after a year, because I was gay. We could have lived the next 50 years in misery, but we didn't. And I didn't carry on my own person DNA stream.

Ah, well. Guess I won't pick up any more OSC novels...

[mt-yvr.livejournal.com]

It frightens me sometimes how much the two worlds I often see as separate converge. You being in one, several of the people you list being in the other. (lol)

See, a good old fashioned genre reader... I did not know this about you.

(glee)

Tried Syne Mitchell? From your descriptions I bet you'd at least be interested in a once through of her stuff.

[tdjohnsn.livejournal.com]

I will print this out and start filling in the holes in my reading library.

I wrote a similar reveiw a few years ago. It is a little dated (Bujold had only written "the spirit ring" at the point I wrote this for instance. Her current fantasy work is amazing.)

http://www.speakeasy.org/~tdjohnsn/about/about_authors.html

I think you would really like Stephen Brust and John Barnes.

[rootbeer1.livejournal.com]

Of all these listed, who would you recommend for someone who never much explored post-1970s SF? But I'm well-grounded in midcentury authors like Jack Vance, Robert Sheckley, Fredric Brown and the big names like Asimov, Clark, Heinlein and Bradbury.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Umm, any on the first part of the list -- that's exactly what it's for. Some of these are less accessible than others, but for someone familiar with earlier authors you shoudl have no problem.

[rootbeer1.livejournal.com]

I should have clarified that I was thinking more of SF authors who are stylistically similar to the ones I mentioned.

Thanks for the list -- it'll be very useful.

[kermode.livejournal.com]

Octavia Butler cannot be missed. The Earthseed books, plus Kindred.

[squalidbear.livejournal.com]

If you liked Neal Stephenson (loved Snowcrash, Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon, hated the self-indulgent Baroque Cycle), I'm surprised you didn't rate Iain M Banks.

I enjoyed the whole idea of The Culture.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

One of the two Scottish post-socialists I mentioned. See, I am too cultured!

[excessor.livejournal.com]

I got my LJ user name from one of Banks's books.

New authors

[dean-in-sf.livejournal.com]

Richard K Morgan won the 2005 Philip K Dick award so he can hardly be called 'lesser known'. But he is a not to be missed new author. Check my archives for review of "Altered Carbon," and "Market Forces".

Susan R Matthews' "Jurisdiction" series is a wicked fusion of S&M and SF.

If a principal put either of these author's works in her school's library she would soon be looking for a job in a new field.

Dean, who still owns the copy of "The Ringworld Engineers" he purchased at the COOP only after considering, at the end of the term, whether he would fail 18.061 if he bought the book.

Re: New authors

[bikerbearmark.livejournal.com]

Richard K. Morgan's noir stylings are outstanding - I devoured Altered Carbon and am midway through Market Forces now.

Re: New authors

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Agreed, left Morgan off because I missed that bookshelf...

[markbuster.livejournal.com]

Hunky,
Owns a sling,
has a job,

AND can read!

You keep raising the bar. I am going to come over and shove some cheetos down your throat and make you watch my boxed set of Golden Girls.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

I don't have a job, I'm retired. Cheezits would be more likely to tempt me.

[malcarne.livejournal.com]

I recently stumbled across this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F5WN3C/qid=1148751209/sr=11-1/ref=sr_11_1/002-5087122-6310402?n=5174

after perusing the artwork check out the song titles

[urbear]

Yes, Yes, YES! I knew there was more than one reason I liked you.

Your tastes are very much in line with mine. I'd go a little further and expand on a few specific works that I appreciate most:

Vernor Vinge
- Across Realtime
- A Fire Upon the Deep
- A Deepness in the Sky

Charles Stross
- Singularity Sky
- The Family Trade

And how about Spider Robinson? He can be trite and/or cloying sometimes, but when he's good, he's very very good.

[tmaher.livejournal.com]

Card's views on homosexuality aside, I could never get past the premise of Ender's Game. The B-plot with Ender's siblings came across as "using sock puppets on newsgroups to take over the world".

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

If you read it now (after net talk has half taken over politics) it probably loses any novelty, but at the time of publication it took some extrapolation from the babbling on Usenet to imagine the possibility. One of the themes of the book is that kids (at least special kids) can change the world (and have moral duties to try to do so) -- which is why it's so attractive to adolescents.