I agree on all counts, JosephFinn. Harlan Ellison is a fine writer, is cantankerous, and his titles HAVE made me weep.
[hijack] He came and spoke to my sophmore English class in the early 1980s. When he asked for questions, we all just sat there looking frightened of this small, intense man. He yelled, “I came all this way to see you and you have no questions for me?” After a long pause,from the back of the room came, “Uh…where did you come from?” Thank God he laughed. A much brighter classmate than I sent this in to Reader’s Digest Campus Comedy. I, on the other hand, pissed him off by asking about writing City on the Edge of Forever. I had read the intro to Strange Wine, so I certainly knew better, but did it anyway. I then partially redeemed myself by asking about a story in Strange Wine. [/hijack]
Here are my favorites, and my favorite title from each:
J.D. Salinger (“Catcher in the Rye”)
Jay McInerney (“Bright Lights, Big City”)
Douglas Coupland (“Microserfs”)
Chuck Palahniuk (“Fight Club”)
Tim Sandlin (“Skipped Parts”)
Carl Sagan (“The Demon-Haunted World”)
Which reminds me of a story I heard about an interview Asimov did. He was asked the question about what he would do if he were to learn that he had only 6 months to live.
His answer? “Type faster.”
Classic.
Put Asimov on the list of my favorite authors. Since I’m an incurable bookworm, it is an impossible task for me to name just one single author. So, in addition to Asimov, add to that list the following names:
Orson Scott Card
Terry Pratchett
Douglas Adams
John Irving
Neal Stephenson
J.R.R. Tolkien (his Silmarillion alone justifies adding him here)
P.J. O’Rourke (hilarious non-fiction)
Dan Simmons (O Mighty creator of the Hyperion novels, I bow down before you!)
Michael Ende (I’ve read only one of his books, but that’s enough for me. The Neverending Story turned me into a confirmed book fanatic at the tender of ten, when I realized after reading it that books can be much more than just a simple linear story. Pity the movie wasn’t as special, although I do think it’s OK.)
I used to like Harlan Ellison, until I bought a rather large collection of his work and read most of it one sitting. I realized how almost all of his stories have the same basic themes and similar plots. His writing style get’s obnoxious after a while, and he’s too autobiographical. Wouldn’t be a problem if his life was one I found interesting or something I can relate to.
He’s a good critic, but as an author of fiction he is a one-trick pony.
I like Neal Stephenson, David Brin, and Larry Niven (not so much for his style as his ideas, though).
I remember reading If On a Winter’s Night A Traveller and swearing each time I wasn’t going to get sucked into the new storyline in each chapter, and every single time doing it anyway and getting poleaxed at the end of the chapter. I like a writer who can play with my mind and keep me coming back for more.
I’ll also second kiwiboy’s “Terry Pratchett – for laughs”.
jr8
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” – Mark Twain
PG Wodehouse by a country mile. I love many of the other authors listed here, but for sheer joy of reading, its Plum every time.
Ignore the fact that his work bears no relation to reality, either now or at any point previously. Ignore the fact that he has one basic plot. There is no author I know of that can match his felicity with language or turn a phrase so aptly.
He doesn’t say a great deal about the Human Condition either, but he sure as hell improves mine.
Paul Auster
Jorge Luis Borges
Italo Calvino
Albert Camus
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Heller
Russell Hoban
Tove Jansson (Moomins!)
I can’t remember any beyond J. I’ll post back later.
I like Ellery Queen, the nom de plume of two cousins with great imagination and humor. Much of their work has missed the collections available, and I enjoy hunting down the strays in old issues of magazines. I have a master list from a bigraphical piece, so I know there are still some out there to find.
Thomas Pynchon (although I’ve not read enough by him)
Banana Yoshimoto (Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow are two of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever read)
…I’ll say Robert Heinlein. Yes, there are people more able to turn the gut-wrench. No, I don’t agree with all of his postulates (and I suspect he wouldn’t want me to), though our views on many things are pretty close.
But when I was thrown out of my father’s house at 17 with the clothes I was wearing and 11 cents in my pocket, I found this:
If for nothing else I owe the man for that, bigtime.
I’ll further list Terry Pratchett for the skill with which he sneaks some real wisdom into all that fun, Tom Robbins for the same.
Sorry, but I have to disagree with your criticism of Ellison’s work based on that criteria. The same plot comment is obviously untenable, so I’ll just ignore it.
Okay, that was a joke. Of all speculative fiction authors, I can’t think of one (besides Stephenson) who has less repetitive plots. Please, to give examples?
As for his work being too autobiographical or obnoxious, that would be a matter of personal taste, and I’ll amicably disagree.
I also mentioned that I find his writing style obnoxious. It would intrude on my ability to enjoy his work even if he wrote better stories, but I get sick of him rehashing his life’s guilt trips and injustices. He almost always writes himself into his stories, usually in a very obvious manner, and his writing style makes you very conscious that it’s Ellison telling you the story, and as a person I intensely dislike him - he’s very self-important and smug. Even though he frequently throws in the token bad things about the standard Harlan/Protagonist to make it introspective and hip, even then the accent is on how much the person suffers knowing how rotten they are. A few stories like this are OK, but when that keeps coming back again and again and it’s the same character always feeling the same thing, it gets old. It’s like he got fame mining his own life’s experiences for stories and then realized that’s all he’s got - and didn’t have the sense to quit before his work became self-parody.
