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

[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.