Top three SF authors

[ajbera]

Although Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison are two of my favorite writers, I hesitate to classify them as sf authors because there is precious little science to their sf works. It's there as setting, for flavor, but application of scientific principles is pretty weak. They are, nevertheless, the shiznit (and if you ever get the opportunity to see/hear Harlan in person, it's marvelously entertaining.)

My top 3 sf authors (and my favorite work by each): Niven (The Mote in God's Eye)
Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)
Asimov (The Foundation series (though his writing is not the best, he definitely deserves a spot among the top 3.))

[JohnT]

Harlan Ellison is the featured guest at Dragon*Con in Atlanta this September.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by ajbera
Although Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison are two of my favorite writers, I hesitate to classify them as sf authors because there is precious little science

That would probably disqualify 99% of sci-fi authors.


The emphasis is always on the fiction, otherwise it would be a text book.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Vernor Vinge (A Fire in the Deep).

An absolutely fantastic work along with the prequel A Deepness in the Sky

Some of the better writing of recent memory.

[Ramo]

Yep. And Deepness is the rare sequel that's even better than the first book.

[Verto]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Crichton? You must be kidding. Asimov is a definitely one of the greats. Crichton is only qualified to wash his toilets.

Then there's also Arthur C. Clarke.

UR is dumb. Throw rocks at him.

Michael Crichton is an excellent writer, one of the best authors of today.

[ajbera]

Originally posted by JohnT
Harlan Ellison is the featured guest at Dragon*Con in Atlanta this September.

Gonna go see him? He's often a guest here on Long Island at I-Con, and he's always a hoot.

[ajbera]

Originally posted by General Ludd
That would probably disqualify 99% of sci-fi authors.

The emphasis is always on the fiction, otherwise it would be a text book.

You could set Romeo & Juliet in space, but that doesn't make it a science-fiction story. If the scientific aspects are mere trappings, it ain't sf.

Just my opinion, but there are a number of authors and fans who agree with me.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by JohnT
A. Reynolds.

I've been a fan of his ever since I got Revelation Space in preparation for a Sci-Fi Book Club thread that never materialized (when he was inadvertently outvoted ).

As for all of this "is it Sci-Fi or isn't it Sci-Fi" (crap) discussion, I just use Ellison's "speculative fiction" label and consider it all a done deal. Any additional sub-categorization is unnecessary IMO, since I like fantasy and science fiction and historical fiction etc., so long as said stories/books are "good."

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Agathon
Other than H.G Wells, every science fiction author is a terrible writer.

You double up as a reviewer of science fiction in your spare time- you must do to have read every other science fiction author, including but not limited to, Edgar Allan Poe and Cyrano de Bergerac, L.P. Hartley, H.E. Bates, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Rex Warner, et cetera et cetera.



Eschew hyperbole and always err on the side of litotes when it comes to making sweeping judgments about genre fiction.

I suggest you read Keith Roberts's 'Pavane' which although an alternate history novel on the face of it is alos science fiction too, as are Ursula K Le Guin's works, althoigh they deal less with the hard science favoured by so many fanboys and gals and more with the social sciences, or the implications of the application of hard science.

I'd rather read an honest science fiction writer's work (or any other 'genre' novelist's for that matter) than yet one more f*cking tedious Anglo-French anti-novel or magic realist bowl of tripe, or 'Great American Novel' focussing on infidelity in commuter societies in Pennsylvania.

[Ramo]

You could set Romeo & Juliet in space, but that doesn't make it a science-fiction story. If the scientific aspects are mere trappings, it ain't sf.

Just my opinion, but there are a number of authors and fans who agree with me.

So Foundation isn't sci-fi (and no, psychohistory, like economics, is not science)?

[Dr Strangelove]

Turtledove ranks up there along with L. Ron Hubbard and "Doc" Smith.
Oh, and Turtledove's a psycho too.

[ajbera]

Originally posted by Ramo

You could set Romeo & Juliet in space, but that doesn't make it a science-fiction story. If the scientific aspects are mere trappings, it ain't sf.

Just my opinion, but there are a number of authors and fans who agree with me.

So Foundation isn't sci-fi (and no, psychohistory, like economics, is not science)?

But the principles are relatively sound. Psychohistory is supposed to predict patterns of future events based on examination of past events, probability, etc. The future wasn't divined by magic or anything, but by the application of rules and measurements; there is nothing implausible or fantastic about psychohistory.

And although economics & psychology (not to mention meteorology, in many ways) are not hard 'sciences', I certainly believe the possibility exists for them to become so in the future once we have a greater understanding of the various forces that affect them. Even if we never gain the predicitive abilities in those fields as we do in physics & chemistry (and there's still much to learn here as well), I'm (reasonably) sure we'll eventually fine-tune their predictive and explanatory models to the point where they are much, much less fuzzy than they are today.

[Ramo]

Yes, it's fantastic. Hell, most of economics is fantastic. The idea that one can accurately model a massively nonlinear system as the behavior of a society is bollocks. Of course, that's not really the point. Believable or not, it's an interesting premise and we're supposed to suspend disbelief.

The real point is that they're not sciences (hard or soft). You can't make controlled, repeatable tests, meaning it ain't a science.

[ajbera]

I believe there's enough value to the current explanatory and predicitive abilities of these arts & disciplines (for want of a better term), and enough potential for them to possibly evolve into actual sciences, that one can say that a story in which a fictional aspect is that an art/discipline like economics or psychology becomes a science qualifies as science fiction.