Okay, this is the last time I'll post this in this format -- while it's fun figuring out the vague approximation of ranking, for the next draft I'm going to just strip off the numbers and alphabetize them. I'll probably remove the primarily genre people too, or move them to a separate list, and just make this a list of mostly mainstream/literary ficiton people who also write spec fic sometimes. That seems like it'd be a useful list, no? Extra reading for when you've read everything on the sf shelves...
Alive:
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 10
- Toni Morrison, 10
- Jose Saramago, 10
- Isabel Allende, 9
- Margaret Atwood, 9
- A.S. Byatt, 9
- Doris Lessing, 9
- Thomas Pynchon, 9
- Salman Rushdie, 9
- Don DeLillo, 8
- Umberto Eco, 8
- Dave Eggers, 8
- Alice Hoffman, 8
- Ursula K. Le Guin, 8
- Walter Mosley, 8
- Gloria Naylor, 8
- Joyce Carol Oates, 8
- Marge Piercy, 8
- Kurt Vonnegut, 8
- Nancy Willard, 8
- Martin Amis, 7
- Kingsley Amis, 7
- Charles Baxter, 7
- Aimee Bender, 7
- Ray Bradbury, 7
- Octavia Butler, 7
- Michael Chabon, 7
- Samuel Delany, 7
- Nick Hornby, 7
- Ian McEwan, 7
- Rick Moody, 7
- George Saunders, 7
- Eleanor Wilner, 7
- Sherman Alexie, 6
- Kate Atkinson, 6
- Paul Auster, 6
- Donald Barthelme, 6
- Ron Carlson, 6
- Laura Esquivel, 6
- Caitlin R. Kiernan, 6
- Stephen King, 6
- Katherine Neville, 6
- Richard Powers, 6
- James Thurber, 6
- Jeanette Winterson, 6
- Judy Budnitz, 5
- Russell Hoban, 5
- David Mitchell, 5
- Michael Moorcock, 5
- Percy Walker, 5
- J.G. Ballard, 4
- Francesca Lia Block, 4
- John Crowley, 4
- Roald Dahl, 4
- Peter Dickinson, 4
- William Goyen, 4
- Jane Langton, 4
- Audrey Niffenegger, 4
- Jonathan Carroll, 3
- Fred Chappell, 3
- Harlan Ellison, 3
- Graham Joyce, 3
- Kelly Link, 2
- Michael Crichton, 1
- Carol Emshwiller, 1
- Karen Joy Fowler, 1
- Neil Gaiman, 1
- China Mieville, 1
- Geoff Ryman, 1
Deceased:
- Villiers de l'Isle Adam
- Kathy Acker
- Anthony Burgess
- Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Italo Calvino
- Angela Carter
- H. Rider Haggard
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Kafka
- C.S. Lewis
- Guy de Maupassant
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Mary Shelley
- Bram Stoker
- Jules Verne
- HG Wells
I know I’m late to this party, but Dave Eggers an 8? Perhaps McSweeney’s as a publishing venue at 8, but not Eggers himself. Certainly not with Kinsley Amis (who died in 1995) or Martin at a 7.
I’m happy to downgrade hiim on your say-so. 🙂