Qui est la meilleure auteur de science fiction et de fantasy
Posté : mer. avr. 22, 2009 8:34 am
Qui est la meilleure auteur de science fiction et de fantasy ? C'est la question posée à plusieurs écrivains par le site SF Signal.
Voici quelques-unes des réponses
Gene Wolfe
That's a good one - interesting and not terribly tough. Ursula K. Le Guin, Connie Willis, Kathe Koja, Kelly Link, Jane Yolen, Esther Friesner, Anne McCaffrey, Carol Emshwiller. These are in no particular order, just listed as they popped into my head; and I feel sure that there are some fine women writers out there whom I have never read.
Ian McDonald
I could give you some names of the best writers who are female, which is different from what you're asking. Having said that, this could be a short list because I'm not going to recommend anyone I haven't read, and, like a lot of SF writers, I find the field so huge and diverse at the moment that I can't read an overview. So you can rightly say, oh but what about her: profound, forthright, significant -- no doubt, but I haven't read her.
A true colossus -- perhaps not the first metaphor that springs to mind -- is Ursula Le Guin. No arguments here. She is the writer who has most influenced the way I write and consider the genre. Oddly, I find her at her weakest when she's most forthrightly polemic: The Word for World is Forest, Tehanu, The Telling, and strongest when she is deeply rooted in individuals in society. I read The Dispossesed when I was in my teens, and of course, at that age, it's going to fill you with idealism and pop-eyed at the possibilities of other political systems and ways of living. 'Happy times in the People's Republic of North Korea,' or words to that effect, one reviewer described it, which is funny but misses the point entirely. There can be joy in Pyongyang. I could rattle on for pages about her lived-in futures, the worlds that seemed more solid than the sociological experiments as which they may have been designed (more joy in Pyongyang, people will always work the system for their own ends) and I loved the whole concept of the Ekumen, in which interstellar transport and communications are easy enough to make the system work --just-- but slow enough to levy a high human cost. And of course, the deathless ansible.
Then there is Tiptree: strange how she's been reduced to just a label, not James Tiptree Jr. any more. Just Tiptree. Her stories are some of the greatest ever written in the genre, consistent, walloping and core material. In longer form she loses the ferocity of focus, that unblinking sniper-gaze, but in the shorts she's gang-busters.
Kate Wilhelm, the wonderful, wry intelligence fuelled by a deeply righteous anger. She's an incredible placer of words on a page. Her sentences are jewels. These are all venerable Begums.
Who do I read in the current generation? Justina Robson continues to surprise, delight and be nimble. Tricia Sullivan never fails to startle, she's one of the most individual writers in the field and every word seems to have come from another place entirely. One thing emerging here is how much more work a woman's voice has to do in this genre than a man's. Fantasy: the only writer I read at the moment is Kelly Link. At novel length: no. I've no interest in current Phat Phantasy, much less 'Urban Fantasy', which isn't for me at all at all; I'm more interested in the Fantastic than Fantasy. These are a few of my favourite writers in my small reading experience--and the best, I'm that vain about my taste-- who are women.
Lucius Shepard
I could list twenty or thirty names off the top of my head, but for the sake of economy I'll limit myself to four or five women writers whom I feel deserve wider attention.
Lisa Goldstein has been consistently under-appreciated. Her novel Tourists, for instance, is brilliant.
Gwynneth Jones writes astonishingly good science fiction that does not receive its due, at least not in the US.
Justina Robson and Steph Swainston are both remarkable fantasists with series books.
The Australian writer Kaaron Warren has an excellent first collection, The Glass Woman, and a novel that I'm looking forward to reading.
Voici quelques-unes des réponses
Gene Wolfe
That's a good one - interesting and not terribly tough. Ursula K. Le Guin, Connie Willis, Kathe Koja, Kelly Link, Jane Yolen, Esther Friesner, Anne McCaffrey, Carol Emshwiller. These are in no particular order, just listed as they popped into my head; and I feel sure that there are some fine women writers out there whom I have never read.
Ian McDonald
I could give you some names of the best writers who are female, which is different from what you're asking. Having said that, this could be a short list because I'm not going to recommend anyone I haven't read, and, like a lot of SF writers, I find the field so huge and diverse at the moment that I can't read an overview. So you can rightly say, oh but what about her: profound, forthright, significant -- no doubt, but I haven't read her.
A true colossus -- perhaps not the first metaphor that springs to mind -- is Ursula Le Guin. No arguments here. She is the writer who has most influenced the way I write and consider the genre. Oddly, I find her at her weakest when she's most forthrightly polemic: The Word for World is Forest, Tehanu, The Telling, and strongest when she is deeply rooted in individuals in society. I read The Dispossesed when I was in my teens, and of course, at that age, it's going to fill you with idealism and pop-eyed at the possibilities of other political systems and ways of living. 'Happy times in the People's Republic of North Korea,' or words to that effect, one reviewer described it, which is funny but misses the point entirely. There can be joy in Pyongyang. I could rattle on for pages about her lived-in futures, the worlds that seemed more solid than the sociological experiments as which they may have been designed (more joy in Pyongyang, people will always work the system for their own ends) and I loved the whole concept of the Ekumen, in which interstellar transport and communications are easy enough to make the system work --just-- but slow enough to levy a high human cost. And of course, the deathless ansible.
Then there is Tiptree: strange how she's been reduced to just a label, not James Tiptree Jr. any more. Just Tiptree. Her stories are some of the greatest ever written in the genre, consistent, walloping and core material. In longer form she loses the ferocity of focus, that unblinking sniper-gaze, but in the shorts she's gang-busters.
Kate Wilhelm, the wonderful, wry intelligence fuelled by a deeply righteous anger. She's an incredible placer of words on a page. Her sentences are jewels. These are all venerable Begums.
Who do I read in the current generation? Justina Robson continues to surprise, delight and be nimble. Tricia Sullivan never fails to startle, she's one of the most individual writers in the field and every word seems to have come from another place entirely. One thing emerging here is how much more work a woman's voice has to do in this genre than a man's. Fantasy: the only writer I read at the moment is Kelly Link. At novel length: no. I've no interest in current Phat Phantasy, much less 'Urban Fantasy', which isn't for me at all at all; I'm more interested in the Fantastic than Fantasy. These are a few of my favourite writers in my small reading experience--and the best, I'm that vain about my taste-- who are women.
Lucius Shepard
I could list twenty or thirty names off the top of my head, but for the sake of economy I'll limit myself to four or five women writers whom I feel deserve wider attention.
Lisa Goldstein has been consistently under-appreciated. Her novel Tourists, for instance, is brilliant.
Gwynneth Jones writes astonishingly good science fiction that does not receive its due, at least not in the US.
Justina Robson and Steph Swainston are both remarkable fantasists with series books.
The Australian writer Kaaron Warren has an excellent first collection, The Glass Woman, and a novel that I'm looking forward to reading.
