Next part of the SFX Book Meme
66. Harry Harrison
Another of those prolific authors of whom I’ve only read a few possibly atypical books - The darkly satirical “Bill the Galactic Hero” is of course the other necessary counter to Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”.
63. Dan Simmons
Only read SF, rather than his horror, but you can still tell he started out as a horror writer. Some genuinely far-out ideas.
59. Stephen Baxter
See #66. Only novel of his I’ve read is the H.G.Wells homage, The Time Ships. Fine Victorian romp, but no idea whether that’s typical of his work or not.
56. C.J. Cherryh
I’ve read quite a lot of her novels over the years; just about everything is pretty solid old-school space opera. If you play Traveller, you’re probably already a Cherryh fan.
52. J.G. Ballard
“Crash”. It’s completely sick. Never read anything else of his.
49. H.P. Lovecraft
Iä! Iä! Squamous and rugose! Technically his work is dark, twisted science-fiction rather than horror, although he’s been hugely influential in the horror genre. Despite his god-awful prose style a lot of his stories are still very powerful; especially the way he didn’t base his horrific entities on any real-world mythology, but made up his own myths.
48. Mervyn Peake
I read the first two Gormenghast books many years ago, but never got round to reading the third. When the BBC adapted it for TV, half the characters reminded me of gamer friends of mine. Not sure what that says.
45. Neal Stephenson
I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by him, but I do get the feeling that some of his recent books are too long by a third, and could have done with a more aggressive editor. Favourite is “The Diamond Age”, although nothing much can top that opening chapter from “Snow Crash”.
41. Kurt Vonnegut
The only book I’ve read of his is “Slaughterhouse 5″.
39. Michael Moorcock
I’ve read a lot of his self-confessed trashy throwaway sword-and-sorcery novels, some of which are better than books written over the course of a single weekend have any right to be. I really ought to read some of his more serious ‘literary’ works.
38. David Eddings
The epitome of hack. The sort of interminable and interchangeable fantasy sagas churned out by him and others has been dubbed “Extruded Fantasy Product”.
36. Orson Scott Card
Quite enjoyed “Ender’s Game” and read a couple of other books of his, nothing special.
35. Stephen Donaldson
Angst! Doubt! Self-loathing! Thesaurus Swallowing! Actually, forget the Thomas Covenant sagas, and read “Mordant’s Need” instead, it’s actually quite good.
34. Gene Wolfe
At his best, no author can touch him. I can’t think of any other author whose best work (The Book of the New Sun) I’ve read four times. At his best he can create alien worlds so vivid, he actually takes you there. Sometimes he can be frustrating, in that everything you read is from the viewpoint of his first-person narrator, and when that character has no idea what’s going on, neither should the reader.