Who are some actual great writers of Science Fiction? I'm talking Nabokov/Joyce levels of prose and characterization (if they exist at all).
Outside of popular names like PKD, CS Lewis, Wells, Mary Shelly, Le Guin, Wynne Jones, all the 19th century precursors, and so many others who have had their works adapted into films and shows (both animated and live action), these are some names I've heard:
>Gene Wolfe
>Mervyn Peake
>China Mieville
>Ted Chiang
>Kazuo Ishiguro
I'm asking about Sci-fi specifically, not fantasy. So I'm not looking for a Lord Dunsany or Guy Gavriel Kay suggestion, unless they have written Sci-fi and I overlooked something.
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If you don't want fantasy, you better rule out Peake.
'Pavane' by Keith Roberts is well written, if you consider alt-history science fiction.
Try Samuel Delaney or Thomas Disch. Also John Crowley though he's mostly alt hist/fantasy.
>John Crowley
I thought Crowley was fantasy, but I'll look into him.
>better rule out Peake.
Wasn't Titus Alone proto-steampunk?
Jack Vance is very underrated and underread even though he is incredibly influential on SFF.
Also R.A. Lafferty and as this anon said, Samuel Delaney (don’t do Hogg though, unless you are a literal Black personhomosexual).
>Read synopsis of Hogg on wikipedia
>Find out Delaney is gay
Why are they all like this?
You know why
i wish larp could fuel my reading habits like some of you homosexuals. while you decipher a chapter of wolfe i will read 3 sanderon novels.
That isn't reading.
Add Lem and Zamyatin.
Iain Banks, "Feersum Endjinn"
he doesnt get enough love
Banks sucked.
What novels are you talking about? Consider Phlebas and Matter sucked ass, and a few of his other books are mediocre, but Use of Weapons is one of the best sci fi novels I've ever read
read more
>best sci fi novels I've ever read
In terms of prose?
I'd say "one of the best," yeah
I quit a lot of books cause of stupid phrasing or cutesy fragments.Grammer matters to me
IMO, I thought Matter was one of his best
I like Banks use of B plots, C plots, etc
His other culture novels did it better imo. Matter's A plot was "Hamlet in space" and its B plot was "Better fly over to my dad's funeral," eventually culminating in "everyone dies, the end". Would probably have liked it more if it didn't feel so padded out, it didn't need to be almost 600 pages
Do the novels tie together at all, or is it just a series of stories with different characters set in the same universe?
The latter. There's a lot of references to other books, but you can read them in any order and still understand everything
So what's the point of it being a series?
Marketing I guess, also to help distinguish them from his non-culture scifi novels
Would you prefer Wheel of Time, where 5 million words builds up to the last 3 chapters
I read them in order - issues or problems contemplated in one book is fleshed out in another
Example: in Matter, a character wonders if life is actually VR and concludes that VR ought to be paradise,and we feel pain, therefore, this is reality
Counterpoint: Surface Detail features a war in only VR but the "soldiers" feel fear and pain and die and come back as soldiers over and over (with their memories intact). Another VR plotline has "people" trapped in a timeless hell full of torture and false hopes. So if Banks' ideas interest you, reading the series is like hearing Banks debating with himself
just my humble opinion
>Samuel Delaney
>Thomas Disch
>Crowley
>R. A. Lafferty
>Vance
What is their best work?
>Delaney
Dhalgren
>Crowley
Little, Big
>Lafferty
Is best in short stories. His stuff is hard to find but the Best of R.A. Lafferty is a good starting point. If you are dead set on a novel go with Past Master or Fourth Mansions (if you can even find it for a reasonable price).
>Vance
Read anything in The Dying Earth cycle.
Haven’t read Disch so can’t recommend anything. Also, OP mentioned him but go with Wolfe if you haven’t already. He’s in the upper echelon of SFF writers.
Thanks bro
I thought Delaney's best was considered to be Triton?
Triton is his best, but Dahlgren is by far his most well known
>Delaney
Nova or his short stories
>Disch
Camp Concentration or 334
>Crowley
Little, Big
>Lafferty
Wrote only short fiction IIRC
Me: https://amazon.com/dp/B0D1L9R2JK
>Man-Kzin Wars
My fricking homie.
Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban
h g wells
Clark Ashton Smith
How does he compare to Lovecraft and Howard?
Language is even more stilted than either. Slightly better than Lovecraft at narrating action, but a far cry from Howard. Nowhere near as reflective as Lovecraft. CAS seemed to be more focused on style than anything else. Worth a read if you like the other two.
Ian Banks. I also like CJ Cherryh but she's not really "great", her prose is just better than most sci fi slop
J.G. Ballard is the first name that comes to mind.
>Every homie posted itt is either dead or 80
Because pseuds think something is shit if it's new.
Thread would've been more interesting if OP asked for Sci-fi writers born after 1970.
The truth is that there are none. Science fiction is a genre for midwit pseuds. No one who actually appreciates literature writes or reads it.
The absolute most midwit pseud take I’ve ever seen
Fiction is fiction. An entire genre can't be good or bad.
All genre fiction is bad. If it were of literary merit it would rise to become literature without qualification of genre. No one would call Salammbo genre fiction, despite it being the best fantasy-lite and alt-history book ever written, because it's of literary merit and rises to become literature.
>If it were of literary merit it would rise to become literature without qualification
All fiction is "genre" fiction. Tragedy is a genre. Comedy is a genre.
Kafka wrote a story about a character turning into a wienerroach. Cormac McCarthy won a Pulitzer for The Road, a post-apocalyptic novel. Gabriel García Márquez won a Nobel prize and his best known work, which falls into the magical realism genre, is lauded.
Your boy Harold Bloom wrote a fantasy inspired by Voyage to Arcturus.
You're just reciting some IQfy bullshit meme.
have a nice day.
I'm not a troony like you
The founders wrote literature: Wells, Verne, Poe. Arguably so did Mary Shelley (more for The Last Man than Frankenstein).
Somewhat below that level, but high indeed: Olaf Stapledon, of course. Dick, Lem, H. P. Lovecraft, Yefremov, the Strugatskys. A few one-shot wonders like Orwell for 1984.
That said, there are works and writers than I can't quite classify as literature but can't quite ignore. Colin Wilson for The Philospopher's Stone and The Mind Parasites. Thomas Disch.
And then there are scifi writers who can't remotely be considered literature, but who one delights in even though you know you're consuming junk food. I'm thinking of A. E. Van Vogt, beloved by both Wilson and Dick.
The best science fiction published in recent decades? The Doomed City by the Strugatskys, and the Golden Oecumene trilogy by John C. Wright.
Thanks Nabokov
I think Peter F. Hamilton has some interesting prose, despite being an autist who tries to write the hardest Sci-fi he possibly can.
Neal Stephenson can be a bit Reddit, but his stuff is nice.
Ray Bradbury is a master, of course.
I would look into Sci fi awards like Hugo. Just know that after 2013 women and P.O.C. win for political reasons rather than merit. Still, the nominee list is worth looking into. Ada Palmer is pretty good.
Ishiguro
pseud take.
>Peter F. Hamilton
I am a fan but yeah he is completely insufferable at times
>A. E. Van Vogt
He's underrated
t. Boris Vian
>I can't quite classify as literature
Define literature.
And don't fricking use the 'genre' meme. See
>Define literature.
Good God. Have you got eternity to spare?
Practically speaking, the best way to define 'literature' or genre is by using the late Wittgensteinian notion of 'family resemblance.' Some kinds of books resemble each other and so are one kind of thing, and other kinds resemble each other in different ways and so are another kind of thing. Notes From Underground, The Castle, Stoner, Ward Six, Nausea all have a certain affinity of form and content, so we bracket them together as 'literature' and only allow in new members if they show just enough resemblance. Null-A, Way Station, The Demolished Man, and Mona Lisa Overdrive have a different set of affinities, and we place a new work in that neigborhood if enough of the same markers overlap. Note that _every_ marker doesn't have to overlap. Just enough.
Oh okay thanks
I've been enjoying Adrian Tchaikovsky lately.
Haven't read them but I hear The Expanse series is good.
>Nabokov/Joyce levels of prose and characterization
Idk man. Sci-fi really isn't the place where are explored like that. It's more about ideas.
>implying Nabokov and Joyce don't contain "ideas"
unironically ngmi, if all sci fi fans think this way then no wonder the genre has such an astoundingly low bar
That's not what I meant. Sci-fi isn't known for beautiful writing or characterization. Characters are usually one dimensional and exist to serve the philosophy, which usually surrounds technological advancements.
It's difficult to find a Stephen Dedalus in that genre.
Ass Goblins of Auschwitz
youse homiez
While it doesn't have the best prose, Star Maker by Stapledon has some beautiful and insightful passages on human nature and our place in the stars
Second Stapledon. Last and First Men is also good, though his projections for the 20th century (written just after WWI) are laughably off.
I think Olaf had Americans nailed tbpf
>Black
Yep. That's problematic.
No, it’s not. It’s just black but in Spanish. Are you some kind of xenophobe or something? What a chud.
no u
Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov & Larry Niven are all great.
>"I'm talking Nabokov/Joyce levels of prose and characterization"
>Anon names Asimov
>>"I'm talking Nabokov/Joyce levels of prose and characterization"
>>Anon names Asimov
I am astounded to say that Asimov's The End of Eternity is very well written. I was astounded.
Very, very few sci fi writers after Wells, Poe, and Mary Shelley write well in the sense of florid or experimental style. William Burroughs' Soft Machine books come closest to the latter, but they don't read 'beautifully.' Ada Palmer tries hard, as does John C. Wright at times, and as did M. P. Shiel. Most beautifully written SF is literary writers slumming, like Updike with Toward the End of Time, Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins, or Cormac's depressing The Road. But they're just taking a walk on the wild side.
>I am astounded to say that Asimov's The End of Eternity is very well written
You make it sound like it's an anomaly. Like you know most of his stuff is garbage.
Vernor Vinge.
My homie
Vern her vinge?
I hardly knew her!
His ex wife was better
I haven't read any by her yet but I have a hardcover 'Alien Blood' by her and it'll be read soon. Any must reads by her?
The Snow Queen is what she's best know for, and it's great. Her cat series is really good too. I think Alien Blood is actually a combo of the first two books in that series.
The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter.
only book they ever wrote but it's good. I hated necromancer but this cyberpunk book is amazing and actually literary.
Thomas liggoti
I thought he only wrote horror
There was an excerpt from Richard Calder, but everyone on here tore it apart.
He overwrites.
>I stared, unblinking
BRADBURY bro. Same eloquent prose as Nabokov and incredibly interesting plots. Read his short story book The Illustrated Man. Probably one of the best things I've ever read
Bradbury is the goat
Idk if anyone has the complexity of Joyce and Nabokov, but there are many writers with beautiful prose.
Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40k books are well written. I'd say he's more like F.S. Fitzgerald in terms of vocabulary than Joyce or Nabokov. He describes action scenes very well.
[Mobile Suit Gundam: Awakening, Escalation, Confrontation] are the best written mecha novellas I'm aware of.
There really is a lack of mecha novels
I’ve always liked JG Ballard, you will see that his earlier stories are more “standard” science fiction (time travel, infinite dimensions) but his later novels are more about social decay,wealth gap,post industrial society
Robert Silverberg
Please read “ The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe”
John Wyndham though I’ve only ready his “trouble with lichens” it was wonderful
>Please read “ The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe”
Will do. Thanks.
M John Harrison. Criminally unknown. Picrel is one of the greatest literary sci-fi trilogies ever.
Read The Vorrh by Brian Catling
Roger Zelazny and Moorwiener's later novels, Herbert's Dune!
Dune is nor well written
Stfu, pleb.
nah he's right Dune's prose is atrocious and autistic
*Summon a sandworm to kill you*
Nothing personnel kiddo
Shit that was meant for