# Top 100 SF Authors (How Many Have You Read?)



## J-Sun (Oct 16, 2013)

I thought I'd start this in response to Rodders' question on the Top 100 Fantasy Authors (How Many Have You Read?) thread:



Rodders said:


> Only 15 for me, but i'm not much is a fantasy reader. I wonder how i'd do on a Sci Fi list?



Only problem is, I couldn't find a decent list*, so had to make one. First, I made sure all Grand Masters were represented, and then added the top award winners and nominees from the old Locus database (the new one doesn't work well for me) and then added all the authors represented on the "best books" page at "scifilists". Then I removed all non-English language and non-primarily-20th century authors which is pretty objective. To get the remainder (close) to 100 names (102), I also removed writers who were minor SF authors (if at all), which is partly subjective**. That gives the following (in 'code' tags for scrollability so this post doesn't take up quite as much space):


```
Douglas Adams
Brian W. Aldiss
Poul Anderson
Catherine Asaro
Isaac Asimov
Margaret Atwood
Paolo Bacigalupi
Iain M. Banks
Stephen Baxter
Greg Bear
Gregory Benford
Alfred Bester
Michael Bishop
Terry Bisson
Ray Bradbury
David Brin
John Brunner
Lois McMaster Bujold
Anthony Burgess
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Orson Scott Card
C. J. Cherryh
Ted Chiang
Arthur C. Clarke
Hal Clement
Suzanne Collins
Michael Crichton
L. Sprague de Camp
Lester del Rey
Samuel R. Delany
Philip K. Dick
Cory Doctorow
Greg Egan
Harlan Ellison
Philip Jose Farmer
Michael F. Flynn
William Gibson
James Gunn
Joe Haldeman
Peter F. Hamilton
Harry Harrison
Robert A. Heinlein
Frank Herbert
L. Ron Hubbard
Aldous Huxley
James Patrick Kelly
Daniel Keyes
Damon Knight
Nancy Kress
Geoffrey A. Landis
Ursula K. Le Guin
Tanith Lee
Fritz Leiber
George R. R. Martin
Richard Matheson
Paul J. McAuley
Anne McCaffrey
Cormac McCarthy
Ian McDonald
Walter M. Miller
Michael Moorcock
Richard Morgan
Larry Niven
Andre Norton
George Orwell
Frederik Pohl
Christopher Priest
Robert Reed
Mike Resnick
Alastair Reynolds
Kim Stanley Robinson
Spider Robinson
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Geoff Ryman
Carl Sagan
Robert J. Sawyer
John Scalzi
Lucius Shepard
Robert Silverberg
Clifford D. Simak
Dan Simmons
Allen Steele
Neal Stephenson
Bruce Sterling
Charles Stross
Theodore Sturgeon
Michael Swanwick
James Tiptree, Jr.
A. E. van Vogt
Jack Vance
John Varley
Vernor Vinge
Kurt Vonnegut
Howard Waldrop
Kate Wilhelm
Sean Williams
Jack Williamson
Connie Willis
Robert Charles Wilson
Gene Wolfe
John Wyndham
Roger Zelazny
```

To me, this list leaves off a large number of essential and excellent authors, such as Leigh Brackett, Fredric Brown, Algis Budrys, Octavia E. Butler, Pat Cadigan, John W. Campbell, Robert L. Forward, Edmond Hamilton, C. M. Kornbluth, Henry Kuttner, Murray Leinster, C. L. Moore, Rudy Rucker, Charles Sheffield, John Shirley, Cordwainer Smith, E. E. "Doc" Smith, Norman Spinrad, Stanley G. Weinbaum and many others but I don't know what disinterested principle I could use to include them such as the lists I used to make the actual composite list. I'm particularly interested in knowing what authors others would add.

Anyway, in answer to the thread title's question, I get 79 authors I've read books by (though I've only read Sagan's non-fiction), 11 (maybe 12) I've read stories by, and 7 in the SBR.
_____

* All I could find was this 2008 SF & F list from SFX which is a very odd and poor list from my perspective (and, while not fantasy-centric, isn't SF-centric, either, obviously) and this 1998 SF list apparently from Joe Random which is, perhaps paradoxically, a much more comfortable list for me.

From the first list, I get a mere 49 authors (along with 5 I've read stories from but not books) and 6 more in the SBR. From the second list, I get 76 plus 4 story-only authors and 5 in the SBR.

** Mostly F&H authors I removed for that reason: Clive Barker, Bruce Boston (really a poet), Ramsey Campbell, Terry Dowling, Jeffrey Ford, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Hand, Joe Hill, Stephen King, Madeleine L'Engle, Margo Lanagan, C. S. Lewis, Kelly Link, China Mieville, Garth Nix, Tim Powers, Terry Pratchett, J. K. Rowling, Peter Straub, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jane Yolen.


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## dask (Oct 16, 2013)

Edmond Hamilton bumped for Peter F. Hamilton? The list already verges on the worthless.


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## J-Sun (Oct 16, 2013)

No argument from me on that point, but I didn't want to make a "my 100 favorite authors" list and that was the best I could come up with on "objective" grounds. It's not so much "these are the best 100 authors" but "these are 100 authors most SF fans would probably be mostly familiar with". Say most people had read 50 of these - if you tossed out a few dozen of these in place of another few dozen, most peoples' tallies might come out to about 50 even with the substitutions. (As opposed to replacing Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke with Totally Obscure Guys A, B, and C, which would change the results dramatically,) But, along with the numbers, that's definitely the sort of thing I'd like to hear - who people think should be on or off such a list. And I wonder if the Chrons could have a sort of poll of members like SFX did?


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## chrispenycate (Oct 16, 2013)

I only hit 83 (I was expecting better) 

I put this down to inadequacies of my book shop in Geneva.

Obviously, there are many names left out, some deservingly (but having sold enough books that they deserved to be contenders), others I would have included (yes, frequently at the expense of some there. But 'twas always thus with lists.


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## Lady of Winterfell (Oct 17, 2013)

*12* for me. But I've been reading Science Fiction for the past few years, where as I've been reading fantasy for many more than that. A little less than half the number I had for the Fantasy list.


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## dask (Oct 18, 2013)

58 in a combination of books, single author collections and anthologies.


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## Bick (Oct 18, 2013)

Hmm, only 49. Bit surprised, but I've read quite a few of the ones you mention who didn't make the top 100.


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## chrispenycate (Oct 18, 2013)

Well, you were asking for suggestions. I tried to search for authors that had had an influence on the entire field, rather than me personally, but absolute objectivity is difficult,  but Olaf Stapleton and Eric Frank Russell from my youth get shuffled off…

Pioneers
How can you leave out H.G.Wells and Jules Verne? Perhaps putting in Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley (as an originator of the gothic model) might be a touch excessive. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?

Military
David Drake, David Weber (for quantity if nothing else) and perhaps Elizabeth Moon?

Science Science
Robert L Forward, Fred Hoyle.

Quantity and general visibility
Piers Anthony, Marion Zimmer Bradley, James Blish (and why not Steven King, if you're allowing Crichton, Burgess and 1984? Certainly the majority of his writing has not been SF, but…).

And for stories that stayed
Gordon Dickson, JG Ballard, Stanislaw Lem.


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## AnyaKimlin (Oct 18, 2013)

Seventeen which is more than I expected.


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## Jo Zebedee (Oct 18, 2013)

Twenty. Less than I expected. But I tend to the soft end of the spectrum.


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## Sourdust (Oct 18, 2013)

J-Sun said:


> Then I removed all non-English language authors



Why? These lists (and the SFWA) do enough to perpetuate Anglocentrism as it is, although admittedly the only translated SF author most US/UK readers are likely to be familiar with is Lem, with even the Strugatsky brothers (or Karel Čapek, coiner of the word 'robot'; or Yevgeny Zamyatin, the major influence on Orwell's _1984_) remaining far too obscure.


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## Ian Whates (Oct 18, 2013)

Without taking the composition of the list to task (which I'm sure we all could),  There are five here that I haven't read, unless you count reading the first two chapters of a Hubbard novel before giving up on it in dismay as having read some Hubbard, in which case it's four.


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## Stephen Palmer (Oct 18, 2013)

A Hubbard novel isn't read, it's suffered.


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## gully_foyle (Oct 18, 2013)

All of them, no wait, 74 of them. Actually, 76 because it is not possible to have such a list without Wells and Verne. And it is a bit of a white bread list. I would include Lem, the Strugatskys, and Boulle


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## jastius (Oct 18, 2013)

i haven't read six of them .. but i live in a very small town with a very small library, and only one place to buy books... a thrift shop..  the rest i have read some of and some a lot of.. 
and that list is missing a few humdingers.


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## J-Sun (Oct 19, 2013)

chrispenycate said:


> Pioneers
> How can you leave out H.G.Wells and Jules Verne? Perhaps putting in Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley (as an originator of the gothic model) might be a touch excessive. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?





gully_foyle said:


> All of them, no wait, 74 of them. Actually, 76 because it is not possible to have such a list without Wells and Verne. And it is a bit of a white bread list. I would include Lem, the Strugatskys, and Boulle





Sourdust said:


> Why? These lists (and the SFWA) do enough to perpetuate Anglocentrism as it is, although admittedly the only translated SF author most US/UK readers are likely to be familiar with is Lem, with even the Strugatsky brothers (or Karel Čapek, coiner of the word 'robot'; or Yevgeny Zamyatin, the major influence on Orwell's _1984_) remaining far too obscure.



The fantasy thread that this spun off from limited its poll to "the past century" and I just followed suit, knocking off anyone before the 20th century. Wells and Verne would have been on the list otherwise (they must have made it from the "best books" poll). As far as why no foreign language, again, I didn't recall one from the fantasy list (on looking again, there may be one) and, for those for whom it's a problem, I don't see how including a token one or three authors would help redress any supposed Anglocentrism and it was a non-subjective way I could reduce the list - "these authors didn't write in English" as opposed to "I don't like these guys so much personally".

But, to avoid confusion, even though it wouldn't make for the most concise and arresting thread title, let's retitle it "Top 102 20th-21st century English-language authors who are big on award ballots or wrote a really popular book according to a poll". 



chrispenycate said:


> (and why not Steven King, if you're allowing Crichton, Burgess and 1984? Certainly the majority of his writing has not been SF, but…)



Here's where I had to get subjective, unfortunately. I can't really think of much King that's genuinely science fictional and had a big impact on SF. While Crichton may write popular technothrillers, I left him on as somebody who made the list by default and mostly appealed to people for SF-like rather than fantasy/horror reasons. (But I sure wouldn't have put him on the list myself.) Burgess and Orwell might have written vanishingly little SF relative to their whole body of work, but that little has been extremely influential to the field and to the popular/critical consciousness of it, so I definitely left them on.

But keep in mind, folks, that, as I said up top, (a) it's not "my" list except as tweaked to get *down* to 100 names (and is still a little over) - it's just who won a grandmaster, got a lot of award nominations and wins, or showed up on that other poll - I don't like it either - but (b) it's just for the purposes of a *game* or a benchmark as an SF companion to the Fantasy poll. The conversation is to discuss what folks have read and how to make it a better list within its parameters, but that can be done by saying "I'd add A and B" or "I'd switch X and Y for C and D" rather than saying "This list sucks! Where's Lucian?" 



chrispenycate said:


> Well, you were asking for suggestions. I tried to search for authors that had had an influence on the entire field, rather than me personally, but absolute objectivity is difficult,  but Olaf Stapleton and Eric Frank Russell from my youth get shuffled off…
> 
> [...]
> 
> ...



Good, interesting suggestions. Drake, Hoyle, and Ballard are in the SBR (I have read anthologized tales of Ballard) and I personally don't think much of Weber, Moon (just one book each) or Anthony (legions) but they definitely have big footprints. Blish, either, but certainly a large critical footprint. And not the biggest fan of Dickson, Russell or Stapledon (though I'm planning to take another crack at Stapledon) but I certainly would have no quarrel with them being on there. Forward's definitely my known favorite there at this point and Bradley is the one I'm least familiar with though I know she's a major one. I should look into her someday.


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## Victoria Silverwolf (Oct 19, 2013)

Stephen Palmer said:


> A Hubbard novel isn't read, it's suffered.


 
I will defend very early works like *Fear* and *Typewriter in the Sky* as good reads.

Anyway, including an author on the list if I can recall having read at least one story, I get about eighty. (There are some names which I cannot honestly remember having read or not.) The other twenty or so are mostly names which are completely unknown to me, with a few which, for whatever reason, ring a bell but who I cannot recall reading.


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## WayneLutz (Nov 23, 2013)

12 here, but have been reading lots of ebooks from emerging authors recently. From the list, Gregory Benford is a favourite. I tend towards the hard science fiction end of things.


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## Daisy-Boo (Dec 2, 2013)

47 that I'm sure of. I might have read short stories of a few more.


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## nightdreamer (Dec 2, 2013)

42 that I know of, but it would be a safe bet that I've read others and don't specifically remember them.  I started over half a century ago.  I can think of dozens of books that I've read for which I can remember neither the title nor the author.


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