Most of my favorites have already been nominated – Heinlein (of course!), Asimov, Cordwainer Smith, Sturgeon, and so on. But one name I haven’t seen is Kate Wilhelm. She started as a mystery writer, and she’s now returned to her original niche, but for a while there, she wrote some really good science fiction. I’ll probably end up voting for Heinlein after agonizing and feeling guilty about Asimov, but I think Wilhelm at least deserves a seat at the head table.
Yeah you win…you win the right to be locked into a small room and be read to.
Are we looking for the writer who was first to come up with ideas (e.g., Wells, Shelley, Verne), or the best writer or the best storyteller or what? I’d certainly agree with calling someone like Jules Verne a grandmaster–he’s one of the creators of the genre, after all–but I wouldn’t call him the best.
I tend toward the writers that consistently put out really good stuff (e.g., Heinlein, Asimov, McCaffrey, Clarke, Niven, Card, Doc Smith…), but there were a lot of people who wouldn’t be on that list that wrote one or two really good books. Dune is an absolutely amazing piece of science fiction. I loved it. As the series progressed, though, it became ever more “meh,” so I probably wouldn’t pick Herbert.
Since I’m a big humor fan, I’d put some writers on my “best” list who really aren’t the best science fiction writers overall, but have produced some marvelous work, like Douglas Adams, Bruce Bethke, and (arguably) Spider Robinson and Neal Stephenson.
Wow. Tough call. If we’re eliminating fantasy, young adult, and humor and focusing on “serious” science fiction, I’d probably start the list with:
[ul]
[li]Heinlein[/li][li]Asimov[/li][li]Niven[/li][li]McCaffrey (I know you can call Pern fantasy, but I’m including her anyway)[/li][li]Clarke[/li][li]Verne[/li][li]Wells[/li][/ul]
(If we were picking a team, it would be Niven/Pournelle, hands-down)
Heinlein is the most important.
The best is Zelazny during the period “A Rose for Eccliestastes (sic)” through *Damnation Alley *& Jack of Shadows
I’d have to give the nod to Asimov, as much as I love Verne. The reason isn’t because of his SF in and of itself, but because he was such a consummate scientist and leader of the SF community. A professor, a man of fierce intelligence, and boundless curiosity. His huge output of published stores, rivaled only by his non-fiction, was still dwarfed by his contributions to magazines and working groups and his tireless efforts as an editor and mentor to an entire generation of SF writers. If we were to look at all the alternate timelines where each of the most nominated individuals had not been born, I think the scientific state of all of them would have been set back. But I think the scientific community in the universe where there was no Isaac Asimov would be stunted most.
Enjoy,
Steven
The problem with including her is that if we’re willing to acknowledge Pern as science fiction (or speculative fiction, or whatever category we’re looking at), then why not include other fantasy writers? If McCaffrey is on the list, then Tolkien not only also needs to be on the list, but he needs to be higher on it. Or, heck, why stop there? Why not Shakespeare or Cervantes or Dante?
Well, OK, it wouldn’t be a problem to make a list with all those authors on it, but I get the sense that that’s not the list we’re trying to make here.
Tolkien never said that Aragorn’s ancestors got to Middle Earth on a spaceship. The dragon in The Hobbit wasn’t bioengineered. The Fellowship didn’t visit spaceships and pull tools from the labs. The One Ring wasn’t an organism pulled from a sister planet in an oddball orbit. There’s a long history of calling psi powers science fiction rather than fantasy.
Dante? Hmmm. Apart from the protagonist being a science fiction writer, was the Niven/Pournelle Inferno science fiction?
Dragons were, in fact, bioengineered by Morgoth. Aragorn’s ancestors didn’t get to Middle-Earth on a spaceship, but one of them did leave Middle-Earth on one. Ring-making was clearly a technology, just one that wasn’t accessible to most of the population.
You read this one Chronos? Pern was more fantasy than MZB’s Darkover ( who others have lumped into fantasy at times ), but still more science fiction than fantasy, especially as retconned. And McCaffrey wrote plenty of other more “pure” sf stuff ( i.e. like the Doona books ).
I wouldn’t put her on a “greatest” list myself, but Pern steps over that line from fantasy to sf as far as I’m concerned. Tolkien meanwhile isn’t even close :).
I’m seeing lists of people, people that influenced people that wrote science fiction, famous authors that have also dabbled in science fiction etc.-when I start The Grandmaster of Science Fiction Poll tomorrow, y’all are only going to get one vote apiece.
Czarcasm had it right, but I’ll see his 20 and bump it to 50 or more. I’m basing it on stuff that stimulated the old sense of wonder for me, expanded my worldview or just made me want to tell someone about the nifty concept.
I’ll throw in some other favorites, including David Brin, Julian May, Keith Laumer and Marion Zimmer Bradley. If you fold in fantasy, grab another 50.
The number of nominees doesn’t really matter, because there is only going to be one winner.
Oh! Zenna Henderson is great in the short stories, but I’ve never read a novel that made me nostalgiac the way Heinlein and Asimov do. She’s a treasure, but not the One.
Mary Shelley has already been mentioned.
McCaffrey’s really a romance writer.
That’s o.k.-The more mentions, the more likely someone will make the poll.
We’ll probably need a runoff vote to determine whether it’s Asimov or Heinlein.
The first story in the series was published in Analog under Campbell, which is good enough for me to call it sf. I wouldn’t vote for her because she spend too much time on this one series, and doesn’t show the diversity of ideas a true winner has. I’m familiar with her other work, and I’m sure that Pern kept her in the money. If Clarke had written 2011, 2012, 2013 … I’d have voted against him also.
If he had written more he’d be a great choice.
Kornbluth also - his collaboration with Pohl produced better things than Pohl did by himself.
It looks like I’m going to have to have a run-off poll first.
Give me a few minutes to set it up.
The poll is open. Could a mod close this, please?