Book recommendations required

[triskellian]

The colleague who lent me an awful Heinlein book last year apparently has some sort of contact with the person responsible for Asda's¹ book-buying policy, and he's asked her for some suggestions of fantasy and SF books he should be getting, both the classics and the new and shiny. She's got this idea that I read a lot of said genres, and asked me for additions to her list. Since her list is composed of people like Heinlein and Anne McCaffrey, she really needs² some pointers to the actually-good stuff out there, which is where you guys come in.

So, tell me your top five classic fantasy/SF authors, and your top five new and shiny fantasy/SF authors. I'll pass the list on, and maybe you'll be able to buy some of your choices in Asda in the future!

¹A British supermarket
²My estimation of her needs, not hers ;-)

Comments

[elethiomel.livejournal.com]

Don't have time to come up with 5 of each but:

William Gibson
Iain M Banks
Neal Stephenson
Jon Courtenay Grimwood

are all on my 'read their new work as soon as it comes out' list. Mostly cyber-punkish, but that's my favoured sub genre, so...

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

I'm presuming it's gotta be family friendly?

Classic -
Julian May still writes good stuff and her back catalogue is great.
George R R Martin can't be beat for feudalry, armies and intrigue (and a dragon or two)
Vernor Vinge hasn't written much SF, but every bit is golden.
Niven & Pournelle's SF is still superb (Footfall, Lucifer's Hammer, Mote In God's Eye and Legacy Of Heorot)
Iain M Banks - possibly too cool for Asda?
Michael Marshall Smith - f'in weird. Wonderful, but weird.

Shiny! -
China Mieville is (to my mind) currently better than Clive Barker
I've been really enjoying Manda Scott's Boudicca sequence, too.
Charles Stross's new fantasy 'The Family Trade' was excellent fun.
Peter F Hamilton's stuff is quite low-brow, but they're ripping yarns.
Richard Morgan's SF is full of ideas. Market Forces was playful.

[onyxblue1.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I've only read one book, Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville, but I want to read more. Better than Clive Barker? Very, very possibly.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

Classic: Moorcock.

Right, I'm tired. No more authors for you! ;)

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

PS George RR Martin is currently high on my list. I'm not really sure whether he's classic or new.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

PPS Alfred Bester's SF is (some of?) the best I've ever read. The demolished man and the stars my destination are fantastic.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

PPPS[*] J. Gregory Keyes is also excellent, under some category or other.

[*] Sorry.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_alanna/]

George RR Martin
Robin Hobb

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

This could be an excellent opportunity to subvert the Walmart empire!

Classic:
Gene Wolfe
John Crowley
Philip K Dick
John Sladek
Jack Vance

Shiny: hmm, this brings home to me that I haven't thought much of stuff by any new sf/f writer who's emerged over the last few years. Maybe I'm becoming (even more of) an old git? But people from before that who are still fairly young and active that I like include:
Neil Gaiman
Cornelia Funke
Jonathan Carroll
Michael Marshall Smith
Marcus Sedgwick

plus there are the obvious people like Banks, Pratchett, Pullman who probably don't need my help!

And, of course, Rhiannon Lassiter and Frances Hardinge...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Are we trying to list good SF/Fantasy or stuff that would be good for ASDA to sell - the two are not the same.

My all-time top 5 would be:

Frank Herbert
Iain M. Banks
Neal Stephenson
Greg Egan
Julian May

A "recent" top 5 from me would be meaningless since I read too little.

The lack of fantasy in the top 5 is simply a reflection of the state of fantasy in general.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I took it as the former, as I'm more interested in the welfare of good writng than of Walmart's bottom line... better from my pov that they carry a stock of really good books, rather than maximizing their sales of mediocre ones.

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Presumably they need recommendations for authors that would appeal to Asda shoppers. And presumably they don't need to be told that J. K. Rowling, T. Pratchett, et al would sell quite well?

Classic
Niven and Pournelle - I can't agree with al_fruitbat enough.
Isaac Asimov - is still probably spinning in his grave.
Julian May - "Many Colored Land", nuff said.
Frank Miller - books with added pictures!
Tim Powers - "The Anubis Gates", nuff said.

Shiny
I don't read much of this new-fangled fantasy or sf stuff since it tends to piss me off. I remember the good old days when a writer would write a book. Then it became de rigeur to churn out a fat, padded trilogy. Nowadays, every new thing that comes out seems to be chapter one in an epic, new, fantasy cycle. Bollocks more like. I blame Anne McCaffrey for starting the trend of being able to get away with fat books in which nothing happened.

Anyway.

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

SF:
Larry Niven - almost every one a classic, with or without Pournelle.
Peter F Hamilton
Michael Marshall Smith (who has become Michael Marshall for his latest two books, which are more thriller/crime than SF)
Iain M Banks
Alistair Reynolds (Absolution Gap etc)
Arthur C Clarke - loads of his are classics
Alfred Bester - The more I read, the more impressed I am


Fantasy
JV Jones (Baker Boy and sequels)
Michael Scott Rohan
Feist and Gemmell are entirely readable. Particularly the Feist/Wurts co-authored books (Mistress etc of the Empire, which are also intelligent)
Tolkien - THE classic!!

Just make sure she doesn't buy anything written or edited by L Ron Hubbard, the bare-faced messiah.

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Hm. I wondered if anyone would suggest Reynolds. I doubt the recommendation has the right granularity, but Revelation Space has the worst ending to an SF sequence I've yet read. Enough to damage the preceding volumes, IMO.

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

Also SF:
David Brin - Uplift saga, plus the infinity's shore/Heaven's Reach I really enjoyed.

[cuthbertcross.livejournal.com]

Hey, what happened to Orson Scott Card? You used to be nuts about him!

[dakeyras.livejournal.com]

Classic:
Isaac Asimov
Jack Vance
JRR Tolkien
Niven / Pournelle / Barnes (or any combination thereof - my favourites are the Dream Park novels)
Arthur C Clarke

Shiny:
George R R Martin
Neal Stephenson
Peter F Hamilton
Raymond E Feist (+ Janny Wurts for Empire trilogy, although not Wurts on her own - I tried reading Stormwarden once and couldn't get through the first two chapters!)
Iain M Banks

[dakeyras.livejournal.com]

By the way, if you want to give Heinlein another go then try Friday - from what I remember it's not nearly as mysoginistic, although it's been a fair while since I read it!

[onyxblue1.livejournal.com]

The Empire trilogy was excellent, especially Daughter of the Empire.

[onyxblue1.livejournal.com]

This is rough. I hate limiting myself.

Classic
Early Heinlein
Ray Bradbury
Alfred Bester
Arthur C. Clarke
H. G. Wells

Shiny
Stephen Brust
Neil Stephenson
China Mieville
Neil Gaiman
Charles de Lint

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

I'm lazy so i'm just going to second suggestions made so far :-)
So -
Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Moorcock is indeed a fine classic but in a supermarket?
Robin Hobb (even if I don't like them that much)
Sherri S Tepper on her good days (okay that was a new one)
Gaiman ish. Could probably count as not fantasy though if he wanted.
Feist/Wurts Empire books but not all of Feist's books...
Charles de Lint
Guy Gavriel Kay
Like them or not Eddings would sell in a supermarket.
Tolkein doesn't count as Fantasy any more, it's mainstream.
Orson Scott Card maybe.

My thoughts are kind of biased by the supermarket bit.
I wouldn't try selling Peter F Hamilton or Niven but i'd give Wells and Bradbury and Arthur C a go just because they are that classic. Oh and William Gibson.

[adamsmithjr.livejournal.com]

Surely anything by Rhiannon Lassiter?

I wonder if this person also buys nonfiction: www.undercovereconomist.com

[nixieq.livejournal.com]

hmm. i'm not sure i have a top-5 classic SF/fantasy author list, but here's at least top five in general:

1. Patricia McKillip
   
2. Terry Pratchett
   
3. Terri Windling (i think she's only actually done a couple of novels, but her edited fairy-tale collections are excellent as well, although not quite what you were asking for >;)
   
4. joan vinge
   
5. jo clayton

there are some others, but those are the ones coming up off the top of my head. and that doesn't even get into kids' books.

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

Classic -
Moorcock. Because you can't have too much cock.
Philip K Dick. See above.
Vance.
Le Guin.
J G Ballard.

Shiny -
I don't do shiny.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

If you're interested in genuinely covering the genre, then you might as well ask what kinds of cuckoo-clock Asda should be stocking. What they're actually going to do, is look for fantasy/SF authors who've produced bestsellers. The top 5 list they will come up with is:

1) Neil Gaiman
2) Susanna Clarke
3) Margaret Atwood (I hope, 'cos she'd be really insulted)
4) Erm...
5) Neil Gaiman?

The 5 they should stock in order to maintain credibility whilst ensuring they don't sell a single book and can justify never having to worry about genre fiction ever again are:

1) Alan Moore
2) Philip K Dick
3) Harlan Ellison (who, along with Dick, should be able to make the average shopper flee in terror using his titles alone: Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W)
4) Michael Moorcock
5) Kurt Vonnegut

[the-original1.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure which one is what one or what one is who . . .

Harry Turtledove
David Weber
C. J. Cherryh
Jo Clayton, especially A Bait of Dreams
Ray Bradbury
Greg Kihn (No, really! It's derivative crap, but it's entertaining derivative crap!)
Alan Dean Foster always seems to go over well in newsstands and grocery stores, and some of his stuff %#8212; once in a while — is actually good.
H. G. Wells*
Jules Verne*
Robert Louis Stevenson*
Mary Shelley*
Bram Stoker*

*Think steampunk!

[guiborc.livejournal.com]

Not sure which are classics and which are shiny, but:

Tolkien
Larry Niven
Robert Holdstock
Julian May (I vote for the Galactic Milieu series in particular)
George R R Martin
Kate Elliot
Paul Kearney

On the other hand, please please please do not recommend Elizabeth Haydon (the Rhapsody series). Apologies if you like her books but I thought they were appalling.