Are you talking about the pace within his books or the pace at which he writes?
If you’re talking about his writing, I agree that Brin’s hit an inexplicable dryspell. He used to release a new novel every year or two. But he basically came to a full stop after Kiln People in 2002.
Excellent list! Scalzi’s interesting: he writes firmly in the Heinlein vein, but his prose is much more than workmanlike, and his characters are, if not exactly realistic, still much more so than Heinlein’s. As annoying as I find Heinlein’s writing, I always look forward to a new Scalzi book.
Robert Charles Wilson is my recent favorite, entirely for Spin, which is the best SF I’ve read in the last 10 years.
Ian Banks doesn’t really do it for me, but I’ve only read one of his books; I don’t remember the name or the plot (began with a superscience woman using an intelligent missile to devastate a medieval army), but maybe it was one of his weaker ones.
Kim Stanley Robinson is a total idea man, with reasonably good prose. Damn, his books are slow. I mean, goddamn.
Richard Morgan? Meh. Again, I read one by him, about a neanderthal mercenary (more or less), and while it was diverting, I didn’t really feel the need to read more.
Are we counting folks who have written a lot in the time period, or only folks who started in the time period? If the former, you know I gotta nominate Ursula LeGuin. While her most famous works are from the 70s, she’s written some stellar SF in the past few decades also.
If Neal Stephenson would team up with someone who would tell him how to end a book, I might consider voting for him.
Two names that I haven’t seen so far:
Jonathan Lethem
Ted Chiang
Both I’d say should be in the running for Best SF Author, but maybe not if the poll is for some sort of modern day Grand Master.
Neither has the amount of output that I feel would be required for the latter.
However, even with the above two, I’d probably still vote for one of the Robinsons.
Seconding China Mieville. His works blow the top of my skull off.
Also, Octavia Butler.
I concur with Robinson, Vinge, and Varley, and would add Niven-and-ournelle and Bujold (mentioned once in a list above).
Like Vinge, Niven and Pournelle both began writing and brought out some important work before 1980, but the majority of what they will be remembered for is their collaborative work, and the great majority of that postdates 1980.
Butler–great idea! Wild Seed is the best vampire-versus-werewolf story ever. Granted, it contains neither vampires nor werewolves. I’m still right.
China Mieville is amazing, but I wouldn’t classify anything he’s done as science fiction, with the possible exception of making a snarky technicality argument for Kraken.
How about the man who never grows old: Robert Silverberg?
Since 1980, some highlights:
Sailing to Byzantium (1984)
At Winter’s End (1988)
The Face of the Waters (1991)
Kingdoms of the Wall (1992)
Hot Sky at Midnight (1994)
Starborne (1996)
The Alien Years (1997)
also:
Robert Reed
Ted Chiang
Orson Scott Card
For some reason, I can’t STAND Silverberg’s prose. It’s so flat, dull and lifeless. I think those years of being the most prolific, high-speed hack EVER did Something Bad to his writing talent.
I agree: I’ve tried Silverberg several times, and really don’t get the appeal.
For me, Stephenson is like watching a world-class gymnast who, at every performance, executes maneuvers of such unbelievable dexterity and perfection that you can’t even imagine how such things are humanly possible, and then at the very end, does a belly flop onto the mats with accompanying trombone “Wah-wah” sound. Every. Goddamn. Time.
In order, based on a combination of the quality and quantity of work I’ve read by them:
and an honourable mention to James Alan Gardner.
And in my opinion all of the above are much better writers than Heinlein, Clarke, Azimov, Niven, Pournelle. I grew up on Science Fiction, cut my teeth on “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel,” and inhaled everything I could find from the golden age on. The only names I can think of from the old guard who stand up to the younger writers are Sturgeon, Dick, Cordwainer Smith, and Jack Vance .
SM Stirling
Peter Hamilton
William Gibson
Walter Jon Williams
Just want to give a shout-out to Stephen R. Donaldson for his Gap series, since he hasn’t been mentioned.
Holy shit. Someone else has heard of Walter Jon Williams!?
On an unrelated note, Walter Jon Williams.
The guy starts with the greatest cyberpunk books ever (no, not Stephenson’s ‘look at me, I’m SO META!’ satire, dammit) and ends up doing huge lovingly-deconstructionist space operas, with pretty much everything else possible in between.
–
George Alec Effinger, too. I’ve never quite been able to forgive him for pulling a Jordan with the Marid Audron novels. He was pretty tightly focused, though. I loved his cyberpunk stuff, but was never able to get into his earlier books.
I haven’t read a lot of the authors mentioned, so my opinion isn’t the most informed there is, but from those already mentioned I’d second:
William Gibson - who should probably win the poll on strength of originality alone;
Vernor Vinge;
Stephen Baxter and
Ian M. Banks.
I’m undecided on David Brin. He had some great space opera (Startide Rising and The Uplift War) and some great short stories, but a lot of his other stuff is kinda meh.
You people should all feel ashamed you haven’t mentioned Greg Egan yet. The guy’s top 5 material for sure.
Unfortunately my favorite sf works from the last couple of decades were written by people who either didn’t do much else or whose other stuff I haven’t read. But I figured that if Frank Herbert can get by on the strength of Dune alone, than these other guys should be in the running too:
John C. Wright wrote an amazing trilogy called either The Golden Age or The Golden Oecummene (I think I’ve read people call it both names);
Maureen McHugh for China Mountain Zhang;
Peter Watts for Blindsight (Starfish is pretty good too, though not great) and
Eleanor Arnason for Ring of Swords (hers A Woman From The Iron People won the The James Tiptree Jr. Award, but I haven’t read it yet).
Alan Moore.
Then, in no particular order:
Banks. Mieville. Stanley Robinson. Stoss.
Post #21.
And yeah, the Gap is great, and it shows how a talented author can shift from high fantasy to hard science fiction, while still preserving his own voice.
His Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind and Days of Atonement are three of my favorite SF books.
Larry Niven
Dan Simmons
Harry Harrison
I just knew I was tempting the Gods when I typed in that last clause…