Sci-Fi Month: My Top Ten SF Authors

As part of the Sci-Fi Month hosted by Rinn Reads, I agreed to list my Top Ten SF authors. Even if I limit my selection to the authors I have in my personal library, it's a tough task narrowing the group to ten, let alone ranking them. Nonetheless, I managed to settle on a list.


10. Kim Stanley Robinson--I chose him for his book The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternative history in which Europeans are almost all wiped out by plague, allowing other cultures to dominate history.

9. James Tiptree, Jr. (the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon)--Brightness Falls from the Air was one of those books that kept me up all night.

8. Sheri Tepper--Beauty also kept me up all night. Tepper was Guest of Honor at the first WisCon I attended. Her books are provocative, but they can be a bit strident.

7. John Varley--Steel Beach has been out for a while, but I enjoyed the read.

6. Neil Stephenson--While I can't get into anything post Cryptonomicon, I did like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age.

5.  Lyda Morehouse--I recommend her LINK Angel series, which begins with Archangel Protocol.

4. Anne McCaffrey--I probably have more of her books than I do of all the other authors listed above. While she's most famous for the Pern books, I also like The Tower and the Hive series.

3. Octavia Butler--I read her Xenogenesis trilogy earlier this year and own Wildseed, Parable of the Sower, and Mind of My Mind.

2. Connie Willis--My favorite book of her is To Say Nothing of the Dog, but I also liked Blackout/All Clear and her collection Impossible Things.

1.  Julie E. Czerneda--She develops great aliens. My favorite series of hers is the Species Imperative one, though I also liked the Web Shifters series. Now I have to go through Goodreads and see if I missed any books of hers....

I better stop here before I get into Honorable Mentions, but please feel free to name some of your favorite authors in the comments!