Talk:List of fantasy authors

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This list would be more interesting and useful if each entry included a headline-length phrase mentioning the person's most notable/memorable works of fantasy. I added a few notes as a trial. Stan 04:29, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

But for some authors, there's lots and lots of those most notable works of fantasy!Regeane Silverwolf 01:17, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I guess that's fine but the info shouldn't go past one line per author or the list will get too long (extra details should be in the bio anyway). Earlier, I had added many of the birth and death dates for the authors. I thought that would be good idea because I noticed that this list shows up in Yahoo and Google when you do a search for a particular author and so this tiny bit of info (plus Stan's notes) helps to make this page a one stop info shop for people who come here from Yahoo or Google. MS, 15, Dec, 03

I noted that several major fantasy authors (mostly from the 'epic' or 'high' subgenre) were not included on the list, so I have inserted R. Scott Bakker, Paul Kearney, Kate Elliott and Patrick Tilley (whose Amtrak Wars series may be set in the future and have SF elements, but is very definitely fantasy due to the presence of magic, telepathy and prophecy). I also added a link to Steven Erikson's entry for the Wiki page on his Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence and an entry for the co-creator of the Malazan series, Ian Cameron Esslemont, who has started publishing his own Malazan novels. --Werthead 00:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Science Fiction authors accidently included here

I believe some of the authors included in this list were included mistakenly, as some only write Science fiction, and have not written any fantasy. Below I have started a list of suspects. If you know of at least one fantasy book they've written, add it after their name here. If you find a suspect entry, add it... --ssd 23:13, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• Anne McCaffrey (Pern is definately science fiction, not fantasy)
• Alan Dean Foster
• Sheri S. Tepper
• John Norman

Before entries above are deleted, they should be either

• Added to Category:Fantasy writers and their page updated to reflect their fantasy work

OR

• removed from this article as fantasy writers if someone is really sure they never wrote any fantasy material

Hmm...while McCaffrey and Norman's works may theoretically be SF, in that they are supposedly set on alien planets, rather than in some imaginary fantasy world, is that really enough to say that they are not fantasy? The work of both is discussed in Clute and Grant's Encyclopedia of Fantasy. McCaffrey it says is basically science fiction, although it notes that she uses a lot of fantasy tropes. Norman, however, is discussed as a fantasy writer, but Norman's works, as "Planetary romance" are classified as a kind of hybrid, I guess. At any rate, I think in light of that, it's appropriate to list at least Norman on the list. Foster, BTW, has definitely written fantasy - apparently he wrote the Spellsinger series, as well as novelizations of Clash of the Titans and Krull. Tepper is also listed in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy - the EofF says that the True Game series "is dramatized in terms of fantasy yet technically is sf: this readiness to conflate the conventions of distinct genres has characterized her work since, so that much of her writing is perhaps best described as technofantasy." I'd say that, based on this, all of these, with the possible exception of McCaffrey, can be listed as fantasy authors. But I dunno. Certainly Foster should be. john k 05:08, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

To me, the difference between fantasy and science fiction is the pivotal role of technology in SF, and the pivotal role in supernatural forces (especially magic) in fantasy. Things get grey when you mention things like ESP which is theorized but not proven by science, and which McCaffery includes in almost all her books. (Teleportation, although perhaps less likely, is mentioned in Star Trek which is clearly hard SF, and perhaps inherited by many other SF books.) I'm not sure why, but people seem to think just because it is set in the past or on a primitive planet with limited technology, it can't be science fiction which usually is written in the future with high technology.

Anyway, my point for this list is that if authors have written fantasy, they are here because their Wikipedia page does not mention it. If they have books (or series) that are clearly fantasy, a sentence or two needs to be added to indicate such, and the first line of the article should also mention fantasy. --ssd 05:19, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hmm...certainly that should be done with Foster. With the others, it's a bit more complicated. I mean, it is very easy to write books that are essentially fantasy books in all essential ways, save that what would normally be considered magic is explained in some quasi-scientific way. I suppose you could say that this makes it science fiction. But I don't think that you can say that this makes it not fantasy. As far as I can gather from my limited awareness of Norman's work, this would be a fairly accurate way to categorize it (to the extent that it is not just S&M porn). McCaffrey seems to be approaching that level (not with the S&M porn, but with the quasi-fantasy content). Tepper seems to be a weirder case, since it seems as though the issue is that there are fantasy tropes in her novels, so I'm not really sure on that. Perhaps someone more familiar with her work could get into that. john k 05:30, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Look, I do believe that there plenty of people who feel that all the people on that list are fantasy and so they should stay on the fantasy list. User ssd thinks that Anne McCaffrey "is definately science fiction." Excuse me, but that is one persons opinion. I do believe there are many others who think she is definately fantasy and so that's where she should be included. I think it's better to have someone listed on too many lists than too few. It does no harm and in fact helps to better cross reference. I do appreciate the hard work users like ssd put into this site, BUT I also think they are trying too hard to find things to fix. Some things just need to be left alone. Having too much information is ALWAYS better than having too little, IMHO. --MS

Sheri S. Tepper's The True Game series is definately fantasy, as is Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series. Neither of them uses science to explain how "magic" work, though The True Game has high technology and magic side-by-side, so it could be considered to be both fantasy and sci-fi. -- Khym Chanur 01:08, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

I think the line between fantasy and sci-fi is blurry sometimes. Certainly there are stories which definately fall into the fantasy catagory, others which are clearly sci-fi, but some are not so clear.

Also, I think Phyllis Eisenstien should be on the list of authors also, but I am not sure the spelling is right.