5 to 10 SCIENCE FICTION Authors you would like to see come out of Obscurity?

[Dave Vicks]

+ 1 SCIENCE FICTION film come out of Obscurity.

 

[Rodders]

My choice for a movie to come out of obscurity would be a Spanish language movie called "The Last Days". I went through a phase of watching post apocalypse movies and this one came up in a search. Well acted, well paced and had a nice ending. It is well worth watching.

Author-wise. I suppose my tastes are very mainstream, with my favourites being Banks, Reynolds and Asher.

Edmund Cooper is an author that I'd like to see get more love. I was introduced to his work as a teenager by way of A Far Sunset and I quickly read as much as I could. My favourites were A Far Sunset, The Overman Culture and The Cloudwalker. The covers were all pretty good, too. I think the ones I read were by Chris Foss.

Paul F. Wilson. With 8 million+ sales, he's not quite an unknown author, but i do tgink he's underrated and feel his work needs to be discussed more. I read four of his "Adversary Cycle" books (The Keep, The Tomb, Reborn and Nightworld) about 25 years ago and I really enjoyed them. In response to a "Reading Goals for 2019" thread, I went back and finished the series, which then introduced me to the Repairman Jack Series. He was the protagonist in The Tomb and I really enjoyed his character so I read them pretty much back to back. It was a great year for me.

That's probably it for me.

 

[BAYLOR]

Stanton Coblentz was a a historian , a satirist and a science fiction writer and he's all but forgotten. Among the books he wrote In Caverns Below , a really funny and bitting science fiction satire.

David Feintuch wrote a really good space Opera The Nicolas Seafort Saga

Bill Baldwin wrote the excellent Helmsman space opera series which , is all but forgotten.

Abraham Merritt popular is his day pretty much unknown to most modern science Fiction audiences.

Stanley Weinbaum The Martian Odyssey died at a very young age of 38. Had he lived and written more than he did , would very likely now become one of one the giants in science fiction.

Curt Siodmak author of Donovan's Brain Hauser's Memory and other books and stories is not well know in the current era.

Francis Stevens (Pen name for Gertrude Barrow Bennet ) The Nightmare and other Tales of Dark Fantasy and The Heads of Cerberus. She was early 20th center writer largely forgotten.

 

[Dave Vicks]

G.David Nordely is a good SF writer.

 

[KGeo777]

Fitz James O'Brien.
He should at least have a movie made of The Diamond Lens.

Saki as well. Some of his stories like The Interlopers would be good in a Twilight Zone-type anthology movie.

 

[psikeyhackr]

James P Hogan
The Two Faces of Tomorrow (1979)
Voyage from Yesteryear (1982)

I prefer 2 Faces to Neuromancer and Voyage to The Dispossessed. It is the ideas and the technology.

Le Guin is a better writer than Hogan but his ideas about society, economics and technology are more sophisticated. Le Guin's characters are better but they don't understand economics any more than she does.

We still have stupid arguments about economics but our professed experts don't talk about planned obsolescence. I haven't been to an auto show in 50 years and wouldn't go to look at an excellent car if they made one. I would just want to know why it could not have been made 20 years ago and what could not have been made 40 years ago.

 

[Randy M.]

I'll queue up my usual response: Edgar Pangborn. His range probably wasn't as great as contemporaries and near-contemporaries like Clarke, Anderson, Knight, Blish and Farmer, but in his wheelhouse he was excellent.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I'll queue up my usual response: Edgar Pangborn.

Davy, I liked that enough to remember it.

 

[BAYLOR]

Leter Del Rey
Fletcher Pratt
Richard Lupoff

 

[J-Sun]

Ten authors (who may not be "obscure" and may even be well-known but are not known well enough):

1. Ben Bova
2. Norman Spinrad

I want both of these guys to be made Grand Master ASAP.

3. Algis Budrys
4. Carol Emshwiller
5. Robert L. Forward
6. Katherine MacLean
7. James H. Schmitz
8. John Shirley
9. Bruce Sterling
10. Every Golden Age author who was ever famous and isn't now.

Movie: Europa Report.

 

[BAYLOR]

Robert Sheckley
Michael Swanswick
James Tiptree JR
Bernard Wolfe

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I am not questioning anybody's choices, but I am just curious.

What criteria do you use to determine "obscurity"?

It seems to me, just for an example, and not meaning any criticism of the previous poster, that James Tiptree, Jr., is quite well-known, even outside the world of SF fans. She even has a fairly major award named after her.

I will hoist myself on my own petard by going out on a limb and adding a name to the list.

Margaret St. Clair (sometimes writing as Idris Seabright) wrote some very interesting stories and a few unusual novels.

As far as an SF film goes, I might mention the 1963 Czech movie Ikarie XB-1 (released in a dubbed and re-edited version as Voyage to the End of the Universe) which was ahead of its time.

 

[BAYLOR]

I am not questioning anybody's choices, but I am just curious.

What criteria do you use to determine "obscurity"?

It seems to me, just for an example, and not meaning any criticism of the previous poster, that James Tiptree, Jr., is quite well-known, even outside the world of SF fans. She even has a fairly major award named after her.

I will hoist myself on my own petard by going out on a limb and adding a name to the list.

Margaret St. Clair (sometimes writing as Idris Seabright) wrote some very interesting stories and a few unusual novels.

As far as an SF film goes, I might mention the 1963 Czech movie Ikarie XB-1 (released in a dubbed and re-edited version as Voyage to the End of the Universe) which was ahead of its time.

Ikarie XB 1 is a great film but, modern fans for the most part have never heard of it.


Nictzen Dyhalis was fantasy writer who only wrote 11 stories in all . Were it not for the Heroic Fantasy anthology Echos of Valor III edited by Karl Edward Wagner , which contained 3 of his stories , I never would have heard of him at all.

 

[J-Sun]

I am not questioning anybody's choices, but I am just curious.

What criteria do you use to determine "obscurity"?

It seems to me, just for an example, and not meaning any criticism of the previous poster, that James Tiptree, Jr., is quite well-known, even outside the world of SF fans. She even has a fairly major award named after her.

I recognize the same problem, so just used a relative scale. As far as Tiptree, she actually doesn't have an award named after her anymore but, *ahem* otherwise, I agree with all you say and that's why I didn't list her though she'd need to be extremely well-known to not be too obscure. So you could make a strong argument that she's only some people's politically correct football now and that, while known and read by long-time fans, she's not actually read by newer fans these days in the way she ought to be. I suspect it's all just a kind of a guess based on our perceptions of other people's perceptions.

 

[dask]

Emil Petaja
C.C. MacApp
Louis Charbonneau
Doris Piserchia
Jeff Sutton
Lan Wright
John Lymington
Kenneth Bulmer

 

[Extollager]

Ronald Clark's Queen Victoria's Bomb, about an atomic weapon used in 19th-century Afghanistan, as I recall. It gets called "steampunk" but I don't see it as having the aesthetic I associate with that genre. It is quite sober rather than being some postmodern whoop-de-doo.

I wouldn't mind seeing this filmed if it were well done, sticking closely to the book in all respects. It wouldn't interest a large audience, but it might win the love of people who usually didn't read and like the same books or movies.

 

[BAYLOR]

Ronald Clark's Queen Victoria's Bomb, about an atomic weapon used in 19th-century Afghanistan, as I recall. It gets called "steampunk" but I don't see it as having the aesthetic I associate with that genre. It is quite sober rather than being some postmodern whoop-de-doo.
View attachment 79288
I wouldn't mind seeing this filmed if it were well done, sticking closely to the book in all respects. It wouldn't interest a large audience, but it might win the love of people who usually didn't read and like the same books or movies.

Ive not read this book but, I like the story concept. As a film, it might do very well with audiences.

 

[Bick]

Ten authors (who may not be "obscure" and may even be well-known but are not known well enough):

1. Ben Bova
2. Norman Spinrad

I want both of these guys to be made Grand Master ASAP.

Bova's dead, though, sadly, so cannot now get it?

Nat Schachner?

 

[dask]

John T. Phillifent
Robert Moore Williams

 

[psikeyhackr]

What criteria do you use to determine "obscurity"?

The author has to have a book with fewer than 1000 ratings on Goodreads that I think should have had a lot more.

Is that a precise enough answer? LOL

Inherit the Stars seems to be James P Hogan's most popular book. I started watching a review of it and the author said it was the hardest SF book he had ever read. I stopped right there. I read ItS long ago. I don't regard it as Hogan's most interesting book. Entertainment value seems to be most people's criteria.