Poll: favorite sci-fi author

[allan]

There are tons of sci-fi authors, so I just listed nine prominent ones, plus an "other". Feel free to share any "others" you may prefer, if applicable....

Mine? Robert Heinlein. Hands down.

 

[shadowdale]

Well mine is Peter F. Hamilton - I abselutly love his Night's Dawn Trilogy, it some of the best books I have ever read, and they place him as my number one Sci-Fi author.

So I had to vote other

 

[Graeme the mad]

I like david Gemmel: have you ever read the Jon shannow trilogy?

Half western, half dimension hopping, half historical, half time travel, half fantasy, half completley insane

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Niven, of course!
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is prob. Heinlein's best, then he went strange. I'll have to rest my eyes before I finish Night's Dawn, 3000+ pages is a bit over the top...

 

[Simon Darkshade]

Graeme, thats the first sane thing ye have said in thy time here!
Gemmel is the utmost bestest of the bestest, and Shannow rocks!
"Today I am become death"

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

Frank Herbert is mine.

The dune books are fantastic studies of human nature.

 

[dreadhead7]

I love ALL of them. But, if I must choose, I must say it's the Good Doctor. The Foundation series and the Robot novels are the best!

But, Robert Silverberg, Ray Bradbury, Harry Turtledove, and Ursula K. LeGuin are good, too.

 

[hetairoi22]

...Tolkien!!!

I LOVE his books (well, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are the only ones I've read...)

 

[allan]

I guess I've always thought of Tolkien as more of a "fantasy" author than a hard science fiction one.... Which is why I (intentionally) didn't include him, or C.S. Lewis or Bradbury (although Bradbury DID write "the Martian Chronicles" which fits the genre of sci-fi).

However, all the "others" votes shows that perhaps we need more than ten poll options (Thunderfall?)....

P.S. I agree with someone's (don't recall who) assessment of Herbert--he's my second favorite, but definitely more thoughtful than Heinlein in the "study of human nature" aspect of writing. And someone else here said Heinlein got "strange" or something (I forget the word used exactly, and in edit mode I can't scroll down to the posts) after "Harsh Mistress"--actually for me, the "Lazarus Long" novels are my favorite, although they WERE quite different from normal sci-fi....

 

[Morgasshk]

Actually.. I'll have to re-call my vote for Asimov for once... I forgot... Anyone ever heard of E.E. "DOC" Smith?
Now HE is a hell of a writer, I found his first book - The Skylark of Space - at a school fete 10 years ago and hunted out the secondhand bookshops for 5 years before I found the rest of his books! Brilliant stuff and all from the 50's! Best ideas and concepts I've ever read and I do a LOT of reading!

Anyone, my bit for the day, Adios Children!

Morgasshk!

 

[Kefka]

He may be long LONG dead now but what about Jules Verne, in his time his books could be considered Science Fiction.

 

[BlueMonday]

Larry Niven. I haven't read a single book of his that I didn't like. they all were great: All the short stories, novellas, novels, and the Ringworld series were absolutly fantanstic.

Kurt Vonnegutt is good too, but I like his sarcastic blakc humour better than his sci-fi stuff.

 

[allan]

"He may be long LONG dead now but what about Jules Verne, in his time his books could be considered Science Fiction."

Or H.G. Welles (forgot about him!).... The broadcast of his words in 1939 put terror in MANY people....

And "the Time Machine" was a good story, and one of my favorite early movies.

 

[allan]

"Larry Niven. I haven't read a single book of his that I didn't like. they all were great: All the short stories, novellas, novels, and the Ringworld series were absolutly fantanstic."

I like the "future history" behind "The Mote in God's Eye" (as well as the story itself)--I wonder if anyone has ever made a CivII scenario out of it (like the wars of the dark age, before The Kingdom of Man was founded among the stars....) Maybe I'll do it myself, when I master the art of scenario creation....

 

[Ashoka]

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Mine? Robert Heinlein. Hands down.
-----------------

Ditto to that.

One of the few SciFi authors who addressed good writing for adolescents, as well as adults. (Good marketing, on his part - loyal teen readers becoming loyal adult readers.)

Asimov a close second.


Ashoka

 

[Algernon Pondlife]

Brian W Aldiss
JG Ballard
Frederic Brown
PhilipKDick
Ray Bradbury
James Blish
Larry Niven
Philip Jose Farmer
Piers Anthony
Frederik Pohl
Anne McCaffrey
Kurt Vonnegut
George R Stewart ("Earth Abides" - a must read)
Frank Herbert
Fritz Leiber
AE Van Vogt
Isaac Asimov
Theodore Sturgeon
Poul Anderson
Alfred Bester
Clifford Simak
Robert Bloch
Alexei Panshin
John Brunner
Gordon R Dickson
Algis Budrys
Daniel Keyes ("Flowers for Algernon")
Arthur C Clarke (for Rama mostly)
Olaf Stapledon
Harlan Ellison
Samuel R Delaney
Jack Vance
Lester del Rey
Thomas M Disch
Aldous Huxley
Joe Haldeman
HG Wells
Harry Harrison
John Wyndham
Robert Heinlein (for his short stories only, his novels are not good although they all have seeds of good ideas)
Jules Verne
Capt. WE Johns (the first SF I read, probably around 1959)
DF Jones
Damon Knight
CM Kornbluth
Joan D Vinge
Henry Kuttner
A Bertram Chandler
Murray Leinster
Doris Lessing
Walter M Miller
Rex Gordon
Robert Sheckley
Eric Frank Russell
Charles L Harness
Ursula K Le Guin
Vonda McIntyre
Vernor Vinge
James Morrow
Keith Laumer
RA Lafferty
Keith Roberts
Joanna Russ
Carl Sagan
Bob Shaw
Robert Silverberg
Roger Zelazny
James Tiptree Jr.

Now, who have I missed?

 

[dreadhead7]

Wow, Algernon! We seem to have the same tastes in science fiction. I have one or more books by about 95% of the authors on your list.

Surprised, eh?

 

[Algernon Pondlife]

dreadhead7, I wouldn't believe you if you weren't a civver and you so young!

I'm not absolutely sure I still have a rep. for every one of those writers (I doubt if Brave New World is in the house, for example and I may have nothing by Jules Verne; but of course those are relatively easy to get ahold of) but I don't let go easily. I still have the original foundation trilogy I read in 1969, when you were not very big.

I don't really believe in naming a favourite or best because that varies all the time, but some books I have happily read more than once:
Hothouse
Non Stop
Foundation trilogy
Man in the High Castle
Macroscope
Earth Abides
What Mad Universe?
Ringworld
Captive Universe
Giant Killer (a short novel)
The Mote in God's Eye
Rite of Passage
Cities in flight
The Seedling Stars (especially Surface Tension)
Slaughterhouse Five
Player Piano
Dune etc.
The Drowned World


There's more of course.

Another thing, lost books. I used to have a superb large collection of Frederic Brown's short stories but lent it to someone and have long forgotten who. Nobody seems to be republishing his work and for me he is the greatest short story SF writer, even ahead of Aldiss, Heinlein and Niven.

 

[JBearIt]

I like Harry Turtledove, David Brin, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Neal Stephenson.

 

[PinkyGen]

Heinlen. Got me interested with Starship Troopers, a juvenile book. Then hooked me with Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land. (Though the last third of Stranger is very weird and does not work so well.)