Forgotten Sci-Fi authors

Which good sci-fi authors are forgotten about today?

I've just been re-reading a few books by John Wyndham (author of The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos). Some of his lessor known books are great fun. See:
en.wikipedia.org...

It just made me think about which other sci-fi authors are largely forgotten about by modern readers. Which authors are worth searching for?

All the best,

Isaac Koi

Well, isn't this weird! My mom just borrowed "The Chrysalids" off of me for her book club a few days ago. I've read a couple of Wyndham's books, and he's a decent author. I think "Chrysalids" and "Chocky" were my favourites. I've also read Midwich Cuckoos, Outward Urge, and Day of the Triffids, although most of those books I read a long time ago and barely remember.

If you like Wyndham, you might also like this guy. I've read his four Tripod novels, the three Prince in Waiting novels, and all of the Fireball novels except the last one. (I never could find that last one, I wanted to know how it all ended, too...) John Christopher (at least that's the one of his many pen names that I knew him as) writes at a similar style and on similar topics as Wyndham, so I think most readers who like one would like the other, and vice versa.

Originally posted by DragonsDemesne

If you like Wyndham, you might also like ... John Christopher (at least that's the one of his many pen names that I knew him as) writes at a similar style and on similar topics as Wyndham, so I think most readers who like one would like the other, and vice versa.

Thanks DragonsDemesne. I'll add some of John Christopher's books to my shopping list. (I think I read a couple of his books a decade or so ago...).

All the best,

Isaac

These were the books that got me interested in reading science fiction when I was about 11 or 12 years old.



Victor Appleton II was a pen name used by the same person that wrote Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift was the series for the boys that liked rockets and science. I still have a few of the books around in a box somewhere, but haven't read one in 30 years.

Originally posted by anxietydisorder
Victor Appleton II was a pen name... (snip)

A bit of interesting trivia about the Tom Swift books: the creator of the TASER weapon was a big fan and named his device after one of Tom's inventions. It was the Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle. Pretty cool, hah? So, he's not entirely forgotten...

I don't know if he's forgotten, but my candidate for juvenile SF would have to be Lester Del Ray. His books made up the bulk of my childhood reading. Awesome stuff when you're nine years old.

Baack

L E Modesitt, A.E Van Vogt, Greg Benford and Robert E Howard who wrote the original Conan stories. There are so many others who led the way for modern SF. Gene Wolfes Books of the New Sun are brilliant. Poul Anderson never lets you down. Kurt Vonnegut jr was a must when i was growing up, William Spencer and John Baxter. I better stop now as i could go on for hours.

Ah, science fiction, my favorite subject... I read and write s.f. (nothing published yet, though)


I think the best thingto do is to go to Wikipedia and put 'Science Fiction Authors' in the search box. There are probably a whole lot of authors that are forgotten.

Vernor Vinge.

His story/novel, True Names, foretold so much of we call Cyberspace. It's hard to say if it predicted the way things would go, or if his vision actually influenced the way the Computers and the Internet would develop. Probably some of both. Before Gibson's Neuromancer and Stephenson's Snow Crash, there was True Names, and it set the tone. Vernor Vinge pretty much started "cyberpunk" with this one book.

His other works are even better IMO. The Across Realtime series and the newer Zones of Thought books are excellent.

I started with Andre Norton some 40 years ago and never looked back.

If you havent read Stephen R Donaldson's Thomas Covenant IllEarth War Series I highly recommend it. Imagine waiting for him to finish and come out with each book. It's a 9 book series. You won't regret it.

Also one of the very, very best Sci Fi Authors, Alan Dean Foster.

To not consider Philip K. Dick.

www.philipkdick.com...

Stanislaw Lem is another writer that should be read.

www.lem.pl...

My favourite sci-fi book by far is Olaf Stapledon's 'Starmaker' (1937) followed by his work 'Last and First Men' (1930).

Starmaker Wiki: en.wikipedia.org...

Last and First Men Wiki: en.wikipedia.org...

Both works were very much ahead of their times. The science in both still holds up today, and the whole time I was reading Starmaker, I couldn't get over the fact that it was written in the 30's.

From Wiki's description of Starmaker:

Some of Stapledon's ideas for alien minds, such as collective intelligence, seem far ahead of their time, anticipating recent ideas about swarm intelligence and the general fascination with networks. He also mentions the idea of virtual reality in the first alien world visited, in the form of an apparatus that directly affects sense centers in the brain. The idea of entire worlds as spacecraft is used several times.

...

The travellers encounter many ideas that are interesting from both science-fictional and philosophical points of view. These include the first known instance of what is now called the Dyson sphere, reference to a scenario closely predicting the later zoo hypothesis or Star Trek's Prime Directive[1], many imaginative descriptions of species, civilizations and methods of warfare, and the idea that the stars and even the pre-galactic nebulae are intelligent beings, operating on vast time scales. A key idea is the formation of collective minds from many telepathically linked individuals, on the level of planets, galaxies, and eventually the cosmos itself.

I loved his method of story telling - Starmaker was from the 1st person point of view - the narrator through some miraculous means is able to travel the universe and the expanse of time in some sort of OBE. He describes what he observes during his journey, and eventually he finds himself with the intelligence called 'Starmaker' - a being like God.

These books are often pointed out as being the best sci-fi ever written amongst sci-fi authors, however I rarely hear them spoken of in the mainstream. I just wanted to put this out there because they're both worth reading, and Starmaker is absolutely incredible.

Also 'Rendezvous With Rama' by Arthur C. Clarke is my 3rd favourite sci-fi book, but Clarke is hardly forgotten nowadays...

Lastly, I'd just like to add I've written a short story and posted it on ATS entitled These Dark Worlds which is the prologue to a novel I'm writing - the story is inspired by portions of Starmaker.