Favorite author?

[-ff-]

Who is your favorite author?

For fiction, I've got to say William Gibson hands down. This occured to me today, as I started re-reading the difference engine for like, the fourth time; last week I reread Neuromancer for what must be the millionth.
Honourable mentions go to William Burroughs and Douglas Coupland

Non fiction would be a little harder to pin down.
No clear winner, but points for Michel Foucault, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Edward Said.

[krisamata]

dean koontz

love him

[acidic_liquid]

I don't really have just one.

I've always liked Stephen King. After reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, I just had to read the rest of his works. I've become a big fan of him too.

[ebbomega]

"Oh my god! Are you Stephen King?"

I'd have to say at this point that Neal Stephenson 0wnz Gibson. While Gibson did do some revolutionary groundbreaking work, and while I loved Neuromancer, I'm trudging through Virtual Light. While I like it, it's nowhere near as good as Neuromancer.

Stephenson, on the other hand, has written no more than 3 works that I've read. Each and every single one has blown the entire Neuromancer trilogy out of the water.

To me, it's like comparing Chemical Brothers to The Prodigy. While The Prodigy were real innovators and took music in a completely different direction than it was headed before, The Chemical Brothers took the style and ran with it in a way that far superceded their predecessors.

As a result, I really liked Come With Us, while Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned has been a major disappointment.

I haven't read any of the Baroque trilogy, but I heard that the first one wasn't so good. I'll give them a try though, because Stephenson has been a pretty consistently good writer thus far.

[ebbomega]

Oh, and I've read Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (since you mentioned Wolfe). While it's a cool book, I don't know if it so much speaks to Tom Wolfe's writing capabilities or to the culture that Ken Kesey created.

[_RoseBud_]

My favorite author ever is Jaqueline Carey

She wrote the Kushiels Trilogy
If you like fantasy, politics, war, and sex it's a great novel......

[-ff-]

[edit - for Ebbomegga]
Neal Stephenson is also a favorite of mine - Snow Crash is perhaps one of the greatest books ever. But I will always love Gibson the way I will always love DJ Shadow - its about consistency - there is no other author whose catalogue I have liked virtually everything in, and for as long.

Regarding Tom Wolfe, I would maybe reccomend the Right Stuff (if you like astronauts) and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Stream-Line Baby (which, despite the name, is not a book about drugs). Both books show Wolfe at his finest as a journalist and commentator on American culture. Kind of like the straight version of Thompson actually.

[automatic]

if you like stephenson and gibson i recommend iain m. banks (or iain banks when he's writing non-sci-fi)...go read his "the player of games"...i've read just about everything gibson, stephenson, and banks have written, and i prefer banks hands down for his ability to turn a phrase, the originality of his concepts, and the sheer darkness of some of his subject material. his non-sci-fi works are excellent as well.

http://www.iainbanks.net/

sticking to the hard sci-fi realm i'd also recommend bruce sterling. his Schismatrix plus compendium is a stunning vision of the post-human future.

http://www.chriswaltrip.com/sterling/

Lately i've been into christopher brookmyre, hard-boiled tightly paced noirish detective stories with an extremely visceral edge.

http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/

and terry pratchett always makes me laugh, no one can do comic timing in written form like him.

http://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/

[crookedking]

bernard cornwell.

he writes better than you!!!!

[ebbomega]

I KNEW YOU WERE GONNA SAY THAT TIM!

See, ff... consistently is exactly the problem that I have with Gibson... he's been on a steady decline in quality ever since the Neuromancer trilogy. I really think he peaked with Count Zero....

[mapleleaf4ever]

Tom Clancy

[crookedking]

haha i was even going to put it in my post that you would know dave.

[ebbomega]

Bahahahah.

The more important thing, though, is that I know _why_.

Sagramor is still teh shit, IMHO.

[crookedking]

sagramor ain't got shit on merlin.

sgt. hakeswill is a good character too.

[miss.myra]

Toughie. For various reasons:

Ayn Rand, Douglas Coupland, Albert Camus, Sylvia Plath (read her journals. insanity has never been so beautiful.), Hemingway (*ducks*)


Ebbo'dave- I've never been huuuge into sci fi/fantasy novels, but I read snow crash and thoroughly enjoyed it. I haven't read any more of stephenson's stuff, but I really ought to.

[BrownThug]

tom clancy

[juice]

either amy tan (i love her writing style, it's very asian), or anne-marie macdonald.