Our favourite authors and their books:
 

Douglas Adams One time Doctor Who script editor and reluctant writer, Adams had a stunning hit with the radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He has gone on to produce irregular, erratic, but always entertaining books in the humorous science fiction field.

Brian Aldiss Though identified with the sometimes extreme new wave of the sixties, Aldiss has always been a storyteller, and though his books can sometimes be challenging they rarely fail to entertain.

Isaac Asimov The prolific Asimov’s greatest concepts were his excellent robot stories, and the 1950s Foundation trilogy. Always packed with ideas and adventure, if short on three dimensional characters.

Alfred Bester Arguably the writer who transformed comfortable forties and fifties SF into the edgier, fast paced, more sophisticated work of the sixties, Bester's top novels combine a film noir grittiness with a dazzling flow of ideas. If you haven't read Bester, you've something to look forward to.

James Blish Sadly forgotten, James Blish was one of those rare hybrids who could produce science fiction about people or about technology. His landmark books are the cities in flight series, with the fascinating concept of spindizzy motors that lift whole cities into space, and the soul searching, thematically link books Black Easter, A Case of Conscience and Doctor Mirabilis.

Ray Bradbury Bradbury’s science fiction is like nothing else. His closest to pure SF is Fahrenheit 451, but most of his books, even those with apparent science fiction content like The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, veer into fantasy. He’s at his best when conjuring up the fears and delights of small town boyhood – as in the wonderful Something Wicked This Way Comes.

John Brunner Sadly neglected now, in the 60s and 70s, Brunner was a star of the SF scene. He wrote a lot of books, producing an output that could occasionally be so-so, but his great books are up among some of the best of the edgy science fiction of the period. An essential part of any SF collection.

Arthur C. Clarke One of the best known science fiction authors thanks to his work on the classic SF film, 2001, his TV series and his 1945 prediction of the communications satellite, Clarke is of the hard technology school. His visions of the future often involve the arrival of some advanced alien technology, and picture a world where current organised religion has outlasted its usefulness. Look out for The City and the Stars, a lovely quest story with a real sense of wonder as a dying, high-tech city finds a new future, and Rendezvous with Rama, probably his best development of the shock arrival of an alien artefact.

Stephen Donaldson Mainly a fantasy writer, best known for his first success, the dark Thomas Covenant books, Donaldson has had considerable success with his science fiction Gap series.

Alan Garner Garner is one of those writers who, though mostly aiming at children and young adults, produces books which are readable by anyone who is prepared to suspend disbelief and enjoy fantasy. His books have matured from the early adventure fantasies to dark mixtures of time where the past and the present mingle uneasily in a very mysterious way.

Joe Haldeman Haldeman's books are often gutsy adventures, but there's an underlying degree of thought that puts them apart from many others. He came to fame with Forever War, which was an intentional counter to the delight in violence of Heinlein's Starship Troopers - from there he went on to win regular awards. A reliable, readable writer.

Robert Heinlein Once a huge name, Heinlein is less visible on the shelves these days, possibly because his technocratic viewpoint has lost popularity. He had three distinct phases – his early space operas, his middle work, which broadened to have more people involvement, and his later, sprawling stuff that got positively odd. He was probably at his best in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Stranger in the Strange Land marked the move to his third phase, but is still tightly written enough to be worth reading.

Frank Herbert Herbert wrote a good number of science fiction novels, but the one book Dune and its sequels dwarves the rest - and much of the remaining science fiction canon. Herbert's ability to fill out the detail of a culture is awesome, and his remarkable sequence merits several re-readings.

Madeleine L'Engle L'Engle is a prolific US writer of children's/young adults' fantasy - but she writes it so well that it is still very readable as an adult. Her masterpiece, A Wrinkle in Time has to be one of the top children's books ever written.

Mervyn Peake There's no doubting it - Peake was a one-off. His masterpiece, the Gormenghast trilogy lies somewhere between a fantasy and the caricature world of Dickens. His work gets stranger still when it is brought to the 'real' world in Mr Pye. In the end, you've just got to try it.

Frederik Pohl Pohl rarely fails to entertain. He has written plenty of straight stories, like his alien encounter series beginning with Gateway, but it’s probably for the dry humour of books like The Space Merchants (with Cyril Kornbluth) that he is best known.

Terry Pratchett The ultimate fantasy humorist, Pratchett has passed the 20 mark on his Discworld series. The technique is simple. Pratchett takes a specific topic and applies to it the peculiar logic and personnel of the Discworld to turn it into a comic masterpiece. Actually, the technique isn't simple - but Terry Pratchett makes it seem like it is.

Robert Rankin After Terry Pratchett, the master of SF/fantasy humour, Rankin depends more on sheer insanity than simple jokes. His characters vary from likeable layabouts to the downright weird. Rankin's humour is at its best when putting strange, occult or extra-terrestrial occurrences alongside the everyday.

Keith Roberts The doyen of alternative histories, Roberts paints a glorious picture of civilisations where history has diverted from our own. Present days where steam is the most advanced form of power, or huge manned kites are a major feature of a feudalistic society are richly portrayed. Try Pavane, Kite World or Molly Zero.

J. K Rowling This unique phenomenon of modern writing shares with the rest of us a total bewilderment of just what has made the Harry Potter phenomenon such a global success. There have certainly been better fantasies that straddle the children/adult reading boundaries - see Alan Garner or Madeleine L'Engle, for instance - but this shouldn't detract from the fact that Rowling's books are solidly crafted and a delight to read.

Bob Shaw A consistent writer who has changed his area from challenging science fiction to writing more humour these days, but manages a good balance of ideas and people in his stories. Well worth pursuing.

J. R. R. Tolkien It may have been a while since Tolkien's books were attracting attention the way they are again now thanks to the feature films of the Lord of the Rings, but this remarkable writer of academically inspired fantasy has never dropped out of popularity. Rowling may be the mistress of child-centred fantasy, but Tolkien invented intelligent sword and sorcery and remains the master.

H. G. Wells Arguably the father of modern science fiction, Wells was a prolific writer in everything from history to romance. Occasionally deadly dull, but when he got his storytelling right, an absolute master.

Gene Wolfe a fantasy writer with overlaps into science fiction. His writing is very evocative, and often drops inadequate characters into impossible situations. A real delight. My favourite is There Are Doors, but it’s hard to go wrong with Wolfe.

Roger Zelazny Equally at home with fantasy and science fiction, Zelazny has produced one of the longest running series in existence - the Amber books - plus some brilliant one-off novels. Sometimes a lazy writer, at his best, Zelazny is stunning.