So, now that I have this...

So, now that I have this appallingly long list (and I'm sure it'll continue to grow), it seems a shame not to make it public so others can use it; I think it'd be a great resource for book-shopping. :-) So I've stripped off the (rather artificial) rankings and alphabetized it. I think what would make this far more useful would be if it had brief annotations and links to the authors' websites.

If you have a moment to scan through, find any authors you suggested (or know well) and send me a line or two of description of their work (especially noting its relevance to genre), that'd be a great help. Thanks, everyone, for all your help and patience with this! See George Saunders for an example of what kind of annotation I mean. I'll post the full list to the SLF site, under booklists.

Alive:

Sherman Alexie
Isabel Allende
Martin Amis
Kingsley Amis
Kate Atkinson
Margaret Atwood
Paul Auster
Donald Barthelme
Charles Baxter
Aimee Bender
Ray Bradbury
Judy Budnitz
J.G. Ballard
Francesca Lia Block
Octavia Butler (http://www.sfwa.org/members/butler/)
A.S. Byatt
Ron Carlson
Jonathan Carroll
Michael Chabon
Fred Chappell
Michael Crichton
John Crowley
Roald Dahl
Samuel R. Delany
Don DeLillo
Peter Dickinson
Umberto Eco
Dave Eggers
Harlan Ellison
Carol Emshwiller
Laura Esquivel
Karen Joy Fowler
Neil Gaiman
Amitav Ghosh
William Goyen
Alasdair Gray
Russell Hoban
Alice Hoffman
Nick Hornby
Graham Joyce
Caitlin R. Kiernan
Stephen King
Jane Langton
Ursula K. Le Guin
Doris Lessing
Kelly Link
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ian McEwan
China Mieville
David Mitchell
Rick Moody
Michael Moorcock
Toni Morrison
Walter Mosley
Haruki Murakami
Suniti Namjoshi
Gloria Naylor
Katherine Neville
Audrey Niffenegger
Joyce Carol Oates
Walker Percy
Marge Piercy
Richard Powers
Thomas Pynchon
Salman Rushdie
Geoff Ryman
James Sallis (htp://www.jamessallis.com)
Jose Saramago
George Saunders: the author of CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and numerous short stories in The New Yorker, Saunders writes dystopian fantasies of America in the near future, a toxic wasteland overrun by thugs and opportunists. His work has a distinctly magical realist element, with a horrific flavor. Often quite funny, in a twisted sort of way.
James Thurber
Kurt Vonnegut
Nancy Willard
Eleanor Wilner
Jeanette Winterson