My Top 100 Authors, comments requested

[Hannibal King]

At the end of the day' date=' it's a series of books. No need to get so wound up that other people have different views to you.

[/quote']

 

Okay. I can go with that. You have your opinion, I have mine. Let's leave it at that.

[Hannibal King]

Not that I am saying you are right in this, Werhead. Because I will always think that you are dead wrong. I could argue this point till the day I died, but I don't think it would get me anywhere.

[Hannibal King]

To get back on topic, here are my 10 favorite authors. In order.

 

1. Terry Goodkind

2. Terry Brooks

3. R.A. Salvatore

4. Ayn Rand

5. Joel C. Rosenberg

6. Robert Jordan

7. Eldon Thompson

8. Tad Williams

9. Douglas Preston & Lincoln Childs

10. Stephen King

[DrakeDouay]

Didn't Terry Goodkind say something about those valiant and chivalrous people of the intelligence community who have been demonised by the

evil hounds of the media?

I don't remember his exact words.

 

Spooks? Chivalrous ?

I'd would personally get a bit worried if my countries "Security Services" were being chivalrous.... :?

[DrakeDouay]

I'd have to stick Mr Goodkind on my top 20 list,though... :shock:

[Gandaal]

In Phantom. Do you want a quote?

Not particularly, I've yet to read it.

[Dylanfanatic]

Good list' date=' Larry. I do need to get into Borges considering how often you recommend him. Are there multiple English translations, and if so, is there a good edition to look for? My ability to read other languages is sadly completely lacking [/quote']

 

Yes, there are multiple English translations of Borges and having sampled two of them, the Andrew Hurley translation is very, very good. If you can find it, I would recommend the omnibus Collected Fictions, which contains all of Borges' major prose pieces in one volume. It cost me about $15 when I bought it in 2002, but it is well worth the cost. Should still be in print, published in tradeback by Penguin in the US and maybe in the UK as well.

 

And as for foreign languages, Spanish isn't all that hard to learn. I'm currently learning to read Serbian and a friend mailed me her copy of the second HP book in Serbian translation. It's interesting, so far (then again, HP is a guilty pleasure for me :P) seeing how close the translation is, even with Cyrllic letters.

[Stevenator]

:shock: wow, i blinked for a second and this thread exploded behind my back. i will take all your thoughts into consideration, but I would like to sincerely thank Dylanfanatic for his imput.

 

when I have the time, I will be posting an updated list. :arrow:

[Moseley]

has anyone read anything by Tad Williams. He's currently my favorite fantasy writer. Don't hurt me! *covers head with hands hoping not to get hit*

[DrakeDouay]

Yep,

Tad's in my top 20 again, exceptin' I don't care for the Gottfried-ish

let-me-be-damned-or-saved-by-Romantic-Tragedy-genre-philosphy.

 

Furthermore, I don't trust him. He's a little too trigger-happy with characters

that the reader cares about.

He must have overheard me and my committee's slanderous mutterings on

account of, as far as I know, he ain't killed anybody lately.... :?

[Ann]

Ridiculous. Richard Rahl's armies were too weak to face the IO in battle, so he ordered them to instead sack the IO's cities and murder the unarmed civilians within them and burn and salt their fields. The only people this kills are unarmed civilians who have as much choice about living in the IO as the Polish did under Hitler or the Russian Jews under Stalin. This is the equivalent of George Bush nuking every city in Iraq to wipe out the terrorists regardless of the twenty million innocent people who'd die as well. This is utterly, morally unjustifiable under any circumstances.

 

So according to this logic they should just lie down and die rather than doing what their enemy did and attacking? I understand you don't care for the books, or the story, or the author, but you might try to tell the truth in your little book review. You know...truth? Truth says that wanting to live and fighting for your own life is never unjustifiable.

 

Goodkind is smart? Right, you mean when he said he doesn't write fantasy? Or that he thinks Ayn Rand is the greatest 'living' writer (she died over 20 years before he made that comment)? Or when he attacked Canada as being a police state?

 

You are quite skilled at taking pieces of conversations and applying them out of context to elicit an inflammatory reaction based on wholly inaccurate statements and verbal typos. For someone so taken on calling those for mistakes you might learn to report accurately Sadly for all your hard work, they are still taken out of context and inaccurate. I see from other postings you're not overly concerned with this. The good thing is persons such as yourself quickly make a name for themselves as something to dismiss.

 

You may like the SoT books. Good for you. Other people dislike them, probably based on much greater experience of other writers. What is surreal is when Goodkind fans hold him up as some kind of modern-day Proust or Camus. He isn't. He's a writer of cheesy hack fantasy who tries to inject a rather outdated philosophy into his works with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. That's it.

 

Well finally. Glad you got that out of your system. I'm sure that you will have some witty and totally inaccurate rejoinder to make. Those who wish to find out for themselves will do so and those who don't will not. Simple as that.

 

To all others who posted a list without the oft-repeated and timeworn rhetoric, my thanks. I'll have to look into a few of these names I've never heard.

[Hannibal King]

Thanks Ann.

[Werthead]

I have said all I have to on the subject of Goodkind in this thread. Opinions have been exchanged and noted. No-one is changing anyone else's mind.

 

However, on the subject of basic morality, I find this statement interesting:

 

Truth says that wanting to live and fighting for your own life is never unjustifiable.

 

At the expense of the innocent? At the expense of the enslaved? Any subjective truth which condones such an action is no kind of truth at all.

 

Regarding Tad Williams: a very good author, poetic in places, simply a thumping good read in others. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is enjoyable, if slightly overwrought, with a nice twist at the end. Otherland is much stronger, with lots of inventiveness and original use of existing stories, fairy tales and ideas. I have decided to wait for the series to be completed before picking up Shadowmarch.

[Stevenator]

I’ve added, and consequently cut, about 35 names. Almost everyone has been scrambled.

 

I have changed several criteria for this updated list, including the full-fledged acceptance of Magical Realism (F & SF portray alternate universes with its own set of rules and characteristics, whereas Magical Realism portrays the real world minus any definite set of rules). Also I expanded my Children’s Literature entrees to include Carroll, Baum, Milne, ect.. Many of the fun “campy†reads (howard, erikson, asimov, and so on) I decided to cut from my Top 100, though they will show up again on longer lists.

 

I am much happier with this list then the previous, but please keep the reveiws coming.

 

1-10

 

Jack Vance

J. R. R. Tolkien

Gene Wolfe

Jorge Luis Broges

M. John Harrison

Italo Calvino

Mervyn Peake

Lord Dunsany

Patricia McKillip

Terry Pratchett

 

11-20

 

Jonathan Carroll

E. R. Eddison

R. A. Lafferty

Ursula K. Le Guin

Lewis Carroll

Brian Aldiss

L. Frank Baum

Tim Powers

C. J. Cherryh

Avram Davidson

 

21-30

 

Thorne Smith

James Blaylock

Philip Jose Farmer

Philip K. Dic_k

Fritz Leiber

Roger Zelazny

Michael Moorcock

Ben Okri

Cordwainer Smith

William Hope Hodgeson

 

31-40

 

Iain M. Banks

Brian Stableford

John Brunner

Christopher Priest

Sheri S. Tepper

Ernest Bramah

Branch Cabell

Neil Gaiman

Tantih Lee

Gabriel García Márquez

 

41-50

 

Alfred Bester

Peter S Beagle

Peter F. Hamilton

Thomas Pynchon

George R.R. Martin

Robert Silverberg

Frank Herbert

Hal Duncan

Susanna Clarke

Sean Russell

 

51-60

 

Russell Hoban

Edward Whittemore

Charles G. Finney

P. C. Hodgell

Michael Chabon

G. K. Chesterton

John Crowley

Dan Simmons

China Mieville

Steven Millhauster

 

61-70

 

Geoff Ryman

John Wyndham

Magnus Mills

A. A. Milne

George MacDonald

John Bellairs

Arthur Machen

Umberto Eco

Tad Williams

T. H. White

 

71-80

 

John Gardener

Charles Williams

Olaf Stapledon

Orson Scott Card

Steven Bauer

Richard Grant

William Gibson

Alan Lightman

Tom Holt

Mary Gentle

 

81-90

 

Theodore Sturgeon

David Gemmell

Douglas Adams

Stephen King

Kenneth Grahame

Samuel R. Delany

Harlan Ellison

Octavia Butler

Angela Carter

Walter Wangerin Jr

 

91-100

 

Phyllis Eisenstein

William Morris

Jeff VanderMeer

Herbert Read

Walter M. Miller Jr.

Matt Ruff

Charles de Lint

Kij Johnson

Robert Heinlein

Kim Stanley Robinson

[Werthead]

This list is pretty cool, Stevenator. Nice work.

[TheDiceAgain...]

Great list but I'd move Douglas Adams up a bit. His dry wit and sarcasm had me laughing out loud through every one of his books. This can be quite embarassing in certain circumstances, I wouldn't suggest it...

[Kivam]

Folks, I'd add Alan Campbell to the list. Just got his debut novel, Scar Night, to revue, and it's damn good (it's been out in the UK for about a year, and just now hitting the US). I see shades of Peake (what I read and what I've heard) and Gaiman in his writing. he'll be a good one.

[Guest Majsju]

Both Peake and Gaiman at the same time? I definitly must look into this bloke.