Re: Best writers I haven't yet read

In article <1147887480.387168.32100@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jpelan@xxxxxxxxx <jpelan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This is a very interesting thread and while I'm able to come up with
several authors that I feel I haven't read ENOUGH of, I'm really at a
loss to come up with someone with a major body of work that I haven't
read at least something of.

Well, thanks. I could've said something similar, though I probably
wouldn't have *meant* it in quite the same way. Anyway, this provides
as good a hook as any for the post I composed offline, after spending
a week dealing with the problem you (didn't mean to) mention.

I said I didn't have a list, and didn't want to.

David Tate and Randy Money's replies convinced me to make a list. But
one reason I didn't want to make a list, is that I can't summon up names
of authors I've never read so easily as they apparently did. So, how?

I considered my references on science fiction and fantasy, and found
that at once the most comprehensive, and the newest, I own, are the
encyclopaediae of which John Clute is co-editor, <The Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction> and <The Encylopedia of Fantasy>. So one possibility
was to use them to build a list. The only alternative strategy I
considered was to look for authors represented by multiple books in my
personal collection's catalogue, none of which books I'd read - but
frankly, when I tried that, it rapidly got boring. And anyway, I'd find
it useful to *have* an index to the authors with entries in those books,
analogous to those I built long ago from the Penguin Companions; why not
kill two birds with one stone?

So I've spent much of this past week compiling a list of author entries
in those books, along with birth and death dates and line counts for the
entries. (To my semi-trained eye and spot test on Tolkien's full name,
the lines in the two books are the same length.) I may post a lot more
on the basis of this spread*** later, or dump it onto the Web, once
I've done some error-checking. (It would probably hurry that day if
people post or e-mail telling me they're interested. Or delay it if
not...) [1] But for now, all I've done is list the longest 50 author
entries in the EoSF (both counting, and then not counting, the errata in
my copy), the longest 50 in the EoF, and the top 100 authors judged by
the *sum* of how many lines they got in the two books.

There are plenty of things wrong with this strategy.

1. The editors do warn us clearly that length of entry should not be
taken as showing an aesthetic judgement. (I could make a lot of
possibly interesting comments about this.)

2. Defining the boundaries of the concept "author entry" resulted in
excluding some who probably should've been included (e.g. Edward Gorey,
because I didn't want to tackle reading comics artists' entries
carefully to see if they ever wrote comics, so I defined "author
entries" as entries about people who've been credited as having written
*anything* PLAIN TEXT and spec-ficnal), and certainly resulted in
including some who probably should've been excluded (the above
definition results in including Steven Spielberg!).

3. The EoF is about 20% shorter than the EoSF (counting by lines); when
you also note that the EoF is 37% author entries, the EoSF 47%, the
difference gets bigger. Of the top 50 science fiction authors, only
three failed to make it into the top 100 by the combined count; but of
the top 50 fantasy ones, nine did. So the list, used as simply as I'm
using it, is systemically biased against fantasy writers; I could
actually make some possibly interesting comments about that too.

4. Finally, these books are, um, not *that* new. J. K. Rowling lacks
an entry; I couldn't think of a science fiction writer who *completely*
matches, but maybe nobody will object if I name our own Charlie Stross?
On the other hand, Really Important Writers whom one should feel ashamed
to have ignored *should* be way back when, seems to me, so I'm not sure
this objection matters.

So OK. 100 top by the combined count; nine more fantasy writers; four
more science fiction writers. [2] And of these 113, how many have I
not read? Even if you count all the writers I name below, and you
really shouldn't, my list is *still* not much longer than the ones
Messrs Tate and Money posted. But hey! I've surely ignored much
higher quality literature, right?

I don't remember everything I read. So I'm spot-checking the entries to
see if they remind me of anything. But I'm not, for example, checking
the tables of contents of anthologies I've read in full, just in case.
So the question is not "Have I ever encountered this person's prose?"
But rather, "Did *anything* about the encounter stick in my head?"

So here goes.

Jules Verne. This is arguable. As a child I read at least two
translations of his novels, but as I understand it, most translations of
him are so bad that they don't in any meaningful way represent his
actual writing, and anyway these were kiddie versions. I may or may not
remember correctly that at some point I tackled a not entirely bogus
version of <20,000 Leagues>, but whatever. Easily the top scorer in
this bunch at 443 lines, equivalent to more than three full pages of the
EoSF.

(Pause. Surely you didn't really care that there are 120 lines in the
typical page of the EoSF, 1st printing in the US of a trade paperback
edition, and 128 in the US 1st hardcover of the EoF? Nah, didn't think
so. But now you know anyway, and it may put the following into
perspective.)

Edgar Allan Poe. OK, OK, I've read that "quoth the raven" poem, but I'm
not sure that's enough, and I'm not at all sure I've read anything else.
Well, my unreliable memory is now claiming "The Telltale Heart" was a
school assignment once. Who knows? 399 lines.

Robert E. Howard. Actually, I may have got through an entire book of
the De Camp/Carter 12-volume set at one point, but see above re Verne...
And my book catalogue doesn't know I read it, if I did. 379 lines.

H. Rider Haggard. Our first absolutely unequivocal never-touched-it
winner. 339 lines.

William Morris, sorta. I *have* read his first book (poems) and his
early stories, which probably do count, as part of a reading project
that then foundered on the rocks of his <Jason>; and I have, several
times, attempted one or another of his late novels, which may count.
330 lines.

H. P. Lovecraft. Beyond a token sentence or three, I definitely haven't
read him. 327 lines.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, to get back to the origin of this thread. I think
I actually started <A Princess of Mars> at some point - Burroughs is
probably a heavy leader in the "Which author do I own the most unread
books by?" sweepstakes, and I sometimes feel guilty about this - but if
so, I don't remember getting far. 309 lines.

J. G. Ballard. I'm sure he has a story in one of the <Dangerous
Visions> anthologies, which I *have* read, so he probably doesn't count,
but I don't remember the story, so he's close. 297 lines.

Jack Williamson. OK, OK, I *do* remember the <Undersea> books he and
Frederik Pohl wrote, so he definitely doesn't count. But I *wish* I
didn't remember them, so can he be an honorary member? 284 lines.

Lin Carter. Well, I've read a lot of his *non*-fiction... 271 lines,
probably mostly devoted to his editorial activity rather than his
fiction anyway.

Donald A. Wollheim. Pretty much ditto, except 263 lines and I don't
remember any non-fiction to speak of either.

Brian M. Stableford. Though I occasionally mean to, given that his more
recent books actually look kinda interesting, if I can ever find a whole
series at once... 259 lines.

M. P. Shiel. The top writer on the list of 100 who isn't on either list
of 50 is Piers Anthony - but he'd be on the EoSF 50 if you counted the
errata. (Snarky remarks about oversensitivity welcome.) Shiel is the
top one who definitely isn't in either 50, but makes it solely on the
basis of long entries in *both* books. Anyway, never touched him. 250
lines.

Algernon Blackwood. My mental label for him is "That guy who's not
Ambrose Bierce, whom I also haven't read". (Though *that* is no longer
strictly true - I read "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" sometime this past
year.) 244 lines.

Olaf Stapledon. Well, I did long ago sort of skim <Last and First Men>,
so I guess he doesn't really count. 221 lines.

Russell Hoban. Another author of multiple books I own but have not
read. 208 lines.

William Hope Hodgson. Um, maybe. I remember something that seems
vaguely Hodgson-like, but also remember clearly that I've never read
either of his famous books; either memory could be bogus. 208 lines.

William Mayne. A remarkably prolific British writer of kids' books whom
I either missed or forgot entire. 204 lines.

G. K. Chesterton. If any people are left yet who haven't slapped their
heads over my woeful ignorance and prepared to rant at me, then this is
their cue... 203 lines.

Robert Nathan. I know I've *seen* a book or two by him... 200 lines.

Andrew Lang. Not sure. Definitely never any of the fairy books,
though. 199 lines.

Robert Bloch. Again, not sure, but certainly not a whole novel. 199
lines.

Charles Grant. We seem to be developing a theme here, vis-a-vis horror.
193 lines.

Steven Spielberg. He's credited (with doubts on the entry authors'
parts) as author of one or two novelisations of his movies; believe me,
the 192 lines are not mostly about deathless prose you somehow missed.
Anyway, *I* missed the novelisations.

L. Ron Hubbard. I think. 192 lines.

Walter De La Mare. I see that "The Canterville Ghost" is actually by
Oscar Wilde, so quite possibly I haven't read a thing by him. He and
Peter S. Beagle are the only two authors on the top 100 who made it
there without having entries in the EoSF. 185 lines.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Pipe down, you. 184 lines.

Clark Ashton Smith. And no, his books' rarity is not an excuse; he's
another of the 'owned but not read' leaders. 181 lines.

E. T. A. Hoffmann. Yet another 19th century giant I've never touched.
180 lines.

Edmond Hamilton. I've kept meaning to, but copies of his earlier works
are actually hard to find and I wanted to read them first so as to get a
sense of the wonderful maturation his late works are said to show (and
so as not to find them inadequate by comparison, if I read the late ones
first and they really are so great). 179 lines.

Kenneth Bulmer and R. L. Fanthorpe, tied at 177 lines. Finally, a
couple I *really* don't have to feel ashamed to admit to... See, one
way to get a really long entry is just to have a whole *lot* of titles
for them to list!

Karel Capek. Well, that shame-free thing sure didn't last. 174 lines.

Algis Budrys. Surely he's somewhere in an anthology I've read? 172
lines. (The only one listed here who's one of the four science fiction
authors on one of the top 50 lists who isn't on the top 100 combined
list. Our next three are top-50-fantasy authors without science fiction
entries.)

The <Mabinogion>. In the EoF, there are a total of two entries for
works that can reasonably be considered as equivalent to author entries
but are about works whose authors are unknown - this and <Beowulf>.
(Other anonymice are typically covered by country entries or the like.)
There are two others for works with known authors that I decided to
include anyway (<Kalevala> and <Kathasaritsagara> ["Ocean of Story"]),
though I consistently refused to include entries about recent
multi-author stories such as the Doc Savage series or the Superman
concept. Anyway, I've read 1/4 of Evangeline Walton's version of the
Four Branches proper, but nothing from any closer translation, though
(you guessed it) I own two. 153 lines.

Johann W. Goethe. Yes, I can ignore *eighteenth* century titans too!
I'm an equal opportunity ignoramus! 138 lines.

Ramsey Campbell. Yeah, more horror. Yeah, I know. 131 lines.

And, whew, that's over with. Does anyone still wonder why I've only
completed two chapters of my history of fantasy?

But I do admit to having read at least *something* by each of the other
76 authors of those 113. [3] So I don't feel totally ashamed; 2/3 may
not be a passing mark, but isn't *all* bad.

Joe Bernstein

[1] OK, two tidbits gratis. One, if fandom really is graying, could it
have an eensy bit to do with lack of recognition for younger readers'
role models? The youngest [4] author in the science fiction book,
Jonathan Littell, turned 24 in the year it came out (1993); in the
fantasy one (1997), the lower limit went all the way down to 22
(Felicity Savage). Total of authors born after 1960: EoSF - 1961 (age
32), 3; 1962 (age 31), 2; and 1 each for 1963 (age 30), 1966 (age 27),
1967 (age 26), and 1969 (age 24). EoF - 1961 (age 36), 4; 1962 (age
35), 4; 1963 (age 34), 6; 1964 (age 33), 3; 1965 (age 32), 2; 1967 (age
30), 4; 1975 (age 22), 1. In other words, the EoSF actually had three
authors in their twenties, the EoF one. (As for ages 30-34, EoSF 21,
EoF 15.) Granted *most* authors don't get books into print until later,
but still, for a field that's had so many youthful prodigies ballyhooed,
this seems awfully strange, and speaking as someone *myself* born well
after 1960, I feel a bit nonplussed; Littell and Savage are the *only*
writers represented who are clearly younger than I!
Two, the single most surprising "outside the genre" entry I found has
*got* to be that for ... drum roll please ...

John Philip Sousa. I kid you not. He's in EoF.
Unless he's the joke entry to match the one for "Smith, E.E." in
the EoSF.

[2] Sigh. OK, the deal is that if you count the errata, Algis Budrys
and Piers Anthony edge out Mack Reynolds and R. A. Lafferty for spots 49
and 50 on the science fiction list; but Budrys and Reynolds each fail to
make the top 100 on the combined list, errata included or not. So
whether or not you count the errata there are only three authors on the
science fiction 50 not on the combined 100, but I chose to look at all
four of the possibles.

[3] If anyone wants the full lists, or whatever, well, e-mail or post,
y'know?

[4] Sigh, full precision. The youngest among those whose birthdates
were given. One hypothesis: prodigies are careless with their mail and
didn't bother to answer the questionnaires sent them in building the
books?

--
Joe Bernstein, writer joe@xxxxxxxxxxx
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/> "She suited my mood, Sarah Mondleigh
did - it was like having a kitten in the room, like a vote for unreason."
<Glass Mountain>, Cynthia Voigt
.