A few weeks ago SFX published a SF and Fantasy Books Special which contained a top 100 Favourite SF and Fantasy authors of all time decided by popular vote. The list shows the perils of popular votes… But lets turn it into a meme anyway.
Bold any authors who you have read; italicise any authors who are sitting on your current to-read pile (not literally I hope); strike through any authors you plan to never read/read again.
- Terry Pratchett
- JRR Tolkien
- Neil Gaiman
- Douglas Adams
- George RR Martin
- Isaac Asimov
- Iain M. Banks
- Philip K. Dick
- HG Wells
- Robert Rankin
- Ursula K. LeGuin
- David Gemmell
- Peter F. Hamilton
- Frank Herbert
- Robert Heinlein
- JK Rowling
- Robert Jordan
- Arthur C. Clarke
- Ray Bradbury
- Stephen King
- Robin Hobb
- Philip Pullman
- John Wyndham
- Diana Wynne Jones
- CS Lewis
- Guy Gavriel Kay
- William Gibson
- Steven Erikson
- Anne McCaffrey
- Roger Zelazny
- Lois McMaster Bujold
- Raymond E. Feist
- China Mieville
- Gene Wolfe
- Stephen Donaldson
- Orson Scott Card
- Alan Moore
- David Eddings
- Michael Moorcock
- Trudi Canavan
- Kurt Vonnegut
- Tad Williams
- Jim Butcher
- Clive Barker
- Neal Stephenson
- Alastair Reynolds
- Jules Verne
- Mervyn Peake
- H.P. Lovecraft
- Sherri S. Tepper
- Robert E. Howard
- J.G. Ballard
- Octavia Butler
- Jasper Fforde
- Harlan Ellison
- CJ Cherryh
- Mercedes Lackey
- Jennifer Fallon
- Stephen Baxter
- Richard Morgan
- Terry Brooks
- Elizabeth Haydon
- Dan Simmons
- Richard Matheson
- Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Harry Harrison
- Jack Vance
- Katharine Kerr
- Alfred Bester
- Larry Niven
- Stanislaw Lem
- Susanna Clarke
- Robert Silverberg
- Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Julian May
- Charles de Lint
- Samuel R. Delany
- George Orwell
- Simon Clark
- Joe Haldeman
- Joe Abercrombie
- J.V. Jones
- Theodore Sturgeon
- Kim Stanley Robinson
- Jacqueline Carey
- M. John Harrison
- David Weber
- Scott Lynch
- Jonathan Carroll
- Christopher Priest
- Jon Courtney Grimwood
- Michael Marshall Smith
- Olaf Stapledon
- Ken MacLeod
- Brian W. Aldiss
- Terry Goodkind
- Charles Stross
- Sara Douglass
- Gwyneth Jones
-
James Herbert