The Best Science Fiction Authors, From A to ZBy Raymond Lockley
Any list of best sci-fi authors tends to be incredibly subjective
(and mine is no exception) and based on personal tastes. There are
also so many types of SF writing that one often is bogged down in
the apples vs. oranges analysis.
So, rather than do something that would pull me down into a smelly
morass or threaten to become useful for society, I thought it would
be fun to do an A-Z list of best SF authors. (In other words, who is
the best sci-fi author whose last name begins with "A", and so on.)
[Note to the truly geeky: There actually is a use for this sort of
thing. One can use the names in various ways to form a set of memorable
passwords, or in algorithm to generate a set of passwords. I have done
this, and found it both useful and amusing. And annoying to others...]
So without further ado, here are my ABCs of SF:
NotesNow that you've looked at the list, I can respond that (1) yes, some are a little obscure, and (2) yes, each of them really does have a reason to be on a list of science fiction authors. A few explanatory notes on how some of these got on the list (other than desperation to match the letter) follows...
Washington Irving -
His well-known story,
"Rip Van Winkle",
is sort of SFish for 1819.
Stephen King -
I know that most people think of King as a horror
writer rather than an SF author, but remember that his
works
include novels with sci-fi themes like
"Firestarter",
"The Tommyknockers",
"The Stand", and
"The Running Man"
(using the pseudonym Richard Bachman).
George Orwell -
While he did not write sci-fi generally, his best known work
"Nineteen Eighty-Four",
is social science fiction at its dystopian best.
Salvatore Quasimodo -
An Italian poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1959, he is also
widely known for translating ancient texts into modern Italian... some of
which could be considered the sci-fi of its time. And he has a cool,
SF-sounding name... Oh come on, you gotta just give me this one.
Q is hard. Can you do better?
J.R.R. Tolkien -
Admittedly, not a true sci-fi guy, but he makes the list because of the
overlap between SF and Fantasy, because of the literary influence of
his magnum opus
"The Lord of The Rings"
on so many authors, and because hobbits are just bloody cool.
John Updike -
Yes, this winner of multiple Pulitzer Prizes wrote sci-fi! His 18th novel,
"Toward the End of Time",
is typically classed as science fiction. And just for fun, consider
"Roger's Version",
where a protagonist attempts to use computer science to prove God exists.
Xenophon -
This ancient Greek soldier was born in the 5th Century BCE, and was an
important influence on Latin literature. One of his most important works,
"Anabasis",
influenced several sci-fi works. And X is hard.
William Butler Yeats -
Another Nobel-winning poet and foremost Irish writer of the 20th Century,
Yeats is not much of a candidate for an SF author want ad. We know he was
deeply influenced by Percy Shelley ("Prometheus Unbound" was one of
his favorite books), and he experimented with so-called automatic writing,
where one channels writing directly from the spirit world. Yeats was also
a Symbolist, and his writings touched on the occult. But the real reason
he's in the list is that he is the best Y writer around.
We both know it. It's okay. I got a real Z, so you can give me
this one...
+ One additional note: It seems unavoidable, given the scope of
far more than a century over which this list spans, and the marginalization
of women authors (in all genres) which has only recently begun to lift, that
then list is relatively devoid of women. I'm not insensitve to that, and I
hope that someone a few decades from now will be able to compile a new
alphabet which is far more balanced. (And good luck to them, too, with Q
and X!) Until then, my modest selection of who the best women sci-fi
authors in English can be found
here.
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