Happy 101st Birthday The Greatest Sci-fi Writer Of All Time!

[ConfederateSS]

-------- Happy 101st Birthday Ray Bradbury The Great Sci-fi Writer of All Time ...My favorite ... Something Wicked This Way Comes... ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)...
---- What's your favorite?

[jonesthecurl]

Dandelion Wine

[jusplay4fun]

I like Isaac Asimov better: Foundation Series, I, Robot (including the 3 Laws of Robotics), MANY short stories, and LOTS of non-fiction on Science.

Ray Bradbury is up there with the BIG GUYS of Science Fiction. There is also Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land) and, of course, Arthur C. Clark (2001, A Space Odyssey).

Here is a note on Asimov, from Wikipedia:

Isaac Asimov (/ˈæzɪmɒv/;[b] c.  January 2,[a] 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was a prolific writer, and wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards.[c]

Asimov wrote hard science fiction. Along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers during his lifetime.[2] Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series,[3] the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966.[4] His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson.[5] He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.[6]

Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.

[jonesthecurl]

I know you're all waiting for this: Asimov was a toilet-head.

[ConfederateSS]

I know you're all waiting for this: Asimov was a toilet-head.

--------
--------My next two favorite after....Bradbury....
------------2nd Place) H.G.Wells
------------3rd Place) Jules Verne...... ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)...

[riskllama]

what about Lovecraft?

[Dukasaur]

Boring.

I've read a few Bradbury books. Usually very slow and dull.

Bradbury was a big believer of the importance of quantity over quality. It shows.

Quantity creates quality:

The best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot of short stories. If you can write one short story a week—it doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing, and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. Can’t be done. At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or at the end of the year, all of a sudden a story will come that’s just wonderful.

-from “Telling the Truth,” the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University, 2001

Get to the big truth first:

A novel has all kinds of pitfalls because it takes longer and you are around people, and if you’re not careful you will talk about it. The novel is also hard to write in terms of keeping your love intense. It’s hard to stay erect for two hundred days. So, get the big truth first. If you get the big truth, the small truths will accumulate around it. Let them be magnetized to it, drawn to it, and then cling to it.

-from a 2010 interview with Sam Weller, published in The Paris Review

Don’t think too hard:

The intellect is a great danger to creativity . . . because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth—who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads “Don’t think!” You must never think at the typewriter—you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.

-from a 1974 interview with James Day

Don’t write towards a moral:

[Trying to write a cautionary story] is fatal. You must never do that. A lot of lousy novels come from people who want to do good. The do-gooder novel. The ecological novel. And if you tell me you’re doing a novel or a film about how a woodsman spares a tree, I’m not going to go see it for a minute.

-from a 1995 interview with Playboy

Writers’ block is just a warning that you’re doing the wrong thing:

What if you have a blockage and you don’t know what to do about it? Well, it’s obvious you’re doing the wrong thing, aren’t you? . . . You’re being warned, aren’t you? Your subconscious is saying I don’t like you anymore. You’re writing about things I don’t give a damn for. . . If you have writers’ block you can cure it this evening by stopping what you’re doing and writing something else. You picked the wrong subject.

-from “Telling the Truth,” the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University, 2001

The Holy Trinity of Sci-Fi are Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke. To those I would add two more: my personal favourite, Poul Anderson, and of course L. Ron, who is much ridiculed because of his religious cult but was actually a really gripping sci-fi storyteller. Bradbury wouldn't even make the bullpen in my fantasy team. Might make him a third-base coach or something.

[HitRed]

Lower on my list is Steven King, Tommyknockers.

Late last night and the night before,

Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers,

knocking at my door.

I want to go out, don't know if I can,

'cause I'm so afraid

of the Tommyknocker man.

About a writer and a buried object in the backyard.

—-

Jurassic Park the book. Michele Crichton.

—-

451

[KoolBak]

DoD.... 100% with you.

I read a minimum of 2 books a week, for 48 years now. Mostly scifi / fantasy. To this day my favorite book hands down is Battlefield Earth.

Bradbury gargles tartar sauce.

[ConfederateSS]

-----Duk,...you must have read Martian Chronicles...more than once...Thought you read 3 dull books...I will say...The Chronicles...ouch...
------------But he was a writer...in all fields..Novels,Movies,T.V.,Short Stories, Children's books..etc...Now are you referring to his T.V. Theater..or his short stories...Both are many....Very well written......Outside of those....So you don't think The Halloween Tree...a classic.children's story....was a story...Of quality?....I find it one for everyone to read....Most Halloween stories... written in the modern era...go for gore,and bloodshed....Boring you say....Maybe we needed a writer to keep the unmoral stuff out of our lives for a change....I will give Bradbury credit...for that....It is not easy to go against what everyone else is doing....Stick to your beliefs and morals....Not caving in to crap,such as The LEFT makes all the suckers these days.....That makes me Love Bradbury's works that much more....It makes him KOOL. . ....I wondering if the can hear that in the Northwest ... ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)...

[jusplay4fun]

MORE on Isaac Asimov:

Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories.[110] Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".[58]

Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series.[111] Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".[112]

Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology.[113] Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology,[114] and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982),[115] which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.[113]

According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.[116]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov#Biography

[HitRed]

Rod Sterling’s

‘The Invaders’

Though not a book he wrote sci-fi.

This is one of the out-of-the-way places, the unvisited places, bleak, wasted, dying. This is a farmhouse, handmade, crude, a house without electricity or gas, a house untouched by progress. This is the woman who lives in the house, a woman who's been alone for many years, a strong, simple woman whose only problem up until this moment has been that of acquiring enough food to eat, a woman about to face terror, which is even now coming at her from – the Twilight Zone.

[jonesthecurl]

Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series.

Actually I believe the three laws were suggested to him by John W Campbell.

[Dukasaur]

DoD.... 100% with you.

I read a minimum of 2 books a week, for 48 years now. Mostly scifi / fantasy. To this day my favorite book hands down is Battlefield Earth.

Bradbury gargles tartar sauce.

Battlefield Earth for the win!!! Yeah, I read that book so many times the dust jacket disintegrated, so I covered it with plastic sheeting to prevent further damage to the cover. That's how much I love it. I don't think it would be my #1 -- that spot is reserved for Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- but it would definitely be in my Top 5.

Duk,...you must have read Martian Chronicles...more than once...Thought you read 3 dull books...I will say...The Chronicles...ouch...

I did read the Martian Chronicles, and to be honest they're not bad. Not great, but not bad. Definitely among his better works. Not as good as C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet, but in the same league.

Fahrenheit 451 is obviously a classic, and will probably stand the test of time as Bradbury's contribution to great literature. Like he says, you really can't write 50 bad stories in a row, and if you write as many as he did, there's bound to be a good one eventually.

My most recent Bradbury read was The Halloween Tree. Take some irrelevant trivia about ancient religions, stitch it all together with some occultist nonsense, and add just enough legitimate fantasy so the fantasy booksellers list it. Yawn. Something Wicked was similar occultsploitation.

My first Bradbury book was Dandelion Wine, which I tried to read based on my mother's recommendation. Tried to read it, fell asleep. Tried again another time, same result. Tried again a third time. Same result. To this day I don't know what that book is about. I just know it's a great insomnia cure.

His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957).

This blows my mind! The Naked Sun has long been my favourite piece of Asimov sci-fi. I never realized it was the end of his main-sequence sci-fi. It all falls into place now. His greatest achievement in sci-fi, after which he didn't feel it necessary to do anything else in the genre for a long time. I understand now.

It's so cool when I actually learn something new in this forum. Thank you, JP4F!

Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series.

Actually I believe the three laws were suggested to him by John W Campbell.

Yes, that is true. Asimov still gets the kudos for having fully explored the concept and examined all the many ramifications of the Three Laws.

[2dimes]

I like H. A. Rey and Richard Scarry.

[ConfederateSS]

----------Duk,...You do know The Halloween Tree is a some what Children's story...I would say 10ish/14ish years old for the most part...So you are looking at it through an adult's eyes....Put your state of mind as a kid getting ready in October for trick or treating, Halloween..Parties..Learning how other cultures, celebrate the dead... Around the same time we celebrate a druid Holiday of sacrifice......You are nitpicking a Story that was to teach cultures around the world to children... Halloween is an occult Holiday to sell candy...yet I doubt the stores, candy companies, costume stores..teach kids that... ... ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)...

[Dukasaur]

Okay, I'll grant you that. It's possible it was intended as a children's story and I'm judging it with an adult's sensibilities.

[jusplay4fun]

You can find many polls and lists; here is one I found:

The Top 10 Greatest Sci-Fi Writers [It has many of the writers already mentioned by many of you...]

10) Frederik Pohl. Frederik Pohl (1919 – 2013) had an illustrious career spanning nearly 75 years. ...
9) Larry Niven. Larry Niven (1938 – ) has won Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, Nebula awards, among others. ...
8. Anne McCaffrey {I know NOTHING about this author....]
7) Ray Bradbury. ...
6) H.G. Wells. ...
5) Frank Herbert. ...
4 Philip K. Dick [not mentioned in this thread, but I have seen his name on similar list YEARS ago...]
3) Arthur C. Clark
2) Robert Heinlein......and...

#1............

1) Isaac Asimov

https://discoverscifi.com/the-top-10-greatest-sci-fi-writers/

I saw a list of some 25 great science fiction novels and it listed several more MODERN books of science fiction. Included was The Martian (2015), the inspiration for the Matt Damon movie by the same title. So was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (1990). Now all such movies are based on Marvel Comic "books". (I was going to offer the URL Link, but it wants to do something weird with cookies, so I did not provide that link.)

[jonesthecurl]

Seeing that Top Ten, I was immediately moved to say, 'but what about so-and-so?' as we all are whenever we see a top ten of anything. I'm sure some of the given top ten would also be in mine, but here are some of the people I would at least consider (certainly before Asimov):

Ursula Le Guin
Douglas Adams
John Wyndham
John Scalzi
Roger Zelazny
Samuel Delany
Harlan Ellison
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Connie Willis
George RR Martin
Philip Jose Farmer
John Christopher
Kurt Vonnegut
Alan Moore
Stanislaw Lem
Spider Robinson

That's without getting off my chair to look at my books.

[jonesthecurl]

So I just spent a while trying to list a personal Top Ten of SF novels. I couldn't do it. So here's 15, not in order of preference. I've allowed no more than one from any author (well, the Philip Farmer is a series, but that's not cheating too much). I'm not claiming these are the best, just favourites of mine.
1984 ( George Orwell)
Citizen of the Galaxy (Robert Heinlein)
Watchmen ( Alan Moore)
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
World of Tiers ( Philp J Farmer)
War of the Worlds (H G Wells)
The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula le Guin)
The Einstein Intersection (Samuel R Delaney)
Old Mans War (John Scalzi)
Tarzan at the Earth’s Core ( Edgar Rice Burroughs)
The Beastmaster (Andre Norton)
To Say Nothing of the Dog (Connie Willis)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
Dying of the Light (George RR Martin)
The Cyberiad (Stanislaw Lem)

[ConfederateSS]

-------Those are KOOL Jonesy....at least you said your list......I don't believe anything list found on the on the internet....Come on...Jp....If Issac Azi...is your favorite ,that's KOOL ....but the internet /so called experts...not buying it...Not just Bradbury........But any list made on the internet list organizations ,of so called top writing experts of today... that also snubs Jules Verne...just doesn't know Great Novels,by Authors of Great Imagination...You have to remember,in Verne's case,as others,of long ago...Books are all people had...To take them on journeys to far away places ,both reality and in the mind...There wasn't movies,T.V..etc..etc...a lot of Authors like Bradbury,Issac Azi...were inspired by Authors like Verne,from long ago...But the so called experts in their little writing circle clubs in say New York etc..have forgotten that,they themselves were inspired by Authors like Verne...That is why I wouldn't take their lists to mean anything... ... ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)...

[HitRed]

Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein

Not sure how all the movies came out with the creature being slow, awkward and mumbling but in the book he has a keen intelligence and bounding athletic ability.

[jusplay4fun]

First of all, I did give my top 3-4, without looking up anything (except for one fact). I must confess that I have not read a Heinlein novel, so I looked THAT up in my initial post.

I read LOTS of short stories by many sci-fi authors and that gives me a sense of what they are about. That may not be the best, but I can say I read them, stories by these writers. While in college, I read and collected lots of paperback books with many sci-fi anthologies. One of my bucket list things to do is to read some of the great classic novels. At the top of that list are: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien; Heinlein (probably Stranger in a Strange Land), Ursula K. Le Guin (probably The Left Hand of Darkness), perhaps Philip K. Dick, and others, such as Philip Farmer and Harlan Ellison. I cannot recall specific short stories but enjoyed them as escapism and as a way to think of the world a bit differently. Most discussions online and in print do not mention short stories, at least not as a primary subject.

I like the Star Wars movies and Star Trek, too. Those have and will inspire new writers and new creative efforts (such as movies and TV). Let's be real; most of us, writers included, are inspired by stories we hear and watch and read.

With that in mind, I think the first three writers of Science Fiction inspired so many: Mary Shelly, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells. They were among the FIRST and they are very good. NO Doubt they inspired so many other sci-fi writers. One guy often forgotten as a sci-fi writer is Edgar Allan Poe:

Poe also reinvented science fiction, responding in his writing to emerging technologies such as hot air balloons in "The Balloon-Hoax"

from Wikipedia.

Perhaps this will "muddy the waters" but I will add the Harlan Ellison wrote an episode for Star Trek, one of my favorite episodes:

Ellison repeatedly criticized how Star Trek creator and producer Gene Roddenberry (and others) rewrote his original script for the 1967 episode "The City on the Edge of Forever". Despite his objections, Ellison kept his own name on the shooting script instead of using "Cordwainer Bird" to indicate displeasure

(again from Wikipedia).

I will also confess that I rarely read novels, not wanting to commit huge blocks of time away from Real Life to read them. So short stories filled that need to read and read things for FUN without denying time for important things, such as studying.

One last comment on this topic at this point. For a college elective, I took a Philosophy course in college called "Religion and Science Fiction". It was GREAT FUN. I had to get approval by the professor since I did not take the prerequisite course on Plato. He was okay with waving it. The course attracted lots of guys I knew were engineering majors and the class was packed. Due to time constraints, we read many shorts stories and a novella or two, as I recall. Again, I do not recall specific shorts stories, or even the novella(s). But I enjoyed the chance to put some thought to what these stories allowed us to explore. As a course my senior year, it provided a justification of my approach to reading for FUN. Unfortunately, I do not recall too many specific stories. We explored several themes and used the stories to explore those themes.

I took no course in Physics, Chemistry, or Calculus that semester. Instead, I took courses for FUN and to explore things outside the realm of Pure Science and Math. The best parts of that semester, as a college senior: I made Dean's List, took 18 credit hours, AND dated several very nice and attractive young ladies. GREAT FUN..!!!

[jusplay4fun]

You can find many polls and lists; here is one I found:

The Top 10 Greatest Sci-Fi Writers [It has many of the writers already mentioned by many of you...]

10) Frederik Pohl. Frederik Pohl (1919 – 2013) had an illustrious career spanning nearly 75 years. ...
9) Larry Niven. Larry Niven (1938 – ) has won Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, Nebula awards, among others. ...
8. Anne McCaffrey {I know NOTHING about this author....]
7) Ray Bradbury. ...
6) H.G. Wells. ...
5) Frank Herbert. ...
4 Philip K. Dick [not mentioned in this thread, but I have seen his name on similar list YEARS ago...]
3) Arthur C. Clark
2) Robert Heinlein......and...

#1............

1) Isaac Asimov

https://discoverscifi.com/the-top-10-greatest-sci-fi-writers/

I saw a list of some 25 great science fiction novels and it listed several more MODERN books of science fiction. Included was The Martian (2015), the inspiration for the Matt Damon movie by the same title. So was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (1990). Now all such movies are based on Marvel Comic "books". (I was going to offer the URL Link, but it wants to do something weird with cookies, so I did not provide that link.)

I will say that this was about the third such online poll I found and MY GUY was #1. Why look further..??? LoL