Best Science Fiction Author From The 80's On

Cafe Society
61

Karl Schroeder is, in my opinion, the most overlooked science fiction writer of all time. Ventus, Permanence, Lady of Mazes are all fantastic.
In 2001, he won a New York Times Notable book for Ventus. In 2003, he won an Aurora Award for best Canadian SF novel for Permanence. And yet, he remains almost unknown.

62
  1. Greg Egan
  2. Greg Egan
  3. Greg Egan
  4. Lois McMaster Bujold
  5. Ted Chiang (word for word maybe the best SF writer of all time, but he doesn’t write much).

Even in the post-1980 list these all feel like old-fart nominations (including my own, I haven’t read seriously in the genre for at least half a decade).

63

Oh, has Ken MacLeod come up yet? Really we should have two divisions here, “Scottish” and “crap”.

64

And what would the other division be?

65

Same here although I try and randomly pick a SF book every now and then. Stephen Baxter is lauded but I find him dispassionate and his characters are hard to empathise with.

I like Charles Sheffield (who is also a physicist).

I’m wondering however if it is me who is the problem and SF is just as good as ever. Maybe I don’t have the paience for the story. Whatever. :o

:smiley: SF does seem to have declined in popularity and fantasy of the Harry Potter - vampire ilk taken its place.