Best Fantasy Authors (Vanity)

5/15/03 | bondserv

[50sDad]

Stafshee's "Her Majesty's Wizard" - Catholic-leaning Humanist drops into magic world, discovers his rhyming skills make him a powerful wizard, gradually comes to discover "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility." And anything in his "Wizard in Spite of Himeslf" series (King Kobald included!)

Read Heinlein's "Farnam's Freehold" and that "Japs invade America" book, something about "Mota."

[Phsstpok]

Dragonriders isn't strictly fantasy. The premise (from Dragon's Dawn) is that the dragons are genetically altered creatures with natural, not supernatural, abilities. They were altered by the colonists' resident geneticist genius (Kitty Ping, if I remember right) when they discovered the idyllic planet they landed on was periodically decimated by a natural interplanetary menace that fell from the sky.

My favorite Dragonrider book is White Dragon, though I love the Harper Hall trilogy as well.

[Spyder]

For laughs, without a doubt, Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series. What I've always found so funny is how he ties in things from our lives into the stories.

Terry Pratchett is the best. Some of the best satire on the disk, ah, er, planet. He's prolific, too - something Douglas Adams unfortunately was not.

[bondserv]

I attended a lecture from Stephan R Donaldson at the Kiva at Kent State back in probably 1986 or so. it was fascinating. He explained the characters at length and why Thomas Covenant was so annoying.

Sweet!!

[Phsstpok]

I met Stephen Donaldson at a book signing in a small San Francisco book store back when the first trilogy was being published. For a long time my friend and I were the only ones there so we ended up talking to him. Finally another lady came up for his autograph on a book, but then proceeded to complain about the vocabulary in his novels.

"Look lady, if you can't figure out that roynish is a bad thing from the context the ur-vile was roynish then you probably won't get the rest of the book either."

I loved it.

[Cachelot]

Which is your favorite?

Lol. They're all good. Got around 4000 vols of fantasy/scifi here, and I can't for the life of me pick any one favourite. I suppose Holdstock is probably the easiest read, the kind of thing that sucks you in. But try Banks, he's sort of new and his range is startling. And he's done a whole slew of scifi as well, and also "mainstream lit". Both he and Peake are totally unique critters.

[billbears]

And the thing about Pratchett is that you don't always catch the meaning of a word until the second time. For example in Soul Music, I don't really think I caught the underlying meaning of the lead singer's name until the second go round

[Arkinsaw]

Tolkien (LOTR), Turtledove (South, Brittania), Ursula K. Leguin (Earthsea), Moorcock (Eternal Champion), Tom Reamy (Blind Voices), Tanith Lee, Lovecraft, Donaldson (Covenant)

Can't stand Pern, Shannara, or most of your typical young boy mage on a quest fantasy.

[GailA]

I Love Anne McCafreey's books, her pisonic stuff is just as great as her Dragon Riders of Pern.

Marion Zimmer Bradley DARKOVER series is Great SI/FI too. MM Auel...Clan of the Cave Bears series is fantastically realistic.

[Arkinsaw]

Riverworld was fantastic I agree. Lots of fun.

[Empireoftheatom48]

Yes you are right Riverworld was a classic. Have you read any C.S. Lewis?

[Spyder]

Yes, they're all very re-readable. Soul Music was one of my favorites, but I've loved all of them. My husband tires of my reading them, however, since I'm compelled to read him the funny snippets, which come frequently.

[Arkinsaw]

And don't tell me about Ruled Britannia. I just started reading it the other night

I think its his best, even better than GOTS. Some of his novels can be a little contrived but Brittania was dead on.

[bondserv]

Extended list:

Tolkien - Rings Series
Stephen Donaldson - Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Series
Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time Series
Terry Brooks - Shannara Series
Terry Goodkind - Sword of truth Series
Joel Rosenberg - Guardians of the Flame Series
David Eddings - Belgariad/Malloreon/Elenium/Tamuli
L.E. Modesitt, Jr. - The Saga of Recluce Series
Robin Hobb - Farseer Series
Tad Williams - Dragonbone Chair

Others additions:

Dragonriders of Pern
Ursula K. LeGuin
Steven Brust - "Dragaera"
Roger Zelazny
Poul Anderson
Anson Guthrie
Manse Everard
Robert J. Silverberg - "Lord Valentine's Castle".
Gene Wolfe - The Book of the New Sun series /Shadow and Claw
George R.R. Martin
Hicks/Weis - Star of the Guardians
Asimov - Early Foundation series
Piers Anthony - Xanth Series
Greg Bear - Songs of Earth and Power
Harry Turtledove
Terry Pratchett - Discworld Series
Mervyn Peake - the Gormenghast trilogy.
Iain Banks -Walking on Glass and The Bridge
Hannes Bok - The Sorcerer's Ship and Beyond the Golden Stair
Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood and Lavondyss
Christopher Stasheff - King Kobold
Lois McMaster Bujold - the Spirit Ring, Curse of Chalion
A.E. Van Vogt - The Weapon Shops of Isher
Jack Chalker - Well of souls
David Drake - Hammer's Slammers
Gordon R. Dickson
Philip Jose Farmer
Stafshee's - "Her Majesty's Wizard"
Heinlein's - "Farnam's Freehold"
Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker Series
Holdstock
Banks
Moorcock - Eternal Champion
Tom Reamy - Blind Voices
Tanith Lee
Lovecraft

[The Grammarian]

Yeah, me too. Of course, Stephen MacDonald's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever are ranked foremost among them for me. ;)

Anne McCaffrey's the name of the Pern books' author, and I'd rank them up there right under Tolkien, personally.

[Arkinsaw]

Tom Reamy - Blind Voices

You too eh?

[Empireoftheatom48]

Loved Azimov, wish they could do justice to the Foundation on the silver screen.

[Phsstpok]

I also greatly enjoyed "Her Majesty's Wizard."

I personally like Rick Cooks Wiz series best of all. Computer programmer falls into a magic world (literally) and dicovers that he can write a magic compiler. It's pretty straight magic and adventure in the first couple of books, but the humor is all built around things computer geeks would get best. By the fourth of fifth book it's mostly about the jokes, but for those in the business they are a riot. I swear that I was at the party he describes at Comdex in one of the books where they come back to Earth.

He starts alot of the chapters with pithy "quotes" from the hero, or others. One I like is:

"Magic is real - unless declared integer."

There's a web page of more of the quotes at:

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/5347/sf027.html

[bondserv]

That's why Thomas Covenant is listed after the innovator Tolkien.

Have not read McCaffrey's stuff yet.

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

Hmm... you know, I went and looked in my "library", and the only fantasy authors I have in it are Tolkien and Zelazny. I know I've read more fantasy than that, but I guess the other authors never impressed me enough for me to actually buy their books.

I liked a site called Clockwork Storybook when it was up and running; it was an experiment in online (and later offline) publishing by a writing group, specializing in "urban fantasy". I knew the authors personally, and liked their stuff. Although the group has disbanded and the site is no longer active, you can still buy their books on Amazon and some other places. Here's a link from Amazon to one of the books by my favorite author of the group, Mark Finn. His style, while still a little rough, actually reminds me of Zelazny (which is probably why I like it.)