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Writers Who Will Stand the Test of Time?
Embedded Geek asks: "Every year, the online version of Locus (a trade magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy) asks the question: "Name the 5 deceased 20th century SF & fantasy writers you think will still be read 50 years from now." The results favored some of the bigger names (Heinlein, Asimov, Tolkein) as well as a few lesser known figures (Simak, Bester). I would like to ask a broader question: What authors (in any genre, fiction or nonfiction) alive today will still be read (hard copy or online) in 2051?" If I had to answer off of the top of my head, I know William Gibson, Charles Sheffield, and Orson Scott Card would be in my list, but that's not all of them. A few authors who I thought would be classics have since vanished (whatever did happen to Daniel Keys Moran, anyways?) aand of course there are a few iffy ones which I could be convinced on (C.J. Cherryh, anyone). What authors do you feel will stand the test of time? Yeah, these are sci-fi authors, but that's about what I read these days.
Jon Katz!
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I've had this sig for three days.
Will stand the test of time as "the classic 'missed it completely' book".
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Before you all say it...yeah, yeah, he's not *real* fantasy, whatever.
But the Discworld books are actually quite sharp, and ideas based: Small Gods and Jingo, for example.
And, more importantly, they are very very funny. The sort of books you keep to read to your children one day, in the hope they'll want to read on their own. I guess like Douglas Adams did for me when I was 11.
his wrtigns will stnad the tset of tmei! No doubt about it.
sulli
RTFJ.
I don't think I know anyone who hasn't read one of his books, they're so terribly depressing....
Roger Zelazny. Probably the best modern mythic author next to Tolkien and the only such author to try and talk about magic and technology as if they were the same thing and under the control of similar mythical forces.
Also H.P. Lovecraft. I predict people will recognize him for the genius he was sooner or later, although he was dismissed as a pulp author by most of the literati in this century.
Animal Farm will definitely stand the test of time. It has thus far. Why not another 50 years?
Who could ever forget the gripping love stories of Danielle Steele?
Probably my favorite author and still very young. While not at the grandmaster level of Asimov, Heinlen or Herbert, he will probably reach that level. I would like to see more books by him, but only at their contined level of excellence
..........FULL STOP.
imho thats one of the great things about sci-fi, its timeless, and I dont think that just because the books will be old in 50 years time people will stop reading them.. look at Tolkein..
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
100 years from now, they'll still be posting it...
Bruce Sterling, Jack Womack. Whatever happened to Womack anyways, he wrote three brilliant novels (Ambient, Terraplane, and uh... another one) that were supposed to be part of a heptology, and then they stopped. Where are the rest of them? This is probably going to look like flame bait but Orson Scott Card is over rated. The short stories rock but he can't keep it up for an entire novel.
semper ubi sub ubi
That is all.
Last post!
I have no particular rah-rah comment, but I'll just say that his writing is some of the most tightly crafted that I have ever read.
...is a very slow writer. You can expect his next book in another couple of years. His latest novel is "The Last Dancer"; it's been out for a while, though there seems to be a special edition of it due out this month.
To that list of writers, in the SF category, I'd have to add Neal Stephenson, one of my favorites.
For starters:
- Seuss (the good doctor).
- Orwell
- Terry Brooks
- R. A. Salvatore
One word - Shanara - enough said. Personally, I think what he has produced is every bit as good as LOTR (please don't flame me) and is actually in some ways better - A, there's more of it, and B, it's written in a way that is easier to read. No, I didn't have any trouble with LOTR, but I have known people who have, and most of them have found Brooks very accessable.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
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Neil Stephenson's not dead!
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
Douglas Adams tops my list.
Mark the Revelator [dotfiles uniting in revolt]
Jon Katz. Definately.
Yes, not his *real* name, but I forget it right now. I've been enjoying his Wheel of Time series more than LotR, and - like most fantasy - the appeal is timeless.
Last post!
I read ~10 pages of the Linux Kernel source code every night to relax, and I'm sure thousands of geeks do the same and will continue to do so until the end of times.
A short list:
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
...
Ringworld, Tales of Known Space, ARM, Lucifiers Hammer, etc.
Simply one of the best.
-Eric
Douglas Adams, without a doubt.
And Asimov as well, obviously.
I also find it interesting that, of all the names listed in the body of this article, I had only heard of Heinlein, Asimov, and Tolkien...
Although he wrote lots of different subject matter, I think his sci-fi themed works were his best. Fahrenheit 451 & The Illustrated Man were both written in 1951, and they are some of the best and most forward-thinking sci-fi I have read.
He was *way* ahead of his time and I think Fahrenheit 451 will be read some time in to the future and hopefully some of his other works as well.
Someone has already mentioned Pratchett, and I hope that Clarke, Jordan, Niven, and others will also "stand the test of time" as talented writers.
However, it would pain me to see some of this work be declared "Classic," for I find this a segregatory (is that a word?) and unfair label for works. It is one of the things that has bothered me the most about my public education - the venerated pantheon of elderly literature labelled "classics," whose members are taught to be the only things really worth reading. This is a distrubingly static literary world that has left, in my experience, no tolerance or room for less well-known and/or more modern work of equally masterful quality.
I have liked many "classics" and disliked as many. I see that such a label may be the inevitable result of "standing the test of time." But when incorporated into curricula, it becomes (in my far from humble opinion) a dangerous and unfortunate thing.
Karma: T-rexcellent.
A little known fact is that Dan actually finished two additional books in the series (Lord November and The AI War), but they are still unpublished. His relationship with the publishing houses has aparently been somewhat turbulent, but from his musings on the mailinglist I sense that he would still like to see them published some day. Wether he is still interested in actually finishing the series still remains to be seen, but i'm hoping he will - some day.
And yes, his books are still just as good as the first time I read them. Dynamite!
apart from the fact that Wyndham isn't in the list but Clarke is :-[ HOW THE FUCK does Tolkein outrank Dick? Dick had more Sci-Fi ideas in one lazy afternoon than Tolkein had in his entire fucking life. And H G Wells? Drivel. Top three? Asimov, Dick, Herbert - and Wyndham in the top ten. And Andy McNabb, of course. You know bravo Two Zero actually IMPROVES with every read?
That was classic intercourse!
Stephen King will still have a large fanbase. A lot of people think that his writing is nothing but horror, but all of his stories have real DEPTH. They don't just scoot past character development or something that could be a plot point at 65MPH and scream, "Nothing to see here."
This is a very similar same issue.
Now you also have the favorites of particular professors, perpetuated because that is what some doctorate candidate wrote their thesis on. So most writers depend on the mercies of the college professors, unless they have some large estate to keep promoting them, republishing the works, etc.
There was a special on PBS recently on the author of the original sam spade detective novels, well known today from Humphrey Bogart movies. But most folks have probably never read the original stories.
Finding out who that was is left as an exercise for the reader ;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I think Neil Gaiman's American Gods will probably mark his entrance (in the realm of prose, at least) into the pantheon of high fantasy/science fiction authors. He will definitely struggle to overcome the graphic novel/comic book stereotypes stemming from his Sandman days, but I think he's a far more fluent and well-versed storyteller than several of the other suggestions I've read here.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
One who may not be known but should be are Bryan Magee (philosopher still living), Wendell Berry (poet and farmer - living), and Thomas Merton (catholic Monk who died in the 60s).
Philip K Dick should certainly appear on the list. His stories are simply amazing, which is why so many have been the basis for movies (Blade Runner, Screamers, Total Recall, and the upcoming Minority Report).
Some think he was insane, some think he was a prophet, but either way his work is a must for SciFi fans.
I think Frank Herbert will still be read 50 years from now, since Dune has been/is being used for games and Television series etc.
Who knows, maybe we'll even see a new Dune movie.
On the lighter side, I think Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy will still be read, with tears of laughter stream out of peoples eyes in 2051.
/Styx
Stephen King: I think he's likely to fill the same niche in future centuries that Edgar Allen Poe does today. He also has the advantage of having written both god novels and short stories so he'll be easy to fit into an academic curriculum.
Dr. Seuss: This is limited to the English speaking world (although I've seen translations) but I'm sure kids will be reading his books for a long time. Perhaps J.K. Rowling for older kids. Maybe Tintin, also, given its international range.
On the science fiction front, I'd say Neal Stephenson, if only because I have a feeling that Snow Crash is going to seem really prescient.
As long as we're broadening the question, what about other fields? I'm thinking Bob Marley (musically and for sociopolitical significance), Roy Lichtenstein,...
Ernest Hemingway was the most influential writer of the last century.
Apparantly, a small press is publishing all his existing Continuing Time books. I'm just really upset that new ones aren't being written (at least not reported on the web site).
For those who don't know what Continuing Time is, picture Neuromancer written by Zelazny, with his "practical gods" approach (toss in heavy genetic engineering and a bit of "is it science or magic?"). Make a plot that spans across not only all of time, but across all possibilities (from chaos to order). From the website (and from The Long Run): "Sixty-two thousand years before the birth of Yeshua ha Notzri, whom later humans knew as Jesus the Christ, the Time Wars ended, for reasons which no sentient being now knows. With that ending, the Continuing Time began.".
Armageddon Blues and Emerald Eyes are two of my favorite books - they are great reads. Last Dancer would be better if the rest of the books would get written. As it is, it leaves too much unanswered.
Incidently, for a quick calibration, Stephen Brust is my favorite fantasy author (barring Paksenarrion), Heinlein my favorite speculative fiction author, and science fiction varies, but I like Asimov, Simak and Clement (who, bless his soul, is one of the nicest people to sit and chat with at a con).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
By far Vonegut is one of my favorite authors. He writes some of the least sterile and most human characters that I can think of.
When I want your opinion I will beat it out of you.
As for current fiction writers, I would say Crighton and Koontz, but only because they're about the only two I'm familiar with. Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes was surprisingly an excellent novel that will be around for decades, and Janice Daugharty's Like A Sister has a good shot at sticking around as well. Both are female authors of the last twenty years; Daugharty's novel was released in 1999.
Unfortunately literature is not blessed with very many instant classics ... because most people don't read books until they have received good reviews or recommendations.
Kevin James Anderson
Timothy Zahn
Peter Telep
George Lucas
Michael Stackpole
Steven J. Sansweet
Kathy Tyers
he's dead but:
Karl Marx
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
As far as I can see, no one's mentioned Harlan Ellison, whom I believe is still alive. Although Ellison would no doubt bridle at being pigeonholed as a sci-fi or fantasy author, he is, and he writes some timeless stuff.
Alexis
Read anything by Banks and you will be glad you did. Every person that I have met that reads Banks agrees, and every review I have ever read confirms that he is an absolutely outstanding author.
His science fiction (Culture books) is top notch, but his fiction (as Iain Banks) is also great.
Zelazny's blend of dry humor, sarcasm, and underlying amusement with life in general are, unlike any other author I can think of, absolutely unique.
Jordan's Wheel of Time series, now up to 9 novels, has been, IMHO, more definitive of the modern fantasy genre than even Tolkien.
Also, the rumor is that Book 10 is being submitted in early 2002, and will be published later in the year! Not sure why such the long turnaround time.
As we approach the Technological Singularity described so awesomely by that awesome science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, it dawns on us that not only we humans but also our emerging fellow cyborgs will be the readership of classic authors from the current time.
Since by definition we can not see beyond the Singularity, we may only list here a few dark horse candidates who will appeal to the AI Minds of the expanded readership by virtue of having written about artificial intelligence:
Orson Scott Card -- Speaker for the Dead (1986)
Joseph H. Delaney, and Stiegler -- Valentina: A Soul in Sapphire
David Gerrold -- When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One
Robert Heinlein -- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Frank Herbert -- Destination: Void (1966)
James Patrick Hogan -- The Two Faces of Tomorrow (1979)
Victor W. Milan -- The Cybernetic Samurai (1985)
Rudy Rucker -- Wetware (1988)
Thomas Ryan -- The Adolescence of P1
Astro Teller -- Exegesis
Thomas T. Thomas -- ME: A Novel of Self-Discovery (1991)
Honestly, its hard for me to not to mention writers who are deceased. However, some worthwhile writers that are still alive that I believe will be read in the years to come are:
- Anne Rice
- William Gibson
- Terry Pratchett
- Maeve Binchy
- Clive Barker
- Toni Morrison
- Dalai Lama
As far as those who have passed on, who will be read for years to come:
- Frank Herbert
- John Steinbeck
- Jane Austen
- Zora Neale Hurston
Truth like surgery, may hurt, but it cures. - Han Suyin, Chinese Physician and Writer
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Information wants...you to shut your pie hole.
Daniel Pinkwater and Isaac Asimov deserve to be on the list! Two amazing writers!
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Sig
Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" was brilliant and his early work "True Names" predated "Snow Crash" and a lot of the cyber-punks. His theory of the singularity might have been enough to cement his place 50 years from now, assuming that the singularity doesn't actually occur of course, in which case none of this will be relevent.
why exclude Asimov from your pretentious list, manmuppet?
That was classic intercourse!
He has written some of the greatest horror and fantasy stories of all time. Stephen King, who writes the same type of stuff and is far more popular, is a hack, compared to Barker.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Just a few questions.
Do geeks read anything other than Science Fiction?
And if the books and authors mentioned above are 'classics,' what the hell do we call Shakespeare, Johnson and others?
-Shaunak.
On the other hand, historical accounts will survive, I'm sure of that. So, for example, The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes will still be read, much like William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is still a must-read. The Atomic Bomb is a fantastic book, a towering and comprehensive work - I recommend it most strongly.
Then, for example, there are biographies: I doubt that James Gleick's Chaos will still be read - there will be other, better expositions of the Feigenbaum Constant - but his biography of Feynman, Genius, will still be read by anyone interested in the mystique of Feynman. (And trust me, with nanotech's rise, his mystique will only grow!)
And of course, I agree with everyone who nominated Dr. Seuss. That, and Alice, and Tolkien, will survive and still be relevant. Harry Potter - it's too early to say, though they are great fun to read...
Anyway, that's my $0.02.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
i beleive people will still read the works of Stainslaw Lem and Philip K dick, espically Lem, his books are way beyond most peoples writings today, and PKD is just wack, his last 3 books are just genius, thats my .02
His "Planet Of The Apes" is a brilliantly constructed social satire. Read it if you haven't because it bears little resemblance to the movies it inspired. It's a true work of genius. Other authors: Frank Herbert, Jack Williamson.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Former Genetics Professor - University of British Columbia, Canada.
Probably Canada's most well known naturalist, increacingly critisied for being rather gloomy in his views of the future, but my most accounts, a great educator.
What strikes me well about the question of who will be remebered 50 years from now, at least in Canada, his work ranging from the CBC's Quirks and Quarks weekly science news radio program and currently the CBC weekly TV series, The Nature of Things will be strong in my memory for promoting interest in science and at times activism.
All things said, I hope his more predictive views will not come true in the next 50 years. But, I feel they are grounded in science and as such, his seeings may be extreemly shaping in how we come to deal with life 50 years from now.
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes, among others)
Douglas Adams (nuff said)
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and others)
Those are my five favorites. Bill O'Reilly would qualify, but I've only just started reading one of his books. Maybe I'll be a writer some day, but until then, I'll keep my list as it is.
Great show. People will definetly be watching it in 50 years.
williiam s burroughs , gertrude stien
hakim bey , terrance mckenna, anais nin
and noam chomsky
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Frank Herbert!! I mean really, DUNE for christs' sake! Despite how his son is fucking things up now, Dune, Messiah, and Children are my top books.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Each these writers have written about future in a way that technology improvements by 2051 won't affect the stories they tell.
Vernor Vinge's Queng Ho & Bobble universes are far removed from the day to day tehcnology issues and focus on the role of the individual in changing society in crisis.
Dan Simmons' Hyperion series is a masterful look at religion, technology, and the hubris of humanity.
Larry Niven's Known Universe is perhaps one of the most detailed and consistent future histories created in the last 50 years.
John Varley's Eight Worlds series and Titan/Wizard/Demon trilogy will stand the test of time as examinations of the effects of endless plentiful society on the individual.
While I love Neal Stephenson, William Sterling, and Bruce Gibson, they work is so focused on near future (part of it's appeal!) that they will suffer as technology passes them by.
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I don't see O.S.Card being read in 50 years. It's hard to know what current authors might retain popularity. I think Arthur C. Clark is a safe bet. The best hard science in the sf genre I've seen in years comes from Greg Egan. Every story has at least one brilliant insight or alternate interpretation of science.
Greg Bear Julian May Larry Niven Kim Stanley Robinson Frank Herbert. Greg Bear never fails to stretch my mind past its previous limits... He's amazing. Julian May, besides being one of the most amazing writers and character-creators, writes about such grand and uplifting concepts that I think she will be aorund for a long time. Niven. 'Nuff said. K. Stanley Robinson. If you haven't read the Mars epics, yer an idiot. Herbert. Again, 'nuff said.
I would say Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Terry Brooks, C.S. Lewis, and Douglas Adams would probably be in my top five. It's really a hard list to make but those are the authors that have had the biggest impact on me so far through different periods of my life. Authors such as Susan Cooper and Lloyd Alexander also played an important part during my teen years. Dr. Suess and the Brothers Grimm were my favorite during my childhood.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I've read most of what he has written and I have never been disappointed. He is probably most famous for "Slaughterhouse 5", but I think either "Cat's Cradle" or maybe "Breakfast of Champions" is my favorite.
Most have a sci-fi setting, but like most good sci-fi, that's not the point. His books are pretty easy reads and are available in any library or used book store. Definitely worth picking up.
Thomas Pynchon is somebody I wish I had the time to read. I've read "The Crying of Lot 49" and thought it was pretty good. His other books are just too damned intimidating (size-wise) to even think about starting...
-ec
Others have mentioned Vernor Vinge as a candidate, but among living authors how could we forget the individual who has won more Hugos and Nebulas than anyone except Heinlein? I'm talking about Lois McMaster Bujold, who imo is the finest sf writer working today, and deserves a place at the top.
The Tick (the Fox cartoon series), based on Ben Edlund's comic book.
The Mote in God's Eye and Ringworld. Larry Niven.
A Song of Ice and Fire, a continuing series of novels by George R. R. Martin. It starts off with A Game of Thrones, and takes off from there. High fantasy that beats Tolkien hands-down.
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Stephen King will be known as the Charles Dickens of our time. His works will be read for at least two generations. King will live on because he isn't obsessed with the technicalities of the genres he writes in unlike many of the SF writers whose works are starting to look rather dated. King puts his efforts into crafting characters that appeal psychologically to his audience as having truth beyond the genre. King isn't a horror writer who stoops to write about people--he's a writer who analyzes the human condition who just happens to have used horror as his handle to establish an audience. I believe that King will grow stronger in reputation as time goes by because his being mainstream will allow further acceptance of his insights. In fifty years once the controversy over some of King's themes subsides, King will become the United States orthodox white male to assign to students to read. He will be acceptable to the interest groups because his opinions are politically correct, he will be acceptable to the parents because of familiarity, and he will be acceptable to the students because his characters reflect empathy to many of their struggles.
For humourous social realism reflecting the mindset of the early 60's nothing beats the Danish Author Leif Panduro. His topics were often the defects of the modern welfare state and the conflict between normal and abnormal. He introduced some of the absurdities we got to know later in some of the Python stuff.
Help fight continental drift.
I would list Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A.S. Byatt, and Paul Theroux (nonfiction only!).
If I am allowed the recently deceased, add Patrick O'Brian and Penelope Fitzgerald.
No Troll intended on Heinlein, but it sads me up to reflect how the exquisite, quirky writers with the intricate things to say don't always get the recognition. Even though Phil Dick was certainly all that (eg, Valis), and excellent with it, I wonder how much of his mass popularity here is due to the continuing thing with films being made of his stories.
How much of the voting will in hindsight show ephermeral trends (eg, the loathsome Hubbard).
Brin is fantastic. Especially his Uplift books. Read Sundiver if you have the chance. Herbert and Pratchett are also pretty fantastic. The Dune series was probably one of the broadest concepts in SF. I always viewed Herbert as the Tolkien of SF (Thinking, of course, of SF and Fantasy as two different things).
It seems that most of my favourites these days have last names that begin with the letter 'B'; Brin, Bear, Barns, Brust, Bujold.
IMHO, as per
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and "Lila"
mostly will be remembered by most as a JAPP (Just Another Pop Philosopher), but will always keep a following of people trying to cope with the dangling ends of eastern and western thought.
I'm sure famous and old SF writers will be remembered 50 years from now, but who do you think will become a remembered writer? I think Iain M. Banks will be remembered from his Culture -series.m )
(http://web.onetel.net.uk/~zakalwe/imb/banks.ht
Another favorite - The Uplift War saga is excellent.
But is it good enought stuff to be read commonly 50 years hence? (Probably not).
Even if his succesors surpass him, he'll still be remembered as one of the founders of the graphical novel form. And since he has succeeded in both this ans traditional novels, I'd give him higher odds than any other author I know of for making work the artistic possibilities of upcoming media.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
I'd personally have to go for
Pratchett, Spider Robinson, Douglas Adams, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, William Gibson. Also I hope no one forgets the absolutely wonderful J.K. Rowling and anyone who hasn't read the Potter books is missing out on something truly special.
Author of "Ishmael" and "The Story of B." Not nearly Sci Fi - more like anthropology for dummies, but still great reads none the less.
Please give your mod points to others, Im at the cap. They will appreciate it more
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Slaughterhouse Five
Cat's Cradle
Most sigs are dumb. This is one of them.
--> William Gibson (Neuromacer)
--> Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
--> William C. Dietz (Legion Of The Damned)
--> Robert Mason (Weapon)
--> Robert J. Sawyer (The Terminal Experiment)
--> Michael Crichton (Sphere)
What about Robert Silverberg - especially his Lord Valentine series is an outstanding blend of SF and Fantasy -- highly recommended.
"Name 5 20th century musical artists you think will still be listened to 50 years from now."
Since today's music scene isn't geared for longevity, this would seem to be a much more difficult question to answer. Sure, we'll have bands like Elvis and the Beatles sitting around for reference defining decades for us (Elvis + Beatles = the 1960s), but what will people actually *listen to* 50 years from now?
Then again, what do people actually listen to now? Sure, we hear music playing in the car, on the radio, on TV, in the elevator, in the shower, but do we pay attention to it? If we can't remember it from one year to the next, what makes you think we'll remember it 50 years from now?
here we go. I haven't read science fiction in a LONG time so I'll combine a bit.
Douglas Adams (hitchhiker, etc.)
Bo Fowler (scepticism, Inc. and The Astrological Diary of God)
Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (the Illunimatus! Trilogy and the Shrodinger's Cat Trilogy)
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Choke)
When I worked in a bookstore I noticed that these're the ones that seem to last, regardless of fads, etc. without having all that much popular support (except for Chuck, but he's just so damn good). I'd also throw Donna Tratt's "A Secret History" in there as well, but I don't know who to nix.
Triv
Wait til the copyrights expire.. all these books we've known and loved will be preserved forever for all future generations to experience thanks to the joy of the Internet.
I'd love to have one of those printers that can print a real book. Imagine when every kid has the ability to read any book in the library of congress online or printed instantly into a paperback. Never shall another book fade quietly into the night.
My current sadness is the difficult time I'm having finding all the books in the very good Son of the Hero series. I hope this is a problem that the future can avoid.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Iain Banks Culture stories are fantastic!
I'd recommend Consider Phlebas to someone starting out.
Use of Weapons, Excession, and Player of Games are excellant as well.
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Just because someone writes an enjoyable science fiction book doesn't mean that it will be seen as a classic by the literary establishment. Some depth and powerful, original ideas are needed too. [Thinking up some weird kind of planet is not a "powerful, original idea".]
I think it's safe to say that Vonnegut, Heinlein, Asimov, Tolkien, and Bradbury are already widely read in schools and meet those requirements.
Most of the other guys I've seen posted here make interesting science fiction, but don't rank among the best overall writers of our time. I mean, how many science fiction writers from the 1800's are still popular today? H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and not much else. And that's when there were a lot of new sci-fi ideas still left to explore.
non-fiction: That is a very interesting question. Most non-fiction books become obsolete. It would have to be some kind of philosopher or a topic which does not change. Maybe Steven Hawkings...
:-)
Fiction:
Arthur C. Clarke (I have read some of his oldest books, and chancer are that someone will read them 50 years in the future too)
Barbara Cartland: Based on the quantity of books she has written it will take more than 50 years to get rid of them
And I guess someone will be reading the book by Leopold Sacher Masoch.
Non fiction writers should not be forgotten..
Paul_d
These will be read many many years from now.... :)
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
Tezuka's is really a comic artist, but he's so beloved in Japan that I think he'll survive the test of time. The majority of his works were of a sci-fi/fantasy genre. He even gave birth to the entire manga phenomenon in Japan, which produces somes of the best fantasy work ever (and some of the worst too :) ).
Top on my list is Stanisaw Lem (except he's not dead yet, but he's getting close...) - Solaris, Cyberiad and the Star Diaries are probably among the best SF works ever, for their sheer imaginative wealth and philosophical depth.
There is absolutely no reason to panic.
I have to agree completely. IMHO, Pratchet is one of the best satirists, ever. I'd put him on a par with Twain. I never laugh out loud as frequently as when I'm reading one of his books!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I Willis will hold up very well. Excellent writing quality, a unique vision, good characterization, and a lot of far-future ideas that aren't as likely to become anacrhonistic in the next 50 years. I love her work.
I'm a nature photographer.
Stanislaw Lem is an incredible author, and, along with Alfred Bester and PKD, probably my favorite SF writer. He will be read - and in circles far broader than the SF fan crowd - when Orson Scott Card is relegated to footnote status.
Also in not-in-English, Adolfo Bioy-Casares should share mention with Jorge Luis Borges; Borges identified him as the best Spanish-language fantastic fictionist of his time.
when I think in what would be read in 50 years, I think more in term of books instead of authors. Maybe some author have a lot of "better than average" books, but in 50 years would be one of them still be read?
:)
Anyway, a lot of good books and authors were named here, but if I have to chose 5, I would take Lord of the Rings (Tolkien), Ender's Game (Card), Fundation's Trilogy (Asimov), Hyperion (Dan Simmons) and, well, most of Discworld series of Pratchett
Many years from now, people will be able to look at this books without thinking "Horror author," which is often attached to this name. A lot (maybe a majority) of his stuff isn't horror.
And he's written so much. This man doesn't write because he likes it, he writes because he has to.
Really, I think that one hunred years from now, King's books will be a great insight to what our culture was like at this time. In all of his books, he does a great job of capturing the time period, which is something that is often looked for in classic authors.
When once asked in an interview what genre
he thought that his writing fell into, Burroughs
replied 'Well, science fiction, of course.' I have
to wonder if the interviewer even read any of
WB's books.
I think that _Naked Lunch_ and the Nova
trilogy (_The Soft Machine_, _Nova Express_,
_The Ticket that Exploded_) will stand the test
of time.
Star Trek fans would do well to read _Cities of the
Red Night_ in which commanders insure the loyalty
of their troops by getting them addicted and
supplying them with opiates --like the Founders
and the Jem Haddar of DS9, except that 'Cities'
was written ca. 1974.
Any genre (not just SF!), alive today:
Umberto Eco
Don Knuth
Saul Kripke
Martin Gardner
(puzzle books have ungodly staying power)
John Cage
(oops, dead)
-Tom Duff
Bear's "Blood Magic" was a book so far beyond it's time it's frightening. It was beyond nanotech before it even started. It and Vernor Vinge's "A Fire upon the Deep" as books that are beyond examples of genre, and actually books that are ground breaking for their era, and therefore classics.
"Dune" was 2nd to only LOTR, (but I'm only modestly read.)
--Adrian
Future science fiction will cater to the counterculture crowd, that will be the first to embrace more advanced forms of nonlinear interactive storytelling done through the more sophisticated merging of literature and entertainment that becomes a reality when cheap photorealistic imagery is mixed with force-feedback devices.
Gaming will become more a matter of design then interaction when game companies start producing entertainment suites for authors of such experiences, not just the games themselves, as companies either keep the source closed and profit off of immense royalties, or open-source and profit off of advertising and consulting fees.
As such, very few authors will be _read_ anymore, but a lot more might be _experienced_. These will probably be the authors with the most 'stylish' works.
Card, Gibson, Herbert, Bradbury, Tolkien, and those that create the most distinctive and recognizable works will probably be the most popular.
With classics such as the Odyssey series (although 3001 wasn't so good) and the Rama series, his work will be read in 50 years from now, even in hundreds of years from now.
Will work for bandwidth
The list is supposed to be "deceased" Authors.
So many of the authors people are mentioning are not dead.
p.s. I do admit that I am surprised Douglas Adams is not on the list.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Jean-Paul Sartre
Yukio Mishima
Jorge Luis Borges
Milan Kundera
If the literary range of slashdot readers is accurately represented by the postings to this story so far, most of you really need to break out of the SF rut once in a while. I'm not suggesting that SF books are inferior; just that there is a whole lot of great writing out there that is not in that category.
My nominations:
-Joseph Heller. After Catch 22 he didn't have much inspiration left, but Catch 22 is clearly one of the best American novels ever.
-Michael Chabon. I'm not nearly as confident about Chabon as I am about Heller, but some of his books are great reads and he's still in his 20's (I think).
Benjamin
Mary Doria Russell.
Okay, she's only written two books (you have read The Sparrow, haven't you?), but if she keeps it up, she'll be regarded eventually as one of the true greats of the genre.
Lois McMaster Bujold. ...
Go on. I dare you, dismiss it as space opera. Okay, it is space opera, but all her books are great, widely read, Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning,
Other have mentioned:
Clive Barker
He deserves to be remembered, if only for writing that rara avis: consistently intelligent, well-written horror.
Terry Pratchett
When I worked in an SF bookshop (that's a science fiction bookshop. In Dublin), Pratchett was consistently our best-sellign author. People with no interest in SF or fantasy would wander in for the latest, and even when spouses/SOs were wandering around, eyes glazed, they'd inevitably find themselves browsing the Pratchetts. I don't think anyone apart from Transworld realises exactly how popular he is.
Neal Stephenson
I'm going to commit heresy here. I think Stephenson is great, but not one of the greats. His books are all eminently readable, but most have been surpassed in their respective sub-genres (Read The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata?). Crytonomicon is an exception, and not just cos it's the first novel I've read with embedded perl.
Aside: I suspect if someone ran the Cryptonomicon manuscript through Acme::Buffy, it'd still be better than all Buffy novels combined.
If I'm still alive in 50 years, I'll still be reading John D. MacDonald. His Travis McGee series is a classic. Those novels, written from the 1960s to the 1980s, are not only enjoyable to read, but are also filled with MacDonald's accurate social commentary and predictions.
These ain't no Star Trek novelizations; they're real books that will stretch your mind ... whether you like it or not.
----- Trapped in time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas. --Army of Darkness
Haven't seen this mentioned yet... James Morrow is an excellent writer... blending reality and religion, along with fantasy and science fiction to craft marvelous works of satire. I think they're great! His books list among: Towing Jehovah, Blameless in Abaddon, This Is The Way The World Ends, Only Begotten Daughter, Bible stories for Adults, Wine of Violence. You gotta admire and respect an author who will write about God's 2-mile long body floating in the sea, after falling from the sky.
I would surely vote Catch 22 as the best book written in the 20th century.
He died less than two years ago.
In the tons of sci-fi (almost exclusively) that I've read over the last 25 years, the one that's had the most impact was Jack Vance.
For sheer inventiveness, language, and the fact that the trappings of science is relegated to the background of the story, makes Vance a must read, and means that he will last well into the future.
O the worlds! The Dying earth, "Showboat world", "Alastor Cluster", not to mention the cultures: "Trills", The Pnume, "The Connatic", "The Dirdir". The list goes on.
If you love a good mix of ancient and advanced technology, with Fantasy & Sci-fi combinations pick up the Demon Princes series of novels, or the omnibus editions.
Newsfollow.com
'Lonesome Dove' is in many ways _the_ great american novel.
But before that I'll read Terry Brooks (Shannara saga), David&Leigh Eddings (Belgariad etc) and Raymond E. Feist (Magician, Krondor etc) many many times. And H2G2 is also in the list.
- Raynet --> .
If you really want to predict it well, I think it's a business question -- whose work won't be displaced by imitators, and whose has a market that will endure. Language is a big consideration too.
...
How about some writers outside the Sci-Fi universe:
- Garbriel Garcia Marquez or Gunter Grass (fiction)
- Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter (mostly plays)
- A self-help or 'inspirational' book?
- Someone in a specialty like Kissinger (his book on diplomacy) or Milton Friedman (economics) or even Bill James (baseball) or an IETF RFC...
- Pres. Clinton's memoirs
- Whoever wrote the following: If you receive an e-mail with the subject "Good Times", DON'T OPEN IT! It will delete your hard drive and forward all credit card numbers to an unknown location in Moldova. It was announced this morning by IBM, AMD and the CDC.
I know some (e.g. Beckett) are dead, but so are Douglas Adams and Dr. Seuss.
Given the tendency of some corporations like Disney to keep pushing for extensions to copyright law, I wonder if any of it will be available in 50 years. The only reason for the publishers to keep the works available is to make a buck. If releasing a book isn't projected to meet their desired rate of return, they won't do it. Sure the stuff that's really popular now might be around, but I'm sure that they are vastly outnumbered by the books that were good, but for whatever reason didn't do well enough to go beyond a 2nd printing. These will rot away in the publishers' archives while being protected from 'IP thieves' by copyright law. I've heard about film historians lamenting the fact that scores of early movies have been lost and continue to be lost just because of this reason.
This might not be as bleak if the primary medium for publishing literature remains the old fashioned paper book. They will last for ages if proper care is taken. These stories will live on and will be passed from person to person via ebay, used book stores, gifts, etc. But what if the publishers successfully get the public used to reading e-books and wean them off the dead tree kind? Given that the publishers will want some copy protection scheme, the work will only last as long as the device used to read it and as long as you can keep the original copy. They will certainly try to make sure that you won't be able to make backup copies (even though it's your right) because that will open the door to pirating or sharing of the work. A person won't be able to sell it unless they part with the reading device also and that would still probably violate a EULA. Converting to a new format wouldn't be allowed because that would deny the publisher the profits from doing so, and open the door for the feared IP pirates. All of this will increase the rate at which works of literture will die and be forgotten.
My prediction: People will have the works that are currently in the public domain (ala Project Gutenberg), titles that are available for the standard e-book reader of the time(which will probably be obsolete every 5-10 years), the surviving paper books, and whatever L. Ron Hubbard's Scientologists keep churning out. Everything else will be forgotten by the publishers and will die with the people who loved it. The same will be true for movies and music.
I pray that I'm wrong.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Embedded Geek asks: "Every year, the online version of Locus (a trade magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy) asks the question: "Name the 5 deceased 20th century SF & fantasy writers you think will still be read 50 years from now." The results favored some of the bigger names (Heinlein, Asimov, Tolkein) as well as a few lesser known figures (Simak, Bester). I would like to ask a broader question: What authors (in any genre, fiction or nonfiction) alive today will still be read (hard copy or online) in 2051?"
Bold emphasis mine.
Almost no mention of non-geek writers to be found. Where are William Styron, Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Michael Ondatje, Kenzaburo Oe, among many others?
you should try his apalling "Philiosphical" essays. Complete nonsense. Dick could out think Huxley in every way. And for vision, look at wyndham's "The Kraken Wakes" and "The Trouble with Lichen" for a nice preview of global warming and the burgeoning market in anti-ageing crap, and the ir gene and clone based future.
That was classic intercourse!
Not Jon Katz
I'm very surprised his name hasn't been brought up. His stories and novels have an amazing sense of presence and relavency today, even though they were written 40 years ago in some cases. He deals widely with the alienation that results from a dependancy on science and technology, and what remains of our humanity in modern times. Ballard is probably most famous for his work Crash which was adapted into a movie by David Cronenberg. Yes, that's the movie about people who like to have sex in car wrecks.
He's clearly a more important writer then most of the people on that list. He's been recieved much better then almost all of those writers as well.
Orson Scott Card's Worthing Saga is a great book, but it makes me wonder. Is there a mormon anywhere who can go five seconds without using religion? Everytime I find someone is mormon, I start putting the blinders on, so I can see past all the religious mumbo-jumbo to what they are actually saying (usually something they were told to say).
1. Greg Egan
2. Gene Wolfe
3. Bruce Sterling
4. Greg Bear
5. William Gibson
6. Vernor Vinge
7. Dan Simmons
8. Octavia Butler
9. Neal Stephenson
10.Howard Waldrop
Honorable mention: Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, Ian McDonald, Rober Reed, Brian Stableford, Walter Jon Williams. Note: This list really only deals with writers who acheived prominance in the last 20 years or so. There's really little point in listing living legends like Fred Pohl, Arthur C. Clarke, or Harlan Ellison, who pretty much everyone agrees will still be remembered then. (For one thing, they've all won Hugos, and Hugo-winners tend to be reprinted.)
I've stuck to science fiction writers, so Stephen King, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Sean Stewart and Joe R. Lansdale are all missing from this list, though I expect some of their work to still be read 50 years from now as well.
Another interesting question is which even newer writers do you expect to see make the cut. Some of my predictions: Patrick O'Leary, Mary Doria Russell, Linda Nagata, Ted Chiang.
Remember, science fiction is a genre with a good institutional memory. It's quite possible that one or two works from all the above will still be read, they way that people like Eric Frank Russell, C. M. Kornbluth and Frederic Brown have all had large reprint collections of their short fiction published in the last five years.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Because 1984 is becoming more real with every year.
d.t
I'm surprised he hasn't been mentioned yet. PKD explored some of the fundamental ideas still being hashed out by many current writers concerning the effect of technology on society and the individual. The ideas behind "A Scanner Darkly", "We Can Build You", and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" in addition to his short stories were added to the meme pool and remain to this day.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Not that he's worth reading - far from it. His books are poorly written, poorly imagined ravings. However, they have become 'sacred' (and I use the word VERY loosely!) texts for a well known cult. This practically guarantees they will continue to be read in 50 years.
I gotta throw in a plug form some of my favorites, even though they may not be considered mainstream sci-fi:
JG Ballard
Phillip K. Dick
Samuel Delaney (especially Dhalgren!)
I think that in a few years, when technology has passed by most of the old space opera authors, these guys are still gonna be read by people more interested in the human race's psychological reactions to change than the changes themselves.
believe me!
-- just a geek - trying to change the world
I do think Orson Scott Card is on the list. I'd like to think that Coupland will still be read, as so many of his books meant so much to me, but I don't know if they will survive culturally or not.
In more mainstream contemporary lit... Martin Amis... Don DeLillo, most certainly.
Non-fiction/natural history? Stephen Jay Gould... Richard Dawkins... and my personal fav, Jared Diamond.
The world won't end in darkness, it'll end in family fun, with Coca-cola clouds behind a Big Mac sun.
I'd put a vote in for Ursula K. LeGuin on both the fantasy and Scifi sides. Her worlds aren't as fleshed out as Tolkien's, and her characters lacked the whimsy of a Gandalf or a Tom Bombadil, but her writing contains poetic observation, if that means anything. Her descriptions of the flight of dragons in "The Wizard of Earthsea" or of the ice flows in "The Left Hand of Darkness" outstrip Tolkien, IMHO.
With LeGuin, you get inside the head of one character (or maybe two) in a deep, moving way, and you see the world in which the character is residing through the internal sketch of the character itself. Thus, you get a narrower vision of the world, but it's more intimately wound up with the character through whom you see it.
I particularly recommend "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Wizard of Earthsea" among her works. Check them out: they're beautiful.
~~~~~~~~~
dissertus scribendo latine videri volo.
About the only problem I see with my predictions about Chuck is that a lot of the references he makes are about pop culture of our time and etc., while writers like Heinlein make stories that are as timely now as they were 30-50 years ago.
Alive Today?
Robert Pirsig
Kurt Vonnegut
Toni Morrison
Alive until a few years ago...
William Burroughs
Phillip K. Dick
Allen Ginsberg
I've read a few other authors that could produce classics, but arguably still haven't.
Brett Easton Ellis
Chuck Palahniuk
Emily Perkins
no, the reason why serious sci-fi writers and thinkers like Dick find a limited audience is that publishers stick spaceships on the covers and bookstores stick the books in a "sci-fi AND fantasy" section where Dick has to compete for attention against the likes of William Shatner's excerable Tekwar and Star Wars "source" books. It's a crying shame.
That was classic intercourse!
Herbert deserves a place in history for his Dune series (the early ones at least), but not all of his books are commendable. "The Santaroga Barrier" is a real turkey.
I noticed a strange thing at my local used book store - Right after Douglas Adams died his books were moved from the 'Science Fiction/Fantasy' section to the 'literature' section.
..wierd.
I'm wondering what their thought process was on this one? 'Science Fiction/Fantasy' is not 'serious' enough? He's dead now, so his writing is classic literature?
air and light and time and space
I think I'll stop here. I could go on for a while. These can all be justified.
-=fshalor
Murakami has great characters, and Wallace is a hoot! Not to mention their writing is more-or-less nobel caliber.
Lovecraft, on the other hand, has been dead for well over 50 years and is already regarded as a classic horror writer, and his works have been in print almost continiously since the founding of Arkham House in 1939.
Since the original question asked for LIVING authors, your choices don't fit the criteria.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
His "Web of the Chozen" is a deeply prophetic masterpiece.
I keep thinking that people will, someday, notice that Cerebus the Aardvark is probably one of the greatest narrative acheivements of all time; I think Dave Sim's frank misogyny is a significant barrier to entry for some people, though. OTOH, it didn't hurt William S. Burroughs much. And Cerebus is such an astonishing work; pop culture, high culture, satire, parody, love stories, social criticism...Sim chose early on in his work to simply respect no boundary, ever. Consider Melmoth , a retelling of the last days of Oscar Wilde, incorporated without apology into the narrative of Cerebus. Amazing, entertaining, and audacious.
-- Support Ometz le-Serev.
Unfortunately relatively few scifi authors will stand the test of time. Not because there is anything wrong with scifi but because "nothing is so dated as yesterdays vision of tommorow." Too many scifi authors are just glorying in a clever "vision of tommorow" (or of the mythic 'past' in the case of fantasy) and are not using that vision as a medium to tell a great story or display any insight into larger truths. They will be entertaining and popular for a day and then quickly fade. I have read many of the authors mentioned in other comments and many were very entertaining but few of them will be read 50 years from now.
I have loved scifi since I was a kid, but I often stand before rack upon rack of scifi novels at the local bookstore despairing of finding anything truly worth the time it takes to read. More and more I have turned to the classics section to find novels that have already proven themselves over time. For obvious reasons there seems to be a higher "signal to noise ratio" in that corner of the bookstore, the writing is better, the stories are less shallow and if many of the themes are sometimes familiar it is because of all the cheap knockoffs I've read before, often from the scifi aisle. I'm sure that there are a few, maybe even a lot of books in the scifi section that would satisfy but finding them is frustrating among so much dreck.
Stephen King - like him or not, he's popular. Some of his stuff is REALLY good. He writes about fantastic crap with a decent human perspective. I've actually had college sociology professors reccomend The Stand. That's pretty sound endorsement.
Piers Anthony - Like him or not - he's written more books than anyone I can think of. Volume alone has to count for something.
Michael Crichton - The idea behind Jurassic Park has been tattooed on our society. I'm waiting for some freak geneticist to try something similar, but maybe with a carolina parakeet first.
VC Andrews - even though she's dead, she'll still be publishing new books in 2051, and someone will be reading them
L. Ron Hubbard - same as VC Andrews, only I'd better shut up or John Travolta will hunt me down and kick my non-scientologist ass.
Kurt Vonnegut - is he still alive? Last time I checked he was... Anyway, he's destined to be a "cult classic" forever. He'll have a niche similar to what Poe occupies today
Anne Rice - as long as being a teenager means sexual confusion and angst and lost of identity, they'll read Anne Rice. It would be nice to stop it, but....
If you include other written media then I'd say Stan Lee, John Ostrander and a whole other crew of excellent comic book writers. Not only because their work is great, but because Amazing Fantasy #15 is worth SHITLOADS of money, and people will still be trading that comic book in 2051, if there are any surviving copies.
Most of the below authors are not in the public eye. But they have a large and loyal fan base, have been around for years, and are still attracting new interested readers.
:)
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea Trilogy
Harlan Ellison
Guy Gavriel Kay - The Fionaver Tapestry series
Anne McCaffrey - Pern
Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover
Just my 2 cents
August 1914, A Distant Mirror, The March of Folly. Great works of History. Read August 1914, you know a lot about World War I, the mentality especially that lead to it. WW I will keep interesting people, so will this book.
Interestingly enough, while the last two have had movies and OVAs based on their works, they bear the same resemblance as Dune does to the Dune movie. Shiro wrote Ghost in the Shell about a wisecracking, practical joke playing Major in a mobile AI driven "tank" force (Fuchikomas are far more than tanks). The movie is not quite the same, and the comic goes much farther into the nature of self. Kishiro did 'Battle Angel', and the OVAs stripped out the action for their use. It makes sense; the foreshadowing and plot stuff in the first volume (which is what the OVAs are based on) only come into play later in the series. And once you read the entire story, you'll understand why the name change (Gally/Alita) occured - the westernization was for a decent reason that isn't evident until the last pages of the last book. --
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
As the Sci-Fi/Fantasy realm as already been pretty well covered, and the question pertained to all genre's here's my additions to the list:
Hunter S. Thompson - I think better than any other living author he truely understands the dark underbelley of 20th century life and commented on with such style and aplomb that he will become required reading
Kurt Vonnegut - Like Thompson he has a keen understanding of our modern world and is, IMO, the greatist satirist since Voltaire.
Ayn Rand - people either love her, or hate her but no one can argue that her work hasn't had a powerful effect.
Milton Friedman - he's one of the fathers of modern economic thought, someone will be reading him in 50 years
Just to make it a longer list than requested:
Carl Sagan
Stephen Hawkings
Gore Vidal
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
I've been listening to an audio book of F451 at work lately.
It's been 20 years since I've read it.
I'm amazed at how releveant the book is for today.
It's very high on my 'read it again real soon list'. IMHO F451 just is not the same unless you are reading it from paper. Listening to an MP3 or reading it online just does not carry the same power as the printed word on a paper page. This is not true for every book (maybe it's not true for any other book), but it's 100% true for this one!
Let see... .Nebula Nominee
Sundiver - excellent book
Startide Rising - Hugo, Nebula & Locus Awards
The Practice Effect - very good short novel
The Postman - Locus & John W. Campbell Awards
Hugo & Nebula Nominee. Also a movie messed up by Costner.
River of Time (Anthology) - grat collection of short stories
Heart of the Comet (w/ Gregory Benford) - amazing sci-fi
The Uplift War - Hugo & Locus Awards
Earth - Hugo Nominee (one of the GREAT books of all time IMO)
Glory Season - Hugo Nominee
Otherness (Anthology) - Locus Award
Brightness Reef 1995 - Hugo Nominee
Infinity's Shore - etc
Transparent Society - etc
Heaven's Reach - etc
Foundation's Triumph - etc
Elmer Kelton, Sam Brown, and believe it or not, Larry McMurtry. The first two for their whole-heart realism and the last for his style.
Thinking of "H.A.R.L.I.E.", does anyone remember the book "Charly"? Don't know who wrote it.
What's this Submit thingy do?
AKA Cordwainer Smith, for Norstrilia, the cycle of the Instrumentality, and many more. Good stuff. Go read it.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Neal Stephenson--consistantly great my new favorite author after Heinlein.(Heinlein would be on this, but you only want live ones.)He's more consistant than Bruce Sterling, who has a couple of good novels, one great one, and some bad ones.
;)
J Neil Schulman--If you haven't read him, you should.
L Neil Smith--The Louis Lamour of SF--people will read him forever.
Robert Anton Wilson (he's still alive as far as I know) Without him we wouldn't know what a fnord was, and we'd still be in the dark about the greatest conspiracy ever
James Geick--He mad me fall in love with fractals. One of the best science writers ever (after that dead one-Asimov).
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
1. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (aka The Great American Novel)
2. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (aka The Great Funny American Novel)
3. The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Very possibly the most important non-fiction work of the 20th century. There are many important works documenting the Nazi holocaust, but this brilliantly written work must stand as the first, best, and most comprehensive work to document the Soviet holocaust (which Solzhenitsyn estimated killed some 68 million people) by one who lived through it.)
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Anyone who has read the Ender Series knows that Card is here for quite a while. If you have never read the Ender Series I sugest you pick up the following:
Enders Game - Chosen for his unique mix of ruthlessness and compassion, Ender, a "third" is taken from his family to lead the United Earth Forces against an alien threat known only as the "buggers" .
Speaker For the Dead - Enders life continues as a cleric of a humanistic religion, known as a "Speaker for the dead" this book centers around the life of a new race of aliens found on a remote planet collonized by portoguese catholics.
Xenocide - Continuing the story of Ender, and his friends, this story is a continuation of Speaker for the dead, and revolves around the personal struggles of the main characters, including a few "Pequinos " or Little ones, and Jane a sentient computer being.
Children of the Mind - Resolving the issues of all for alien speicies know in the universe, "ender" dies, and the storie resolves the life of Jane, the buggers, and the Pequinos.
These are a "must read" for any serious Sci-Fi fan.
"The clay can become a bear, but not while it lays cold and wet on the riverbank." -Orson Scott Card, Children of the m
I got dibs on felching rights!
He's not dead, but should be mentioned here. Eon and Eternity are fabulous, and some of the his 'future ideas' will become reality.
His Song of Ice and Fire series has to be the most
mature and realistic Fantasy series I've read.
Elaboration;
I like it in fantasy when the setting is a fantasy setting; say, different time, added swords and violence, magic, dragons etc.
What I don't like is fantastic circumstanes/events. Say, newbie swordsman defeats experienced soldiers on first battle, or nasty loser gets hot girl against all odds, etc.
In Martin's books, when the hero is against big odds, HE DIES. In the third book the whole course of the series is turned in one paragraph ALL OF A SUDDEN with the death of a great driving force.
The timing. Things may be given in detail, or sometimes things move so fast that you FEEL the chaos of the moment.
The Portrayal. Each chapter is from the standpoint of a different character, sometimes on opposing sides. It really makes you respect different forces. Sometimes months have past since you read about a character and you have to fill in the gaps. Sometimes a description a character gives of something is so subjective that it does not readily become apparent that it is what another character is discussing. Sometimes you read about something that has happened and another character who is directly involved with it doesn't know about it because of the speed of communication/misinformation.
The series actually gets better with each novel
By the third book you can hardly breath.
So, I was too lazy to use proper grammar or fully explain why he is the master. sorry, busy. But honestly this series pushes the Genre forward way past the contemporaries.
-mateusz-
Piers Anthony will stand the test of time. His Xanth series is classic, and he's written plenty of other acclaimed sci-fi/fantasy novels also.
It's not a silly question. The vast majority of the United States reads popular fiction/non-fiction. Stephen King, Anne Rice, Tom Clancy, Robert Jordan. Biographies of today's "heros": Princess Diana, Oprah, Monica Lewinski.
Fifty years from now, most of us will be reading their decendents and I couldn't guess who they will be.
In classrooms we'll be reading "literature." Those we consider "great" now and those we'll come to believe were great. We'll keep reading people like Shakespear, Dickens, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Joyce. Literary immortals. And we'll tack on whomever we please.
Specialty genres rarely make the cut. From Romance to Travel to Science Fiction to How To books; fifty year old specimens of these are more often considered novelties than anything of merit.
My guesses for the next to join the immortals:
Kahlil Gibran
Ayn Rand
John Updike
Anne Frank (is she still alive?)
And about a thousand more I want to be on this list.
This isn't just a "who's your favorite writer" question. It's also a "whose books would you bring with you to a desert island" question. Who could you stand to read again and again, and get something new out of them with each read? Who of a genre could you recommend to a buddy who hates that genre? Who makes you love reading, not just reading them? And who would inspire you to write?
I seem to have drifted from my Subject:.
In mathematics, one does not understand things, one merely gets used to them.
--VonNeumann
Like his stuff or not (I like about half), his fiction is strongly set in contemporary culture and for this alone will probably be read 50 years from now -- both for "this is what people were reading c.2000" and "this portrays N.American society c.2000"
je ne suis pas un fou
Come on, no one here has read The Belgariad or The Mallorean? How about The Ellenium or The Tamuli?
Eddings epoch tales are awesome.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
So what? We were asked : What authors (in any genre, fiction or nonfiction) alive today will still be read (hard copy or online) in 2051? Where is it said that we had to pick Sci-Fi authors ?
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
Sticking to the "(in any genre, fiction or nonfiction) alive today will still be read (hard copy or online) in 2051?"
Tom Clancy
Pat Cadigan
George Bush (hasn't written his yet, but it will be interesting - DCI, fall of Berlin wall, collapse of USSR, Gulf War I, etc)
the authors that will last the longest will be those that use their world to explore US- not just exercise their imagination. for that reason, the authors that are long on technology and short on humanity will get lost. I want to add my vote for Jules Verne- there's a man who knew how to tell a gripping story.
any explanation necessary?
ok, fine: amazon.com list and personal website
yeah, i know of course its sort of self-loving, but hes an interesting author..
familiarize yourselves with a click, lazyarses.
The chances are some version of D&D will still be played in 50 years time, and if you ever read his
'Tales OF the Dying Earth' Series, you can see how
inspirational he was for a generation of Fantasy readers, I belive he is still alive today (though he must be getting on). Maybe Robert Jordan will still be read too, (if he ever finishes the wheel of time series, otherwise I suppose everyone will just give up)
I can add 2, Anne McCaffrey and Sheri S. Tepper, both very good authors, Tepper is the one less likely to be read, but McCaffrey's stories about the dragonriders of Pern are just wonderful, and so are all other of her book that I have read, very good, and focusing more on characters than technology.
:(,
:)
Now on the men...
I didn't see Kim Stanley Robinson mentioned (the colorful Mars trilogy).
and now on to the ones that should be read, but it's not as likely
Peter Hamilton, the reality dysfunction
Julian May, the next Douglas Adams?
Harry Turtledoves alternate history books
those are the ones I can thnk of now
I'll start off with the following:
Zadie Smith : White Teeth. I predict this will be required reading in high school by the year 2020. If you haven't checked it out yet, I strongly urge you to do so.
Haruki Murakami : Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World . Really, just about any of his novels would suffice. This particular one is a blowing mixture of magic realism and science fiction.
Gabriel García Márquez : 100 Years of Solitude. He practically invented magic realism. Other than Tolkien, he's probably the most influential writer of the past fifty years.
Kazuo Ishiguro : The remains of the day. His writing is so precise, so exquisite, so flawless, I don't believe there has been an English-language novelist to compare. I actually prefer his The Unconsoled, but I don't think it has the same aura of classicism.
Stanislaw Lem : Memoirs found in a bathtub. I think this will stand the test of time as his most "excellent" book, even though gems like The Cyberiad and The Futurological Congress are undoubtedly greater crowd-pleasers.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
From what I understand, Zelazny died of pancreatic cancer (may be wrong, it's been a while since I read it) and was in none-too-good health when he wrote the last amber book. It showed. It looked very rushed.
I loved the amber books - first "adult" book I ever read without help. I believe I was 8 or so. My sister's boyfriend loaned them to me. He saw me reading "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" by Twain and handed me a paperback, and said "if you like that, you'll love this." I was hooked from the second sentence of Nine Princes.
The Culture novels are brilliant, and, to my mind, should form a model for the future development of human society. For those of you who haven't read any Culture books, see the FAQ
Choice of masters is not freedom.
I am sure that by this point in the thread, many of these authors will be redundant. Here goes anyway (single author per genre, living only, pretty arbitrary) ...
/. just loves this guy but I had to add my $0.02 - especially since he didn't make it into the original message.
... and hilarious.
... I can't read 'em all ;-)
Science Fiction: Neal Stephenson - I know
Fantasy: George Martin - If you haven't read his Song of Ice & Fire books, run (don't walk) to your bookstore right now! He stands almost alone in this god-forsaken genre for snappy dialog and compelling character development.
Satire: Kurt Vonnegut - "I've got doctorates in pig shit, horse shit and chicken shit. If you need me, I'll be out back shoveling my thesis."
Farce: Tom Robbins - Consistently brilliant
Thrillers: Tom Clancy - Now if they'd just stop ruining his books with crappy films.
Popular Science (non-fiction): James Gleick - His "Chaos" is a terrific read.
Physics (non-fiction): J.D. Jackson - You're not a super-geek until you've grokked the fullness of "Classical Electrodynamics"!
Computer Science (non-fiction): Donald Knuth - See Jackson in physics above. Replace "Classical Electrodynamics" with "Art of Computer Programming I - Algorithms".
History (non-fiction): Alvin Josephy - His "Patriot Chiefs" is one of the most interesting books I've ever read.
Cuisine (non-fiction): Julia Child - duh!
Sorry about the limited selection of genres
Although SF now seems like a narrow genre, time tends to wipe out such notions. Jules Verne comes to mind. His books are read by all sorts of people, not just the lame star trek crowd. The best work of any genre will eventually become part of the classic litterature.
Asimov's books on robots will always be relevant. The authors who use SF to illuminate the human character will be relevant. Orwell will be relevant. All the Star Wars/Star Trek offspring will sonn be forgotten. Most of the dragon and knight sort of fantasy will soon be gone. Too much of the SF/Fantasy litterature is like Barabara Cartland for people who don't care for bodice rippers. Just replace bodice for space suit, and horse-cart with space ship.
Another factor I would include in this, is how much read the author is today.
An old favorite of mine is Dickens. He was wildly popular in his time, but not considered very fine litterature. However, his penny novels have stood the test of time much better than his contemporary's, who wrote flat, boring pieces about the dilemmas of the upper classes. So when trying to pick out the classics of the future, one might want to look for similarities with Dickens.
Agatha Christie is another one. There are better mystery writers out there, but her name might be the only one remembered 300 years from now.
If I have to pick the Dickens of this century, it'll be Stephen King. His short stories are excellent. He writes pure fiction, and is not afraid to break some laws of nature. He is extremely productive, and a best-seller. Teh best-seller part is what surprises me a bit, since I usually try to stay away from the unwashed masses reading habits. I guess sometimes the unwashed masses are right. Or maybe they buy the books for the flashy ingredients, not realizing what gems they are. Some of his books dig deep into the human character. He does not try to please the literature critics and besser-wissers. He just wites and writes. Some of his books have a strange ending, but that was also the case for Dickens.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
What will be considered literature in 50 years. Very few science fiction authors will manage that. Among those there are mostly older authors like Asimov, Heinlein, Tolkien, Dick, LeGuin, and Clarke. But some of these authors that people have been listing just don't have any real staying power. All of those authors backed up their great ideas with, at the very least, solid writing and good plots. To make an example of Robert Jordan, whatever his real name is, I've read the first 6 books. In the midst of that 6 book I realized he had nothing original to say. In his mind, everyone of his male characters thought the same way, and all of the female characters thought about the men as stubborn mules everyone other second. Now some people may still enjoy his writing for the plot, but plot doesn't last 50 years, particularly if it's so long that someone has to read 6,000 pages.
The fact is that any author or book that has lasted this long was trying to say something about humanity, not just convey a good story. Even though Tolkien denies any meaning in his trilogy, he clearly explores the nature of humankind. And the fact is, there isn't much of that in science fiction these days. Aside from a few notable exceptions, most authors are just telling tales.
That's why I think most of the authors that will still be read from this century are those that manage to both sell and be critically acclaimed. For example, Michael Chabon. Adventure's of Kavalier and Clay is a fantastic novel which sold well even before it was awarded the Pulitzer. Now it's a national bestseller. The man is in his 30s. There are a number of post modernist writers who absolutely should be remembered in 50 years, it's just a question of whether people will find post modernism appealing. By the way, as far as I've seen, nobody can really define modernism or post moderism very well. They more or less define an era. The other current writers who will still be read, and I think there are a lot: Gunter Grass, Don Delillo, John Updike, Cheever, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Marquez, Jorge Borges, Vonnegut, Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, and so many others. And some of the classics from the lost century and beyond will always be read: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Salinger, Carver, Chekhov, Nabokov, and more that are slipping my mind at the moment.
These are just a few of my favorite things
D.M. Thomas When a body catch a body coming through the rye...
Every highly moderated post so far has been some sci-fi or fantasy author. Yes, some of these authors probably will be read in fifty years, but not nearly as much as the "great" writers of the 20th century. A good corollary is music. Sure, people will still be listening to Black Sabbath and King Crimson in fifty years, but not nearly as many as will be listening to The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Why? Because that's the way music criticism has been running for the last thirty years, and it is showing no signs of changing directions. In order to understand why authors are still read fifty years after, you have to look at the critical direction. This shapes what is talked about, which shapes what is read, which shapes what is known in the future.
So I would say that in fifty years the most widely read authors of the 20th century will be:
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
Vladimir Nabokov
T.S. Eliot
James Joyce
And probably a few others I've missed. This is the way modern criticism is shaping up, and, personally, I like it this way. Then again, a few of these could be dropped and a few added in the coming years. F. Scott Fitzgerald was not overly popular in his own time, and only became well respected when he was rediscovered in the late forties. Likewise, Shelley was practically worshipped as the greatest romantic poet for much of the 19th century, but his standing dropped dramatically with the "new criticism" of the early 20th century. This has already happened to a degree with Hemingway as he is now regarded as a bit sexist.
So yeah, some S/F is worthwhile and will be read in the future (I'd point to Dune and and LotR)...but the above authors will almost unquestionably be read.
Checkout taccom my worl war II simulator
Anybody else remember/like J G Ballard? He was kinda quirky but I read his stuff all through high school and it had a big impact on me ...
For those who are unfamiliar with Lem, I'd recommend starting with the Cyberiad, which is a collection of fables involving two robot builders. It's whimsical, witty, and accessible. My favorite, though, is the vastly different Solaris, which in some ways reminds me of Borges. For those unfamiliar with Borges, perhaps Labyrinths or Dreamtigers would be good starts. Borges' prose and poetry are dense, compact, and carefully wrought; fascinating as his themes are, it's his style that is most distinctive.
I don't have the spare brain cycles at the moment to talk much about either author, but you can find some decent Borges resources at Booklist.com. A google search should net some good Lem sites. Mainly, I just wanted to chime in my agreement with the parent post.
People mention William Gibson- I can see that, primarily for the 'Burning Chrome' stories and 'Neuromancer', but I think Pat Cadigan will stand the test of time better. "Mindplayers" is an incredible piece of work.. I haven't got "Synners" yet, but "Fools" is so much more ambitious that it gives you whiplash, and pulls it off. I don't know anyone else who is able to use _typeface_ for _dramatic effect_, put it that way. There's a moment towards the end of Fools (which uses typeface to indicate narrating personality) that gives you chills when you notice the identity 'slip'. William Gibson doesn't do that, he just wallows in grit, though some of his stuff has formidable intensity.
I think Douglas Coupland will be seen as an important author in the long run. It's very easy to write rubbish that's 'slice of life' and ordinary, but it's very much another matter to set up hidden tensions and suspense, beneath the surface of the narrative, and then finish by resolving them still without obviously calling attention to them: my pet example is in the online version of 'Microserfs' in which the tension has to do with the narrator's dead brother, a conflict never dealt with, and finally brought into the open- what's being resolved isn't about the father's problems, it's the way the narrator's life has led him to his own resolution- concluding with the blinking lights that characterise the narrator's life lighting up the sleeping father. I realize a lot of people will think this is reading ridiculously much into it, but that's exactly my point- this is why he's a legitimately great author. His writing makes very big points in very, very understated ways.
Finally- in an utterly, totally different field, remember Dale Carnegie and "How To Win Friends And Influence People"? The guy writing books like that in the modern day is Harvey Mackay, an envelope tycoon with a lot of basic common sense and honesty. As usual, he's continued to write even after he's said most of what he had to say- not that the sequels are bad, they hold up well- but the primary book by him is called "Swim With The Sharks Without Getting Eaten Alive", and it certainly will stand the test of time- and will also tell you not to buy anything in a room with a chandelier in it ;)
I totally forgot about him.
;-)
I feel that his Gaia trilogy was instrumental in establishing the potential of women as strong action characters leading to such delightful film roles such as Sigourney Weaver in the Alien films and Linda Hamilton in T2.
However, it is his examination of bioengineering in his "ten world" novels such as the "Ophiuchus Hotline" that will surely secure his legacy.
Plus, "Millenium" is super-cool
the dark tower series is one of the most complex and interesting scifi/fantasy series around
I believe in my heart that one day Lord of Light will be recognized outside of the science fiction ghetto. When Zelazny was on, he was as inventive a stylist as any of his "literary" contemporaries.
Phillip K Dick was original in every way. I still read Ubik every few years, and it still fucks me up. I think his work is incredibly influential on pop (i.e., TV and movie) science fiction. The Matrix is pure PKD. I think he really writes about the uncertainties of his era in a way no one else did, and wrote about drugs in a way that nobody but Burroughs (whom I don't really like) could, and that's the kind of thing that folks 50+ years hence will get from him.
I really like Neal Stephanson, too, but I can't really call him inventive, as almost everything he does is lifted straight from V era Thomas Pynchon.
What, you have never even heard of him. Come on, hes relatively new, but that doesnt automatically mean that he is bad!!!
All his novels: a must read!!!!
What about Ray Bradbury or Kurt Vonnegut? Of course the reason they don't seem to be considered is that, unlike Heinlein or Asimov, they escaped genrification. Too be seen as an SF author is instant cred death and banshies you to the specialist author ghetto.
But works like Fahrenheit 451 or Slaugherhouse 5 are more widely regarded. That's why you find them in the general Fiction section at Barnes & Noble. Having works that are highly respected yet aren't SF works helps too (e.g. Mother Night).
Interesting this same reason seems to have eliminated them from this competition here as they aren't "real" SF authors.
What is music when you despise all sound?
-Hemingway
-William S. Burroughs
-Allen Ginsberg
-Kurt Vonnegut
-Stephen King
-L. Ron Hubbard (sci fi, not scientology or any other crap like that he wrote)
-Robert Jordan
-Friedrich Nietzsche !!! people still read him, just underground!!
p.s. - Two up and coming authors that still fall roughly under the sci-fi rubric and that I can recommend are Jonathan Lethem and Ken McLeod. Check them out.
My favorite (and one with enough critical praise to make me think he'll be read for a long time) is George Saunders, a writer who publishes frequently in the New Yorker and has two books of short stories, Civil War Land in Bad Decline and Pastoralia. Some of his work has a science fiction edge, being set in the future, but it really defies categorization. One recurring subject is the downtrodden and picked-on. His stories are unbelievably imaginative, and there is both wit and heart in his writing -- in 2 pages one can go from laughing out loud to crying. My favorites are The End of Firpo in the World (in Pastoralia) and the 400-lb. CEO (in Civil War Land). At least one of his stories is published online here.
Why did we all just forget about THE MAN?? seriously..... I mean, I love Stephenson, Gibson, and the whole lot of them, but I find it hard to believe that noone seemed to mention the author of one of the greates sci-fi stories of all time... "I have no mouth and I must scream".... Did you guy forget where the "Matrix" story was ripped off from??? heh heh..
-da5id
I like Guy Gavriel Kay very much... his Fionavar Tapestry trilogy is very well done. It's one of the few trilogies that I caught as it was being written so I had to wait impatiently for the next book to come out. :)
Another must-read author (if you ask me, that is) is Storm Constantine. I didn't care much for her book Sea Dragon Heir, but her Wraeththu trilogy is wonderful. If I could have only three books in my life, it would be these three. Eventually I'll have to order some more of her stuff... I can never seem to find it in bookstores.
If anyone's interested in some literary analysis of the SF/Fantasy genres, check out the Genre Evolution Project at the University of Michigan. It's still a work in progress (papers are being published as we speak), but interesting nonetheless.
Title says it all.
The authors that will stand the test of time are the ones whose stories actually have something to say to the audience of tommorow. Many science fiction authors have a nasty habit of dating themselves. What is incrediably imaginitive today might be stale 50 years from now, and only of literary interest to english majors and literary historians. William Gibson is an absolutely amazing writer. I love his work. However, will he stand the test of time? His work does focus on technology a lot, often at the expense of the characters. While his imagination of the world of tommorow is an amazing experience today, will it be as hard hitting 50 years from now when a good deal of what he has imagined is realized or surpassed? I think some of it will. Neuromancer is still an excellent read despite the fact that much of the technology (i.e. The Net) has been realized, and not precisely as he envisioned. Another science fiction author that stands out in my mind is David Brin. His take on human relations with alien species is unique, and could only be outdated by actual alien contact. His books are filled with the fantastic, but he keeps his work grounded in real science. (He has a doctorate of astrophysics and has consulted for NASA) Besides having some truly origional ideas and real science in his novels, he also builds living breathing characters that are absolutely compelling. Even if you ignore the ideas and science, his books are still a good read just for the characters and conflict. There are other authors I should mention but am simply too lazy to write about right now. =P One thing we should keep in mind is that the classics of today may not be readily apparant to us. Tolkien's work was not well received when it was first published, and there are a plethora of other classics that went unappreciated in their own time but are dear to us today. It's quite likely that the real classics that everyone will be enjoying 50 years from now are books nobody here has even heard of, let alone read.
More likely literature types that get taught in schools...
Italo Calvino
Joyce Carol Oates
John Updike
Primo Levi
Borges
etc.
You can't "wait" until copyrights expire anymore. The best thing you could do is work toward getting the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act ruled unconstitutional, and ensure that copyrights one day will expire.
People should have enough of a sense of pattern recognition by now to realize that in 20 years, Disney will still be around to make sure nothing created after Mickey ever goes out of copyright. So classic works like the Rhapsody in Blue may never be available to the public, and the books you mention may very well fade quietly into the night.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
some of the most intersesting and complex scifi/fantasy stuff around:
1. the illuminatus trilogy(robert anton wilson and robert shea)
2. the Dark Tower series(stephen king)
3. the aprentice adept series (piers anthony)
4. Kurt vonnegut's early stuff is great scifi though his later stuff is more important literatur
5. samurai cat
How could anyone forget the man who taught us about the fnords?
If you haven't read his work yet, you don't know what you're missing. Try here for some book excerpts. It's probably best to start with the fiction, like The Illuminatus! Trilogy and The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy.
______________________________________
Ever notice how fast Windows runs? Neither did I...
Sticking with the Sci-Fi fantasy theme.
His Thomas Covenant books are, too me, simply amazing. The depth with which the characters are developed in unmatched by other fantasy writers.
For instance, I liked Jordan's earlier books, but now they just drag on and on. Lot of things "happen," but it never seems to matter and I never get the feeling that I understand what drives any of the characters.
I have an inkling Ayn Rand will survive, she'll be seen as an exaggerrated form of 20th century philosiphy.
I want to see Douglas Coupland survive, I've always connected with his books, even as a pre-teen, as a demonstration of the alienation that is the root of the GenX/latter-half-of-the-century culture.
There's more, but I have an AP US history test to study for.
This kind of question reminds of watching old science fiction movies. Entertainment that attempts to portray the "future" is always hamstrung by the fact that any vision is constrained by current knowledge and to connect to its audience in any meaningful way must include contemporary references, which necessarily dates the material immediately. Every "future" seems simply to be a forward looking time capsule of the period in which it is produced, and inevitably says more about its own time than the time it purports to portray.
The same with sci-fi. Who knows who will live on? I certainly wouldn't look at the best sellers to tell me. Look back and some old best-sellers lists from the 30's and 40's and see how many titles you recognize. You'll probably say, "who the hell was that?"
Some cases in point: Kafka was barely read at all during his time and directed that all his papers be burnt upon his death. It is only through the "faithlessness" of his executor that we are able to read him at all. Salieri(?) of 'Amadeus' fame. He was by all accounts one of the most popular composers of his day, but who knows of him now except through the play and movie in which he is portrayed as hopelessly mediocre. Bach led a very parochial life, never straying very far from his home town and church, yet wrote volumes of what is now considered to be some of the greatest works of all time. It is really only after his death and through other scholar's research that he has come to be so recognized.
Who will people be reading in 50 years? We probably aren't even reading them now.
On the other hand, the people who truly make us think (Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein come to mind) are the authors I'm concerned with. I'm sure people will always be reading Stephen King, but that doesn't mean he's a great author. Ditto Anne Rice, who certainly is not (in my ever so humble opinion.) But there is some hope for actual literature, too; After all, people still read the classics. Hell, they're teaching people about Marie De France in High School these days, bless their little educational hearts.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not because he was especially profound - although he certainly was at times - but because his humor is universal despite the sf setting. I've bugged a lot of people who positively loath science fiction into reading the Hitchiker's series, and do you know what? They love it, all of them. This was the best of British and sf humor all combined by the brilliant mind of Douglas Adams, and I really can't imagine a time when people will stop saying to each other "Hey, this guy Doug Adams wrote some really funny stuff. Read it!"
I would also argue that this degree of absurdist, uniquely british humor in science fiction was really a new innovation of Douglas Adams, although I do know I'm on thin ice there.
As is obligatory in any post about Adams, I would like to close by saying that Douglas Adams most definatly was a man who always knew where his towel was, and his literature reflects that.
I'm the stranger...posting to
William Gibson
Kurt Vonnegut
Stephen King
Douglas Adams
That's the Top 5 I think will be around 50 years. hmm, well there are others, five is too short of a list.
Douglas Adams, it counts as Sci-Fi and everyone can always use a laugh.
Or how about Robert Anton Wilson, for the Illumantis (sp?) trilogy.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
These comics are WAY too topical - they make sense at the time, but as soon as we forget the petty struggles to configure win2k ISA server, or the win32 Apache port, or any other similar issue these comics address, the humor will lose a lot of its value. That said, I think historians who specialize in the twentieth century might get a kick out of them.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Sentimental clerk who's a DNA fan. Nothing wrong with that, mind you - I would have done the same thing - , but it has no deeper meaning.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Singularity? You buy that crap?
Since by definition we can not see beyond the Singularity, we may only list here a few dark horse candidates who will appeal to the AI Minds of the expanded readership by virtue of having written about artificial intelligence:
Orson Scott Card -- Speaker for the Dead (1986)
I hate to nitpick (well, I love to nitpick, but I hate getting berated for it), and perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but it sounds like you're saying Speaker for the Dead was written about artificial intelligence. It wasn't - in fact, as far as I remember, there was no mention at all of artificial intelligence in the entire series.
If you're referring to Jane, I'd suggest you finish Xenocide and Children of the Mind or check out some fan websites - Jane wasn't artificial.
--Dan
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
1) Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
2) AC Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama.
3) Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker
4) Daniel Dennett - Content and Consciousness, Brainstorms
5) Robert Wright - The Moral Animal
6) Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time
'nuff said
The thing that made Poe great was the way his stories and poems struck a chord with the reader, made them really empathize with desperately unhappy, disturbed people - and he could do that because he was himself very disturbed and unhappy. Read "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Raven" if for some strange reason you haven't already, and tell me you don't fell unsettled by them, that you don't identify with the narrators on a very deep level.
No go read a Stephen King novel, novella, or short story. Is he a talented writer? Are his stories and characters engaging and thought-provoking. Absolutely, on both counts - I really do like King. But the problem is that his works very often comment directly or indirectly on our modern society, mores, and values. "The Long Walk" was one of the best pieces of short fiction I've ever read - and I did empathize with the protagonist - but it plays to a large degree on twentieth-century values and ideas.
Poe, on the other hand, is timeless. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a story about a descent into madness. Nothing more or less. Very little setting is given, and the story is short enough that you really don't get a feel for the society of the day - but that is what makes it so universal - all the extraneous stuff is cut out.
Does this make any sense, or am I full of it?
I'm the stranger...posting to
Thomas Pynchon- people will still be trying to figure Gravity's Rainbow out in 50 years
Neal Stephenson- same goes for Cryptonomicon
Alexander Solzhenitsyn- maybe the most important Russian author of the 20th century, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich preserves the horrors of Stalinism for generations to come.
Don Delillo- his books speak volumes about America during the last half of the 20th century
Quite possible David Foster Wallace, if he gets over his own cleverness and produces something that won't seem dated 20 years from now.
Most of the SF authors that seem to be so popular here need not apply. Ditto for other genre-bound authors. Regardless of how good these writers are at storytelling, the vast majority of their works are formulaic and derivitive.
In that vein, look at some of the authors people cited as timeless on these posts:
- Dr. Seuss - All his stuff was written in the 40's-70's, yet his messages ring true, even the political ones. (If you've never seen his collection of anti-Nazi cartoons, run out and get it).
- Larry Niven - Some of his technology is dated (mainframe computing) but his stories are still fantastic. The fact that Known Space takes place in the far, far future helps.
On the other hand, Tom Clancy will not (IMHO) "stand the test of time," and not because of the quality of his writting (although some might criticize him for that). No, what I mean is that his stuff becomes dated so dang quickly. Look at his subject matter: politics and technological nuts & bolts details. You'd be hard pressed to find two subjects that have changed more radically in the last ten years. I mean, try to reread Red Storm Rising as anything other than "What may have been" and you bust a gut laughing (On the other hand, The Hunt for Red October works great as historical fiction).Of course, don't weep for poor old Tom: he's laughing all the way to the bank.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I perked up when I saw your reference to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. For anyone with an interest in history, and/or politics, it is a must-read.
You could've hired me.
Fortunately modern criticism has essentially discredited the idea of a divinely ordained canon of classics, in which Homer stands at the top and Shakespeare is the greatest English author whom no man can ever hope to match; and the virtues of what used to be dismissed as "genre fiction" are being recognised.
It'll take a long time for any of that to filter down into the lower levels of schooling, but don't worry - your views are shared by most modern academics.
In the broader sense, in which "classic" does simply mean "has stood the test of time/is recognised to be really rather good", there's nothing wrong with the term at all. Have a look in the "modern classics" section of your local bookshop - you'll be pleasantly surprised at what's in there these days. And I look forward to the day when Pratchett et al are also found on those shelves.
2 words "DARK TOWER"
Those of you who have had the pleasure of reading those books and figuring out the links to all of his other books knows that this man is disturded. It was funny that is topic be brought up because this morning i was talking about how in 25 years king will take poe's place in high school literature. His character developement and plots are rivaled by none. he lets his imagination run wild so we don't have do. Anyone who can honestly say he doesn't deserve a spot on their top 5 has obviously not done much reading in their life. The dark tower series alone is worth putting his name on this list.. even in it's uncompleted form. then add all of his other works and it catapults him to the top of my list.
Stephen King
George Lucas (If you can count him)
Chris Carter (Ditto)
Micheal Stackpole
Timothy Zahn
My new title at the office is "Vice-President of Everything Else"
I refuse to get an account, so most likely no one will read this as it'll be below everyone's threshold. Bleah. If someone would mod this up to +1, I'd appreciate it.
That said, I would like to draw everyone's attention to Thomas Ligotti, an absolutely amazing contemporary author that no one has yet mentioned. He writes exclusively short horror fiction, and his style is rather outside the mainstream of contemporary horror, so he isn't very well known to the public at large. He has, however, received immense critical acclaim, and he has been anthologized with Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, and Neil Gaiman, just to name a few authors that have been mentioned by others. Besides his very original and lyrical style, though, he has lately taken an interdisciplinary approach to fiction, collaborating with the musical group Current93 to produce joint works of prose and music. The overall effect is striking and quite unlike anything else being done right now. If you're interested, you can read some of his stories for free at his website, www.longshadows.com/ligotti
I'm sorry, man, but come on. They were saying back in the 50s that they'd have sentient AI in ten years. In the sixties, they were still saying it. Ditto the seventies, eighties, nineties, and now the oughties. Given that track record, is it that wise to bet on sentient AI within fifty years? And don't talk to me about the "vast strides" we've made in AI, because they don't exist. We've made kick-ass expert systems, true enough, but the state of the sort of true generalized AI that might lead a long time from now to sentience is still in its infancy.
One last point: How the hell do you code something when you don't even know how it works? And can anybody tell me in precise, painstaking detail how sentience works? Well enough to program it?
I'm the stranger...posting to
That one was VERY large indeed - his robot stories, foundation, and a lot of his other works were all part of this universe, although you need to read a lot of his stuff to see it.
I'm the stranger...posting to
With that in mind, who do you think might be a good (or at least sucessful) author who will be forgotten not because of the quality of his/her work but because of the choice of subject amtter?
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
There are many bookstores where the distinction between living and dead is the distinction between fiction and literature. It usually works pretty well, as if a person's works are still in print after his death, then they're likely to be meritorious. It's also very objective. This doesn't always work, as your case points out. (I'm not arguing DNA's merit, but if Danielle Steel died tomorrow ... well, you see where I'm going.) Genre authors don't usually make the jump, but some do.
Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
Jd Salinger will probably stand the test of time. Catcher in the Rye is a classic. Plus, he's mysterious and that is always a sure way to get at least a cult following. Most of the other authors I could think of were already dead though. I think PKD will stand the test of time. He wasn't just sci-fi for the sake of sci-fi, most of his writings had a larger point to them, and insanse as it sounds, he probably beleived quite a bit of what he wrote. Stephenson might still be read, but I don't think he will as it stands now. He's written some great stuff, but I don't know if he has quite gotten to that one book that will cement his place in literary history yet. Even though he's dead, I feel the need to include Vladimir Nabokov. He WILL be read in 50 years. John Steinbeck will also be read in 50 years, if for no other reason than for the historical context of some of his books.
Here is my question though, what philosophers of the 20th/21st century will still be read in 100 years?
Tim
to be popular, or considered a classic, in 50 years is Nancy Collins's "Sonya Blue" trilogy about a vampire who is *not* undead. It was a damn fine read. Last time I saw it, it had been re-released in a single-volume trade paperback.
utter rubbish
...Stephen Donaldson for the TC series... great stuff, which should be read by everyone... (Not so keen on his Gap series stuff tho')
No Norm, those are your safety glasses; I'll wear my own thanks...
What I want to know is why everyone's heard of Gibson, and yet no-one seems to have heard of W.T.Quick...
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Dickens wrote novels that, more than anything else, explored the tragic and terrible human condition of the poor in 19th-century England. His novels, while they certainly use their characters to good effect, are used to send a message about society.
King also has strong characters - I could argue that they're even stronger than Dicken's in many ways - but those characters are used only to drive a plot, a plot that usually conveys no real social message. (With the exceptions of some of his earlier novellas.)
I confess, I have a hard time thinking King will be considered a classic author. But even if he is, he will not be in the same niche as Dickens.
I'm the stranger...posting to
This thread misses the point: Science Fiction
literature is a highly distributed content creation/distribution system, with roughly 10,000 authors. The system (not some sample of 5 authors) will stand the test of time precisely because of network economy and the quality of content. Time for p2p with micropayments to those authors?
See my little web site:
An annotated list of 3,284 links, also some brief notes on 6,108 authors and pseudonyms NOT on the Internet, for a total of 9,392 authors' hotlinks or names or pseudonyms or notes.
This is arguably the largest on-line encyclopedia of science fiction authors (which includes copious external hotlinks and e-mail links) known to exist. Total length exceeds 3.7 Megabytes of text. It includes over 1,550 non-biographical encyclopedia entries on Fantasy and Science Fiction terms. There are many other bibliographic websites (typically lacking external hotlinks), and they are referenced.
The parent domain
slices that distributed system by chronology, theme, country, and other dimensions.
I have plenty of favorite authors -- after all, my co-authors and co-editors include Asimov, Bradbury, Brin, Clarke, Feynman, Heinlein,
Sturgeon, L. Sprague de Camp and others -- but it is the SYSTEM, the culture of science fiction, that must be seen as an integrated whole.
This thread misses the point: Science Fiction
t ml
literature is a highly distributed content creation/distribution
system, with roughly 10,000 authors. The system
will stand the test of time precisely because of
network economy and the quality of content.
Time for p2p with micropayments to those authors?
See my little web site:
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/authors.h
An annotated list of 3,284 links; also some brief
notes on 6,108 authors and pseudonyms NOT on the Internet, for a total of
9,392 authors' hotlinks or names or pseudonyms or notes.
This is arguably the largest on-line encyclopedia of science fiction
authors (which includes copious external hotlinks and e-mail links) known
to exist. Total length exceeds 3.7 Megabytes of text. It includes over
1,550 non-biographical encyclopedia entries on Fantasy and Science Fiction
terms. There are many other bibliographic websites (typically lacking
external hotlinks), and they are referenced.
The parent domain http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/
slices that distributed system by chronology, theme,
country, and other dimensions.
Hell, even laypeople can quote the Three Laws of Robotics, and people who haven't even read Robots and Empire can quote the zeroth law.
People who've never read Foundation know about psychohistory, and psychohistory, robotics, etc have become a part of the english language because of Asimov.
So, odds are, he'll be the one remembered a hundred years ago, one way or another.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
No offense, Asimov is good, but I found his stuff a little 'loose'.
It seemed to take several novels to get the gist of the Foundation society and what was going on.
The authors I mention drop you 'onto the island' of their world with enough survival information to get by without turning it into a textbook. Asimov seems to drop into lecture mode quite often. It's his style, but it's not for me.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
Literally. Reading "Atlas Shrugged" hurts. I did it once, on a dare, and I had a headache for a week. That woman is just so damn preachy - she stuck a 40-page lecture on the evils of helping people in the middle of the book! 40 pages! No interruption! After that, I gotta say, I read a steven king novel right away, and it was like taking a warm shower. Never again will I open a book by Rand - she was a sadist!
I'm the stranger...posting to
As noone has mentioned him yet...
Theodore Sturgeon
Everybody here seems to be focusing on the sci-fi/fantasy authors, and not many others. Probably because most people here read mostly sci-fi and fantasy books. Everybodies top ten list will be based on his or her personal taste. The list at www.writersdigest.com of the publicly voted best 100 writers of the century includes alot of sci-fi/fantasy greats, but aslo includes many other authors who are equally good. I think any one of the people on this list could be in a top five list.
Interseting to note too that the preivious list was English authors only. We, in the english-speaking world, sometimes seem to forget that there are other languages on the planet, each with authors of equal worth.
300 some odd posts, and while I didn't look too carefully, I didn't see a single "Stephen King, dead at 54" troll...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I nominate JG Ballard, not only for his thoughtful books on how technology changes humanity (Crash, High Rise, and Concrete Island), but because his early short stories are really good science fiction.
Read his short stories such as "The Concentration City" (where humanity has so populated the earth that the only solution is to build onward and upwards), or "The Subliminal Man" (about a society that is so reliant on consumerism it must turn to subliminal advertising to force people to continually buy products) and you can't help but admire his imagination at the implications of technology and society.
Perhaps he isn't flashy space opera, but his ideas are consistently interesting and engaging, and to me, that's a hallmark of a good sci-fi writer.
With quotes like this I certainly hope Bill Gates' book is a classic for the ages. It would be a shame if his genius wasn't preserved for generations to come.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers" - Bill Gates, The Road Ahead
May well be remembered 50 years from now in the same way we still recall the Brothers Grimm. I personally believe that her books are even more compelling than any of the authors listed in the header.
Michael Crichton's writing is amazing. Have you read Timeline? I would call is adventure-science fiction, but nevertheless compelling.
I'm surprised I didn't see one reference to David Eddings. I loved the Belgariad and the Mallorean. I can't believe no one else enjoyed his books?
1;
I'm surprised there aren't more non-SF authors listed. Well, OK, this is /. -- maybe I'm not so surprised :-) My partial list of living authors off the top of my head:
Science Fiction and Fantasy- Neal Stephenson - good cyberpunk and other works, very readable
- Ursula K. Leguin - The Left Hand of Darkness and other classics
- C.J. Cherryh - she's very prolific, and writes both science fiction and fantasy
- Orson Scott Card - the already classic Ender's Game
OtherReading through the lists of important authors, am I surprised as to who gets left out. In order to further confuse the debate, I offer these (not necessarily Sci-Fi) authors:
Arthur C. Clarke-Find me somebody who hasn't been exposed to his work. He was Asimov's contemporary and just as good. 2001, Rama, so many others, I can't believe that he'd be forgotten. Also, lest ye forget, he postulated the communications satellite.
Salman Rushdie-If for no other reason, he'll be remembered for angering the entire Islamic world and then spending several years in London under British protection.
Sir John Keegan-Like Stephen Ambrose, a gifted historian with a knack for making his writing accessible to the public. Even if you're not a history buff, read Face of Battle sometime. It was published 25 years ago and is still popular.
Carl Sagan-He wrote, in addition to being an astronomer, and is well known outside the academic community.
Finally, I'd like to point something out. Most authors that stand the test of time are remembered because they accomplished something outside the literary realm or had some distinguishing characterisitc. For example: Sir Benjamin Disraeli was a 19th century British politician, but also an accomplished author. Yet, his works might not be known today had he not also been a successful politician.
Ugh, long post, sorry.
No statement is true, not even this one.
Douglas Adams and Larry Niven. I know Ringworld is one of those future stories that might seem really silly in 50 years, but I think it has just enough internal consistancy and depth that it will stand the test of time. I mean, it is already pretty old by scifi standards and its still very much loved, so it is off to a great start. A lot of material writen around the same time is already laughable. But not Ringworld.
And of course Douglas Adams is just classic. Mostly because the science is so absurd it isn't really the point anyway. And that will last a long time to come.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
I agree 100% with Asimov and Heinlein, they wrote timeless books that will still make sense 50 years from now.
We will probably remember:
James Patterson (Alex Cross series)
Michael Crichton
Stephen King
We will hopefully forget:
Tom Clancy
John Grisham
I am a hardcore Clancy fan, but his books are going to be terribly outdated in 50 years. Grisham was doing great but I am not too happy with his last two books.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
"The Royal Family" was last year's book; a searing look through the underworld of the Tenderloin in San Fransisco, examining prostitutes, child molesters and homeless people, not to mention many others in a tapestry that has the breadth of Dickens and the spiritual intensity of a Kafka or a Kerouac. It's a moving and depressing book - there were moments that made me laugh and there were other moments that made me squirm in my chair with horror and loathing. Underneath it all is an obsession with the old Calvinist idea of the Elect and the Damned - and of course, Vollmann's compassion is for the Damned. 50 years from now people will not truly understand the American society of our day without reading him.
... It makes anything Stephen King's ever written read like Dr. Seuss. He's also written a brilliant series of novels dealing with North American history, a truly strange cyberpunk fable (You Bright and Risen Angels) describing the war between the inventors of electricity and insects, and "Butterfly Stories: A Novel" about a photo journalist who goes to Thailand to immerse himself in a world of prostitutes, AIDS, and slow self-destruction. Vollmann is a genius with heart and he may well be the best writer of his generation.
I'd also like to suggest a story he wrote in "The Rainbow Stories", dealing with a mad killer who stalks winos on the streets of San Fransisco and force feeds them Drano
As far as other writers are concerned, I find it interesting that no one's mentioned Thomas Pynchon. People will be reading Gravity's Rainbow 50 years from now, simply because they still won't have figured it all out.
Oh, and there's a name a lot of people have mentioned who is definitely overrated - Ayn Rand. She's an interesting philosopher - anyone who wants to consider the questions of freedom and economics needs to pay attention to the questions she has raised and needs to be able to refute (or justify) her answers to them. But literature? Hardly.
And for the fantasy buffs out there, I would like to suggest James Branch Cabell's "The Cream of the Jest". It's a funny, sad and poignant book without the usual medieval war on steroids posing of most fantasy novels.
Face it, this book is bound to be around for quite a long time. Granted, it will be on 80th edition, but still, a timeless classic none the less.
His work has made it 70+ years so far and spawned an ever-growing pile of pastiches, homages, and occasionally, a really novel and entertaining piece of work (Richard A. Lupoff, please call your office...). At least one publisher has a strong interest in keeping his work in print (Arkham House), and the literary critics don't seem to have finished with him yet.
I don't think Lovecraft is likely to get the same kind of name recognition as, say, Jules Verne, but I have a feeling his work will survive.
Definitely. Not only is his science believable (and already possible, in some cases), but his fiction is also what I'd call "literature", not just forgettable adventures that happen to take place in space.
Visit his official site at http://www.lem.pl.
No non-English authors in your list, which is a bit of a pity; you've probably never read anything by Stanisaw Lem, Boris and Arkadi Strukatzki or Karel apek, and you don't know what you're depriving yourself of :-)
There is absolutely no reason to panic.
Here are a few that weren't listed: (Mostly because they do not write in English)
Dostoyevski (I have no idea if that's spelled correctly) - his book Sin and Punishment (don't know if that is the correct translation)
Albert Camus - L'etranger (The Stranger)
And of course J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye
Besides that, I wholeheartedly add my support to these authors:
Frank Herbert, Terry Pratchett, Roger Zelazny, Dr Seuss, Orson Scott Card and and George Orwell.
- Make it idiot-proof, and someone will build a better idiot.
What separates him from other 'great' sf/fantasy authors is that he can really _write_ - his stories stand on their own grounds. Unlike many of the other greats, who are idea men/women first, writers second. Martin's fiction will probably stand up to repeated readings 50 years from now, after the other greats stuff seems a little dated.
I predict Gibson will become the E.E. Doc Smith of our generation: remembered, but more as an icon of the times.
Probably one of the writers in his genre (horror) that will be remebered.
Yeah, I love Shirow's stuff (my favorite is still Dominion Tank Police :) ), but I agree that it's much lighter. Because of that, I don't know if it'll "stand the test of time". Well, possibly Ghost in the Shell, if only because of the movie, and it's pretty serious (although, like you said, lighter than the movie). Appleseed is probably a better story though. Also, he might get historical bonus point for doing it all without assistants :).
I've never seen the Battle Angel manga - I'll try to check it out. If only I wasn't so poor these days...
George Gaylord Simpson's The Dechonization of Sam MacGruder is to Jurassic Park what Lord of the Rings is to Roald Dahl (not to dis Dahl, but you get the picture).
Although not so proliffic as Heinlein or Asimov (the only book of his I like is I, Robot), Simpson represents SciFi at its best. A must-read.
In the fiction category, I nominate Thomas Pynchon, author of Gravity's Rainbow.
Also--She's only been gone a few years, but Gina Berriault wrote some of the best short stories around (next to Flannery O'Connor).
While he's not a fiction writer, Stephen Ambrose has turned out to be one of the more accessible/readable hsitorians of the past 20 years. Freshman history professors will still be assigning his stuff 50 years from now.
Just had to add a link to this story:
How the world was saved
It's Tolkien, not Tolkein!
~paul
I've seen Pynchon mentioned in about 2 comments. From my(geek's) point of view, he is my favorite author of "literary" prose. Not only is he deeply familiar with the bulk of Western literature(I caught an obscure reference to Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" in Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon"), but he also knows his science:
In "Gravity's Rainbow", there are passages which make reference to behavioral psychology, organic chemistry, the physics of rocket science, and Godel's theorem.
In "Vineland", there is a passage comparing God to a hacker(correct use of the term). "Vineland" was written in the late 1980's. Most non-hackers still aren't even aware that there's a distinction between "hacker" and "cracker".
In "Mason & Dixon", Pynchon gets into the difficulty of measuring a straight east-west line between Maryland and Pennsylvania, among other difficult surveying tasks, not to mention other astronomical problems from those times.
Additionally, his prose is awesome, complex, and usually hilarious. A sergeant in "Gravity's Rainbow": "'Course, old Blood 'n' Guts handed Rommel his ass in the desert. 'Here's yer ass, General'. 'Ach du lieber, mein arsch!' heh heh heh". Sometimes I think that "Snow Crash" was just a ripoff of "Vineland", and that "The Cryptonomicon" was just a ripoff of "Gravity's Rainbow". Nothing against Neal, it's just that he isn't paving entirely new ground.
Pynchon will certainly be read in 2051.
he'll do
I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned the Pern books as they are a staple of classic SF.
...
They were what, in effect, got me hooked reading this stuff, starting a hobby that has me pretty much attempting - single handedly - to keep the publishing industry alive today
- JD
A Poem about PKD, by Theodore Sturgeon If I recall:
Phillip K. Dick is Dead, Alas
Let's all queue up to kick God's Ass
-Wayne Steele
Please, both Egypt and Syria launched attacks during Ramadan in 1973, deliberatly during this time because of the supposed prohobition on warfare.
---
Silence is consent.
I haven't seen these ne where mentioned yet, or am i just blind?
Douglas Adams - author of the famous Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Piers Anthony - Author of an amazingly funny fantasy series, Xanth
Other posters have already mentioned the important writers from the early half of the century. Let's not forget the more recent greats:
/.ers love will be remembered by the people who visit the 22nd century version of /., not by the masses. Of course, Tolkein will always be remembered.
Don Delillo (White Noise, Libra, Underworld)
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow, Crying of Lot 49)
William Gaddis (Recognitions, JR)
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest, his essays)
Haruki Murakami (already mentioned)
possibly Jonathan Franzen
Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-5, Mother Night )
John Barth
Philip Roth
In terms of sci-fi, I imagine selections from Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury will be remembered. All those smaller audience books regular
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
Can't believe he wasn't mentioned yet! As far as authors still living, he is definitely one of the best. Though I am not a big fan of "Immortality" (I am pretty much alone on this, though); "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is one of the best books I've ever read.
sic transit gloria mundi
Nice to hear from you, Mr. Moran. :-)
John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus Trilogy, W.S.B.
... was a real pissant.
Python anyone?
Tip for anyone who though The Matrix was original: read Tiger! Tiger!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Really, really good author... although not *hard* science fiction. Comes to mind the Riverworld series (esp. the first 2 volumes), the Dayworld series (all three are great) and the Creator of Universes series. Have a look at his Official home page
Best Regards,
Durval Menezes.
I have never met a computer that didn't like me.
That's because it wasn't called "Charly," it was called "Flowers For Algernon," by Daniel Keyes. It was subsequently made into a movie called Charly. To be fair, I believe there was a limited edition of the book published with the name of the movie.
I suppose that the novel might be a "dark horse" entrant in the 50-years-from-now question. I don't remember it being of any particular greatness in terms of writing quality (perhaps someone can correct me), but the plot ranks as a great high concept story which has been used over and over again since.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
- George Lucas. Yes, Phantom Menace wasn't all it was hyped to be. But after almost 25 years, Star Wars is still flying off the shelves....
- Sir Paul McCartney. They don't make you a smelly English Knnnnnnnnnnniggit for nothing...
- John Williams. Classical music for people who hate classical music. And then there's "Catina Band"....
- Don Henley and Glenn Frey. Hell froze over, and they still play "Tequila Sunrise." And then they told us to Get Over It.
- Andrew Lloyd Weber. CATS. Phantom. Evita. They shoulda named him "Tony."
- Chuck Jones. The Grinch. Porky Pig. Wile E. Daffy. Hell, we know Daffy survived into the 23rd Century, just ask the next guy....
- And last but not least, J. Michael Straczynski. Tolkien brought the saga into the 20th century. Lucas put it on the big screen. JMS brought it to the small screen, and did the same kind of pioneering with CGI that Lucas did with what became ILM...
Of course, there are others who are only recently dead that deserve mention... Charles Schultz, Gene Roddenberry (less for scriptwriting than for starting something that just won't dieBut the folks I have mentioned have, by creating outside of traditional print, created icons that have, for the most part, already stood the test of time. These aren't the only ones out there, either.... just what came off the top of my head over Sunday brunch...
--
Oh, drat these computers. They're so naughty and so complex. I could pinch them.
-- Marvin the Martian
I'm sure what's-her-face will be remembered.
It's been ages since his last new publication, I believe he's still teaching in NYC. Despite his very small output, he's garnered numerous World Fantasy Award nominations for his short stories and novellas. His one lengthy novel, The Ceremonies from the mid-80's, is overdue for a follow-up.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
James Ellroy writes some of the best historical fiction available. He will be studied 50 years from now because he doesn't give us a glassy-eyed sugarcoated past, and his research is impeccable. I have a feeling he will be read in Fiction as History classes for many many years. Equal opportunity offensive, which is reflective of the times he's writing about, unflinchingly entertaining (violent, vulgar, slick), remarkably literate (even elegant!) and he makes what seem to be crackpot conspiracy theories (the Mob and the CIA were selling heroin to finance the Bay of Pigs, and then later decided to kill JFK for screwing them on it, etc. etc.) sound like rational, most-likely theories of how Bad Bad Men made our country and our politics into what they are today.
PS-Robert Heinlein! Proving we can make the future more misogynistic than the present!
am i the only person that loves 1984?
Stephen Baxter is someone who I've never heard mentioned when it comes to SF. I'm not sure why, because he uses SF as a platform to write great stories about people.
Some of his books include: Raft, Ring, Timelike Infinity, and Moonseed. The Xeelee books (Ring, Raft, and many more) deal with the entire history of the universe. He also goes quite deep into String theory.
I don't think that his name will be as big as Wells or Asimov and thats too bad, because his works are just good fiction, even outside of SF.
Math is like sex. People who get it are popular in class, people who don't are not.
Still living, but among the best American writers we have. Would be nice to see TLDV in my lifetime though.
Besides the obvious SF/fantasy candidates (Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Robert Silverberg, Guy Gavriel Kay, Tim Powers, Kim Newman, Fritz Leiber, Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons) . . .
Paul Johnson
William Manchester
Tom Wolfe (captured zeitgeist of 60s, 80s, & 90s)
V.S Naipaul
Christopher Hitchens (he's growing up)
Jacques Barzun
Norman Mailer (infantile politics, was a good writer once)
George Macdonald Fraser
Umberto Eco
Mark Halperin
Walter Tevis
Shelby Foote
John Keegan
John Kagan
Robert Kagan
Stephen Ambrose
Henry Kissinger (_Diplomacy_ stands out)
Irving Kristol
Gertrude Himmelfarb
Roger Kimball
Hilton Kramer
Eric Hobsbawm (hate his politics, but he's a must-read, and always will be so)
James Lee Burke (hate his politics, but he writes well - or wrote, seems to be in a rut of late)
I would definitely have to agree with having Orson Scott Card on that list, Tom Robbins would have to be on it, Saul Bellow's books have been read for the last 40 or so years so I think another 50 is reasonable. Something I am kinda curious about is that for the last 30 years classic literature has not changed, high school and college students are still reading the books their parents read, so what I am truly wondering is will our children be reading these same titles or will new classics join these older ones, and who would be a good author to choose these new "great works of literature" from?
Phillip K Dick.
Represent, yo.
# wrote sig.txt, 23 lines, 31337 chars
I am surprised that Robert Jordan's serie Wheel of Time is not talked about. His work rivals that of Tolkien in the complexity of the world and the richness of the characters. It is truly amazing how real his world feels while at the same time redefining fantasy. I recommend this series to absolutly everybody. I bought the serie myself and the books are so worn now cause all my friends have read them. Amazing.
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
OK, this one's partly in jest, but I love their books. And hey, anyone who can tell the same story 4 times, using 16 books to do it, and still be just as readable by the end can't be half bad... ;-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Good children's books have long lives because parents introduce their children to what they enjoyed as children. This is doubly true of childrens books that can be enjoyed by adults.
Look at how long the Oz books have been in print for example.
danuel simmons, he wrote the hyperion seirce, he might stand the test of time
hack the planet
"Mentifex," aka Arthur T. Murray, shills his AI project on every technical website known to man. He's actually one (of many many) reasons I stopped visiting ZDNet.
Ursula K. leGuin
Frank Herbert
Philip K. Dick
Poul Anderson
Others I would suggest have already been mentioned but I would second the nomination of Roger Zelazny.
For me, it's simply the most important book
ever written. Not be the best by Quinn by any
stretch, but a starter on a voyage that will
leave you gasping for breath. My personal favourite
of DQ is "the story of B", but YMMV.
"Ishmael" shook the very foundations of the
way I see the "world" (our culture) today, and
not many books if any can make that claim.
Read "Ishmael"; it will change your mind.
Uwe
http://www.ishmael.com/
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
... most people here agree that what we are giving the readers of tomorrow is:
1 - Some scifi
2 - Glorified children's books (Rowlings? You gotta be kidding me!)
3 - Fantasy (your basic Medieval Space-Castle genre)
and it goes downhill from there
I certainly hope this won't be the case, because then the "Land of Tomorrow" will be a poor place indeed.
sic transit gloria mundi
Conrad introduced the genre of the sea story. If you want to read excellent and powerful books read any one of his many. They are excellent excellent books that have to be read into. But if you can analyze it and get into it then you will have found the true power of this author. His most popular book is probably "Heart of Darkness," this is the book that Apocalypse Now! is based on. I could list many titles but I say just go out and buy any of his books (or all of them like I did).
What good is a used up world, and how could it be worth having? --Sting
I haven't seen him mentioned -- I thought the Gateway series was pretty good.
Dan Simmons' Hyperion was fantastic, but I also enjoyed most of his horror stuff too - much better than King IMHO. I also think Cherryh deserves mention for the recent "Foreigner" series. I can't wait for "Defender."
I believe writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Don Delillo, William Gaddis and David Foster Wallace will still be read fifty years from now. I believe that most will be read a hundred and fifty years from now. I also believe that Kurt Vonnegut and JG Ballard will still be read as well as Maya Angelou and such recently deceased as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. I'm not so sure that many authors in genre fiction will make it.
Author of The Cyberiad, starring Trurl and Klapaucius, which inspired the game SimCity.
A articulate Polish universal fiction writer, who thinks that Philip K Dick is a Visionary Among the Charlatans.
Nobody can figure out how he writes in Polish, yet the English translations of his books are full of brilliant poetic puns and neological phonetic jokes. He's got a great translator, Michael Kandel, to say the least.
His son Tomasz Lem created and maintains his father's official Stanislaw Lem Web Site.
-Don
PS: But here's what Philip K Dick, another great writer, had to say about Stanislaw Lem to the FBI:
Philip K. Dick to the FBI, September 2, 1974
I am enclosing the letterhead of Professor Darko Suvin, to go with information and enclosures which I have sent you previously. This is the first contact I have had with Professor Suvin. Listed with him are three Marxists whom I sent you information about before, based on personal dealings with them: Peter Fitting, Fredric Jameson, and Franz Rottensteiner who is Stanislaw Lem's official Western agent. The text of the letter indicates the extensive influence of this publication, SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES.
What is involved here is not that these persons are Marxists per se or even that Fitting, Rottensteiner and Suvin are foreign-based but that all of them without exception represent dedicated outlets in a chain of command from Stanislaw Lem in Krakow, Poland, himself a total Party functionary (I know this from his published writing and personal letters to me and to other people). For an Iron Curtain Party group - Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not - to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas. Peter Fitting has in addition begun to review books for the magazines Locus and Galaxy. The Party operates (a U..S.] publishing house which does a great deal of Party-controlled science fiction. And in earlier material which I sent to you I indicated their evident penetration of the crucial publications of our professional organization SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA. "
Their main successes would appear to be in the fields of academic articles, book reviews and possibly through our organization the control in the future of the awarding of honors and titles. I think, though, at this time, that their campaign to establish Lem himself as a major novelist and critic is losing ground; it has begun to encounter serious opposition: Lem's creative abilities now appear to have been overrated and Lem's crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks on American science fiction and American science fiction writers went too far too fast and alienated everyone but the Party faithful (I am one of those highly alienated).
It is a grim development for our field and its hopes to find much of our criticism and academic theses and publications completely controlled by a faceless group in Krakow, Poland. What can be done, though, I do not know.
-Philip K Dick
From Stanislaw Lem Questions and Answers.
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
All four books in this series, and to a lesser degree the following trilogies/duologies are must read for anyone prentending to be a SF buff. Great colorful SF.
only infrmatn esentil to understandn mst b tranmitd
Kurt Vonnegut!
I'd say Joseph Heller, too, but he's hopped the twig. I think.
These guys qualify as literature. Sorry, but a lot of the stuff mentioned here is readable, but not terribly profound.
Reading the majority of the comments, no one is given the reasons that most "classics" share; that being universal themses.
These are those stories that span ages and most cultures; stuff that made Tolkien famous and has a bunch of people re-reading his work in anticipation of movies!
If you've ever read his trilogy, you'll notice that it's good - vs.- evil all over again in an interesting world. Robert Jordan has an amazing world, but I can't see him sticking around as a classic because he doesn't write to the heart and soul of people.
Consider Shakespear who may not be the most famed sci-fi writer, but in the Tempest touches on forgiveness and the depth of meaning of life and love between enemies and family. People don't read Shakespear today because of the hefty language barrier and they had it spoiled for them in some formal education, but I encourage you to pick it up and take a look! Shakespear's claimed "genius" should NEVER be put in his plots! They are trite and many clearly borrowed/stole. The reason you read Shakespear is that he writes so that we can see the depth of the characters, and in them we see reflections of our selves.
What do you think makes Star Trek (or did make Star Trek) so popular! We saw bits of our daily world in those shows with racism, hate, love, betrayal, forgiveness, grace, justice, and all the rest. The sci-fi wrapper was just a very tasty sugary hook, hehehe.
I'll say that many sci-fi series and books will linger on, but I think the ones with the "universal theme" as it's called, will remain. Read Frankenstein! It's sci-fi and is really a great book. Read The Time Machine. Read The Tempest and King Lear and Paradise Lost. (Paradise Lost does drag, though). Read the Christian Bible and you'll see universal themes applied to life here in our reality; In our Internet; In our world.
The bottom line to this rambling is that despitre genre or plot books that deal with certain issues stick around regardless of what people do. Farenheight 451 will be around for a loooong time. It deals with rights of the individual and breaking the mold. Oh well... you get the idea.
Sam
Frank Herbert - Dune. It didn't win the Hugo Award for nothing.
George Orwell - 1984. Dated,yes. But also timeless.
you know Katz will stand the test of time, when old and grey /.ers will still be whinging about him
Come on, that guy's writing haven't even begun to sink in yet, and his prophesies will come continue to support him.
He's got a better grasp on the human condition than anyone else I've read in my life.
How could we forget to add to this list the infamous John Norman (aka John Lange) the author of the Gor series of books. What? you haven't heard of Gor? Best you go and Google it then. Probably not everyones cup of tea but they are much sort after by various people (many of us who live in a real life Gorean relationship), and I will imagine will be still very popular in many years to come.
Dan Simmons - A true genre-busting writer, and one that Harlan Ellison seems to think is one of teh best living authors
Kim Stanley Robinson - for The Memory of Whiteness above and beyond anything else. . .
James Morrow - elegant religious fiction that doesn't preach
Asimov's novels went downhill after "Third Stone From The Sun", but a lot of his short stories were good. A great deal of his later stuff appeared to suffer from the "you can't edit this, he's a genius!" attitude while his earlier stuff seemed to suffer from the "we can't edit this, we have a dealine" attitude. He was very good at describing two cultures; inner city new york and a little russian village. Extrapolating those cultures out to a galactic empire didn't really do much for me, even at age 15. He may be remembered the same way Thackeray is remembered today, an incredibly prolific writer that isn't read much anymore.
The late George Turner made a point some years ago, that there was no SF in his home country that could be considered literature by the standard of it lasting the test of time. I think the majority of current SF will be read by fans of the obscure as light entertainment in fifty years time, like reading the Leslie Charteris "Saint" short stories now - or they will change medium and distort wildly, like the "Saint" TV program (resembles the stories) and movie (sort of resembles the TV series slightly).
He has had assistants (and may currently use them). His locale in Japan (in the art boonies) made it hard to find qualified people, and required him to do all the art himself for a period of time. Look at Appleseed Volume 1 versus Appleseed volume 3 and it's like looking at Dilbert versus Michael Manning. His stuff developed both artistic and setting detail, with heavy footnotes and appendixes. That, I think, is part of the reason he's good. The other is that every one of his works has a deep unanswerable question. In Appleseed, he questions if happiness, contentment and peace are real and/or obtainable, or if they are mythic impossibilities. In Ghost in the Shell, he questions "Are we only the sum of our memories?" and posits a future when those memories can be altered, and poses an interesting question of identity when two sets of knowledge ("ghosts" or souls) are merged into one - who is that person? Where did the contributors of those two sets of knowledge "go"? It's worth noting that the movie ended there, while the manga goes on for quite awhile in a almost completely text internalized conversation. (If you read this far, you're a fan - you *do* know that the word 'manga' refers to both printed and animated cartoons, right? Despite that, I'm using 'manga' in the Americanized version of just referring to the printed comic).
Of course it's all wrapped up in sex and violence, but sex is part of being human, and the violence is almost a showcase for future weapon concepts (thus the footnotes and anal detail in the appendixes about rank insignia and such).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
The 20th century authors still read 50 years from now will mostly be non-sci-fi authors. Sure, a few sci-fi authors will still be read - J.R.R. Tolkien, Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, etc. But the others you mentioned - hell I haven't even heard of half of them NOW. In 50 years the 20th century literary giants that will still be read will be authors like: George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Maya Angelou, J.D. Salinger, etc.
I don't think anyone would seriously argue that the sci-fi authors you mentioned are more well-read even now than someone like John Steinbeck is, let alone in 50 years.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Even if we limit ourselves to fiction, sci-fi will be a *very* small portion of the fiction that survives to be well-read 50 years from now. Hell, I haven't even heard of half the authors Cliff mentioned NOW, and either have most other people. Authors who will stand the test of time are more timeless authors - ones like J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm), John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath), etc. Does anyone really think in 50 years anyone will have heard of Orson Scott Card, much less place him beside authors like Steinbeck?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
When an author dies or wins a prize or shows up in the news some other way, bookstores will often move his or her her books to a more prominent location, turn the front to face outwards on the shelves, etc. Since Douglas Adams had a pretty wide readership/appeal even outside of SF fandom, it would make sense to move his books to a more prominent location to increase sales among those who never look at the SF section but might see his book, remember hearing about him in the news, and decide to check it out. When William Gibson had a couple of bestsellers, his books started showing up in the general fiction shelves too.
I'm normally a Tom Clancy, Lord of the Rings, Turtledove reader. Due to recent events, things like Black Hawk Down, The War for God, and
From Beirut to Jerusalem are now on my reading list.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
in the year 2042(i think). It will be interesting to read the world he envisioned 50 years earlier. Already interesting is how pervasive the Net is in the book, when it was first published in 1990 before the Internet was popular as it is today.
(Ugh. I deserve a -1 for that title. Maybe someone will be nice enough to give me +2 for being Informative.)
Calvino is not, per se, an SF writer, but if you like Lem or Dick, his philosophical & folklorish style of writing will lend himself to you.
The three titles I own of his are:
Invisible Cities (an allegory based on a fictional dialogue between Marco Polo & Kublai Khan)
The Castle of Crossed Destinies (the telling of several stories based on cards from a Tarot deck)
If on a Winter's Night a Travel (selections from several imaginary books . . . well, you have to read it for yourself to understand)
And if Calvino has sated your weird literature taste, then there is Milorad Pavic. His _Dictionary of the Khazars_ evokes HPL's own creation of the _Necronomicon_.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Even though Phil Dick was certainly all that (eg, Valis), and excellent with it, I wonder how much of his mass popularity here is due to the continuing thing with films being made of his stories.
I think that Phil Dick is rather like Lovecraft in that he is more important for the themes suggested in his work rather than the literary merits of anything he actually wrote. And as with Lovecraft, the best films based on Phil Dick's work (for example Blade Runner) tend to be those that take the most liberties with the source material but preserve the feeling.
How much of the voting will in hindsight show ephermeral trends (eg, the loathsome Hubbard).
Only if Scientology collapses. Remember that 100 years ago Mormonism was considered as wacky as Scientology is today, and yet today it is a mainstream religion.
What about Harry Harrison ? The Stainless Steel Rat & the Deathworld series !
A Song of Ice and Fire.....it is a fabulous fantasy series in the works, the first three books have been written and are just amazing. I'm surprised I haven't seen him mentioned earlier.
(although LeGuin has already been mentioned)... both come to mind as enduring talents whose work still reads as crisp and fresh as it did decades ago... neither is necessarily as landmark, SciFi powerhouse, but their influences persist, especially among television writers... the humanity that they both focus on is timeless... and will always appeal, especially to young minds...
Wow, I can't believe I have scrolled through this whole list of comments and haven't seen a post promoting Margaret Weis and/or Tracy Hickman yet. Their Dragonlance epic is/will be a classic. Admittedly most of the companion books aren't that great, but the original trilogy (Chronicles) and its later sequel (Legends) both written by Weis and Hickman are some of the best fantasy I have ever read. Then there is the Darksword Trilogy, and the very well done Death Gate Cycle. I think Weis and Hickman are going to be on the shelf for quite some time.
Have you noticed that Gibson has also made the "classics" list? I recently saw his book, "Virtual Light", published by Penguin Classics.
Jane Austen is from the Regency period of the 19th century, so she doesn't really count. I suppose you are referring to the PRESENT Dalai Lama?
Maeve Binchy would not be very high on my list of "survivors", and Toni Morrison's production is terribly uneven.
How about:
- Salman Rushdie
- Thomas Pynchon (but NOT "The crying of Lot 49")
- Angela Carter
- Carl Sagan
- Jorge Luis Borges
- A. S. Byatt
- J. M. Coetzee
- Don DeLillo
- John Fowles
A good deal of these names are British; to me, they show far greater originality than many American writers... (ok, shoot me then...)
Regards,
engpjp
would be my two top picks.
Adams is forever the funniest and most timeless. (except for the digital watch bit).. I'll forever be wishing I could aim a Somebody Elses problem field over things so that I wouldn't have to look at them!
Speaking of Orson Scott Card. Anyone know what happened to the "trilogy" around Lovelock. The book was written early 90s and promised sequals but left us with a monkey that was mostly a wanker. (don't karma me off for that I'm being serious, you'd have to read it to understand).
All that being said, I think Card needs a new theme. He's exhausted the very relevent multicultural thing.
Guenter Grass (My Century, The Call of the Toad), Albert Camus (The Fall, The Plague), Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot), Emmanuel Bove (My Friends).
Not High Art, but fun and readable, and suprisingly literate.
If the couple of centuries before the 20th were anything to go by, the most successful writers (and by that I mean sales and critical acclaim, whatever the genre) are not necessarily the ones still read 50 or 100 years after their death. Take the 19th century - one of the biggest selling novels in the 19th was East Lynn by Mrs Henry Woods (great name), sold millions of copies, and is now hardly in print (it's still worth reading - combination murder mystery/love story). Or one of the most prolific novelists of the 19thC, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, wrote 80 novels, almost all bestsellers, including a couple of huge sellers - Lady Audley's Secret being one. You'd be hard-pressed to find it in a bookshop these days. Some bestsellers do hang around, like Charles Dickens, but his contemporary Wilkie Collins was just as popular in his day, and doesn't have nearly as high profile as Dickens still has - the Woman in White and The Moonstone notwithstanding (both excellent).
Going further back (stop me if you're bored), The Mysteries of Udolpho (Mrs Radcliffe) was HUGE at the turn of the 19th century - so much so that Jane Austen wrote a parody of it (Northanger Abby). The parody's still in print, the original is very hard to find (and having read it, you don't want to find it, believe me).
And it's not just literature where this happens. GE Moore was one of the leading philosophers of the early 20th century, a colleague of Russell and Wittgenstein - and now barely rates a mention. Yet you can have someone like Nietzsche who was ignored during his lifetime, and yet is today probably more influential and widely-read than ever in academic circles.
The obvious point is that we just don't know who will be big in 50 to 100 years time (tho its fun to speculate), although it's almost worth betting that it *won't* be someone we've all heard of today. Other times look for other things from their art, and we can't guess what they'll be. As it says in The Go-Between: "The past is another country, they do things differently there." So's the future.
That aside I can't see too many writers around today (living) who'll still be big (and I mean Dickens/Joyce/Proust big) in 50-100 years. Peter Carey, the Australian who's just won another big prize, might do it: you sci-fi fiends out there should try his novel Illywacker, it's crazy. JK Rowling's Harry Potter books probably will. Toni Morrison, maybe. So long as Martin Amis is forgotten as quickly as possible.
Gotta go, it's Clemens v Schilling... Clemens will probably still be pitching in 50 years time.
Enough said.
Question Authority....they probably aren't
Robert Heinlein
C. J. Cherryh
A. E. van Vogt
Vernor Vinge
E. E. 'doc' Smith
Frank Herbert (just for Dune, since they make kids read it nowadays)
David Drake
S. M. Stirling
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Michael Criten (jurasic park) Clancy (hunt for red october), Jose Farmer (river world sf series),
Not exactly SF writers by profession, but K. Eric Drexler and Ray Kurzweil may be writing what the future will actually be like in 50 years with more detail than any other SF writers I've read. See Nanodot.Org for more information.
Perhaps, but the original post was trying to list books that would appeal to AIs of the future. While Jane may not be an AI, what she goes through in the series would most certainly appeal to most AIs capable of understanding literature, I think.
Just to nitpick, I suppose.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
"Shockwave Rider",
"Sheep Look Up",
"Stand on Zanzibar"...
They just don't *feel* like Sci-Fi when you're reading them... they feel like newscasts and documentaries...
Well I guess I look at science fiction and literature a bit differently. So here are my authors whose work will be read and appreciated 50 years from now.
JACK VANCE - Crossing science fiction and fantasy Vance writes great stories which are not tied to science closely. His stories of the Gaien Reach are wonderful. And "The Last Castle" is a true classic.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON - I'm thinking less here of his Mars trilogy than his Orange County Trilogy and "A Memory of Whiteness." Again, not too closely tied to any given technology.
LARRY NIVEN - One work: "Ringworld" because it will last. No galactic core explosion but who cares? Perhaps it's a bit too '60s.
URSULA LEGUIN - for "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "Earthsea" if nothing else. She writes very well indeed.
GREGORY BENFORD - this one is riskier but Benford is more than a "hard science" writer.
GREG BEAR - just for "Blood Music" if nothing else.
I have a few picks that are sort of "off the beaten path"
LUCIOUS SHEPARD for "Life During Wartime"
CONNIE WILLIS for her short stories. I think "At the Rialto" will appear in many anthologies.
THOMAS PYNCHON for "Gravity's Rainbow"
and the staples:
ALFRED BESTER for "The Stars my Destination"
ROBERT HEINLEIN - the early juveniles were well done. His later work was self-indulgent crap and he desperately needed to be edited - hard - as he was in his early career.
I'm not sure about Arthur Clark. I don't think his work has legs.
He has my vote for Ring.
To Kill a Mockingbird.
'Nuff said. Just re-read it today...
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I see a ton of people mentioning SF writers. I also noticed that the question was "any genre". It's astonishing that nobody has mentioned SHAKESPEARE he's only been around for, oh... 400 years? My guess is he lasts the next 50. He's only the most obvious example. Feel free to name more.
No sig for you.
My top authors for "Still good in 50 Years"
Sci-fi
Bujold - (start with Cordelia's Honor ) MARVELLOUS
Moon - fantasy and sci-fi
Cherryh - Cyteen / Chanur / etc
Mystery
JA Jance
Hillerman
maybe list
Niven's Ringworld series may last
Weber is good ~
Clive Barker
and whever wrote Phule's Company
Hmm-
We create our society each time we interact with another person.
What kind of society did you create today?
Richard C Bond, Sr. 1986!!!
We create our society every time we interact with each other. What kind of society did you create today?
I don't know if we'll still be reading his books in 50 years but they're certainly a great way to pass time right now.
Here's a list: http://electronictiger.com/shorts/dw_hh.htm
On another note, I just love Baen's free library concept... a collection of freely downloadable copies of top notch books by a small but growing list of their authors.
My picks:
JK Rowling
Larry McMurtry
The Glass Bead Game is and will be a classic.
Terry Pratchett is a recognised Fantasy writer, as well as being famous for his comedy.
Douglas Adams is comedic science-fiction, and he is recognised.
Book bigots take those blinkers off your eyes, maybe you don't like his writing, but he is NOT OFFTOPIC.
Apalling moderation like this ruins the whole point of Slashdot.
It's not whether you agree with the post, but if it's on topic.
If we're talking timeless, immortal authors, I'm highly surprised that nobody mentionned Michael Ende. Whether his writings qualify as fantasy or philosophy is anyone's guess, but The Neverending Story is just that, a timeless masterpiece. I think it's one of those books that will always live on, possibly through centuries, because as long as there will be someone putting words on paper, there will be neverending stories, and Ende's book is about them, and why they matter. I know I'll keep re-reading it all my life long. It's worth it.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Walter Miller -Yes , he died recently. This book is SF literature.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
why? I really don't think it needs to be pointed out
Robert Anton Wilson
Hamilton, etc...
All those people were great fiction writers. Too bad someone
took them seriously.
were some of my favourite books as a kid. For a specific authour,
I'd add Erma Bombeck.
Look, I read Science Fiction (or better yet, as Harlan Ellison puts it 'Speculative Fiction') as much as the next guy, few of the people on the list are easily construed as classics, whatever your opinion.
These people are writing generic fiction, the equiviant of daytime television. The real people who should (though probably will not) be read in the future are those who chose to break ground with their writings. For me personally, I would give credit to Phillip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, Asimov, and maybe a few others. These are the types of author
who deserve to be remembered. ( I won't even begin to talk about whoever decided to list Tom Clancy on this list, that's not funny, even as a joke)
Though taste in literature is certainly subjective, I find it arrogant for people to give credit to those who produce tales no deeper than the surface words. Even worse than those, are the writers who rehash old plots with aliens and spaceships. Books like 'Stranger in a Strange Land' are what this kind of fiction can do, and more often should.
Now that I have babbled for a while, I would like to apoligize to those who feel differently than I and find these kind of bathroom reading hacks meaningful, but alas, I can't as this is a dispicable opinion, and not worthy of anyone!
Also, to the guy who bashed Wittgenstein for not being particularly deep, maybe the problem lies in the reader, and not in what is read...
The authors of religious works will almost certainly stand the test of time better than writers of contemporary fiction (although there are some that would contest that religious works and fiction fall into the same category, but that's not an avenue I was intending to address). As long as religions exists (and I don't see it going anywhere), there will be a significant number of people reading their corresponding religious texts.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Anyone remember 'Enders Game'? That is quite possiblely one of the the best Science Fiction novels I have ever laid my hands on. His later Ender writings were not nearly as good, but Enders Game.... damn.
Yea I know Orson Scott Card is not dead, but I definately think his book will be read for many many years to come.
-AC
Deep Down Every Girl is a Vampire.
Ferna of the Fern people.
Up there with JRRT. I like him because he isn't afraid to kill main characters. Its more life-like that way.
When everyone thinks alike, no one is thinking.
If you open your mind too wide, people will throw trash in it.
actually, that was the name of the movie with cliff robertson. the book was called "flowers for algernon," i think.
Robert A. Heinlein
Aldous Huxley
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Vladimir Nabokov
Larry Niven
Thomas Pynchon
J. D. Salinger
John Kennedy Toole (must-read: "A Confederacy of Dunces")
Kurt Vonnegut
I'm relating these to children's stories, which have shown a decent persistance.
The point is, that a book or a show can disappear leaving just small marks on society. But given the current techie culture of quoting heavily on certian books and references, we might expect the original Star Wars, The Matrix, and the general feel of Dr Who and Star Trek to suvive, these are doing better than other works, such as Blakes 7 or Babylon 5.
Given the vast material on Dr Who and Star Trek, we might find these surviving in a guise like Noddy, Mickey and Minnie, &c, where people are familiar with the characters, but not any specific plot.
Hitchhicker's Guide, may well be the new Alice in Wonderland, and the Matrix, and Star Wars may well survive as storys that give many quotes to, something like Black Beauty, or the Secret Garden.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Sewer, Gas, and Electric and Fool On the Hill.
I was waiting for someone to mention Egan. He is the single most imaginitive SF authour I have ever read, although Baxter is right behind him.
The best remembered writers of the 20th century (note, I don't say best SF/F writers of the 20th century as that would be redundent) were folks like Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arhtur C. Clarke. Fredrik Pohl, Philip K. Dick, L Sprague de Camp, Lester del Rey, Harlan Ellison, Clifford Simak, Alfred Bester, Ray Bradbury.
l
But some names of folks who haven't been mentioned that should be... Cyril Kornbluth (did his best rememebred works with Pohl), Henry Kuttnerand C.L. Moore (husband and wife) who wrote a lot of stuff together as Lewis Padgett (sp), Fredric Brown, H. Beam Piper, Randall Garrett ("The Highest Treason" is still a great story about what true Patriots will do when they have to), Gordon Dickson, Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison, etc.
I could go on and on listing great writters... (Did anybody meantion Ted Sturgeon yet? How about Murary Leinster?) Just that there are a lot of folks who may well be remembered.
The major thing is this: We don't get to pick who will be remembered. People get remembered because the future folks see some value in continueing to read it. I think all of these writters deserver to be remembered... but most won't be remember except maybe to English Professors specializing in 20th Century American Lit. And then a lot of them as just names of people who wrote something... which is then rarely read.
Oh well...
http://www.globalcrossing.net/~dnr/sfnovels.htm
Olaf Stapledon
--
Nahuel
I hope that Tad Williams Otherland series would still be being read in 50 years time. Not least because my copies will be worn out by then and I'll need some new ones. His excellent characters as well as his vision on how the Internet will grow and develop in the future will make interesting reading for people of that time, especially since the books are set approximately 50 years from now. Like readers of today reading some of the early Asimov stuff, it will be great to see how far off the mark he is.
Author / Claim(s) to Fame
Peter F Hamilton: Night's Dawn (Reality Dysfunction, The)
Greg Egan: Permutation City, Diaspora
Linda Nagata: Bohr Maker, Tech Heaven, Deception Well, Vast
Frederik Pohl: Gateway series
Orson Scott Card: Ender saga
Robert L Forward: Dragon's Egg
Larry Niven: Tales of Known Space, Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers, Ringword Throne
Charles Sheffield: Mind Pool, Orbs of Heaven (sic?)
Octavia E Butler: Wild Seed, XenoGenesis
Harry Turtledove: World War II alternate history
David Brin: EarthClan
Julian May: Galactic Milieu series
jon katz
Liberty uber alles.
me!
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Eggers' literary collaborators that will also make the cut:
* David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) -- A post-postmodern masterwork.
* Zadie Smith (White Teeth) -- A cross-cultural, multi-generational comic epic.
Fight for your right to read books!
Come on people! Heller - Joseph fricken Heller. Catch-22 will live forever (or die trying!).
Also Orwell and Huxley - the books from these fellas are just coming true...
True. I was being rather nice. In reality I'll just copy all the stuff anyway and let them try to figure out how to keep children from accessing the files after I've inserted them into FreeNet version 72.
:)
I don't have the money to buy off our officials like Disney can but I can out-geek them. It's best in a war not to fight where your enemy is strongest right?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
In the fiction genre: James Joyce of course.
It seems that most of the writers mentioned so far are genre writers, so at the risk of being too obvious, I'd like to nominate John Steinbeck.
The transcendent East of Eden may be one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century. A tragic and yet beautiful retelling of the Fall from Grace in a modern setting, the story manages to be simultaneously heart-rendering and uplifting by exploring the themes of destiny and freewill, righteousness versus callousness.
IMO, it competes with Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath for the title of Steinbeck's best work.
Has anyone heard of a guy named Michael Crichton? Hmmmm??? Oh yes, let's not forget Frank Herbert and Greg Bear. Oh, and of course people will still be reading Timothy Zahn, Kevin J. Anderson, and Michael Stackpole.
I belong to the ______ generation.
Kurt Vonnegut
Douglas N. Adams
But probably only for the fact the his later books had some of the weirdest sex around.
I'm still horribly scarred from reading it, but I seem to recall that "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" series was completely fucked up with all sorts of orgies and incest
Randy's dad was the one who devided up the furnature. Randy just hacked it so he would get the punchcards :P
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I know everyone in the Slashdot reading audience oozes brain brilliance like I ooze snot, and I'm simply throwing a snowball against the wind, but I would like to nominate Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman for their Dragonlance Series.
You're right, it's not The Hobbit. But it's good. And Star Wars isn't Star Trek either, is it?
---------- You are not the contents of your sig.:-p
Shikasta also provides a perfect explanation for the stupidity and short-sightedness of humanity, although I think it might a spoiler to say what that explanation is.
When was the last time you read a comic strip written 50 years ago?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
An analogy would be to compare primitive Mesopotamian clay sculptures to more modern artwork. No-one goes around claiming that the Venus of Willendorf is immeasurably superior to, say, Henry Moore's work - although for their time, those Venuses were pretty cutting-edge.
And in defense of science fiction, it's one of the only genres which allows themes to be explored that go beyond the mundane and boring details of current human existence. If it weren't for the pretensions of the aforementioned individuals, this would be more recognized. Some amazing work of great literary significance has been done in SF, but often has not received the recognition it deserves because of the limited perspective of those literary critics who believe that if it's not dealing with the petty trivia that fills their dreary existence, it's not relevant to their lives.
Don't allow yourself to be constrained by the tunnel-visioned, small-minded parrots who can only repeat how great someone who lived hundreds of years ago was, and how everything that's new and that's now pales in comparison! What we create in our time will become the legends and greatness of the future - appreciate our creations for the human genius that they embody, the equal or better of anything that has come before!
Alive:
1) Michael Moorcock
2) Ursula K. LeGuin
Dead:
1) Aldous Huxley
2) Orwell
3) Lovecraft
Greg Egan, particularly for "Diaspora", which, while being flawed in some ways, embodies an amazing depth of thinking.
I think not. These three are chiefly remarkable because they found a parade and got to the head of it or, at best, appealed to some very specific, topical part of the zeitgeist. The world hasn't quite turned out like they thought (Japanese ascendancy for Gibson's example). I'm willing to bet that they don't speak to anything as common to the human condition as, say, Ring Lardner, O. Henry, or Runyon. And who reads them any more?
If any of today's popular writing survives it will probably be Dr. Suess.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Yeh, If by 'writing' you mean 'copy and pasting other people's work to kuro5hin'
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
This guy is not only keeping the Cthulhu mythos goin but has also created a vampire series that puts all others to shame. Sure Anne Rice has cranked out some good tales about Lestat and company but Lumley makes sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that vampires are BAD and should not exist period.
also wish that Stepenson would get his new book out sooner ranther than later.
Alan Dean Foster bears noting as he can really develop a story full of great characters and then end a story in six pages.
----------- destroy evil immediately!
John Berryman, Seamus Heaney, Wallace Stevens, in that order.
illegitimii non ingravare
Rm *.* would only delete files with spaces in the name. You want rm *
Or perhaps the famous rm -rf *
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Edgar Allan Poe was credited as writing one of the first science fiction stories, "Ligeia."
Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage. Joshua Slocum
I say Michael Crichton because if nothing else, a number of his movies were made into Hollywood block busters. Jurassic Park, #2, #3, Congo (although it wasn't nearly as good as the book), and more I think. Good author. Good books. Good read IMHO.
Egan and Dan Simmons definitely.... but no one has meantioned David Zindell - His series (Requiem for Homo Sapiens)"Neverness", "The Broken God", "War in heaven" and "The Wild" are excellent, lyrical mystic/SF.... but I don't think he will be remembered as the books appear to be out of print already.
Edgar Rice Burroughs easily makes this list. Without a doubt. Or have we all so quickly forgotten about Tarzan? ERB published his first book in 1912(princess of mars). Go into any book store and ask for this nearly 90 year old book. They will ALL have it. What other pulp sci-fi authors can you say this about? Other than Verne (who should ALSO be on this list), who else in this genre has better stood the test of time? And how many of you were pissed that Disney's Tarzan strayed so far from the plot?
ERB has got to be on this list. Period.
God may be on your side, but Lady Luck is MY bitch
I noticed a strange thing at my local used book store - Right after Douglas Adams died his books were moved from the 'Science Fiction/Fantasy' section to the 'literature' section.
..wierd
He was always complaining that his books ended up in strange places, such as "travel", "Eating", "Religion", etc.
I'm wondering what their thought process was on this one? 'Science Fiction/Fantasy' is not 'serious' enough? He's dead now, so his writing is classic literature?
It's also that literary critics like to claim to be authorities into what the author was thinking. Which is easier when an author cannot contradict them
I hate to nitpick (well, I love to nitpick, but I hate getting berated for it), and perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but it sounds like you're saying Speaker for the Dead was written about artificial intelligence. It wasn't - in fact, as far as I remember, there was no mention at all of artificial intelligence in the entire series.
If you're referring to Jane, I'd suggest you finish Xenocide and Children of the Mind or check out some fan websites - Jane wasn't artificial.
If they have not read Xenocide (which explains exactly what she is) they might get the impression that she's an AI.
Obligatory Author: Frank Herbet (Specifically Dune). I know he's dead, but it was premature and relatively (15 years) recently. He certainly is a writer of this era.
First of all, my thoughts here are strictly confined to authors who write in English of some form. As for the longevity of current authors I think almost none will be around in 50 years, other than those within the circles of the literati (eg Nobel and Booker prize winners). The problem will be that the volume of content will continue unabated and the new prose (particularly in SF) will drown out that written today.
The problem with SF is that there is little to recommend it as literature, the plots are often excellent (for example I love greg bear and a grandchild of mine would surely enjoy his work as much as I did, but I don't think they will read him) and the ideas great but of this masse, it is only those who famously tie themselves to a point in time in the future that end up being read at that time, particulalry since their lack of literary "quality" means that they will notbe taught in schools. I think we have moved into a phase where the near future offers barren ground for the current author (perhaps current events will alter that) and so few will stand the test of time.
I agree with a previous poster who mentioned Steinbeck (although he too is dead) and I think that Irving Welsh will be read in fifty years because he speaks to/of the chemical generation whose lives will be "interesting" at that time.
One of the great problems is the lack of social comment in "populist" literature. It is difficult to find the Dickens of the late 20th C (in fiction) whose well crafted books critique the wrongs of the society of the day, through metaphor and satire. For it is those authors who are sought out to try and understand a society for ehich we do not have a direct experience. The other problem is that literature is no longer the most accessible vehicle for that form of comment any more. Television and even music is the metaphoric record of today.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Vonnegut? Pynchon? David Foster Wallace?! This is good stuff, here!
Donald Knuth - The arts of computer programming
Hardy,Wright - Introduction to the theory of numbers
Tom Apostol - Introduction to analytic number theory
Walter Rudin -Real and complex analysis
I.N. Herstein - Topics in algebra
Pure science fiction that more of today's writers grew up reading.
Besides the Barsoom tales, there is the Pellicudar tales on Venus as well.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
James L. Halperin: The Truth Machine; The First Immortal.
The Truth Machine explores what life would be like from a societial and moral perspective if a 100% accurate lie detector was created. The reason I believe this book is an important read is because it really looks at what our species would become if everyone was completely truthful, and what it means if someone is not truthful in such a society. A great deal of how our current society works is based on the assumption that a person can lie. One day in the future, take the time to think about how you behave when interacting with people and absorbing information, with respect to the truthfulness of those interactions and information. You will discover just how important the ideas of true, false, and shades in-between are to your everyday life.
The First Immortal is not as interesting from a philosophical standpoint as The Truth Machine, in my opinion. However, it approaches the issue of immortality in a similar vein. Our society is directly influenced by death, much as it is influenced by the ideas of truth. Halperin explores what our society would be like if life and death became much more absolute once immortality becomes a reality.
The strength of Halperin is that he is able to realistically explore these ideas while keeping the reader thinking about the world they are currently living in. While many other authors use science fiction to look at a completely different reality, Halperin's books read as if they are historical recounts of specific people who are currently alive in the present (1990-2000).
Tad Williams: Otherland & Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn
I like to think of Tad Williams as the fantasy and science fiction author who is the Tolkien for the rest of us. As anyone who has read Tolkien knows, his world is incredibly rich but the actual story sometimes gets lost in the detailed description he presents. Williams' "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" 3-4 book set (it was 3 books, but the last one was put into two volumes when reprinted since it was so long) is a fantasy trilogy which I believe builds as rich a world as Tolkien, but in the story that focuses more on developing characters than Tolkien does.
Although "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" is an excellent fantasy trilogy, it is not something which creates anything so special as to invoke discussion. The Otherland series (4 books), however, can very well do that. In some respects, this is like the anime series Lain in that it explores the blurring of reality and virtual reality, but it does not go as far as to say they are one and the same. Instead, the story presents bits and pieces of what it would mean to have two equally acceptable realities. I say bits and pieces because the focus of this series is more on the plot than on the ideas.
Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game & Ender's Shadow
Of all Orson Scott Card's books (BTW-the name Orson and the presence of the pig-like creatures in one of the Ender books makes me think of Orson from Jim Davis' comics), Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are the most impactful. The issues presented, the character development, and the story are thought provoking in different ways for persons of all ages. I think the greatest difficulty which Card had to face, and one which he handled amazingly, was to tell the story from an objective point of view. The motivations and emotions of the characters involved never force one particular conclusion upon the reader. It is the reader's responsiblity to come to his or her own conclusions, but the objectivity of the story makes it impossible to come to a conclusion which is inherently or completely acceptable.
The other books in the Ender series are also very good, and deal with difficult personal issues. I especially like the one with those pig-like creatures (I forget how to spell their name correctly). But in the books which involve Ender as an adult, the story is not presented objectively and instead of idea is mostly to explore an idea which Card has already come to a conclusion about. I'm not too crazy about the non-Ender books by Card.
- let us not forget - such prolific writers such as Michael Moorcock, who reaches grandeur in "Mother London" and RATFL status with "The Dancers at the End of Time", and Our Dear Little Friend Storm Constantine - her "Wraethu" books and "Calenture" are like a Jolt to the brain - and of course there is Fritz Leiber, and John Harrison, author of the Vironium/Urconium books, which richly reward a long, close rereading, and Calvin Batchelor's book on the founding of the People's Republic of Antarctica, and even Charles Williams' frankly strange "Christian" fantasy. Oh, yes, "Solaris" and other works by Stanislaw Lem will be read way into the future, because he makes a 7734 of a lot of sense.
They'll all be reread, simply because they break the mold that many of the genre fantasy and SF writers fit only too well - Read one, and you've read them all! %^()
Strangely enough, I think Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series holds up well pretty well thus far, and will continue to do so for about 100 years or more. His depiction of interstellar craft and interspecies politics are based more on good science, history, human design patterns, and common sense than those of Star Wars, Star Trek, and other popular sci fi genres.
Also, his universe has the variety and color that makes it very compelling - the same elements that made Star Wars compelling. From the urban slums that Flinx grew up in to the primitive, frozen world of Icerigger.
Russians, but their ideas are pretty cool.
I think that a lot of Clarke's work will live on - after all, awasn't The Sentinel once voted the best SF short story of all time?
Also I think that in say 50 years the playing field will be levelled across the C20, so some of the century's earlier writers will become more popular in comparision to today's fashionable writers, since in 50 years late-twentieth-century writers won't have the distinction of being "modern" and the large print runs of the current writers will no longer give them an advantage (i.e. in 50 years everybody will be reading reprints of the classics, whatever they turn out to be, so the fact that modern writers sold 100,000 copies in paperback in the 90s will not affect tomorrows readers as much as todays).
Here's another question for the panel - which will live longer - Iain Banks books, or Iain M. Banks books (i.e. the SF or the other stuff)?
Basically, there are those authors who date themselves by extending today's technology and describing it in detail. Then they hinge their stories on those technologies.
I don't think these people will survive. Michael Crighton's diamonds and state of primate training in Congo fit well into this category (not to mention the futuristic powerful imaging system he described, that now sits on many desktops). Jurassic Park did okay because cloning is cloning -- Tom Clancy's work will be outdated.
Then there are others who present a very 'human' story surrounded by technology. Crucial technology is more loosely defined and is based on an ultimate end -- human-like robots (Asimov) and emotional talking computers (Clarke). We've passed 2001's date and it doesn't feel dated.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Isaac Asimov Arthur C. Clark Ray Bradbury Frank Herbert
H.Beam Piper - He's dead, but by god he shouldn't be!
Alan Dean Foster - Sheer imagination. And fun. Spellsinging? Who woulda thunk it.
Peter F Hamilton - Nights Dawn. Mindstar. Need i say more?
Steven Baxter - hard science.. fiction
Greg Bear - as above..
L.E. Modesitt - 700 comments and NOT ONE mentions him! I am disappointed.
Heinlein/Clarke/Asimov et al
Philip K Dick - A look inside humanity..
E.E."Doc" Smith - The man did space opera better than any one else, before or since.
C.J Cherryh - Rimrunners/DownBelow Station et al.
Fred Pohl - He is good, and i mean good! Try "Mining the Oort" if you don't believe me!
Why and who is Terrance Dicks? He is IMHO the main writer for Doctor Who. As I see Doctor Who surviving, if nothing more than cult status, his writings will survive. I'm not saying that he is a great writer, just stating that he'll be remembered and read.
At last count, which is not up-to-date I have at least 20 of his books (scripts). I do enjoy a quick and precise plot.
Nobody has mentioned the Elric saga! I personally, as well as a few other people I have known, have read this series of books more than once. Perhaps by nobody nominating Moorcock I should realize that he isn't as popular as I thought. If anyone decides to check out his work, I recommend the books of his youth. His more recent stories have become more theoretical and convoluted. The stories he wrote when he was younger are much more exciting.
I know it's been said before, but I'd like to elaborate.
Dan Simmons doesn't seem to get a huge bit of publicity for some reason, but I think his writing will stand the test of time because all his stories revolve around characters.
He doesn't rely on short-sighted or ambitious predictions about the near future, and he goes beyond discussing relativity and androids. All his stories are about people, whether they be human, virtual, or artificial. Also, as is especially vivid in the _Hyperion_ series, he takes seemingly trite ideas about the future or physics or human nature, gives a detailed and arguably bleak picture about that future, and when it's all told, you wish you could be there.
I especially love Simmons's sci-fi. The _Hyperion_ series is vastly underrated, especially the last two books, _Endymion_ and _The Rise of Endymion_. But the wonderful thing about Dan Simmons is that he is masterfully intelligent, incredibly well-read, creative, and obviously driven as an artist to write. A common theme in his forewords is that the story demanded to be written. And the story never focuses on the technology but on the ideas and the most of all, the characters.
He's written in other genres and has proven that he is a writer -- an artist -- and the stories he tells transcend genre and time.
Can there be any debate?
Anne McCaffrey has been a mainstay of Sci-Fi for the last 20 years or so. The Dragon Riders of Pern was a masterful series. It got played out way too far, but the original three were wonderful.
- Sig this!
Ayn Rand will be glorified and hated because of The Fountainhead --the individual vs second-handers-- and Atlas Shrugged --the egoists vs the altruists. Her books continue to sell in the 500K copies per year, and it's already been 50+ years.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." -- Tennyson
I think the following comic artists will be read 50 years from now:
1. Bill Watterson--his Calvin and Hobbes are truly imaginative and stand the test of time.
2. Charles Schulz--again, Peanuts at its very best also stands the test of time.
3. Will Eisner--he has done a number of graphic novels that are flat-out GREAT. I'll never forget The Neighborhood: Dropsie Avenue; I hope it gets made into a TV miniseries someday.
Offhand, only some classics might survive. Not necessarily in english ;-)
like the Bible, Iliad, Odyssey, Aesop, Confucius, LaoTse, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Beowulf (not cluster, the book.
None of the ^H^H bestsellers. Certainly not lame "science fiction". These just appeal to us, now.
By that reasoning I suppose. I have also heard people from Britain refer to "Southern Yankees". In their vernacular it makes perfect sense but would get them punched out if they said it in Georgia.
For a weird bit of escapism, try Vurt and the associated books in it's series..
In particular "Gravity's Rainbow"
Rudy Rucker, particularly Transreal!, freeware
Douglas Adams - The "Trilogy" and the online site
Robert Heinlein, especially The Number of the Beast and Stranger in a Strange Land
A. E. Van Vogt - The Weapon Shops of Isher series, the World of Null-A, and other novels.
E.E. "Doc" Smith - The Lensman series.
Ursula K. LeGuin - A Wizard of Earthsea, the Earthsea trilogy. Lasted this long and going strong online!
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Mars series
William Burroughs - Naked Lunch and others
William Gibson - The Gernsbach Continuum, Burning Chrome
J. G. Ballard - Crash
Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net
Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age
Nancy Kress - Beggars and Choosers trilogy
Philip K. Dick - The Zap Gun, Martian Time Slip, lots of others
Michael Crichton - Travels, Andromeda Strain, Timeline, Rising Sun
Stanislaw Lem - The Cyberiad
Greg Bear - Blood Music, many others
David Brin - Uplift Trilogy, Earth
Carl Sagan - Contact, many others
Arthur C. Clarke - 2001, many others
Frank Herbert - Dune series
Samuel R. Delaney - Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Dhalgren
Vernor Vinge - Realtime series
Isaac Asimov - The Foundation series, The Robot series
Larry Niven - Ringworld series
Jerry Pournelle (with Larry Niven) - The Mote in God's Eye
C. S. Lewis - The Narnia series, Perelandra series
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
Some others which may not make it into history but might be good to keep..
Charles de Lint - Moonheart and others
A. A. Attanasio - Radix tetrad
Jack L. Chalker - Well of Souls series
James P. Hogan - The Genesis Machine
John Varley - Titan
Peter F. Hamilton - The Reality Dysfunction
Stephen Baxter - Timelike Infinity
Alexander Besher - RIM
www.tor.com has a number of these artists.
there are some other great ones from early 80s for which I can't remember author/title.. help?
1 - another cool one, author/title unknown. a message from aliens that resembles an animated sequence of hypnotically merging venn diagrams drives every genius who sees it crazy with its seductive, inescapable logic. A lesser man who gets around the intelligence test gains access to a interstellar library beam. A key scene is inside a spaceship built from this ("Omnivox?") technology, in which the beam de-evolves the crew into liquid which can stand heavy accelleration, then re-evolves them back. One bad guy suffers a mishap in which he ends up a starfish! Predates the public Internet and tells you what may happen when we light it up one day with atomic lasers.
2 - a more recent, fun novel which features an American Indian whose sand paintings prove to be alien warps in time and information space. (Not Jack Haldeman's High Steel)
3 - another novel which features "neurolinguistic programming", which according to this fsf novel is a special language used by the sumerians that is rediscovered and gives its speakers over others.
4 - Hollywood (or maybe California) Dreamtime, by unknown author. Involving description of virtual reality technology and funhouses of the future. A fsf mystery.
anybody has an idea, please email me!
Forgot to mention in my list, Leiji Matsumoto's
comic books and films in the Galaxy Express 999
(Ginga Tetsudo 999) are going to last a long time.
Also Gainax' Evangelion series, though that is just film as far as I know.
There are many authors that have already stood the test of time and will continue to do so. Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemmingway, Franz Kafka, just to name a few. There are some great writers in the Sci-fi genre (Asimov, Orwell) however I find it unlikely that ALL the names being mentioned here will truly be relevant 50 years from now. There's a giant literary world out there, consisting of much more than just sci-fi/fantasy authors and history has shown us that only a small number of the very best authors will be remembered as classics in 50 years.
Contemporary authors who will still be read 50 years hence: Vonnegut Pynchon Pratchett Adams Seuss Asimov Heinlein Clarke Rand Ones who will drop from sight over time: Stephenson King Herbert Hawking plus all the great but obscure SF writers that would get mentioned only on a /. list - 50 years is a ong time for tastes to change, especially for niche artists. There's no justice or accounting for mass tastes.
"Traveller in Black" is well worth a look as well.
Joe Haldeman ("The Forever War") is not too bad, but definitely not in the classic class.
Neil Gaiman, I'm not so sure about. I love his work, but don't put his novels in the "classic" class and I just can't see the literature police letting a graphic novel aspire to classic status. And if they did, I'd have to vote for "Maus" first, much as it would hurt.
Orson Scott Card and Roger Zelazny, well, my feeling is that, good as they both are, they haven't shaped a genre in quite the same way as, say, Tolkien did (I haven't seen CS Lewis here yet either, by the way, which I find hard to believe).
I'm glad someone said it, and more fluently than I could be bothered with. Jordan just isn't worth my time, even to point out how pointless his writing is.
And at the risk of getting modded down as a redundant...
Terry Brooks has to be at the top of my list. The whole Shannara series is a great read.
Orson Scott Card I loved the entire Ender and Ender's shadow series(except for Xenocide)
Harry TurtleDove "Guns of the South"
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
Great noir, exposing the 50's and 60's corruption and fear.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
The reason why it wasn't good in terms of writing quality was because it was written from the viewpoint and vocabularial age of Charly, as he changes through the book. Its an interesting technique, but it makes it impossible to say it is a great book technically.
Lewis has been dead for nearly 38 years, and at my last information, every single one of his books is still in print. Among relatively prolific writers (say, 20 books or more), I can't think of anybody else whose entire corpus was still in print four decades after his death. Another fifty years will probably make little difference.
Marion Zimmer Bradley
John Bradshaw
Melody Beattie
Bill Wilson
Theodore Geisel
Maya Angelou
Alice Walker
Toni Morrison
Barbara Park
Eric Carle
Maurice Sendak
Just because things look different doesn't mean anything has changed.
because printing on demand and vast data storage capabilities will change the economics of the publishing industry. Those that are represented by the best marketing teams will be read the most. [sigh]
Die Stalinorgel and Vergeltung are the best war literature I'm aware of. Ledig was forgotten for 50 years, but his books bite like Private Ryan on speed.
Censorship on Slashdot
Frankly, most of her her stuff reads like a political tract to me.
I did like the Earthsea Trilogy, though.
YMMV,
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
50 years might not be long enough determine "standing the test of time". 3 of us were having this conversation not too long ago using 500 years as our mark. All we tend to remember from 500 years ago are Da Vinci and Colombus. We decided you had to be completely timeless, the hands-down best in your genre, and universally provocative in a deep enough way that humanity is still learning from you 500 years down the road. After much debate we arrived at:
Tolkein - literature
Dylan - poetry/music
Picasso - visual art/painting.
These are the only "Shakespeare's" of the 20th century we could identify. People will remember those 3, Gandhi, the nuclear bomb, and landing on the moon. In 500 years everything else will just be "other 20th century stuff". Most literature will be passe, nonsensical, or just irrelevant by then. Especially humor, there's nothing less funny than an old joke.
...Maybe add Louis Armstrong to the above list?
Of course we're probably way off.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
I can't believe yours is the only post I've read so far mentioning Tad Williams.
Critics have called Williams the closest thing there is to a modern-day JRR Tolkien but, IMHO, his work blows Tolkien away.
Sure, he's not as well known, but read his classic fantasy trilogy Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (made up of The Dragonbone Chair, The Stone of Farewell and To Green Angel Tower*), and compare it to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
Now I'm not saying that LOTR isn't a good read - it's a great one - but MST has so much more action, emotion and depth that you immediately remember that LOTR was written for kids.
If more people knew about Williams, he'd be lauded as a genius - and rightly so.
(* MST's book three was also published in paperback in two parts as it was so big. These two books are called Storm and Siege.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
He's the least-read good writer that I personally am aware of. Check out "The Book of the New Sun" (4 volumes), "The Book of the Long Sun" (also 4 vols) and "The Book of the Short Sun".
Never try to teach a pig to sing; it's a waste of your time and it irritates the pig.
Multiple writers (my favorite is The Apostle Paul), but this Book stands the test of time. It is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Anne. She has a great range of books, from the Dragonriders of Pern (Harper Hall Trilogy is excellent) to the Acorna series, Crystal Singer series... she creates an excellent blend of fantasy and science fiction.
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
Language, geographical location being two of the most important.
This being a heavily US influenced site has, not surprisingly, portrayed mostly English speaking authors (not to mention Tomi Morrison or Nadine Gordimer amongst several of the English speaking world worth reading is a big oversight).
In the Spanish speaking world there are many authors that we will continue reading that other cultures will not notice at all but that are essential to our societies (Mario Benedetti, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Camilo Jose Cela, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to mention just the giants). Thus, any attempt to find relevant authors that does not so by first delimiting the choice by country and language is a futile exercise. Suffice to say that many of thae authors you mentioned are unknown in the Spanish speaking world (heck, I did not now about Tolkien and how much he is regarded in high steem until I visited English speaking countries).
What about German, French, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic writers? No? I can't tell either...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Don't forget Dan Simmons's Hyperion series.
They are a great set of books, and a great epic story. He is no relation to me, by the way. Here is a page about him.
Surprised no one has mentioned him.
Not a ton of output but what there is is pretty damn good.
http://www.sff.net/people/Waldrop/
Display some adaptability.
I've always heard that he doesn't use assistants - at least, that's what he says in interviews. The stock story is that he had one once, but it didn't work out at all, so he never went back to working with them. I know that he does a lot of conceptual art for games, etc. these days, so maybe he uses assistants for that work? Still, most of the stock stuff that people know about is individually done, right?
Also, do people really use manga to refer to the animated stuff? I've never heard that before, but would be interested to know the context.
I think at least a few of these authors have a shot at still being popular in 2051:
*I'm assuming King is stashing away 1 novel for every 1 that is published, to be released posthumously.
The context is Japan. It's a japanese word, and the Japanese use it to refer to both animated and comic form cartoons. This comes from four people: Peter Payne of J-List (who lives in Japan), a friend who taught in Japan for six years, his wife he came back here with, who is Japanese and speaks little english, and her friend who came over for Christmas to visit America for the first time (who spoke pretty much no english). None but the first were particular fans of manga - they are just average people from Japan using the word as it is used on the street, while the first is a big fan of manga, and would be the equivelent of someone in America who would distinguish between "Comics" and "Cartoons". So it would seem that both among fans and non-fans, in Japan the word manga refers to both animated and print cartoons. Here in America, of course, manga generally just refers to only the printed form, while anime refers to animated movies, OVAs and TV series.
A friend just added that he's heard that among British otaku, it's all called manga as well, according to a Brit tourist he met at EPCOT (who also called my friend's large collection of anime pins "manga badges").
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Inaccurate perception.
Tolkien did not know when to quit. He also didn't know when to publish. He kept on writing until he died, but never managed to get anything which he thought was ready for publication other than the Big Three plus some miscellaneous shorts. What he Really Wanted I think was to publish twenty volumes of the Silmarillion, but he just couldn't get it organized well enough.
You may be right about Jordan, though. :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Just because a Brust fan likes this Moran character, I think I will have to check him out.
Stephen Brust is amazing. The man can do anything he wants to.
Interesting footnote: I always get my girlfriends to read Agyar. So far, there's been a direct correlation between the length of the relationship and what they think of the book.
Brust is probably the only author to take Zelazny's style and actually be a better writer.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Being as I just spent a good 6 continuous hours of my weekend DEVOURING "Ender's Game", I would like to object. I really enjoyed "Ender's Game" and I'm gearing up to finding the time to read "Speaker for the Dead". Granted, I haven't read Card's short story version of "Ender's Game", but I wouldn't say that he was unable to "keep it up".
Why the fuck haven't any of you lamers mentioned Michael Moorcock?! Never mind Elric, what about friggin' Jerry Cornelius, the English Assassin?!
Not science fiction, but worthwhile :
joyce - for Ulysses
gaddis - a frolic of his own, jr
becket - waiting for godot
steinbeck - grapes of wrath (and some others)
tennessee williams (assorted)
knuth - assorted
feynman - lectures on physics
pynchon - crying of lot 49, vineland (and for the truly brave) gravity's rainbow
strunk and white - the elements of style
King is our era's Charles Dickens with a heavy dash of E. A. Poe. King has recorded the sensibility, the fears and the passions, of the second half of the 20th century. He's way beyond just horror.
I also note that we are no longer in a world where the wordsmith creates just for print alone. Obviously, TV, video, and cinema frequently how one consumes a stary. We are wll beyond just text on a flat surface.
Harrington
*Jackie Collins
*John Grisham
*VC Andrews
*Cmdr. Taco
*Jon Katz
Douglas Adams never really thought of himself as a science fiction writer, just a regular writer who used science fiction language and themes to express himself. his writing style was very reminescent of P G Wodehouse -- who isn't classed as a science fiction writer at all, and who you will find in literature.
Wow, who'd have thought! Thanks for the info :).
His annual reports will stand the test of time.
Michael Swanwick
Not sure if these would really stand the test of time, but I hope in 50 years I still have these books on my shelf.. that is if paper books are still legal in the future =)
J.R. Tolkien
This has probably been mentioned many times on the board but oh well..
And now that I think about it, most of the other authors are probably not the best out there or anything, but ive loved the books:
Micheal Chrichton (sp?)
Neal Stephenson
Clive Cussler
Robin Cook
Tom Clancy
The above books, most of them, really arent huge thought provoking books, but as an example, I bought the book Atlantis Found or something like that from Clive Cussler.. Didn't really think his books looked that good, but atlantis is an interesting subject in my opinion..
As soon as I got done reading that book, I proceeded to read the rest of his books in about 2 months time. This in my opinion shows a good author.
Stephen King is also a pretty good author, but I really can't get into his use of descriptions so much as I used to. Micheal Chrichton is another one of my favorite authors, but lately he hasn't come out with anything that good.. Airframe wasn't really as good as his previous works.
Ive also gotten into Robert Ludlam quite a bit, but once again he's not really any sort of author of the century or anything.
Well, thats what ive been reading lately, I enjoy books quite a bit, there is nothing like getting a brand new hardback book, cracking it open, and spending a rainy day reading.
Ok, most of the authors who have really blown my mind have been mentioned by others (eg, Clarke, Asimov, Vinge, Simmons, et al).
What about A. A. Attanasio? His Radix tetrad, and other books in a similar vein, just blew me away in much the same way as Hyperion. Radix in particular, but even the simpler story of Hunting the Ghost Dancer was brilliant. Didn't care all that much for the Dragon & Unicorn series though. No signs that his books are overly popular, but they deserve to be.
A more recent one that I haven't noticed anyone mention, who seems to have great potential: Peter F. Hamilton. The Neutronium Alchemist series was incredible. I have a great deal of respect for anyone who can create an entire Galactic culture, even in broad strokes as Vinge did in Fire Upon the Deep. Amazing imagination...
i think the writers most widely to be read are humorists such as PG wodeHouse,PJ o'Rourke et al.
and Mystery writers such as agatha christie etc.
Contemprary "popular" writers often vanish without a trace
Wanted : A Signature.
I don't think it's possible to list all the books that have ever made me think, but here's a few.
"The Dispossessed", by Ursula LeGuin
The "Foundation" series by Isaac Asimov
"Earth Abides" by George Stewart
most people have never heard of this book, but anyone who has seen or read "The Stand" by Stephen King will feel the echoes of this story throughout. I think the original was better.
"The Coelura" novella, and also the "Powers That Be" series, both by Anne McCaffrey
The "Incarnations" series by Piers Anthony
"The Unfinished Revolution" by Michael Dertouzos
"The Prophet", and also "Mirrors of the Soul" by Kahlil Gibran
"Ethics for the New Millennium" by the Dalai Lama
"No Logo" by Naomi Klein
"Dune" by Frank Herbert
"The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. Beagle
what's on your think list?
The writers who continue to be read in the next fifty years will be those who move people. And in addition, they will be somewhat overlooked in their own time, which will ensure that future readers will feel the cheap satisfaction of looking down on those who could not perceive the breadth of vision of the authors at the time.
Good bets are: Alexander Solzhenitsyn for First Circle and Cancer Ward (Nobel prize but forgotten like SALT II after the Cold War), Yukio Mishima for the Sea of Fertility tetrology (his Nobel was given Yasunari Kawabata in '68, and boy(!) was he angry), and Mark Helprin whose A Soldier of the Great War will probably last as long as anything human.
Freely they stood who stood and fell who fell.
BTW, it would be interesting to read Galapagos in 1'002'001 :) .
hany
My votes would go to:
Storm Constantine for the Wraththu trilogy, Piers Anthony after having read Anthonology (On the uses of Torture and The Toaster are two of the best shorts ever) and Parke Godwin for Waiting for the Galactic Bus, among other works.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
Nice to see others still remember The Long Run and other Daniel Keys Moran books. Still waiting for the xext 36 or so books in the series!
As to a real answer to the poster's question: Neal Stephenson, Dan Simmons and Iain M. Banks are the ones who'll be most read and remembered 50 years from now.
Michael Swanwick calls him (twice, the second in italics) "the greatest writer in the English language". Not "SF writer", just "writer".
Try "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", structurally three ambiguously interrelated novellas (and which Kim Stanley Robinson told me I was the first to figure out was the structural source for Stan's "Icehenge", which even his wife hadn't picked up on).
Then try "Peace". "There are Doors". "Free Live Free". And when you're ready to start on the main course, "The Book of the New Sun" tetrology, starting with "The Shadow of the Torturer", "The Claw of the Concilliator", "The Sword of the Lictor" and "The Citadel of the Autarch". Then start on the appended "The Urth of the New Sun", and begin the related "Book of the Long Sun" (3 novels) and the payoff "The Book of the Short Sun" (3 novels, and although I am one hardboiled child welfare trial lawyer, I was in tears). As modest, softspoken writer Harlan Ellison (he of the gentle tone and lust for compromise) called Gene, he is on the sacred task of writing everyone else under the table. Gene alone would have been worth learning to read. You will beggar yourself if you miss him.