Sci-Fi key authors

[ryos]

I'd add Anne McCaffrey's Pern series. I'm not sure how popular they are in the grand scheme of things, but I really like them.

They're one of those books that's hard to genre-fy. They're technically Sci-Fi but read like Fantasy, mostly due to the dragons.

Edit:
Dean Koontz seems pretty popular. He writes Horror/Thrillers with supernatural elements, leaning more towards the thriller side than the horror side. I'll read one now and again, but I'm not that into horror.

Also, if you're just going for popular, you can't leave off Stephen King. I don't personally care for anything he's written, but you can't deny that he's huge.

Finally, on the success of Brandon, the fact that he's able to afford a full-time personal assistant says to me that he's doing very well for himself.

[Reaves]

I hated Weber's On Basilisk Station but I like the 1633/1634 collaborations he's done with Eric Flint. I've been told Weber gets better after Basilisk but haven't tried any.

Oh much better. Actually I had the exact same reaction to ON BASILISK STATION; it was a Christmas present and I read it, but didn't continue on with the series until about a year later, when two other members of my family told me how great it was.

[Renoard]

McCaffery is great.  And Martin is great too, Although he's a talented hijacker like Rigney rather than an originator.

Rothfus is going to be a big star, if he can find a formulaic approach.  The Story within a Story is going to work for about two more novels then he'll have to go to a more conventional approach.

I think Doctor Forward is phenomenal but the man is not prolific.  Greg bear has a lot going for him too.

I don't read horor, unless it is fine old gothic lit like Shelley or Poe.  But Lumley has something going for him, if you can overlook the sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.

I saw some chatter about Brandon Sanderson earlier.  He seems to be a nice guy but there are issues with his work.

Not to be indelicate, but I would never have read anything by BS if he hadn't been chosen to finish WoT.  The titles and the synopses on Mistborn and Elantris were real turn-offs and his was one of the shelves I simply bypassed when scanning for new titles.  I prefer the sensual experience of perusing an actual brick and mortar and scanning synopses for a good read.  His books were too short, sounded a bit too new agey and had substandard cover designs.  Layout and design often say more about how a publisher feels about a property than the actual painting selected.  Tor didn't seem to believe in Brandon and I couldn't bring myself to try.

I found after reading Elantris that he has potential, but his own work really needs to come up a notch in characterization and plotting before he'll be in the same league with Martin or Eddings.  On the other hand he's probably on par with Feist and Howard.  But Rothfus does seem to have an edge on him, though both are in the same league. And he doesn't borrow the classics.  Rigney stole from Feist who stole from Tolkien who from the Edda. But each put his own mark on the work and we forgive them.  But it is refreshing to see someone like BS or Rothfus build a world that is uniquely his.

Working with WoT will probably help BS grow quite a bit.  But I have to say, the online release of Warbreaker had some holes that needed plugging and some major issues with Characterization.  I think his own work is suffering because of WoT.  That's to be expected.  He has a lot riding on how it's received.  But I do think he gets some undeserved praise in this forum because of his close ties. That is to be expected too, he shares the faith of the majority, who have a vested interest in one of their own becoming the next "Milton or Shakespeare".  And he was a founding TimeWaster.

No shame in cheering your own, just remember that the world at large might not be quite as thrilled.

[Shaggy]

No shame in cheering your own, just remember that the world at large might not be quite as thrilled.

Or maybe just you aren't.

It's Rothfuss, not Rothfus.

What are some of these 'issues' you're talking about, hmm? You've been pretty vague so far.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

McCaffery gets very repetitive, sometimes literally (when she rewrites the same thing from a different point of view). She's a great author to read when you're in junior high/early high school. Then she gets old. (At least that was my experience.)

I love the Mistborn hardback designs, as well as Elantris. (The first Mistborn paperback cover sucked.) The cover copy for Elantris was just the prologue, so if you don't like it it's probably not a book for you. I think the Mistborn cover copy is also good, though hyperbolic at the end. (Please, don't tell me fantasy will never be the same again...let me decide that after reading it, thanks.) And Warbreaker was written before Brandon started on WoT, so whether his own work will suffer or benefit remains to be seen. And...too short? Brandon's books ain't short, unless you count Alcatraz. Publishers prefer books half his length. And I don't see a "new age" connection at all.

[ryos]

McCaffery gets very repetitive, sometimes literally (when she rewrites the same thing from a different point of view). She's a great author to read when you're in junior high/early high school. Then she gets old. (At least that was my experience.)

Funny, that's exactly when I read her stuff. Middle school and early high school. I have fond memories, but I haven't picked one up since. *shrug*

[Renoard]

Of course the Dragonsiger duo is YA.  But while The Dragon Riders has an open and easy language style, the stories have more subtext the older you are when you read them.  They aren't high literature, but as post apocalyptic Sci Fi they are pretty good stories.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

The first Dragonrider story ("Weyr Search") was fantasy, pure and simple, with its talk of the "old blood" and all. Only later did McCaffrey change the series to science fiction because fantasy was frowned upon a lot more than science fiction at the time. Her books never made good science fiction. Her orbital mechanics are very bad. (Any type of planetoid/comet with an elliptical orbit around a star so that the closest approach is every 250 years would, at closest approach, shoot through the inner system in weeks, not 50 years!) And in her Rowan books she set the planets around the brightest stars in the sky instead of stars that are anywhere close to each other. Oops!

They're fun until they get repetitive, but they're hardly great literature of the genre. I do think she would count as a key author for historical reasons, because everyone since her has been influenced by her ideas of what dragons are, and every dragon book since then has been either her dragons slightly changed, or a reaction against her dragons.

She does get the junior-high-nobody-understands-my-genius-angst pretty well though. She has some very good characterization.

[Patriotic Kaz]

I don't care a filp about horror so stephen king and the likes i ignore...

[Bookstore Guy]

Brandon's novels are not short at all. The long length of his novels was a serious concern for Tor when publishing him. Since his novels were close in length to Jordan (by about 50K words), but didn't sell 1 million copies HB worldwide, he was an expensive author to print early on. He is definitely still perfecting his art, but he is in the class of authors who are changing fantasy. I do find it odd that you, Renoard, would say that Tor didn't seem to care about him based on the cover art. His Elantris cover is beautiful, and is done by one of the best recognized artists in the industry right now - Stephan Martiniere. His Mistborn HB covers were by Jon Foster, another very well received artist, and they are great covers. Those covers alone (especially Elantris) have sold numerous copies of the novels themselves. Now I'm not saying this because I'm giving him the "home-field advantage", I'm saying it because I read the novels, and because of the hundreds of people who I personally sold the novels to who ALL came back and loved the books. In my experience, booksellers all over the country (with whom I spoke to personally) were getting great feedback on Brandon's novels. It isn't just a local thing. It isnt just favoritism. Brandon is very well received.

Kaz - as for horror, I think you have the same misconception that most people do about horror. It isn't all blood, guts, and gore (and if it is, it really isnt worth reading in my opinion). Most good horror has elements of fantasy or SF in it. Stephen King's Dark Tower is fantasy. The whole Urban Fantasy genre is really just another name for Fantasy Horror. HP Lovecraft's stories are literary horror/fantasy. I'm just saying, you do yourself a disservice by ignoring all horror because then you are ignoring some fantasy and SF as well.

[Shaggy]

Also, Renoard–why do you not read short books?? That seems very, very nonsensical to me.…

[Renoard]

@ Shaggy
Typically (in my experience) short novels gloss over characterization and finer plot points.  I usually feel that the novel has finished before the author "got out of first gear".  Conversely some can be loaded with poetic language that is too dense and obscure to be a "good read". Camus for instance had this problem.  A third common issue with short novels is that they may be targeted at young readers and have the excessive dose of Teen angst that Ookla was referring to, without the relief of a satisfyingly mature subtext or cast of genuinely adult supporting characters.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I think Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer are both fantastic and satisfyingly mature, and they're both rather short. (Of course, neither are SF.)

[Renoard]

@Books
I meant to reply earlier.  I wasn't talking about the artists or illustrations, I meant the layout and design work that was done after the illustration had been completed.

[Shaggy]

Hmm…I under stand that, Ren, but can you really always tell if a book has that stuff you don't like just because it's short? I certainly couldn't.…