lae wrote:
I loved the Hitchhiker's Guide. One of my alltime favorite books is called The Dispossessed, and I can't seem to remember the author's name although she is well known.
Ursula K. Le Guin. One of my favourite books, also
(she's another one who has written both sci-fi and fantasy, and stuff that sort of crosses over between both - unlike many sci-fi authors whose academic backgrounds are more "science-y", she's an anthropologist, and so her books tend to be much more people/culture/politics focused rather than technology focused. As well as a lot of sci-fi books set in the same universe as "The Dispossessed", she also wrote the Earthsea Quartet, which is regarded as one of the classic works of literary fantasy...)
Other (loosely) sci-fi authors i like (many of these could also have contentions about whether they could more accurately be considered "sci-fi", "fantasy" or in some cases "horror", "satire" or other genres): John Wyndham ("The Day Of The Triffids", "The Kraken Wakes", "The Chrysalids", etc), China Mieville ("Perdido Street Station" and its sequels in the New Crobuzon universe), Will Baker ("Star Beast"), Paul Park ("Coelestis"), Lovecraft's dream-fantasy stuff as well as the more sci-fi-ish of his horror stuff, H.G. Wells ("The Time Machine", "The Island Of Dr Moreau", etc)... it's also possible to consider some more "mainstream"/"literary" stuff, like Orwell or Huxley, as "sci-fi" according to strict definitions, so i'm not sure if strict genre-classification is actually helpful...
Currently reading Roger Zelazny's "Lord Of Light", which is kind of a hybrid of sci-fi with Hindu/Buddhist theology/mythology stuff, altho in writing style it's (to me) a little reminiscent of Lovecraft's dream-fantasy stuff, and also slightly of Le Guin's Earthsea stuff...