OK, U asked 4 it.... I've bn reading science fiction & other weirdness since 1971, when I was 12 yrs old & my parents threw some 2nd-hand copies of ANALOG magazine & other SF magazines at me, followed quickly by Raymond J. Healy & J. Francis McComas's huge landmark SF collection ADVENTURES IN SPACE AND TIME. I haven't looked back since, tho I liketa think my tastes have Xpanded a bit....
I haven't read everybody -- there's a lotta people I've never read, & I can give U a list -- but I've dug around pretty widely, from Asimov 2 Zelazny, Heinlein 2 Ellison, Niven 2 Moorcock, lotsa classic old stuff, little bit from the '50s, lotsa '60s New Wave & '70s stuff (4 part of the late '70s I was reading almost everything in the magazines every month -- ANALOG, GALAXY, F&SF, ASIMOV'S, the rest), started slowing down in the late '80s, & only bits & pieces since.
What follows is stuff I remember knocking me over w/ its brilliance, inventiveness, vividness, involving-ness or un4gettability, stuff that won't waste yr time, no matter how old it is. (It's also a good memry test 4 me 2 C how mucha this stuff I can remember off the toppa my head.)
In alphabetical order by author, then:
Isaac Asimov: Nightfall, The Last Question.
Clive Barker: Dread, In the Hills the Cities.
J.G. Ballard: The Cloud Sculptors of Coral-D, Venus Smiles.
Michael Bishop: Cathadonian Odyssey.
Frederic Brown: The Star Mouse.
Edward Bryant: Stone, Strata.
Cynthia Bunn: And Keep Us From Our Castles.
Pat Cadigan: It Was the Heat.
Orson Scott Card: Eumenides in the Fourth-Floor Lavatory.
Arthur C. Clarke: The Sentinel.
Samuel R. Delany: We in Some Strange Power's Employ Move on a Rigorous Line.
Philip K. Dick: Frozen Journey (aka I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon).
Thomas M. Disch: Descending.
Cory Doctorow: When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth.
Gardner R. Dozois: A Special Kind of Morning.
George Alec Effinger: Lights Out.
Greg Egan: Scatter My Ashes.
Harlan Ellison: 'Repent Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman, A Boy and His Dog, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes, Eidolons, From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet, With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole, The Deathbird, The Whimper of Whipped Dogs, Sleeping Dogs.
John M. Ford: This Too We Reconcile, Preflash.
Karen Joy Fowler: The Faithful Companion at 40.
William Gibson: Burning Chrome, The Winter Market, The Gernsback Continuum.
Felix C. Gottschalk: The Examination.
Joe Haldeman: Hero.
Henry Hasse: He Who Shrank.
Robert A. Heinlein: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long.
Gwyneth Jones: Red Sonia and Lessingham in Dreamland.
Stephen King: The Body, The Reach.
Nancy Kress: Touchdown.
R.A. Lafferty: Continued on Next Rock, Been a Long Long Time, Narrow Valley.
Ursula K. LeGuin: Vaster Than Empires and More Slow, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, The Day Before the Revolution.
Graeme Leman: Conversational Mode.
Johnathan Lethem: The Happy Man.
Barry N. Malzberg: La Croix (The Cross).
George R.R. Martin: A Song for Lya, This Tower of Ashes, In the House of the Worm, Sandkings, Nightflyers, The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr, The Storms of Windhaven (w/ Lisa Tuttle), With Morning Comes Mistfall, Meathouse Man, The Stone City.
Bruce McAllister: When the Fathers Go, Dream Baby.
Ian McDonald: Toward Kilimanjaro, Rainmaker Cometh, Vivaldi, Unfinished Portrait of the King of Pain by Van Gogh.
Rick Moody: The Albertine Notes.
David Morrell: Orange is for Anguish Blue for Insanity.
Gregory Nicoll: Dead Air.
Larry Niven: Down and Out.
Frederik Pohl: The Merchants of Venus.
Kim Stanley Robinson: Green Mars (novella), A History of the 20th Century With Illustrations, Mother Goddess of the World, Escape from Kathmandu, Discovering Life, The Part of Us That Loves.
Spider Robinson: Unnatural Causes or The Guy We Couldn't Help, Stardance (w/ Jeanne Robinson).
David J. Schow: Lonesome Coyote Blues, Not from Around Here.
Robert Silverberg: Sundance, Caliban, To See the Invisible Man, Hawksbill Station, Waiting for the Earthquake, House of Bones, We Are for the Dark, A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa.
Michael Shea: The Autopsy.
Dan Simmons: Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds.
Norman Spinrad: Journals of the Plague Years, A Child of Mind.
Lucius Shepard: The Man Who Painted the Dragon Graiule, A Little Night Music.
Lewis Shiner: Love in Vain, Jeff Beck.
Henry Slesar: Beside the Golden Door.
Bruce Sterling: Dori Bangs, Green Days in Brunei, Mozart in Mirrorshades (w/ Lewis Shiner).
Michael Swanwick: The Dragon Line, The Edge of the World.
James Tiptree Jr.: A Momentary Taste of Being, The Screwfly Solution.
John Varley: The Persistence of Vision, In the Hall of the Martian Kings.
Kate Wilhelm: Baby You Were Great.
Connie Willis: All My Darling Daughters, The Last of the Winnebagos.
Richard Wilson: Mother to the World.
Robert F. Young: Boarding Party.
Roger Zelazny: The Doors of His Face The Lamps of His Mouth, For a Breath I Tarry, This Moment of the Storm, This Mortal Mountain, Permafrost, The Engine at Heartspring's Center, The Man Who Loved the Faioli, Unicorn Variation, He Who Shapes.
OK, that's about as far as I can go w/o some more digging thru my collection 2 jar my bad memry. If I can think of NE other 4got10 greats I'll add them here. Meanwhile, NE1 else out there read NE of these & wanna compare notes...?
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2 comments:
What you said, but also maybe these:
Isaac Asimov "The Last Question"
Fredric Brown "Puppet Show"
Fredric Brown "Question"
Ted Chiang "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"
Arthur Clarke "The Nine Billion Names of God"
Robert Heinelin The Green Green Hills of Earth"
Robert Heinelin "The Man Who Sold The Moon"
Fritz Lieber "Gonna Roll the Bones"
James Maxey "To the East, A Bright Star"
Larry Niven "Neutron Star"
Larry Niven "At the Core"
Alastair Reynolds "Fresco" http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_05/uk/doss25.htm
Alastair Reynolds "Beyond the Aquila Rift"
Alastair Reynolds "The Sledge-Maker's Daughter"
Charles Sheffield "Tunicate, Tunicate, Wilt Thou Be Mine?"
Robert Silverberg "What We Learned From This Morning's Newspaper"
John Varley "Press Enter"
Howard Waldrop "The Ugly Chickens"
Stanley Weinbaum "A Martian Odyssey"
R: Hmmm. Some intresting stuff here. Haven't read Ted Chaing, tho it Cms like everything he writes wins an award. I'm not familiar w/ James Maxey at all. Reynolds' "Aquila Rift" IS pretty great, very vivid & spooky, tho I felt like the Nding wasn't quite resolved enuf, or solid enuf, or something. The main reason I like it is cos it reminds me of a Caribbean cruise I went on 10+ yrs ago -- scenes in that story R just like places on that cruise ship! 4got about Varley's "Press Enter," tho it's bn awhile since I read it. He's done a lotta Good Stuff.
I figured I could come up w/ plenty more titles I'd 4got10 1nce I posted this list, but only a couple have popped in2 my head since then, both by Joan D. Vinge: "Tin Soldier" & "View From a Height." ... but mayB I'll have more 2 add soon. Still got plenty of story collections around here, & that YEAR'S BEST SF 13 looks like there's some Good Stuff in it. Thanx 4 commenting.... -- TAD.
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