Ten Science Fiction Novelists I Really Like

July 26th, 2008

I sometimes feel the need to balance criticism with praise. Just not necessarily at the same time or for the same things. Some people reading my blog for the first time because they saw my post about Michael Crichton may think I’m a Comic Book Guy type who hates, or is at least critical of, well, everything.

I write science fiction because I love science fiction. I knew it from the moment I read my very first science fiction novel, Philip Jose Farmer’s A Private Cosmos. I had gotten the book as a birthday gift from a friend when I turned eight and had no idea I’d just fallen into this wondrous rabbit hole.

So, here are a dozen sf novelists currently working who have done work I like a lot within recent years. I’ll say a few words about each and recommend a novel or two that I’ve read an enjoyed. I was just going to do five, then six, then ten, and decided to stop there. It’s a completely biased list, and a little arbitrary in some ways. All I’m guaranteeing for each is that they’ve got scientific sensibilities, write entertaining and thoughtful books, and are still active writers. In no particular order…

Jack McDevitt writes stories set in the future, in space, with aliens. I like that combination when competently done, and McDevitt is more than competent. I very much liked The Engines of God:

Joe Haldeman has a degree in physics and is an amateur astronomer. Since The Forever War, he’s continued to experiment and write different sorts of books from both a literary and idea-driven perspective. Recently I enjoyed Camouflage:

Robert Sawyer is exceptionally skilled at providing very clear explanations of complex science issues. He also turned some ideas around in surprising ways, as in Calculating God:

Alastair Reynolds is the other sf novelist out there with a PhD in astronomy, and while some of the speculative elements he features are way out there, he’s got a solid science background. I recommend his first, Revelation Space:

Eric Nylund is an old friend of mine I’ve known since the mid 1990s when we met at Clarion West, where I first became a fan of his work. He made the New York Times bestseller list with his last Halo tie-in book, Ghosts of Onyx, which I liked very much. I wanted to recommend a different pair of books, though, featuring his own original universe. Signal to Noise and A Signal Shattered:

Nancy Kress was one of my Clarion instructors way back when, and before the workshop I read her excellent novel Beggars in Spain. More recently I really enjoyed her Probability trilogy, Probability Moon, Probability Space, and Probability Sun:

David Brin’s Startide Rising was one of the best sf novels I read in college, and I was thrilled to get a cover blurb from him for my first novel Star Dragon. A few years ago he jumped publishers to Tor and wound up with my editor (and that probably added six months to her response time to me, too), and I recall asking her if the new book was good. That’s a relative term in some senses, and what I was really asking and what she responded to was whether or not the book was good at the Startide Rising type level. She said it was, and I agreed after reading it. Kiln People:

Vernor Vinge, one of the inventors/popularizers of the Singularity concept, has written some really great books. I’m not a huge fan of some concepts he uses, like his “zones of thought” or the “on-off star” which seem more like fantasy than science to me, but no one does aliens the way he does. Fantastic. Check out A Fire Upon The Deep, and A Deepness in the Sky:

Robert Charles Wilson is a really fine writer with a gift for character and intriguing situations. I haven’t gotten to Spin yet, but I really liked Blind Lake and The Chronoliths:

Greg Egan is a hard sf writer’s hard sf writer. Sometimes I have problems following his way-out but well-researched ideas that often push the very boundaries of our understanding. I recommend Quarantine:

I could easily do another list or two of sf writers I love, and maybe I will in the future. What saddens me is that there isn’t enough time to read as much as I like. I usually read 20-25 books a year, comprising a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and sometimes the choices are driven by research I need to do for a project. If you’re annoyed that I didn’t mention someone you think is every bit as good or better than those on this list, chances are I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet. John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War is on my to-read shelf, for instance.

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