Sci-fi/ Fantasy Authors

Timothy Zahn
Jack London (he wrote old school Sci-fi! )

Can't believe I almost forgot Herbert. Dune has to be the best series I've ever read. It makes me want to do that stuff.
 
My personal favorites:
Tolkein
Jordan
Martin
Zelazny
LeGuin
Gaiman....Neverwhere is the best "stand alone" fantasy I've ever read. :cool:
Rowling
Lovecraft

Paul
 
Joss mentioned Jack Vance, and I wholeheartedly recommend you read everything by him! One thing to mention, Jack goes back to the 50's and writes in an utterly unique style which is impossible to emulate and is extremely expressive. It is exquisite stuff and worth finding even if a lot of it is out of print now. Here are some of his best works which should be easy to get ahold of:

Fantasy

The Lyonnesse Trilogy: Lyonnesse, The Green Pearl, Madouc

The Dying Earth series: The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga, Rhialto the Marvellous


Sci-Fi adventure

The Demon Princes series: The Killing Machine, The Star King, The Palace of Love, The Face, The Book of Dreams

The Planet of Adventure series: The City of the Chasch, The Servants of the Wankh, The Dirdir, The Pnume

There is a lot more, once you're addicted you can dig deeper.

Almost forgot to add, read Gene Wolfe's New Sun series, it's nearly as good as Vance.
 
I concur, Torz. Vance is one of my all-time favorites. Likewise Gene Wolfe....His new "Knight" books are quite good.

I also loved Julian May's Saga of the Pleistocene Exile. This is a highly imaginative and complex tetrology that rivals anything I've read. Unfortunately nothling else I've read from her measures up.
 
Herbert, Heinlen, Asimov, Bradbury, Orson Scott Card.

Some of Clive Barkers stuff borders SciFi.
 
David Brin's Uplift Wars series.
Julian May's sagas of the Pliocene exiles.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars trilogy.

Anything by Ray Bradbury, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov, Gregory Benford and hundreds of others.
 
Great replys.If anyone happens to know Robert Jordan,could ya tell him to finish his damn Wheel of time series! Honestly,I have read all 8 or 9 of them and it seems like the story is just getting started. A year and a half between chapters is driving me mad. Ya ,I said chapters cuz thats what 1000 pages of his is like. The next chapter to a never ending story. Keep them coming :)
 
I enjoy the classics, but one more modern series that I also loved was the Chronicals of Thomas Covenant by Stephan R. Donaldson (Willp pegged him.)
I read these as he wrote them (or as close as I could get) and could not wait for them to come out.

Great 6 book series.
 
Forgot Robert E. Howard, who wrote Conan and other fantasy work. It is actually very, very good - much better than people think.
 
My favorites, after some 50 years of reading sf are:
1.) The Classics, mostly "hard sf"
Isaac Asimov (for his "Foundation Trilogy" and his "Three Laws of Robotics", if for nothing else, but his works are legion)
Robert Heinlein (especially the books and stories in his "Future History")
Poul Anderson
Robert Sheckley
Roger Zelazney (His short story, "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" is, IMO, the finest short story in the English language.)
Harry Harrison, the "King of Alternate History"
S.M. Stirling
Andre Norton
C.M. Kornbluth
Keith Laumer
Phillip K. Dick (especially his Man In A High Castle)

2.) More Modern authors, including a good bit of fantasy:
Neil Gaiman (especially American Gods, Nerverwhere, and the "Sandman Series" of graphic novels)
Ursula Le Guin
Stephen Lawhead
Jack Whyte (for his "Camolud Chronicles")
Bernard Cornwell (for his "Winter King Trilogy" on King Arthur)
Fred Saberhagen (for the whole "Berserker Series" from which we get the Death Star in "Star Wars" and the Cylons in "Battlestar Galactica", except that Saberhagen's robotic killers are truly scary. He also does horror genre in his "Old Friend of the Family" series about Dracula as a, more or less, hero.)

3.) Some space-opera authors:
E.E. (Doc) Smith
Edgar Rice Burroughs(perhaps more fantasy, I don't know)
A. Bertram Chandler (for his great John Grimes stories, for more, see http://www.bertramchandler.com/)
 
Terry Goodkind has a series much like Robert Jordan, but not as dark. And the good guy wins with inegrity. Still active.

And for mind numbing fluff read the (8 books or so) Area 51 series. Don't remember the author right now, but they're fun.

I like Stirling too. The Terminator stuff is pretty good.

Alan Dean Foster w/ the Flinx series. Good stuff and seems to be an active series.

EE Knight started a series w/ the Way of the Wolf, but I haven't seen a second. It's not what you'd think either.
 
another vote for Harry Harrison and Robert Heinlein (actually I think Joss's avatar is from the cover of Stranger in a Strangeland).

Kref
 
in terms of series, zelazny's amber series is tough to beat, although I *love* brust's jhereg and phoenix guard. definitely read the amber series, the first 5 books are amazing.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Naahhh ... try Turtledove! :D
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Damn, another "elder moment"! ;) I had typed in Harry Harrison thinking "Stainless Steel Rat" and "Bill the Galactic Hero" and then put in "King of alternate history" thinking of Turtledove. You are right, of course, Esav, Turtledove is the unsurpassed master of the art of writing alternate history.
 
Krefcenz said:
another vote for Harry Harrison and Robert Heinlein (actually I think Joss's avatar is from the cover of Stranger in a Strangeland).

Kref
Click to expand...
If you have never read any of Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat stories, you have a wonderful experience awaiting you. Bill the Galactic Hero is a parody of Heinlein's Starship Troopers from a Cold War perspective as Joe Haldeman's The Forever War is a parody form the VietNam perspective. Where Haldeman's book is bitter, Harrison's book is funnier than Hell. He also wrote a number of other sf books with a decidedly off-center perspective. He did one quite good alternate history book, actually, The Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!, where a descendent of that traitor, George Washington, is the engineer in charge of building said tunnel across from England to her North American colonies. The American Revolution had been won by the King when the British introduced the Ferguson Rifle on a mass scale to their troops.
 
That's OK. The Stainless Steel Rat is still one of the great characters in SF. THAT'S a series they could make movies out of, and sequels and prequels, for years! Even Hollywood couldn't ham him up too badly. :p
 
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