I have started a bit of a project on my website: see
here.
Fantastic and fascinating job! A lot to ponder over and a lot of new perspectives.
Hmmmmm ... Maybe I should dig out The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun and finally read it.
Same here.
Zahn's early short stories, before he got sucked into writing Star Wars extended-universe books, were generally pretty good. I've read and enjoyed several.
Have you not read Sheffield? His novel Between the Strokes of Night, is excellent.
I second that on both Zahn and the Sheffield novel. I wonder what Zahn's career would have been like if he hadn't hit the Star Wars lode. On the one hand, he might be much less known but, on the other, we might have a lot more of his excellent independent stories and novels and he might be seen differently by a lot of SF readers.
No, never have read Sheffield, but maybe I will give that one a try. But before then I think I'll give Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama a try.
I may have missed why Clarke came up but it's interesting you should mention him in connection with Sheffield given the kind of famous bit that Sheffield and Clarke independently came up with space elevator novels within months of each other in the late 70s and have been linked by that ever since.
The top 10 contributors to Analog in the 2000's decade (2000-2009):[...] Interesting to see Niven back up there - I would not have guessed that. Lovett, Frederick and Oltion are the go-to authors for the magazine in this decade.
I was surprised by the Niven, too. For some reason, nothing specific by Oltion springs to mind, but I seem to recall Lovett (also a big non-fiction contributor) and Frederick doing some things that could merit their place.
Just some of the million things that occurred to me going through the lists:
On the 1930-4 list, I have read stories by Bates, Wandrei, and others, but only have (unread) books by Ray Cummings and then, of course, lots of Williamson and Leinster but those survived to make continued impacts. Just from 1935-9, it changes drastically, as I have books by Gallun, Binder, Campbell, Long, Weinbaum, Rocklynne, Wellman, Williamson, and de Camp or 9 of 17 names.
Astounding captures almost all the biggest SF names of the 30s/40s except Edmond Hamilton, who had a much more hospitable home in Weird Tales.
On the 40s, I have read at least one Jameson story but I agree that he (and perhaps Raymond F. Jones) sticks out as "not like the others" in terms of name recognition, though he may have more great stuff that I should be aware of. (One thing I'm struck by is how often I'm surprised at people's seemingly strange notions of "household names" yet how in accord our households seem to be.) Either way, almost every author (even on the 5-year breakdown) is well worth reading. Rocklynne (split across the late 30s and 40s) might be my "greatest contrast between how well he's remembered and how well he ought to be remembered" candidate.
On the 50s, Fyfe is a name I know but it is surprising to see what a big deal he was. More surprising is that Everett B. Cole was a frequent contributor and I'm not sure I've ever even heard of him. Anvil is a guy whose name didn't really register for a long time, but it eventually did and I do have a book or two of his to read someday. Budrys, though reasonably well-remembered, I suppose, would be my nominee for the greatest discrepancy there.
On your website, you say "Looking at the decade as a whole, it is interesting to note that van Vogt, George Smith, Hubbard and Jameson have now disappeared from Astounding." We can blame Dianetics for Hubbard and van Vogt (though van Vogt at least wasn't involved with Scientology). And, while Campbell didn't absolutely let it stand in the way of buying a good story and I don't know all the facts behind it, I can't imagine he was exactly eager to buy George Smith stories after Smith ended up with his wife. Sometimes writers being prolific contributors might not mean much beyond personal issues - Williamson's writer's block, Leiber's occasional alcohol problems, etc.
The 60s doesn't quite go back to the early 30s, but there are several unfamiliar and less familiar names there. Of those I do know, James H. Schmitz should be remembered better. (Like Budrys, I feel like he is, but not enough.) Seeing Harrison and Reynolds along in here make me again think that Campbell and Astounding have a somewhat monolithic conservative reputation when both those writers (perhaps even more than Asimov) are examples of very left-of-center writers who were frequently published by Campbell.
Interesting that Wodhams was so productive at both the end of Campbell and the beginning of Bova while only a few others hit both lists at all, and lower down. That's definitely a writer I have to find something out about. One thing that is striking is that being a prolific contributor is no guarantee of top quality but many of the most prolific are top-quality and some unjustly forgotten, so it seems worth finding out there.
Speaking of the 70s discrepancies, while original anthologies go back to at least 1951 and Healy, they had a significant impact on the market in the 70s, which may also account for some of the shifts. For instance, Silverberg was still quite prolific in short fiction but was captured by Pohl and Galaxy/If in the late 60s and then, in the 70s, published mostly in upscale markets like the original anthologies and Playboy and so on. In the late 70s and on, Omni pulled a lot of people, both because of the pay and because of the Bova connection, as he left Analog to edit Omni.
On the 90s, G. David Nordley and Stephen L. Burns never seemed to get as much traction outside of Analog as they should have. Nordley, especially, has written some really good stuff. And regarding Asimov publishing there through seven decades, loyalty is a big component of his character. I don't know that he was ever all that prolific but Nelson Bond may be somewhere near that longevity mark, too.
