FAVORITE SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS

The following is just a list of my personal favorites. It's not meant to be all-inclusive or definitive.

1. Isaac Asimov. I've never found any that i liked better. His Foundation stories are the best. And if you've never read "The Last Question," please read it. The ending is such that you will kick yourself because you know you could've written it yourself but you didn't come up with the idea first.

2. Stanislaw Lem. He's the only one that's in the same league with Asimov. A lot is probably lost in the translation from the original Polish and he seems somehow more archaic than Asimov but his stories otherwise rival anything Asimov wrote. Curiously, Lem was of the opinion that the exploration and colonization of space was naive, foolhardy, and dangerous.

3. Michael Crichton. He's really in a class by himself. He has the ability to spoon-feed science to anyone, even someone who hates it and couldn't care less. "Jurassic Park" was a horror story disguised as science fiction. "Timeline," my favorite, was a romance disguised as a time travel story.

4. Greg Benford. He's my favorite living syfy writer. He has an impressive body of work of which my favorite is "Sailing Bright Eternity," a hard syfy story that actually has a strongly mystical flavor.

5. Arthur Clarke. I've never thought of Clarke as being in the top three because of his lack of consistency. He's written some great stories that can match up with anybody's but he has written a lot of very ordinary stuff. My favorite is "The Fountains of Paradise."

6. Greg Bear. I include him because he is truly protean, a natural mimic that can imitate other writers perfectly. "Vitals" is a Michael Crichton read-alike, "Songs of Earth and Power" is a Stephen King story written by Greg Bear. I know of no other writer who is this versatile.

7. David Brin. Brin shows signs of being undisciplined, such as "The Uplift War'" which I found unreadable. But when forced to write within constraints he can be a great writer. Of the three post-Foundation novels his is the best---"Foundation's Triumph."