Writers you SHOULD be reading

[oneirophrenia]

As a follow-up to a previous post about sci-fi and fantasy writers who should just retire already, here's a complementary list of folks y'all SHOULD be reading--and worshipping like the gods they are. So pay attention, mathematical, this is just what you're lookin' fer!

Dan Simmons: Simmons' Hyperion and Endymion books were just awesome--hardcore, mega-epic-scale space opera so expansive and stirring it literally exalted the spirit. Now, he's working on a duology, Ilium and Olympos, which deals with a virtual posthuman recreation of the Trojan War as told my Homer, a war between the gods and men, intelligent robots of Jupiter, a self-aware planet, and...just too much to list. It's so packed with ideas it will literally make your brain overheat, so be sure to crack open a cranial suture or two, or trepan a small region of skull to allow for proper heat exhaust.

John C. Wright's Golden Age Trilogy: Much like Dan Simmons, Wright uses Classical allusions, mythology, and legend as a creative basis from which to tell one of the most awesome transhumanist Space Operas ever written. The Golden Age Trilogy deals with the darker side of life in a posthuman utopia of ubiquitous nanotech, neuro-augmentation, spacetime manipulation, megascale engineering, and literally godlike Machine Intelligence...but the story is so engaging and so human that, as tempting as it may be, you really can't get overwhelmed or lost in the details. it's just awesome.

Charles Stross: On the other hand, if you want transhumanism a lot closer to home, and a LOT more technical, then download Stross' Accelerando RIGHT NOW. Lots of transer fiction deals with life after a technological Singularity...but Stross in Accelerando gives you life before, during, and after as seen through the eyes of an extremely odd, dysfunctional, thoroughly postpostmodern and posthuman family. It's oftimes extremely funny, witty as can be, bizarre, and inspiring. And if it doesn't make you want to run out and buy stock in nanotech and neuro-engineering properties RIGHT NOW, then you deserve to be recycled when the posthumans decide to dismantle the earth to build more computronium.

Now, on to the most fantastic.

China Mieville is the best fantasy writer alive these days. His stuff is just so...weird--like a combination of Dickens, Lovecraft, Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, Gene Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thompson. Perdido Street Station was just amazing. Slake moths are the most awesome creations ever released in a fantasy novel. Read it NOW, bitchez!

Tom Piccirilli is more a "horror" author than a fantasy author, but his latest two novels, November Mourns and A Choir of Ill Children, are more like twisted Southern Gothic ghost stories replete with inbred freaks, granny witches, moonshine, and the faceless festering evil that seethes eternally beneath the bloodstained soil of the gods-damned South. Truly, honesty creepy stuff.

And, of course, Caitlin R. Kiernan. If you haven't read her stuff yet, get the FUCK off your asses a do so. Threshold is the best neo-Lovecraftian novel written in the last twenty years, and the followup, Low Red Moon is just as harrowing and bizarre. Silk and its own followup, A Murder of Angels, are incredible dark fantasy explorations of mortally-wounded minds, poisoned dreams, and the infectious hopelessness of some people. Definitely not happy-go-lucky summertime reading, but sooooooooooo beautifully written. Kiernan is the Cormac McCarthy of the dark fantasy/horror/sci-fi realms. Period.

Ohyeah, and if you want to read some shitty weirdness that I've been throwing together lately, head on over to www.oneirophrenia.net. Yeah. I wish I was HPL, or Cait.

Comments

[z0mb1e.livejournal.com]

I really like when you give out recommendations. I think I might have to get around to reading some China Mieville. Of course, the fact that he is a socialist gives me a bit of extra motivation...

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

I normally loathe socialists, but Mieville's socialism is at least represented in his novels by an obvious concern for the betterment of so-called "lower class" people. In that sense, he's not a crypto-Marxist as some people have described him, nor a trendy but economically-misguided eurosocialist, but someone who actually believes that societies are responsible for the well-being of their citizens--and that's something that I greatly applaud. Unlike Ken MacLeod, whose goofy politics foul up every one of his otherwise awesome novels with useless EU/communard asskissing, Mieville's political commentaries--especially those evidence in _Iron Council_, his latest novel, are very individual-centered, pragmatic, and intelligent. I think you would REALLY like his work, _Iron Council_ in particular.

Another good neosocialist writer is the abovementioned Charles Stross. As in the case of Mieville, he takes the basic good ideas of socialism and likes to speculate on how to properly implement them without handing it all over to Big Bush-like Government. Through his work, I learned of an interesting pseudo-economic principle called "agalmics" (just google that word and you'll learn all you need to know about it) that could very well make real-world applicable socialist principles possible for the first time in history!

[forlorn99.livejournal.com]

Everybody should of course read and love Caitlin Kiernan.

And if I may be so bold as to add a name to your list, you should check out Mehitobel Wilson as well.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

Mehitobel Wilson is...okay, I suppose--I read a number of short stories by her and really liked them all...but I've only toyed around once with one of her novels (the title of which sadly escapes me now) and wasn't too impressed. I tend to respond better to writers who like to go wild with stylistics, and Wilson's prose was just too...oldfashioned for me, I guess. I'm such a jaded bastard. :)

[forlorn99.livejournal.com]

She hasn't written any novels to this point, just the short stories (which were collected as Dangerous Red).

Possible you're confusing her with somebody else?

[jdecay.livejournal.com]

For first time-Kiernan readers, I think I'd recommend Tales of Pain and Wonder, her short story collection, as a good starting point, over her full novels.

I keep meaning to read China Mievelle's stuff, but I keep hesitating on account of reading a interview with him where he came across as so singularly pretentious and overblown. I'll get past that one day.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

Cait's short stories are all Most Excellent(tm), but I maintain that newcomers start with _Threshold_, as it seems to be the work most indicative of ALL of her narrative interests: ancient things, mysterious pasts, broken characters, hyperLovecraftian weirdness, and so forth....

And don't worry about Mieville seeming pretentious: he has a doctorate in economics, so he's BOUND to sound pretentious in interviews! NONE of that comes across in his fiction, though.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

That's the best way to get started on any new writer, but particularly Piccirilli and Cait. For Tom, make sure you look up _A Choir of Ill Children_, as I think it's the one you'd dig the most. And for Cait, _Threshold_. Definitely. Both of those novels are *so* superior in every way, that I'd say they're the best possible places you can start.

Actually, you might want to just look up the above works on Amazon.com, as I do believe they offer sample chapters--and, best of all, if you like them, you can buy used copies for, like, $2 a piece.

[jdecay.livejournal.com]

Amazon's sample pages (when available) are very useful for seeing if a book is any good. I think that the first page of most books is a good indicator of what will follow.