The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

I just looked at my Goodreads listing for most read authors. About a third of the books I've read in the last couple of years, since I've been keeping track on Goodreads, are science fiction. My most read authors, though, are mostly science fiction writers.

1. Orson Scott Card - 13
2.(tie) Robert A Heinlein, Philip K Dick, John Steinbeck - 8
3. Isaac Asimov - 6 (a lot more than that really, just not lately)
4. (tie) Dan Simmons, Michael Crichton, Ernest Hemingway - 4

What are your most read or favorite sci-fi authors?

I only started reading SF this year so only two authors are on my most read authors list both with two books read.

1. Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood's End)
2. Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games I and II)

Well, my top five are:

1. Brian K Vaughan (13) - comic book writer
2. Sue Grafton (12) - I've been working my way through her alphabet series
3. Isaac Asimov (11)
4. Jeff Lemire, William Gibson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (7)
5. Ray Bradbury (5) - it's actually been much more than that over the span of my life, but not the span of my GoodReads account!

So between comics, sci-fi, and mystery I'm pretty well covered.

Admittedly I haven't made a comprehensive list for goodreads, and I'm not including comicbook authors:

1. Robert E. Howard (11)
2. Michael Moorcock (7)
3. Stephen King (5)
4. George R.R. Martin (5)
5. J.R.R. Tolkien/Aleister Crowley (4)

1. Sir Arthur C Clarke - 17
2. Philip K Dick - 15
3. Stephen King - 13 (why i read his books ive no idea as they generally really disappoint me)
4. China Mieville - 8
5. John Wyndham - 7

3/5 authors are british which surprises me

My most read authors are Douglas Adams, Eoin Colfer, Stephen King and I think Sidney Sheldon. I read Sheldon in the initial stages of acquiring my book reading habit. I want to read more of Asimov and Clarke now. The current book I'm reading of Clarke and Baxter, from the Time Odyssey series, is just Fantastic. Perhaps the most modern science fiction book I have read as it was all published post the year 2000.

I've read a fair bit of Crichton too! I don't know why I keep forgetting about him.

Dick
Asimov
Gibson
Heinlein
Smith
Simmons [his Hyperion is the best Sci-Fi shit I've ever read so crazy and captivating].
Wells
Verne

Most Read Authors:

Philip K Dick
M. C. Beaton
Jim Butcher
Michael Crichton
Rick Riordan

No other Zelazny fans here? That's a shame. He's my all time favorite.

Jim wrote: "No other Zelazny fans here? That's a shame. He's my all time favorite."

I've read Zelazny, as well as Delany, James Blish, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer and others. Trouble is, I read them a long time ago and my memory has been overwhelmed by the fog of time. I just don't remember the books anymore. Looking forward to the rereads.

Buck, we seem to be on the same page with our reading. I re-read a couple of Niven's books in the past decade. Most recent was "Protector" as an audio book. It was excellent. The other one was a bunch of short stories, the first of which featured Beowulf Schaefer figuring out the tides. Can't recall its name off hand.

It's been a busy year & audio books seem to make up at least half my reading now. Some books shine when read aloud. I listened to 2 of Card's that way & he said he writes to have his books read aloud. Both "Treason" & "Ender's Game" seemed to prove him right.

Others don't do well as audio books. They're books that I'd skim parts of. The most recent was Saberhagen's first Berserker book. It's a collection of short stories each of which had a couple/few paragraphs explaining what Berserkers were. After a dozen stories or so, that explanation made me want to scream.

Jim wrote: "Buck, we seem to be on the same page with our reading. I re-read a couple of Niven's books in the past decade. Most recent was "Protector" as an audio book. It was excellent. The other one was ..."

I do a lot of audio books. Started with audiobooks on tape cassettes in the car on road trips. Now I use a stereo bluetooth headset. I heard rather than read most of the Card books. I won his Earth Unaware, The First Formic War, (audiobook on CDs) the first of three prequels to Ender's Game in a Goodreads first-read giveaway.

I download audiobooks (as well as ebooks) from my public library.

It seems there a few people here who have read a lot of Philip K. Dick. He's one of my favorites and I've read more books by him than by anyone else.
I was just going to do my top five, but then I started finding it interesting how many people outdistanced Stephen King. I would have guessed he would have beat Parker, Block and Crichton, but then those three are much easier reading than the rest of my list. I tend to read them like one eats candy, whereas Dick, Delany, Ellison and even Bradley are more like a full meal. And I have to admit for most of my reading life I was focused on the full meal authors.

Philip K. Dick (50 including a few biographies/letters/interview books)
Samuel R. Delany (27)
Harlan Ellison (27)
Roger Zelazny (27)
Marion Zimmer Bradley (19)
Mike Resnick (18)
James Blaylock (17)
Michael Crichton (16)
Lawrence Block (16)
Robert B. Parker (15)
Stephen King (15)
Edgar Rice Burroughs (15)

There were a bunch of authors I really felt should have been better represented, not that I haven't read a lot of them, just that they deserve to place above the lower tier here. Authors I thought of in that way are Lucius Shepard (11), Octavia Butler (10), Robert Bloch (10), Tim Powers (9).

Most read (and favorite) authors:
1. Robert Anson Heinlein (everything he ever wrote, many times for each one)
2. Isaac Asimov
3. Ben Bova
4. Orson Scott Card

1. Roald Dahl (read loads when I was younger)
2. C. S. Lewis (I have reservations on each book I read but curiosity spurs me on)
3. Hidyuki Kikuchi (questionable and messy writing but with some delicious science fiction nuggets)
4. Eoin Colfer (Read quite a lot in my early teens)
5. H. G. Wells (Recently turning into one of my favourite authors)

Stephen King (28)
Andre Norton (13)
Roger Zelazny (12)
Isaac Asimov (9)
Mercedes Lackey (8)
James A. Michener (8)
Robert Silverberg (8)
Orson Scott Card (7)
Robert B. Parker (7)
John Jakes (6)
Ben Bova (5)
John Grisham (5)
Robert A. Heinlein (5)
James Patterson (5)

I'm surprised only two women are in the list, but they're near the top.

I'm surprised Ursula K. Le Guin didn't make the list.

The list I posted 6 years ago has grown. I know that I've read between 20 and 30 books each of Le Guin, Heinlein, Asimov and others. Unfortunately, since GR removed that feature, we can't easily check for an count.

You can't see it on your bookshelves, Buck? I export my shelves to a spreadsheet & find it's much easier to look up some things that way.

I sorted by author and noted all the ones I'd read at least five.

Jim wrote: "You can't see it on your bookshelves, Buck? I export my shelves to a spreadsheet & find it's much easier to look up some things that way."

I'm sure I could if I took the trouble. It was just more convenient before.

"Most read author" would be hard for me to calculate acurately even if GR still had the feature. Sometimes I log only one book from a series, and most of my pre-2008 reading is not in here at all.

I put a little though into it, and would guess that the most pages read from an SF-related author over my first 50 years would probably be:
Dorris Lessing, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula Le Guin, Neil Stephenson, Samuel Delaney, James Morrow...