Ted Chiang’s book is called “Stories of Your Life and Others” and I believe every story in the book has been nominated for some prestigious award or another. He is really good. However, he has been anthologized frequently prior to 2002, so I don’t know if he counts or what.
Chiang is the most amazing writer in SF and I’d love to see him finally do a novel. It’s possible that he hasn’t been able to figure out how to sustain his brilliance over the long haul.
BTW, the first novel list can be misleading. Geoff Landis won with “Mars Crossing” in 2001, but he’d been publishing short stories for years, and won the Hugo and Nebula for “Ripples in the Dirac Sea,” published in 1988.
Yeah, I explained in my thread on the other board that if the author has published short stories and even collections prior to 1998/93, that was OK.
To give an example, I used Tom Wolfe and The Bonfire of the Vanities as an example of a well-established author who just happened to write his first novel relatively “late” in his career.
I’ll second the recommendations for Jonathan Lethem and China Mieville – although if i had to choose just one, I’d go for Mieville.
Lethem is kinda like Vonnegut or Dick in a way: darkly humorous, not much of a stylist languagewise.
Mieville is more like Le Guin or Peake or maybe Delaney: hugely stylistic, rather political. His imagination is tremendously strong and terrifying.
Sadly Sean Stewart’s first novel was in 1992; otherwise, I’d put him above Lethem and below Mieville in terms of recommendations. If you ever do a theme of magical realism (somewhat far afield from science fiction, I know), you could do worse than Stewart.
Daniel
I know I don’t have time to read anywhere near as much sf as I used to (the sad lament of virtually every sf writer I know) but the Locus lists have a remarkable number of unfamiliar first novels in them.
What really startled me is that even so I’ve read the winning (or second place) book for several years back.
2002 The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde (Hodder & Stoughton; Viking)
2001 Mars Crossing, Geoffrey A. Landis (Tor)
2000 The Silk Code, Paul Levinson (Tor)
1999 Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson (Warner Aspect)
What a range of styles and topics those are. I guess the field can’t be too unhealthy.
Lethem won in 1995. The 1993 winner, China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh, is far better, IMO.
Shoot shucky dern, as the kids say. I got distracted by the Locus Awards and forgot to mention the book I came here to share.
Prophets for the End of Time (1998, Baen) by Marcos Donnelly. Didn’t get much attention, but it’s a fascinating, well-written, and utterly original book that has one of the few interesting takes on modern religion in the field.
And that was his third novel, anyway – In The Drift came out in 1984.
Other possibilities:
I’d mention Neal Asher, but his books aren’t out in the USA yet (his third is being published in the UK this year). Gridlinked, his first novel, is out in the states this summer.
Matthew Woodring Stover has been writing for less then a decade, and his Heroes Die is a big, tough, violent SF/Fantasy hybrid that ends with one of the best fight scenes in recent fiction.
Michael Flynn wrote a series in the late '90s that started very strong (with Firestar, which can be read independently), but somewhat petered out after that. His brand new novel, The Wreck of The River of Stars is also quite good, though it’s not a happy book.
Ken MacLeod has been writing for only about a decade. Others disagree, but I think The Cassini Division is the best place to start with his books.
Linda Nagata is a new writer who’s really good, but doesn’t get much attention. Her first novel, The Bohr Maker is a lot of fun, and she has a new one out called Memory (and about four in between as well).
If you like sex in your fantasy, I will point at Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart and say not more.
Richard K. Morgan’s another new writer – his first novel is Altered Carbon, a detective story set in a cyberpunky future.
(In a similar genre, but doing things very differently, is Paul Levinson, who also does detective novels, though his are set nearer in the future.)
Greg Keyes is still pretty new, and his most recent book, The Briar King starts a very ambitious (and very good, I think) epic fantasy series). Hm. Looking again at the OP, you asked for “Science Fiction” specifically, which means I should stop mentioning fantasy books. But China Mieville isn’t SF, exactly, so…I dunno.
And I’ll second the reccomendations of Mieville (whatever genre pigeonhole you want to stick his books into) and Kage Baker.
Re: Ted Chiang and full-length novels.
A year or so ago I interviewed Ted Chiang (what a thrill!)… he said he’s never had an idea that was big enough for a novel. If you want to read the interview its at:
http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=chiang