Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
Read More.Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
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15 Greatest Science Fiction Writers of All Time, and Who Do You Think?
February 26th, 2009
I’m a month late commenting on this list of the 15 greatest science fiction writers of all time, but I will comment and offer my own.
For myself, I weight novels more than short stories, and have my own personal preferences. I weight serious science fiction more than softer things, but not always when I am swept away.
My list
15. David Brin. The Uplift books are wonderful and imaginative. Some of Brin’s short stories are legendary. Kiln People was a really good book, and some of his other stand alones are also remarkable.
14. John Brunner. Stand on Zanzibar is one of my favorite novels of all time. I feel like he was an unappreciated writer.
13. Neal Stephenson. Snowcrash and The Diamond Age are instant classics, and his other books are also quite memorable. I will remember the opening chapter of Snowcrash forever.
12. Philip Jose Farmer. As I said yesterday, he was my first favorite author, and the World of Tiers books and the Riverwold books are great.
11. Ray Bradbury. Not the hardest sf writer out there, but a really great writer. Farhenheit 451 still resonates today in so many ways.
10. Arthur C. Clarke. Not as high as you might have expected. I’ve liked nearly everything I have read from Sir Arthur, but haven’t loved a lot so much. Very good to great, but not legendary consistently.
9. Ursula K. LeGuin. Unfortunately the only female writer on my list. I don’t know whose fault that is exactly, but there it is. Her novel The Dispossessed is one of my all time favorites, and so is A Wizard of Earthsea if you will let me stray into fantasy for a moment.
8. Dan Simmons. God, I love this guy. Hyperion blew me away. So did Carrion Comfort, and many more of his novels and short stories. I have fallen behind reading him, and I am more than willing to jump genres to do so. He only lives a couple of hours drive away in Colorado and I must meet him sometime.
7. Fred Pohl. My first year of college Pohl was my favorite writer. I devoured the Gateway books, Man Plus, everything he write that I could buy. His short story “Day Million” is one I love so much.
6. Roger Zelazny. Another love in college. Lord of Light. Creatures of Light and Darkness. Isle of the Dead. Over in fantasy the classic Amber series. And such wonderful short stories…he died way too young.
5. Joe Haldeman. The Forever War was a special read for me and I still remember buying the book in a mall B. Dalton’s back in the 1970s. So many other great novels and short stories coming so consistently. His novella “For White Hill” is one of my favorite short pieces. I am fortunate to have had Joe as a Clarion West teacher and to have him come as a guest for my Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop (now taking applications for July 2009).
4. Larry Niven. I don’t know that everyone would put him so high, but I really admire so much of his work, albeit some is in collaboration. Ringworld still blows me away. So does “The Hole Man.” Legacy of Heorot is also a favorite novel, and don’t forget The Mote In God’s Eye.
3. Isaac Asimov. I have to put him this high, but not higher. So many books and short stories, so many so clear and insightful things he had to say. He was always like a friend I never met. The Robot stories and Foundation carry so much magic with them. Timeless.
2. Vernor Vinge. I hope Vernor doesn’t feel he is getting too old to be this high! His Deep books, his Bobble books, and more put him up here. And while I have some issues with his vision of the singularity, I find him quite visionary and worth listening to as a thinker independent of being a writer.
1. Robert Heinlein. Between Starship Troopers and especially Stranger in a Strange Land, this guy has always been science fiction to me. And about another dozen books and short stories.
Honorable Mentions: Orson Scott Card, Nancy Kress, Gregory Benford, David Gerrold, Robert Silverberg, Robert Sawyer, Michael Swanwick, Robert Charles Wilson, Alfred Bester…
Who do you think? As usual pick up to three, and be encouraged to explain your picks.
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I love Brunner, but I very much preferred The Sheep Look Up and Shockwave Rider to Stand on Zanzibar. A large part of this may be due to my opinion that Chad C. Mulligan was an utter dickhead…
However, I haven’t read enough of the SF canon to want to make a claim as to anyone being “Greatest of all time”. I read a lot of SF as a kid, but a fair bit of what I liked when I was younger doesn’t really stand up to re-reading. It doesn’t matter how nifty the ideas are; if the characters are wildly unrealistic two-dimensional puppets, it just ain’t good writing. Doc Smith and Heinlein are particularly blatant offenders on that front.
I would have put Gibson above many of the people in either of those lists; Neuromancer/Count Zero/Mona Lisa Overdrive were fairly formative books for me. Ditto for Julian May’s Pliocence Exile/Intervention/Galactic Milieu series.
But I’d second the acclamation for Zelazny and Haldeman; Amber and Jack of Shadows were a heap of fun, and the ending of The Forever War will always be one of my favourite moments in fiction.
BTW, some random recommendations:
Simon Ing, Hot Head. Brilliant cyberpunk.
Mary Gentle, Golden Witchbreed & Ancient Light. Very, very good first contact SF (us contacting them, rather than the other way around). Fantastic characters and wonderfully subtle alien-ness.
Graham Dunstan Martin, Time-Slip. A rather dark post-nuke novel set in Scotland that plays around with the theological implications of multiple-universe theory.
George Turner, The Sea and Summer. An as-it-happens environmental apocalypse novel, set in Melbourne; think of The Sheep Look Up crossed with On the Beach. I loved it when I read it, but I was only 15 at the time. I think it would stand up to re-reading, but no guarantees.
I’m really tempted to say Douglas Adams and if he had written about 20 more books I Probably would. Also considered Jules Verne but I can’t really say I’d read his stuff if they weren’t classics.
If I had a sawbuck for every time an average individual said to me “I read books today because of Ray Bradbury,” I’d be a wealthy man.
Favorite Bradbury stories: “The Lost City of Mars,” “The Rocket Man,” “The Homecoming.”
Robert A. Heinlein: terrific, complicated, vivid female characters. Favorites: “Glory Road,” “Friday,” “I Will Fear No Evil.”
My third pick: Neil Gaiman, because of “THe Sandman.”
I have too many favorites from Asimov and Clarke to not put them on the top of my list…
from Clarke, I LOVE Childhood ´s End, The City and The Stars, Rama, The Fountains of Paradise…
[…] Mike Brotherton’s 15 Greatest SF Authors of All Time […]
I also don’t feel I’ve read enough to rank authors with any confidence. I’ve read some novels by various of the classic authors (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, etc) but not as many as a lot of sf fans have.
I read tons of Larry Niven and Frank Herbert and Roger Zelazny during high school and enjoyed it a lot. But then I also got very into more hifalutin literary “soft sf” authors like Samuel R. Delany and Gene Wolfe. I also would mention James Blish – Cities in Flight blew me away, and I enjoyed various other stuff I read of his as well. Beyond that, I would probably identify specific novels more than authors (e.g. Bruce Sterling’s Involution Ocean, even though I’ve read that he dislikes it and considers it an embarrassing first novel or some such; and yeah, Joe Haldeman’s Forever War; and many more specific novels).
Depending on your definitions of ‘sf’, I’d say Frankenstein and Dracula were both quite influential on me, and among the very few novels I’ve read multiple times.
I chose Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, and Philip K. Dick. I’ve always been a fan of the first. Not sure why, but I started with his short “Call Me Joe” and I’ve loved his work ever since.
Asimov is one hell of an idea man. His prose is often rather stiff, but I think when one takes into account his influence, etc. then you can’t exclude him from a top list. Plus I like his work.
And PKD is, well, awesome. End of story. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, etc. All amazing works. His short fiction leaves something to be desired, I think, but the ideas are generally good and he’s not a bad writer, just a simplistic prose stylist (most of the time, at least). But his non-fiction and his fiction are fascinating. I love his themes and his constant questioning of humanity, real and unreal, etc.
I can’t believe Andre Norton is missing from the original list. She, Bradbury and Madeleine L’Engle (also missing) are the first science fiction I read as a kid.
I also wish Butler and Cherryh had been included. They are both so adept at world building.
Simak would have nice as well but no one ever remembers the poor guy.
(I have to admit I only like Asimov’s non-fiction. With the exception of ‘Red Queen’s Race’ his fiction seems a little dull, but his other writing is wonderful.)
I voted Clarke, Wells and Other, that being Ballard. Rather Britocentric, but there you go (I am a Brit). Also, my reasons are not really a balanced objective weighing of whether they are the “greatest”.
Clarke I respond to because I like his spare prose and his ideas, his often straightforward near-space subjects tinged with the fantastical/alien/or far future. He was the first sf writer I was aware of reading (at about age 7, in 1965) so he was kind of “my” writer, the benchmark. Also, he was born in the same week and same county as my father, in December 1917.
HG Wells – I like his sf writing, and also the way he is the ur-writer for several sf themes. I like his personal history, too and how it slots into his work – for instance, being taught by Darwin’s bulldog, TH Huxley, and how evolution and the ferment of science inspired him. At college for a dissertation I read a lot about him too, plus some of his other works, like his Experiment in Autobiography.
JG Ballard – I just like his mordant wit, his slightly lost or unhinged characters with odd motives interacting inadequately with each other in landscapes with personas of their own, plus his askance look at technology, media, roads, development… Not, possibly, your hardest-sf writer. And to many people Ballard and Clarke are pretty much opposites.
Having said that, for a long time Dune was my favourite novel, and Heinlein too I read a lot of, and Blish and Le Guin and Asimov, Simak, Bradbury, Delany, Zelazny, Anderson, Silverberg. Pohl. Loads of non-Brits! Oddly, I have read hardly any Brunner. Brian Aldiss I read a lot of back in the day as well. I like some Bob Shaw too.
Not a bad list, Mike – but I do take issue with your statement that “I think we’ve learned something about writing science fiction over the past century, and more people do it better now than at any time ever in the past”.
It hasn’t really been an entire century – let’s pick Campbell’s advent and say closer to 5 or 6 decades and I just can’t agree that more do it better now than ever before – simply can’t.
Yes, I’m sure my past colors my perception, but I read much of the comtemporary stuff and ask ‘where are the ideas?’ – and why are they spending so many words on flowery description?
Lots more good suggestions here. I liked very much what I’ve read from Cherryh and Butler, although I haven’t read more than a couple of novels from each. Similarly only read a little Simak and Blish, liked it well enough. Also I am weird that I never read Andre Norton at all for some reason — just a big miss. Poul Anderson should get some consideration, and I went through my Poul Anderson phase, although that led me to read a few things I didn’t think were so fantastic.
Oh, and I sort of think of SF as being around more or less since Verne and Wells. Others pick the 1920s. The Campbell era seems a little late, but definitely when things picked up with the advent of Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke.
In sheer numbers, there are more science fiction novels being published today than ever — at least looking back historically. I’d love to see a plot of number of science fiction novels vs. year. In terms of short stories, the same thing might not be true.
Theodore Sturgeon’s “More Than Human” moved me to tears, so that alone earns him a position on my list.
Didn’t Theodore Sturgeon also give Spock powerful emotions in that Trek episode he wrote?
Hey, I love a good list; maybe I’ll do up one of my own soon. Although I’d probably want to make a distinction between “the greatest” and “my favorites” because I don’t see them as being exactly the same. For example, I can see Heinlein being one of the greatest, and Asimov, because of the huge impact they’ve had; but I wouldn’t count them among my favorites.
A couple of your Honorable Mentions would make my list for sure: Kress and Wilson.
Brunner to be sure. Le Guin. Probably Silverberg. Maybe Bradbury.
Some from the first list above who would most definitely NOT make the cut for me are Ellison (who is a pretentious ass with more attitude than substance) and Dick (who may have had some great ideas but whose writing skills were horrible).
And hey…. no Mike Brotherton on the list? Hehe….. actually, I did pick up one of your books and plan to read it in the near future.
Haven’t any of you heard of John Wyndham ?
I tend to think of great writers by their consistency and not a one-time wonder hit (especially when they beat that book to death with sequels for the money example: Larry Niven with Ringworld Series, Anne McCaffrey with Pern series, etc. etc.)
My favorites who are *always* a great read 1. Roger Zelazny, 2. Jack Vance, 3. Iain Banks…
The most I wanted to really say was JACK VANCE, JACK VANCE, JACK VANCE… next to Zelazny he is far underrated with consistently fine works!
I wish I was familiar with all of the writers mentioned. Of the ones that are mentioned I would go crazy trying to create a top 15 list.
So instead I will only add two of my favorites who have not yet been mentioned here.
The first is Barry Malzberg. When I discovered him in the mid 70’s, I gave a collection of his short stories to my mother in law, an English teacher. I described them to her as “social science fiction.” She was floored by his writing. If you are not familiar with him I recommend Beyond Apollo which was the recipient of the first ever Campbell Award given in 1972.
The second is Rudy Rucker. I am happy that I have read so few of his books, because I anticipate that I will find as much to enjoy in them as a have from each and everything that I have had the pleasure to read. If you are not familiar with him I recommend the “Ware” Tetralogy
Enjoy.
John Wyndham is one of my favourite science fiction writers. All his works are classics. It’s strange that I don’t see him considered in more of these lists of greatest sci-fi authors. He’s #3 on my list behind #2 H.G. Wells, and #1 Robert A. Heinlein.