I'll have to check him out.
My personal living favorite is Charlie Stross, check out Accelerando for a sample of his stuff. Also check out Halting State and Dechlorinating the Moderator
Also his Lovecraft meets Len Deighton/Ian Flemming series The Atrocity Archives/The Jennifer Morgue. Finally his Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise are the best and most skewed Space Operas in a long time.
Hands down, Kim Stanley Robinson. His Mars series is so knowing of human nature that they are beyond genre fiction.
I always enjoy reading Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, and Snow Crash as well.
One of my favorite series of the last 10 or so years was Steven R Donaldson's "The Gap" books.
No, they aren't about a far-future children's slave colony making fashionable, yet reasonably-priced clothing for offworlders.
A cleverly done blend of "hard" sci-fi and Space Opera. (I know! How crazy is that!)
Of course, it's been a while since I read them, so if you think they suck, I can't argue with you. I'm not a big fan of Donaldson's, so I was surprised I liked these books as much as I did.
Science Fiction to me isn't so much about the technology as it is about the society with the technology. Snow Crash was great in this way, the world it presented was quite vivid. My favorites, however, are the Risen Empire series by Scott Westerfeld, which goes into the dangers of complacency via unlimited intellectual property "rights". As well, I love Corey Doctorow's revisisioning of a geek-centric world.
And of course, Douglas Adams.
I too like Daniel Keys Moran and Scott Westerfeld. I also like Kathy Tyers, John Scalzi, Kevin J. Anderson, and Louise Marley.
Spider Robinson, for examining how human psychology and advanced technology mix/don't mix.
Living?? Easy and sorry but to me there is no contest for the top two. Philip Jose' Farmer, or Harlan Ellison, take your pick as to what order you wish to place them. Philip K Dick were he still alive would be up there too. Arthur C Clark is another living science fiction writer I would place in my this pantheon.
Back to Farmer, if you've read the River world series, your opinions of religion have had to change. The man writes with clarity and precision.
Ellison is so good that most of the Star Trek (original series) movies were basically set up by him in a phone conversation with the Late Gene Roddenberry, but he has never received the credit he deserves, maybe because he had the temerity to tell Roddenberry that the first Trek movie was a piece of shit. Ahh well the artist temperament.
Ah, I forgot to list Spider.
I really really love the Stardancer Trilogy he wrote with his wife. Especially the last two books. (The first one I can take or leave.)
And Night of Power before he fucking butchered the damn rewrite making it PC.
Oh, I was SO PISSED OFF when I got my brand new copy after all those years scrounging used copy after copy after copy in bookstores around the country. Only to find that he'd massively changed key plot points in order to be PC. Including part of the damn ending!
I consider the money a pure gift to Spider and Baen publishing, but I'll never trust either of them again when it comes to republishing anything.
Assholes.
Night of Power is worth reading, but make goddamn certain you're reading a copy from back in the 1980s, not one of the new ones.
I will definitely check him out. thanks!
CapD and karmakin
Read Stephenson's Crypnomicon, fantastic!
Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series has been my fave scifi for several years. (haven't tried her fantasy stuff as fantasy usually makes me gag).
Kim Stanley Robinson. His Mars series blew my socks off.
Karin Lowachee. Her trilogy (Warchild, BurnDive, and Cagebird) examines the impact of war on children using Scifi as the vehicle. Pared down writing, not a wasted word, her craftsmanship amazes me.
I'll have to check out DKM, thanks for the tip.
David Brin and William Gibson are two of my faves
and also Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg and Starquake
preznit giv me turkee:
Brin Is interesting in that he that rare-bird the principled libertarian. While I usually disagree with the final conclusions of his essays I do think he is honestly taking some positions that progressives can agree on.
It's a sad thing when you realize so many of your favorite sf writers are dead. But to be fair, I don't read as much sf as I once did.
Of the more recent authors, I've enjoyed Alexander Jablokov's Carve the Sky and Deepdrive. Ian Banks' Culture novels are always an interesting read, too. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash was also lots of fun.
For greatest living SF writer, although he's getting up there in years and his last book had more than a bit of a swan-song feel to it, I'd have to nominate Jack Vance.
And that's at least partly because I also consider him one of the greatest living fantasy writers, for his Dying Earth series and the Lyonesse trilogy.
Vance is very much a one-of-a-kind. He doesn't write "hard" sf; his work has more of a sociological bent, how the human and alien encounter and shape each other. His style is unique, cooly sardonic at times, often stunning in its spare poetry. He has an unsurpassed knack for the bizarre and colorful.
Of his short stories, "The Men Return", "The Moon Moth", "Green Magic", and "Liane the Wayfarer" would make a great introduction to his work. His novella "The Last Castle" won the Hugo back in the 60s, but actually seems more relevant with every year that passes.
Otherwise, he's been so prolific an author it's really hard to come up with an essential list of his novels. For what it's worth, my favorites are To Live Forever with its thoroughly amoral protagonist in a society defined by its cutthroat competition for the gift of immortality, Emphyrio for its unsurpassed atmosphere, and The Eyes of the Overworld.
Needless to say, I'm also a big fan of Michael Shea, who was obviously deeply influenced by Vance's Dying Earth series. So was Gene Wolfe, another of my favorite authors.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all and sundry!
Definitely love Neal Stephenson and Bujold. If you open it up to Fantasy, you have to include Terry Pratchett. I liked all of the Brin Uplift Novels except the last one.
Oh, I was SO PISSED OFF when I got my brand new copy after all those years scrounging used copy after copy after copy in bookstores around the country. Only to find that he'd massively changed key plot points in order to be PC. Including part of the damn ending!
I've been reading Spider Robinson's stuff since the early 70's. He is one of those writers that breaks the heart.
Because he knows what good writing is and he knows what an insightful story is. And he has chosen to not to write either as his career has developed.
That's not the first time I've seen a good person sell out. It's disgusting and pitiful. And there's nothing, no core of honesty, left to trust there afterwards.
Once they've lost that cherry, they're done.
I remember when I first came across _The Long Run_. Senior year of college: I was talking Sci Fi with a friend of mine who we'll call The Soft Guy (and whose name was kind of like calling an O-Lineman 'Tiny). I mentioned _Neuromancer_, and he said, "Read _The Long Run_, it's much better." He lent me his copy, and I was completely blown away. Some of the best science in science fiction mixed with some amazing storytelling. I got _The Last Dancer_ a year or two later, and have since read a few others. From his blog, it seems like he's writing again, perhaps we'll see the _AI War_ in the near future.
As far as living writers, I also like Stephenson, Gibson, Bruce Sterling (especially the short stories), Harry Harrison, John Shirley's _Song Called Youth_ trilogy. And of course, Arthur C. Clarke.
Philip K. Dick is one of my all-time favorites. Frank Herbert wrote some interesting books outside of the _Dune_ series, especially _The God Makers_.
"and also Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg and Starquake
preznit giv me turkee | 12.23.07 - 9:16 pm |"
Yes!!
For mind candy, nobody beats Neal Asher. NOBODY.
He doesn't try for anything more and doesn't pretend to. He does space opera. Better than E.E. Smith. Better even than David Drake, whose Inner Author rebels against anything not thoughtful and precise enough. The first story of Asher's that I read was "The Engineer", and it totally blew me away. Here are the ingredients for this recipe -
* A practicing engineer, last survivor of a millions-of-years-dead super-race that moved suns and shuffled genes like so many decks of cards, complete with his toolbox.
* A mass-murdering fanatical fundie general.
* A sadistic treacherous mercenary with his ship of cutthroats-for-hire.
* AIs so advanced that trans-humans foolish enough to interface with them are burned out within minutes .. but during those last minutes, they can invent things that change the shape of human societies everywhere and forever.
* An interstellar dreadnought so huge it shifts planets in their orbits when it passes too close and changes tides just by being there. Don't ask what happens when it busts caps, you don't wanna know .. but survivable it ain't.
What's not to like?
Captain C, IMHO, Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most overrated novelists in the entire field. I don't really understand why; the subjects and plot lines he chooses ought to knock my socks off. They just don't.
If you want to see Clarke shine, look for his shorter works. That guy can compress more, and better, storytelling into fewer words than anyone else I know of. Tales From the White Hart is just loaded with examples of this sort of thing.
I gues i am more of a scifi/fantisy hybrid type. hard scifi allways bored me and so did high fantisy.
I have two favorits
Moorcock who is amazingly still alive, and writign so damm good stuff as allways.
and Neil Gammen. if you havent read American Gods yet make it your next book....its a masterpeice...how a brit touches the soul of america so well and so convencingly I will never understand.
Great thread - I've read Science Fiction for over 30 years and a few of these names are new to me.
My favorite living writer is Greg Bear - based on two early books, Blood Music and The Forge of God. Both get re-read every couple years.
In an category I'd call Hard Fantasy, my top writer is Michael Marshall Smith, based on his first book - Only Forward
Is Samuel R. Delaney still alive?
I think that arguably the best SF writers do not write in english.
The Polish writer Stanislaw Lem died last year, so I suppose he barely does not qualify. His novel Solaris was twice made into a movie. Memoirs found in a Bathtub, once I thought funny, now seems more like a story about the Bush mis-adminstration, complete with a special room where incompetants are awarded medals.
The Russian Strugatsky Brothers, Boris and Arkady are also well worth reading. Not to long ago I finished reading "Roadside Picnic" which deals with the aftermath of a first contact
with aliens. The aliens land, but they pay absolutely no attention to humans, they stay for a while, leave a mess and people then try to figure out what the crap they left is actually used for. Mostly though people get hurt in trying to find out. Sort as if one was to have a picnic in the woods, leave behind say a carving knife and a curious squirrel attracted to the shiny object decides to play with it.
Others have mentioned this, but I would like to remind the jury that the author of "Childhood's End" is not dead.
Also, Moran himself thinks "Childhood's End" is one of the two best science fiction novels ever.
I suggest:
The Star Fraction, by Ken MacLeod (possibly the best debut novel since Neuromancer)
Distraction and The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling
Take Back Plenty by Colin Greenland
Distress by Greg Egan
and for fun, Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven
Let me contribute Mary Doria Russell to the mix. Her unfinished triple trilogy is making me nuts. The first two books are astonishingly good.
Harlan Ellison.
Nobody has said Richard K. Morgan yet: Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies, Market Forces, Thirteen.
I knew Thirteen was gonna be awesome when I read in the intro that his nonfiction sources included Steven Pinker, Susan Faludi, the Jesusland map posted to the net after the 2004 elections and Tariq Ali.
No mention of Robert Silverberg???? Hawksbill Station, Nightwings, and Passengers are some very good short stories.
Umm. I did not mention Susan R. Matthews. Which was seriously stupid of me.
Her "Jurisdiction" stories are incredibly rewarding reads. But mind candy they're not. The only adjective that comes to mind offhand is "grim".
Andrej Koscuisko has got to be one of the least enviable protagonists in modern American letters. Because he is a man who is morally betrayed not only by his society, but by his own nature. And he knows it.
But, unlike the usual tragic hero, the nature of his society and situation are such that his failings only serve to advance him.
Yeh, Plummet, Delany's sixty-five and published a well-received (non-SF) novel this year. Been a couple decades since he's published any science fiction, though. Even longer for the inimitable Joanna Russ, who stopped writing altogether ten years ago thanks to disability. And Kate Wilhelm, whose short fiction during the Vietnam era was more horrific and powerful than Ellison's, IMO, seems to have been doing all detective novels of late.
So who's currently living and active in the FSF field that I like? Kelly Link. Rebecca Ore.
I second Neil Gaiman and Greg Bear. Ian McDonald; his "River of Gods" is magnificent, about a future India, character development is great, this one starts slowly but is worth seeing all the disparate parts fall together.
If Octavia Butler had lived just a little longer she would be at the top of my list, tho.
I second prof fate's selection of Jack Vance. There is no other reasonable choice.
Is John Brunner still alive?
I can tell by the tone my favs won't make the cut, but...
Larry Niven (the Known Space works in particular)
Dan Simmons. Hate his politics, but he does far future very, very well.
Vernor Vinge. A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness In The Sky are first rate.
I like the early Vinge. Also the early Niven.
I'm fairly old school in this arena.
As Illinois Jacquet needed to exist for Charlie Parker to come into being fully developed, C.M. Kornbluth, Alfred Bester, Fritz Leiber and Frederick Brown were necessary for Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg to come into their own.
And, well, what can't you say about Harlan? (And what don't we say enough about regarding Silverberg, who's range has gone from Dying Inside to Sadhrach in the Furnace to smaller gems like Sailing to Byzantium or Chiprunner...he even wrote the first fantasy series outside of Lord of the Rings that I actually enjoyed - Lord Valentine's Castle. 
)
Ursula K. LeGuin stands on her own, though for me her later stuff didn't/doesn't have the "kick like a mule" effect on my mind of The Lathe of Heaven, The Left Hand of Darkness and a personal favorite, The Dispossessed.
I would safely say that the most unnoticed but important speculative fiction book of the last 30 years is the eerily prescient and satirical On Wings of Song by Thomas Disch.
And I would also safely say that the most unsung hero of the last Yahweh-only-knows how many years was Donald Wollheim, who's annual collections kept some of the best writing in the field noticed for many a year.
Philip K. Dick, I am sorry to say, never worked for me as a teen. I must have tried to read Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said three or four times until I just gave up in disgust. I knew there was something in there, but it took until my mid-thirties to go back to his work and read it and get it, just as he began to get noticed by Hollywood.
Heinlein I never got into much. Too dry, even with all the allusions to open and variable sexuality, though there were a few good ideas and concepts sprinkled in the writing.
Varley and the Eight Worlds series, though, I really enjoyed as they came out over time, though it's hard to beat the original Ophiuchi Hotline. I never jumped into the Gaea Trilogy, though in part that may be because Titan, on the surface, without having read it, sounded a little like Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, and I never remedied that opinion by just reading it. (My loss.)
So, this Moran whippersnapper is better than Varley, Jesse? Really? Well, there are a lot of folks with feet in multiple genres, a lot of good writers today whose names don't immediately come to mind but their stories, or at least the ideas behind their stories, do. Maybe him too.
I'll go do some research.
Oh, and Greg Bear. You can't ignore Greg Bear.
Holy crap, DKM is blogging and getting back the rights to The AI War at last. Thank you so much for this post pointing me back in Dan's direction. Best Christmas present EVER.
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