SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

"Michael Crichton - I discovered him in the mid 90s when the Jurassic Park book came out. I proceeded to tear though all his books. Great storyteller able to extrapolate a scientific idea into a fun adventure."

I have to disagree with Crichton - He was on target with Jurassic Park, but then fell off track once it became a movie. Almost all of his later books should have had Screen Play written on the cover. He stopped writing to tell a story and started writing to sell a movie deal.

JR Tolkien
Isaac Asimov
Orson Scott Card
Frank Herbert
Ray Bradbury
George Orwell
Arcady and Boris Strugatsky

Ray Bradbury

Kurt Vonnegut

Are the two classics for me and two of my favorite authors. Bradbury taught me to dream and Vonnegut taught to think.

For newer writers:

Dan Simmons

Greg Bear

Douglas Adams

Dan Simmons never misses. All of his books are excellent.

Greg Bear is really good, but does have a few misses. His second books are never as good as the first book. Excellent short stories.

Douglass Adams, need I say more?

I agree with the Crichton choice but he is hit and miss, I loved Prey but Pirate Latitudes is one of the worst books I've ever read.

I would add Ursula K Le Guin, she is amazing,

I loved Tad Williams when wrote Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and the War of the Flowers. But I could not stand Otherland, when I finished the first book I simply could not summon the internal fortitude to read any further and I am a completist who muscled through the mess of the Maze Runner trilogy.

I would also add the Frontlines books by Marko Kloos, he fits your description, he is a great storyteller, whenever I finish one of his books I want the next one to be out already.

I've fallen into Graham Greene and hope to read more of his work. I really like his voice, maybe because he wrote in periods that attract me, like the 30s and 40s.

My favorite storyteller with a distinctive voice is Stephen King. He has the amazing ability to make you feel as if he is speaking solely to you. I think he has a natural, unaffected voice in that he stays out of the way of his characters, allowing them to tell their own stories.

Brandon Sanderson all the way, love his books

*Living authors listed only*

Lois McMaster Bujold - Master of character development so much so that it kind of inhibited her from writing more stories in Vorkosigan since the main characters development into people that would make less interesting stories but was very satisfying and flowed perfectly. Her characters feel more real to me then any others I have read.

David Weber - Master of the technodump. He builds vast worlds that are extremely internally consistent, and the way he writes many of his info dumps just gets me extremely excited for whenever the tech is finally used.

Yu Wo - The very theatrical version of comedy mixed with a single cohesive plot is so enjoyable. Everytime I read one of her books I just picture in my mind a Pixar/Dreamworks CGI movie or a saturday morning tv show that manages to be fun for the whole family.

Wildbow - Master of writing Action. One of the best action writers I have read, every action moment whether it's pitched combat Worm/Pact or verbal jousting Twig feels so intense and entertaining.

Jim Butcher - Master of Pulp Fantasy, I can't really think of anything in particular he does well but everything he writes is so enjoyable.

Brandon Sanderson - Jack of all trades pen and paper campaign writer. Personally I feel like Sanderson has no weaknesses but really no outstanding strengths outside of the fact that he can always come up with an interesting hard magic system.

Larry Correia - Master of writing Action. Writes solid good works overall but where they really shine is the action scenes in which the stakes constantly get raised and even more awesome.

Reki Kawahara - Master of coming of age stories. Started with the Web Novel turned Light Novel Sword Art Online, which many people read...liked...read the next few books which were trash and dropped(foolishly as the current books are the best in the series). However as time went on he got to be a really good author that actually has lots of character development combined with a good dose of that shounen spirit.

Special shoutouts to ryukishi07 who has written multiple of my most remembered and cherished scenes/plots in fiction...too bad you desperately need an editor.

I love: Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin, Lois McMaster Bujold, Terry Pratchett, Isaack Asimov.

Aaron wrote: "*Living authors listed only*

Lois McMaster Bujold - Master of character development so much so that it kind of inhibited her from writing more stories in Vorkosigan since the main c..."

Agree with Weber, Butcher, and Correia. I would add David Drake, SM Stirling, and James White.

Nice thread! I'll add my take on the best storytellers. For me it's all about diving into the story, seeing and experiencing the story as it unfolds trough the eyes of the characters. Almost making me believing I am a part of the book. I usually listen to books, which makes the perfect campfire storytelling experience.

Tier 1 story tellers (Best)
Brandon Sanderson - The Way of Kings
Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind
Pierce Brown - Red Rising
James Islington - The Shadow Of What Was Lost
Anthony Ryan - Blood Song

Tier 2 story tellers (Very Good)
Robert Jordan - The Eye of the World
Brent Weeks - The Way of Shadows
Peter V. Brett - The Warded Man
Scott Lynch - Red Seas Under Red Skies
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Robin Hobb - Assassin's Quest

PS. If your taste is similar to mine and you have some awesome books to recommend please do so! :)

great list.I looked into the ones I had not yet read,put them on my list.

Greg Egan, Ted Chiang, Ian McDonald, Nancy Kress, Neal Stephenson.

Arthur C Clarke

John Scalzi

Neil Gaiman

Stephen King

Ray Bradbury

And just because they make me laugh out loud:

Christopher Moore and Carl Hiaasen

Gene Wolfe,Dan Simmons,Stephen King,Robert R McCammon,Tolkien,George RR Martin.

There are a lot of story tellers out there, but for me (just off the top of my head and severely limiting my list for this thread):

J.R.R. Tolkien (first and foremost)
Stephen King
Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman
Suzanne Collins
David Gemmell

Ok, just as story tellers, the narrative style, without consideration about the plot or character development (not necessarily implying that they are bad at them):
1. Joan D. Vinge
2. Clifford Simak
3. Poul Anderson
4. Greg Egan
5. Nancy Kress

Ray Bradbury
Neil Gaiman
Charles de Lint
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Tanya Huff
Nnedi Okorafor
Octavia E. Butler
Kurt Vonnegut
Sherman Alexie
Lois McMaster Bujold

Great topic! I would definitely agree with the previously stated suggestions of Le Guin, Terry Pratchett, and Dan Simmons.

Salman Rushdie's works are not always strictly SF/F, but he is definitely the writer who comes to mind when I think of a story "coming alive". He seems to be very much aware that he is there to entertain and his prose is breathtaking. His new book seems like it will be great for genre fans, I can't wait to check it out.

One more suggestion I would throw out there is Mervyn Peake.

-Robert Heinlein
-Anne McCaffrey
-Harry Turtledove
-John Bowers (but I'm mad at him right now because of the ending of his latest book).
-Bruce Davis
-Harry Harrison
-Christopher Stasheff

I guess my favorite storytellers aren't fantasy or sci fi so much but still great writers

Louis L'Amour
Loren Estleman
Robert Louis Stevenson
Bernard Cornwell
PC Doherty
Roger Zelazny
CS Forrester

L'Amour is probably the best pure storyteller of them all, the kind of guy you could hear sitting around a campfire telling a tale from memory and invention.

I would have to say Richard A Knaak. I recently interviewed him on his books as well as his upcoming novel. Read it here:
www.ashleyblodgett.blogspot.com

Have to add N.K. Jemisin to my list after reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Such a wonderful story

Tolkien
L'Amour
King
O. Butler
E.R. Burroughs
R. Mccammon
W. Gibson
GRRM
P. Hamilton
L. Mcmurtry
A. Dumas

Hello Balkan !!! you enjoy Rothfuss so likely you will enjoy Joe Abercrombie. "The first law" trilogy is good. "Red Country" stand alone is good. happy hunting.

sorry Balkron your name got auto corrected

Neil Gaiman came to mind immediately. I remember reading Coraline and really feeling much more frightened and on edge and anxious to keep going than I did while watching the movie. And you should hear him READ his stories! I saw a video of him reading a short story called "Feminine Endings" that was so chilling and I usually multitask while I listen to that kind of thing, but I couldn't with this one. Stephen King is also a favorite of mine. The Dark Tower series is where I think his horror skills shine most, because there wasn't a lot of scary stuff in the first book per se, but I was extremely creeped out while I read it.

Paul wrote: "Clive Barker. If you haven't read Galilee or The Thief of Always, you're missing out."

I do not think he has written a bad book yet. Best yet, his short stories are even better than his novels.

The guy I look for when in a book store is Theodore Sturgeon, author of More Than Human.

Favorite storytellers:

1) C.J. Cherryh

2) Lois McMaster Bujold

3) Barbara Hambly

4) JRR Tolkien

5) Charles Stross

6) William Gibson

7) George Alec Effinger