Top 10 New Sci-Fi/SF Authors?

Dukebytes asks: "I am looking for the new RAH/Piers Anthony/Roger Zelazny/Weis & Hickman etc..., of the world. I have read just about everything I could find on King Aurthur, all of the Dragon Lance stuff, and all or most of the 'old school' hardcore. I don't know, I have maybe 4000 books at home, most of them Scifi/SF. I am looking for some new stuff. I haven't bought any kind of book other than techie for more than 2 years. I just keep reading the ones that I have over and over and over. What are you guys reading? If it is a series, please list ALL of the books in it!"

Comments

good hard sci-fi stuff

[kbs]

I've found a rather good liking for some of Gregory Benford's work. If I'm not mistaken, he's a Physicist, so he approaches his work in the same sort of manner. The characters might not be all that great, and his main characters are almost always University professors who end up facing tenure issues, but it's an interesting read.

I've also found, for things that are sort of out there philosophically, that Greg Egan is pretty cool. I haven't seen any new books by him recently, but I'd suggest Permutation City, Diaspora, and Quarantine as some interesting things to check out.

Vinge, Simmons, Stephenson...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vernor Vinge rocks:
A Fire Upon the Deep
Deepness in the Sky
(loosely related)

Dan Simmon's Hyperion/Endymion series (4 books) is excellent.

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon.

good, recent SF

[gribbly]

Didn't we have a question like this not so long ago...?
Anyway:

• Greg Egan - Permutation City, Diaspora
• Steven Baxter - Manifold:Time, Manifold:Space
• David Marusek - check his site
• Iain M. Banks - Culture series (you want me list them all? What the hell!? You haven't heard of google?
• 
  There you go!
  grib

Some authors you might enjoy

[Interrobang]

I know how you feel. I own about 2000 books, so there are a lot of times when I go into my local second-hand bookstore and don't find anything I want to read at all. The posters who suggest you branch out have a good point, and I can provide some input as to "Mainstream for Science Fiction Fans" (remember that anthology, "Science Fiction for People Who Don't Like Science Fiction"?)

Note that some of these authors are not new, but you may not have gotten around to them (or heard of them) yet:

W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe Comes to Iowa, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and If Wishes Were Horses, which are sort of "magic realism" fantasy (no orcs, elves, or swords to be seen!).

Stephen King, (bear with me!) The Dark Tower series, which is sort of dark, parallel-world fantasy drawn from contemporary popular culture, and not really like anything else King's ever written.

Tom Holt, Only Human, Snow White and the Seven Samurai, and Ye Gods!, which is sort of similar to Douglas Adams, only with less philosophy and more social skills.

Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend In A Coma, which is a complete departure from Microserfs.

Donald J. Skal, Antibodies, a very overlooked little tome on people who want to become machines.

Frank Norris, McTeague, written in 1899 and has probably one of the scariest endings ever written. Ok, so it's not SF, but it might count as horror, and it's definitely a classic book. I love this book and think it's a really great read. Norris doesn't pull any punches, so it's really gritty without any flowery phrases to be found. :)

Theme anthologies are also a great way of discovering "new" authors, as are subscribing to SF magazines. But I'm sure you knew that already.

Adviso: Keep in mind that I'm heavily into Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen King, and Cordwainer Smith (among others), and I despise Tolkien and all the other sappy fantasists who take themselves seriously, so take with the appropriately-sized grain of salt.

Best troll so far this year.

[Doktor Memory]

The mark of a truly excellent troll is that it contains just enough elements of truth to hook the casually unwary. I tip my hat to you, sir or madam as the case may be.

Re:Robert Jordan

[sjbrown]

I didn't mind the ending, seeing as the last 4 or 5 chapters were the only chapters where something actually happened. Up until that point, Jordan basically reiterated stuff we already knew and described how about 20 Aes Sedai looked or held themselves. It was my least favourite book of the ten.

Note to Jordan: Your fans would appreciate it if, in the future:

• stuff actually happens
• you include glossary entries for minor characters (how am I supposed to remember the difference between Reene, Renna, and Reine, when they were last mentioned in 2 paragraphs 4 books ago?)
• you wrote faster. Maybe consider hand steriods

Of course, for all the criticism, I highly enjoy the Wheel Of Time series and would reccommend it.

Iain Banks & The Culture

[cosmosis]

Banks isn't entirely new, but he remains largely and undeservedly undiscovered. You can read all about him on my Iain Banks website.

I would also say that if you have not already read Greg Egan, especially his book, Diaspora, do so. This is first-rank hard sf at its best!

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