The Nightstar Zoo

What is your favorite author? I mean the kind of writer that just their name has you picking up the book to read because you know it will be good or going back and reading the same book again because it was just too good not to.

To start off mine is Patrica McKillip. Her worst is still worthwhile reading. Her best draws you back deeply into the story and you almost feel like you are completely part of the story.

Bernard Werber. He wrote it? I'll read it.

George R.R. Martin. That man's narrative voice has no equal.

Terry Pratchett. I just like the humour.

J.R.R. Tolkien (duh)
Robin McKinley (She has a certain style to her writing that make her books all but impossible to put down)
Pamela C. Dean (haven't read enough of her stuff, but what I have is very well written)

If I want to kill a few hours, David Weber's stuff is quite good, but it gets a little... repetitive after a while.

Henk G.

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Why are canines called canines when feline canines are bigger than canine canines?

Robert A. Heinlein (I've only been disappointed once)
Dave Barry
Isaac Asimov on *any* subject

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"Vox populi? Vox humbug!"
- William Tecumseh Sherman

Me.

What, you don't proof-read your texts? I re-read the fanfic I did for It's Walky! half a dozen times, and I can't bear to look at it again :p

Favorite authors?
Arthur C. Clarke, Karl May, J. R. R. Tolkien, Hugh Lofting
*edit* oh, and Zane Grey.

Heinlein. Haven't been disappointed yet.

A few years ago, I'd have said Piers Anthony. But now that the publishers won't buy anything from him except more Xanth, and he's sick and tired of writing Xanth, his latest ten or so Xanth books really suck. Any of the first six or eight Xanth books, and any non-Xanth Anthony, is usually pretty good.

Douglas Adams. I've already read everything he's written, multiple times. Listened to the radio series, many times, watched the TV series, many times, played the video games, many times. Including Bureaucracy. Would Mary Poppins please pick up the White Courtesy Phone?

David Weber is quickly becoming one of my new favorites. I loved the Honor Harrington series, and I'm eagerly devouring the March Upcountry series he co-wrote with John Ringo.


OK, I find myself rambling a bit while I write this, so here goes...

The gent who runs my favorite used bookstore in town recommends anything by Philip K Dick, anything by Harlan Ellison, anything by A.E. Van Vogt... Last time I went in there, I got off easy. Came out with a copy of Heinlein's "Door Into Summer" (Read it, want my own copy), Douglas Adams/Terry Jones "Starship Titanic" (Ditto), HP Lovecraft "The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Other Stories of Horror", the June '03 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, and the January '00 issue of Analog. Usually I end up hauling more paper home. Couple visits ago, I found myself leaving with no fewer than SEVENTEEN books. Bleh. 'Course, it's my favorite bookstore because those seventeen books cost me a whole $8... He sells most of his paperbacks for 5/$1 and most of his hardbacks 3/$1... His priced stuff is usually $0.50 to $1.50 each. Although he's soon going to have a SIGNED COPY of "Stranger in a Strange Land", he's probably going to price it between $300 and $500. He'll be bringing a *FULL SET* of EE Doc Smith (all the books, all the posters, everything) to Fandemonium to sell in the dealer's room, so if you're a Smith fan, you might want to show up.

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Fandemonium 2010 -- No Boundaries.
http://www.fandemonium.org
Friday - Sunday, August 6th - 8th, 2010
Nampa Civic Center - Nampa, Idaho (Only 20 minutes from the airport!)
(Idaho: It ain't just potatoes anymore.)

That's some unusual authors you picked there! I like both, but I think both are falling out of favor somewhat due to their lack of... cultural sensitivity? political correctness? something like that. Also, as far as I know, Karl May never really caught on in America, though he's very well known in Europe (I'm a former European).

Henk G.

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Why are canines called canines when feline canines are bigger than canine canines?

I'm a current European, so it's not that strange :)
Winnetou is one of my all-time favorite books, I still read it now and then. Sure, it's very naive, but it's still a great book.
Karl May was one of the first authors that wrote positively about "Indians", and AFAIK the Sioux tribe declared him a friend of the tribe when he visited them, so I don't think he insulted them or anything.

Hugh Lofting - well, all I read of his are the "Dr. Doolitle" stories, and I don't know if he wrote anything else. But in those stories he ridicules the positions of power, and brings forward the little man (and his animals :) ). Considering the age and subject of his writing, I'd say he was pretty advanced in his thinking.
All in all, they both had advanced ideas, I guess that's why I like them so much (aside the fact I refuse to grow up :) )

I have three. Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Terry Pratchett. Don't try to make me choose between them, lest I sic The Outsider on you with a Piecemaker to blast you into Endworld.

Raymond E. Feist. I've always liked the Krondor universe. As fantasy goes, it's pretty rare to find anything in the fantasy genre quite this solid (though some of the later Shannara books came close).

Guy Gavriel Kay - Canadian fantasy writer. Vibrant, descriptive, interesting and distinctive settings and characters.

Connie Willis - clever and witty, science fiction that can easily be appreciated by non-scifi readers.

Terry Pratchett...need I say more?

Several that have already been mentioned plus Orson Scott Card. Some of his stuff is more re-readable than others, but it is all worth reading at least once.

Ender's Game - probably 20 times or more.
Lost Boys - once, it is just too emotionally draining. I keep thining about picking it up because it is so good, but I'm afraid of the emotion.

Okay, I was waiting for a friend at the grocery store last night, and wandered over to look at the books. I usually find absolutely NOTHING of interest there, but you never know, you know?

Anyway, there on the shelf, was a shiny new copy of "Callahan's Con" by Spider Robinson.

I immediately and without thinking about it grabbed the book and dropped it into my cart.

Everything I've read from Spider has been absolutely wonderful and fun. I own the vast majority of his books, and am always on the lookout for new ones. Spider is as pleasant to read as Heinlein. And Spider's not dead yet, so we'll get more works out of him!

Oh, yeah, and he's turned me on to some truly terrific music.

_________________
Fandemonium 2010 -- No Boundaries.
http://www.fandemonium.org
Friday - Sunday, August 6th - 8th, 2010
Nampa Civic Center - Nampa, Idaho (Only 20 minutes from the airport!)
(Idaho: It ain't just potatoes anymore.)

Terry Pratchett, of course. And not just for the humor - he tells a story wonderfully.

Terry Pratchett is very good, but I think he's too whimsical in his storytelling. Sure its funny, but you can tell there's an underlying serious side to all his books. Just once, I'd like to see a book that let that side develop fully.

For fiction, Douglas Adams (no surprise there, eh?)

Non-fiction - I love Bill Bryson's travel books. I must have half of In A Sunburned Country memorized. Just got A Short History of Nearly Everything, but haven't had a chance to read it yet, having recently developed something of a social life and started playing golf again.

And for both fiction and non-fiction from the same author, I'll just say one word: Asimov.

Hell yeah. I actually FORCED myself to stop reading his Song of Fire and Ice. Why? So that I could stretch the magical, magical period of 'reading it for the first time' longer...

I admire Tolkien for his world-building skills. He really got into the details. As a plain prose writer, though, he wasn't that hot, especially if you compare him to other writers at that point, like Chesterton and Lewis.

I like Kipling. Cos it's FUN to read his stories. It really is. He builds his sentences in such a way that they sound like they'd be great read aloud.

Is it blatantly obvious that I have no life if I said I've read at least one work from all of these authors? I however strongly go with Orson Scott Card. If my name doesnt give it away his books simply immerse me into them. If any of you have read them especially the latter works in the Ender's game series I have loved and cherished these works because he captures my spirit into one of his characters. I am Novinha. No I am not "like" Novinha she is, quite literally, me. I lost both my parents to a milignant form of cancer while I was very young and took it to heart thinking they had left me. I grew up in the same fashion afraid of making connections to people for fear of losing them also. Orson scott Card captures my spirit in Novinha so closely it it almost eerie. May he continue writing LONG after I have departed this world.

Terry Pratchett, his books are generally great

Card is indeed quite good. i just wish he could, just once, write about a family that isn't totally dysfunctional. The Ender series, the Shadow series, the Homecoming books - I'd hate to be a part of *any* of those families. (And no, I haven't read the Alvin Maker books yet, so I have no opinion on those).

You've heard about the Ender's Game movie, right?

_________________
"Vox populi? Vox humbug!"
- William Tecumseh Sherman

I'm Probally going to have to go with Heilein. I've almost managed to wear my copy of Starship Troopers out entirely. On the other hand there is always Neil Gaiman

If I judge favourite authors by the ones I've dragged over to my new home country, then it's Terry Pratchett (pterry! Pyramids is my other favourite), some Asimov and Clarke (both of which I don't own enough of) and Anne McCaffrey (far too many to be healthy). I've also got the earlier Xanth series books.

I don't think Pratchett's 'underlying morals' are a bad thing - I'm all for whimsical tales of fancy, but I appreciate the irony he wields.

I also like Niven, mainly because plenty of his stories contain workable scientific devices, with a minimum of unobtainium and handwavium (not counting, of course, his ringworld books with monsters and magical technology a-plenty, not necesserily a bad thing).

R.A. Salvatore hands down. I love every book by him that I've read, and I've read a couple books more than once. I still have a few I want to get by him also. I just need the money to do so.

Anne Rice, Terry Goodkind, Orson Scott Card, and Anne Bishop

I must have read The Crosstime Engineer by Leo Frankowski at least that many times. It's the only book that I've ever read twice in a row.



I'm afraid that the only Spider that I've read was Mindkiller and his short story collection Antinomy.

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Favorite SciFi/Fantasy Author: Tad Williams. I've read Otherland at least five times, all 3600 pages of it. Piers Anthony is a close second

Favorite Mystery Author: Lillian Jackson Braun. What can I say, I love those damn cats from The Cat Who... series.

Favorite Angst-type Author: It's a tie between Zindel and Salenger. The Amazing And Death Defying Diary Of Eugene Dingman, is my favorite Zindel, while Catcher in the Rye is my favorite Salenger, though I do like what other of his stuff I have read.

Favorite Romance Novel: If I ever voice an opinion on that one, someone please shoot me. Preferably in the stomach so that I can contemplate where I went wrong during my slow and painful death.

I forgot about this thread! I've a couple more to add to my list:

Terry Pratchett - don't think I mentioned it the first time around. Since the opening of this thread, I tore throught the entire <i>Discworld</i> series, as well as anything else I could find with his name on it (still looking for <i>The Carpet People</i>, <i>Dark Side of the Sun</i>, and <i>The Unadulterated Cat</i>) and directed (and, due to some last minute droputs, ended up performing in) a local production of <i>Mort</i>. He's probably my #1 right now.

Stephen Jay Gould - one of the best American popular-science writers (I'd stand him up to Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan and Brian Greene any day of the week). I'm not sure if I agree with the whole "punctuated equilibrium" thing, but I love the way he wrote.

Carl Sagan - see above. The joy and wonder he felt about discovery is evident on every page of every book he wrote.

Harlan Ellison - with an asterisk. I love the introductory material he writes for anthologies (especially the <i>Dangerous Visions</i> collections), and his memoirs are a hoot. But most of his actual fiction leaves me cold. Not all, but the majority. I think his real strength is as an editor and historian.

(Incidentally, I'm thrilled to see that Card has finally managed to write a functional family! The Wiggins, the Arkanians, and the Delphikis were all fine examples of real families in <i>Shadow of the Giant</i>.)

_________________
"Vox populi? Vox humbug!"
- William Tecumseh Sherman