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My Opinions on Various Authors
Jun. 22nd, 2012 08:48 pmBecause nobody asked for it. I'm only counting authors whose work I have read.
Isaac Asimov: The Old Master, although some of his work is rather dry and clinical at times. His nonfiction work is even better than his fiction. One of his robot novels was the first work to make me question perception of language.
Arthur C. Clarke: A master at building a setting and presenting the sense of something greater beyond the border. Unfortunately, his attempts to present what the future will actually hold typically end up downright silly these days - I can't bring myself to read the later half of his short story work.
Ray Bradbury: A lot of potential, but buried for the most part in showy, overdone writing that makes trying to get to the point a chore. "The Small Assassin", "A Sound of Thunder", and ESPECIALLY "There Will Come Soft Rains" are standouts and exceptions.
Neil Stephenson: Fast-paced and intense, but he has no ability whatsoever to focus on the plot and keeps getting carried away in digression after digression.
John Varley: Another author who writes engaging, intense plots, but unfortunately he likes to step forward and make long, boring speeches at his readers. Red Thunder was amazing; Red Lightning opened with a long, thinly-veiled attack on FEMA that made me walk away.
John Scalzi: Somewhat uneven, and he probably shouldn't have tried to write from a young person's viewpoint (Zoe's Tale was an embarassment), but his narrative voice is generally a delight and his sense of humor is brilliant.
Orson Scott Card: A sad example of what happens when you let your personal viewpoints color your work too strongly. The Ender series (both the main series and the Shadow sideseries) start strong and gradually slide downhill into mere specters of themselves.
Stephen Baxter: A misogynstic, hateful hack who shamelessly exploited a better author's name to push his own work.
Harlan Ellison: Glimmers of talent, but he suffers from the poisonous belief that he's far more profound and intelligent than he really is. "Repent, Harlequin! Said The Ticktockman", "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", and that one with "the Islets of Langerhans" in the title are the only stories of his that are anywhere near as smart as he thinks. (If, as he's stated, he wrote the first one in a week, then he may be editing his stories to death.)
Kurt Vonnegut: Too cynical for his own good. The misanthropy and bitterness makes his work nearly impossible for me to like, and his apparent determination to undercut any hope or success in his stories is not encouraging.
Piers Anthony: I've only read a couple of his Xanth books, so I can't say for sure if he's really as exploitive and misogynistic as TV Tropes likes to play him as, but they definitely weren't anything to enshrine.
Simon R. Green: Some fine ideas and a good ear for dialogue, but what's with his obsession with cutting down and weakening his female characters?
David Eddings: My strongest inspiration. It is my deepest regret that I never got to meet this man.
Neil Gaiman: A very imaginative writer, able to spin entire worlds... but cursed with an inability to end a story when it needs to end, instead dragging it on another chapter or two longer than it should for no good reason.
Ursula K. LeGuin: I've only read one book by her, but let's face it, these days it's obvious she only writes to expound her views.
George R. R. Martin: Not applicable, because I haven't read all the way through the first Song of Ice and Fire, but frankly, I like the TV series more. Fevre Dream is awesome, though.
Corey Doctorow: What the fuck is he talking about?
Philip K. Dick: I admire what he was trying to do, but sometimes he got a little too far into his own mind with the wheels-within-wheels and referencing.
Agatha Christie: I wish she hadn't included Hastings in so many of the Hercule Poirot novels. They work so much better when she isn't flailing away at the stereotyped "idiot Watson".
Shirley Jackson: I never understand what the story was about, but I always have this sense that something terribly wrong just happened. More authors should be able to pull that off.
Mary Janice-Davidson: Why is she insisting on keeping the Betsy the Vampire Queen series going? It should have ended five books ago, for fuck's sake!
Isaac Asimov: The Old Master, although some of his work is rather dry and clinical at times. His nonfiction work is even better than his fiction. One of his robot novels was the first work to make me question perception of language.
Arthur C. Clarke: A master at building a setting and presenting the sense of something greater beyond the border. Unfortunately, his attempts to present what the future will actually hold typically end up downright silly these days - I can't bring myself to read the later half of his short story work.
Ray Bradbury: A lot of potential, but buried for the most part in showy, overdone writing that makes trying to get to the point a chore. "The Small Assassin", "A Sound of Thunder", and ESPECIALLY "There Will Come Soft Rains" are standouts and exceptions.
Neil Stephenson: Fast-paced and intense, but he has no ability whatsoever to focus on the plot and keeps getting carried away in digression after digression.
John Varley: Another author who writes engaging, intense plots, but unfortunately he likes to step forward and make long, boring speeches at his readers. Red Thunder was amazing; Red Lightning opened with a long, thinly-veiled attack on FEMA that made me walk away.
John Scalzi: Somewhat uneven, and he probably shouldn't have tried to write from a young person's viewpoint (Zoe's Tale was an embarassment), but his narrative voice is generally a delight and his sense of humor is brilliant.
Orson Scott Card: A sad example of what happens when you let your personal viewpoints color your work too strongly. The Ender series (both the main series and the Shadow sideseries) start strong and gradually slide downhill into mere specters of themselves.
Stephen Baxter: A misogynstic, hateful hack who shamelessly exploited a better author's name to push his own work.
Harlan Ellison: Glimmers of talent, but he suffers from the poisonous belief that he's far more profound and intelligent than he really is. "Repent, Harlequin! Said The Ticktockman", "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", and that one with "the Islets of Langerhans" in the title are the only stories of his that are anywhere near as smart as he thinks. (If, as he's stated, he wrote the first one in a week, then he may be editing his stories to death.)
Kurt Vonnegut: Too cynical for his own good. The misanthropy and bitterness makes his work nearly impossible for me to like, and his apparent determination to undercut any hope or success in his stories is not encouraging.
Piers Anthony: I've only read a couple of his Xanth books, so I can't say for sure if he's really as exploitive and misogynistic as TV Tropes likes to play him as, but they definitely weren't anything to enshrine.
Simon R. Green: Some fine ideas and a good ear for dialogue, but what's with his obsession with cutting down and weakening his female characters?
David Eddings: My strongest inspiration. It is my deepest regret that I never got to meet this man.
Neil Gaiman: A very imaginative writer, able to spin entire worlds... but cursed with an inability to end a story when it needs to end, instead dragging it on another chapter or two longer than it should for no good reason.
Ursula K. LeGuin: I've only read one book by her, but let's face it, these days it's obvious she only writes to expound her views.
George R. R. Martin: Not applicable, because I haven't read all the way through the first Song of Ice and Fire, but frankly, I like the TV series more. Fevre Dream is awesome, though.
Corey Doctorow: What the fuck is he talking about?
Philip K. Dick: I admire what he was trying to do, but sometimes he got a little too far into his own mind with the wheels-within-wheels and referencing.
Agatha Christie: I wish she hadn't included Hastings in so many of the Hercule Poirot novels. They work so much better when she isn't flailing away at the stereotyped "idiot Watson".
Shirley Jackson: I never understand what the story was about, but I always have this sense that something terribly wrong just happened. More authors should be able to pull that off.
Mary Janice-Davidson: Why is she insisting on keeping the Betsy the Vampire Queen series going? It should have ended five books ago, for fuck's sake!
