Favorite Science Fiction Authors

A little over ~~a week~~ three months ago I was asked “Who are your favorite sci-fi authors?”

I’ve been thinking about how to answer this question… I could list all the sci-fi authors that I like, a la my favorite songs, but that would be an extremely long list… or I could pick just one, but to be honest I have no idea who I’d chose…. in the end I decided to list the top nine and my favorite book by those authors.

-note- As I compiled this list I found a startling fact, only the top two are still living… what does that say about my opinion of modern sci-fi?

9. Arthur C. Clark

Actually, I’m not a huge fan of Arthur C Clarke. He’s at times overly opinionated and Rendezvous With Ramma is misspelled. And too long. And Boring as hell.

But, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: The Final Odyssey are a hell of a book series, with 2010 being a personal favorite of the group. I even like the movie, which I’ll admit I saw before reading the book.
8. Philip K. Dick

This is another odd one for me as I guess I’d have to say that Philip K. Dick is not a very strong author. He had amazing ideas, but was weak in execution.

Of course that all means that some of the best Science Fiction movies have been based on his works. Total Recall, Bladerunner and Minority Reports are some of my favorite movies all based on We can Remember It For You Wholesale, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and The Minority Report respectively.
7. Lucian

Probably the world’s first admitted Stand-up Philosopher.

He wrote A True Story, a simple tale of a man being whisked off to exotic and alien worlds, 1800 years ago
6. Kurt Vonnegut

If you haven’t read Slaughterhouse 5 or Mother Night, go do so now, but Breakfast of Champions (my personal favorite) is even better. All three have been made into movies, with varying results.

Slaughterhouse 5 is probably the best known, but Breakfast of Champions is more likely to get played on my stream…
5. Douglas Adams

Admittedly this is an easy inclusion, Adams practically cemented humorous scifi to the world with the absurdist Hitchhiker’s Guide, but personally Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is his magnum opus.

A strange tale of what happens to gods when people start believing in Pop Music and Ticket Counters more and also about why you can’t get a pizza delivered in London.
4. H.P. Lovecraft

There are enough people out there to extol the virtues of Lovecraft, so I’ll just say the Mountains of Madness is a classic of descriptive horror.
3. Jules Verne

Voyage Dans La Lune is now and will ever be the best space travel book ever written and may have really made it possible for humans to have the imagination to go to the moon. Verne was a treasure and is rightly deified in France, and should be on the bookshelf of even non-scifi readers.
2. Peter David

Remarkably the first living author on my list, as of Dec. 31 2011, and my second favorite. Peter David has worked on just about everything from Live TV to Cartoons to Comic books and Novels, and his Star Trek work is unmatched so far.

New Frontier was the first time I had read a Star Trek book where the characters changed and the plot moved from one story to the next. It was amazing to see that the ST universe actually moved along when the cameras were turned off.

The New Frontier series is still going, and hopefully will for a while to come.
1. Howard Waldrop

Also a living author, though his output has never been as high as Peter David, but his quality is higher.

Though he has written novels, The Texas-Isreali War: 1999 is one, hid short stories are far superior.

Night of the Cooters is my favorite and describes an Alien attack on a small Texas backwater town. I would recommend buying his books, though almost all are out of print now, but a good library should have them… and with as obscure as he is you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding one of his works…