Some years ago, I read more or less everything that HP Lovecraft wrote and blogged about it.
Years later, I read more or less everything Jack Vance wrote and blogged about it twice.
I have also, more recently, read almost everything that William Golding wrote, but I have not blogged about it on the basis that it may not be revelant to my readers' interests.
I have really enjoyed these projects - I have found that after a while they get a momentum of their own and motivate further reading, and there is something about getting to know an author's personal arc that itself almost functions as an overarching novel-within-a-novel: you read the fiction, but can also get an overview of the linkages between the works so as to provide a coherent whole.
I would like recommendations for other fantasy/SF/horror authors to get to grips with. Here are some baseline requirements that Must Not Be Violated:
1. The author should have published at least 7 novels.
2. The author should not be JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, George RR Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Steven Erikson, Julian May, David Eddings, China Mieville, or Gene Wolfe, because I have either read all or most of their stuff already, or know that I don't particularly like them.
RECOMMEND AWAY. And show your workings. Sell me on your recommendation!
Discworld - Terry Pratchett
ReplyDeleteTerry Pratchett - Discworld.
ReplyDeleteThese books are humurous, witty and at the same time seriously down to earth in their treatment of serious subject matter. It's 41 books total which greatly exceeds your limit of 7. If you don't want to tackle that many, the series breaks down into several "sun-series". The wizards books, the death books, the witches books, the guard books etc. I should say that some of the earlier books are weaker. They start as sword and sorcery parodies before he finds his footing as soemthing of. Their own. The author himself recommends starting with "Guards Guards".
Discworld always brings me back to my time working at WH Smith, aged about 15 or 16. At that time, in the mid 90s, they were all the rage. There were entire shelves of them on sale. A different era.
DeleteDavid Gemmell.
ReplyDeleteThe late Howard Andrew Jones for fantasy
ReplyDeleteMy goodness! I had no idea Howard had passed away. We had corresponded at some length over the years, until 2024, when things trailed away. I had just assumed he had become busy. I'm really sad to hear about his death.
DeleteI just started reading him - I wasn't sure how good a S&S hero based on Hannibal could be and I was more than pleasantly surprised. I was especially delighted by a story that I slowly realized was a take on PG Wodehouse's most iconic pair (but still a solid S&S yarn).
DeleteClark Ashton Smith. I'm currently reading the Averoigne cycle, but had read the Hyperborea and Zothique cycles and I love them. Best prose author of the Lovecraft Circle. He was left outside the Appendix N Recommended List of AD&D because Gygax was drunk the day he wrote it, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteOnly issue is that CAS didn’t write any novels AFAIK, but otherwise, totally YES and CAS fits with the kind of material noisms writes a lot more than some other authors discussed here.
DeleteThis is a good suggestion - I have read some of his short fiction.
DeleteWell, I don't know if these are recommendations yet these have been my read everything by projects:
ReplyDeleteFritz Leiber. I'm still in the process of reading. I haven't finished the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books because I love the books so much that I don't want to experience the feeling of having read them all. However, Leiber's non F and GM books are quite a treat and he is an excellent writer for making up and writing in many different settings. Can't really say what the personal arc for Leiber is, other than he starts out as a 29 year old who's interested in sci-fi, fantasy, witchcraft, theater, and has drinking problems, then dies at 81, being a 81 year old interested in sci-fi, fantasy, witchcraft, theater, and has drinking problems. I guess there's a breakdown as more and more tragedy enters into Leiber's life, yet one gets a sense of a man who keeps trucking and that is very noble.
William Hope Hodgson, he may be disqualified because he only wrote 4 novels, yet he published enough short story collections to qualify. He was an interesting man. He feels like a gay teenager who's into horror fiction egregore or thought form emanated into the past, in that he was a body-builder who inspired H.P. Lovecraft. Not only that, he was a cabin boy, made locks for Houdini to try and get out of, and he fought and died in WW1. His personal arc from what I get is a dark one, there are a lot of plot points that include the death of a child, and a lot of his work is about strong men having to be strong in order to protect those that they love yet eventually that is not enough and you are going to die in Hodgson's world. The strong men in his fiction usually survive long enough to save their loved ones, yet William Hope Hodgson died in WW1 in straits similar to his characters.
(I know that I am harping on this, yet when I am referring to Hodgson's strong men, they are not anything like manosphere Sigma understanding that that term invokes. Hodgson's strong men would actually not want to be strong men if circumstances didn't force them and they don't get anything out of being strong other than knowing that the monsters won't get the younger men or women or babies because they fended them off this night. The feeling is more like Jack London characters in a lovecraftian universe.)
Philip Jose Farmer has so many books and all of them are quite a ride. Farmer is so amazing in the bizarre ideas he comes up with. He's incredibly mature and insightful when dealing with religious themes yet crazily he writes stuff that should be terrible internet fan-fiction however he turns it into literary gold. All his Tarzan books shouldn't work, they really shouldn't work, yet not only does he make it work, it's actual literature.
I have more yet I have waffled on too long. I do apologize for the length of this comment. Why do I make mini-essays in the comments? I honestly just want to be brief and just have three words in my comments.
These are good suggestions - thanks. I have never read a single word by Farmer, but you've reminded me that I once had dozens of them. At the university where I did my PhD there was a massive archive of SF fiction for a specialist centre. At one time they were trying to get rid of some non-rare stock to make space, and were giving away box after box of stuff for rock-bottom prices. I bought a box of about 100 books for £5, many of which were by Farmer. I was storing it at my office, but then when I got a job at another institution they were summarily thrown out by cleaners before I got the chance to move them!
DeleteThe World of Tiers books feel like a real unknown, or underappreciated, influence on D&D. Pointlessly convoluted traps, creatures of different mythologies all thrown together. It's all there.
DeleteI'm sorry, but Farmer's A Feast Unknown sequence is emphatically not literature. (And apologies to our host if this comment showed up twice, something went very wrong the first time I tried.)
DeleteJules Verne
ReplyDeleteGood suggestion. I have never read a single word his fiction.
DeleteUrsula Leguin. This page says she published 22 novels: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/874602.Ursula_K_Le_Guin
ReplyDeleteI’ve read 5 novels, and in addition to all being excellently written and intensely thought provoking, there’s a variety of setting and tone that would make a Read Everything project not too repetitive.
I think this is an excellent suggestion (and much more sensible than the one I'm going to make).
DeleteThe problem is....I am not a massive fan of LeGuin. I really like her short stories a lot and have got a lot out of them. But I read the first four Earthsea books and they were a bit 'meh' to me. Is this heresy?
DeleteEarthsea are children's books. Try something Hainish.
DeleteAvram Davidson.
ReplyDeleteThis might be a winner. You had me at the Vergil Magus series: 'A fantasy series set an alternate ancient Mediterranean world in which harpies, basilisks, and satyrs exist during the Punic Wars.'
DeleteI've only read the first of the Vergil series, The Phoenix and the Mirror, which I remember being quite good. The setting is how people in the Middle Ages imagined the ancient world was, and how they imagined Vergil, namely as a sorcerer/alchemist.
DeletePatricia McKillip, fantasy. At least _The Riddlemaster of Hed_ trilogy and _The Forgotten Beasts of Eld_. Full disclosure, I haven't read 7 of her novels (yet).
ReplyDeleteThanks! I have a vague memory of seeing her books in a bookshop but I've never read her.
DeleteTerry Pratchett - fantasy; as already mentioned by others, Discworld, but not only, the Nome trilogy, The Carpet People, Dark Side of the Sun (SF)
ReplyDeleteChristopher Rowley - fantasy, the Basil Broketail series (in its own 7 tomes, plus there is a novel Wizard and the Floating City placed in the same world, though not featuring any of the Basil series characters if I recall correctly). While certainly not high literature, I did have fun reading it. There are other series by the same author, but I haven't had opportunity to read them.
Andrzej Sapkowski - Saga o Wiedźminie (the Witcher saga), though I have no idea if it was translated to English in its entirety already (I am Pole, I read it in original).
Stanisław Lem - Science Fixtion, various: Cyberiad, Fables for Robots, The Star Diaries, Tales of Pirx the Pilot, Solaris, The Invincible, Eden... Some are lighter (Cyberiad, Fables for Robots), some more philosophical, but a very good read if you expect more than just "action, action and sum more action in cosmic scenery" kind of sci-fi.
Lem is a tricky one to be a completist of, because not all of his works have been translated into English, some only excerpts, and there’s various collections of short stories and compilations that overlap each other…. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem_and_their_adaptations
DeleteThat being said, everyone should read at least some Lem.
Becky Chambers. She writes mainly SF. Don't expect big plots and lots of drama. Her novels tend to focus on the little interactions between people. That is done with a lot of love. In her first novel "A long way to a small, angry planet" the title describes the main plot. The story revolves around the daily workings of the crew of the ship that is stuck together for months at a time. Her latest monk and robot series investigates what do people want when they live in a perfect world.
ReplyDeleteRobert E. Howard only wrote three novels, so I'll suggest L. Sprague DeCamp, a guy who Gygax listed as one of the major influences on D&D but is mostly forgotten these days.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you should do that Golding post anyways.
I may do the Golding post anyway, yes. His work is very fantasy-adjacent at times.
DeleteVernor Vinge, the SF author with the most creative alien species and most compelling depiction of superintelligent AI
ReplyDeleteP.G. Wodehouse. I just read his first Jeeves and Wooster book, and I feel he has a knack for interesting social situations that will be an inspiration for me later on. If you want, you can double-dip on authors who knew each other and add Arthur Conan Doyle. :-)
ReplyDeleteI do love Wodehouse, as an occasional read.
DeleteI'm going to nominate Hugh Cook. Mostly because I think he deserves much more attention. The majority of his work is formed of the 10 book Chronicles of an Age of Darkness which sounds like the most turgid mid 80s fantasy series ever (and full disclosure I started reading somewhat hoping it would be). Thankfully the series offers an awful lot more with a great variety of style and setting. Each book can be read independently with recurring characters cropping up between novels.
ReplyDeleteDid Patrick Stuart do some posts about this? It rings a bell.
DeleteHe certainly did:
Deletehttps://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2024/08/let-him-cook.html
https://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2024/11/he-cooked-zaan-olo-malan.html
And I would also be interested in seeing you join the Hugh Cook bandwagon.
https://worldbuildingandwoolgathering.blogspot.com/2026/05/march-april-2026-miscellany-raging.html
I'd second Hugh Cook, the island of Untunchilamon in his novel the Wishstone and the Wonderworkers feels like something out of Yoon Suin
DeleteI’m going to nominate the late Phil Rickman. He wrote horror-adjacent fiction set in rural England and Wales. He is best known for the Merrily Watkins series about a female Anglican exorcist, but he did a number of standalones (which also exist in the same universe as the MW novels as far as I can tell). The MW novels could be described as ‘Midsomer Murders meets folk horror’. I’ve read four of the MW novels and two standalones (I’d say out of those two, I’d recommend Chalice, which is set in 90s Glastonbury).
ReplyDeleteOh, they sound great. Thanks for the recommendation.
DeleteMargaret St. Clair, at eight novels and four-odd story collections, would be a manageable but rich choice, a fantasy/science-fantasy influence acknowledged by few outside the Appendix N cognoscenti.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteGlen Cook, I really enjoyed the Black Company books. Also, David Gerrold, I enjoyed the War Against the Chtorr books, but he's best known for being the guy who wrote, "The Trouble with Tribbles," StarTrek episode.
ReplyDeleteMartha Wells. She's most know now for the Murderbot books but she's written all sorts of books over the years. One of her earliest City of Bones is a favorite of mine - sort of fantasy post apocalyptic with an archeological feel - could have been the basis for a whole RPG setting. She also has a whole series about shapeshifting bird people that is way more compelling than that simple description - and something the writer of Yoon-Suin might appreciate.
ReplyDeleteI can't recommend Le Guin, even though I think some of her science fiction is the finest ever written, because I think her fantasy works are mostly stinkers.
ReplyDeleteof major science fiction authors, I can think of at least 3 whose work has at least a 75% hit rate with me: Christopher Priest, M. John Harrison, and William Gibson. I think they all produced (and the last two may continue to produce) really interesting, reread-worthy novels after their seminal period.
-Joel Sammallahti
Jorge Luis Borges!
ReplyDeleteI would suggest Karl Edward Wagner but he falls short of the 7 novel limit (Dark Crusade, Darkness Weaves, Bloodstone, the rest are short story collections). Very sad. Conan-like but darker and somehow a more compelling world that the author isn't afraid to burn down if the story requires. Also they are hard to find or expensive but if you find any in a used book store I highly recommend them.
ReplyDeleteAdrian Tchaikovsky!
ReplyDeleteAdding another vote for Clark Ashton Smith, he's a skilled writer technically and he's a good midpoint between Howard and Lovecraft when it comes to a lot of mood and themes.
ReplyDeleteThe main issue with him is he wrote his stories with BLINDING speed as he was writing them to support his sick parents during the Great Depression so a lot of them really needed another draft.
As for Martin, I did a completionist deep dive into Martin's short stories from the 70's and 80's a while ago and they varied wildly in quality but the best very very very good, and it was interesting to see what looked like rough drafts of some of his famous characters in old books. For example in Armageddon Rag we have Tyrion as a horny college professor, Tywin as a hack novelist, and Melisandre as a campus radical.
I'd want to say Clark Ashton Smith, but he fails on the technicality of never having written a novel. I think E. R. Eddison didn't get seven out either; certainly the Mercury cycle is just four (of which one unfinished). So: my suggestion is Fritz Leiber. His Lankhmar stories are an absolutely unparalleled influence on early D&D; they're also fun as all hell. The man could WRITE. His sense of humor alone puts him above Howard to my mind; the cheerful, urbane tone of the stories is just beautiful. His non-Lankhmar stories are necessary to put him over the seven-novel threshold, but those too, my God. Conjure Wife! What a brilliant story.
ReplyDeleteHonorable mention to Gandalf's suggestion of Jules Verne; it's sort of absurd never to have read 20,000 Leagues under the Sea or Around the World in 80 Days and you should do it for your own sake.
Finally, the malevolent suggestion would be Dumas (père). He's a titan among writers, practically all his novels are ludicrously enjoyable, but once you'd committed to reading them all you'd discover that there were about eighty more of them than you thought. And plays, too!