Favourite fantasy/sci-fi novels!

[EAP]

So what is everyone's favorite Fantasy Book/series? Any particular reason you like it so much?

Here's a [incomplete] list of some authors generally regarded as the creme of this genre.

Professor Tolkien [The most well-known fantasy author]
George R.R. Martin [The most critically acclaimed (among fantasy buffs anyway) fantasy writer on Internet]
Ursula Le Guin [Earthsea]
Guy Gavriel Kay [Pesudo-Historical fiction with fantasy toppings]
Ray Bradbury [Short stories, mainly]
Stephen King [Dark Tower]
Robert Jordan [Wheel Of Time, folks feel very strongly about his writing, one of the fantasy gaints though, in terms of money-making]
Hobb Robin [Her character Fitz is generally regarded as one of the most well-crafted characters in the fantasy fandom]
Hope Mirrless [Lud In the Mist]
Tim Powers [King of Conspiracy theory, sensationally thriller Urban Fantasy]
Stephen R. Donaldson [Thomas Covenant, Mordant's Need]
Neil Gaiman [You just gotta love the guy, dont'cha?]
Tad Williams [Excellent author, well known for his baroquely intresting take on the LOTR's themes in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn saga]
William Hope Hodgson [The Gentleman used to write when fantasy as a genre was non-existant. Has come to light in recent years primarily thanks to Gutenberg]
Terry Goodkind [As much as I hate him he is one of the most financially successful authors out there]
Terry Brooks [Standard but popular teen high fantasy fare with a smattering of science-fiction]
David Eddings [Hero with muscles flanked by chick with big boobs sword-sorcery fantasy]
David Gemmel [Highly morally polarized stories, very likeable hero]
Dave Duncan [Shadow!]
Emma Bull [Wrote a beautifully exotic urban fantasy novel in the form of War of the Oaks]
China Mieville [Considered by some to be the new mastero. Pretty original stories the beauty of which is sometimes marred by his sometimes overt [admittedly personal opinion] left-wing poltics]
Robert E. Howard [The dude responsible for creating Conan]
Steven Burst [Pretty popular author writing good, solid standard fantasy fare]
Roger Zelazny [Popular for Amber, though his sf is better]
Mervyn Peake [Gormenghast, deep, dark, terrible, brooding, intensive fantasy in every sense of the word]
William Morris
Lord Dunsnay [Another one plying the trade before the label fantasy was comercially introduced, but unlike many others his contributions have always been recognized]
E.R.Eddison [IMO the best fantasy writer before Tolkien]
Melanie Rawn [Helped make the genre popular among high-schoolers]
Michael Moorcock [Elric!]
Lois McMaster Bujold [Is more famous for her SF stuff]
Dan Simmons [Though It can be argued that the Hyperion cantos is Science-fiction]
Patricia McKillip [Excellent author, perhaps the most underappreciated one out there]
Barry Hughart [One in Ernest Bramah's vein]
Terry Pratchett [What he writes is essentially fantasy, Britians favorite dude after Tolkien]
Rowling [Rivals Tolkien in terms of fame/sales]
Lloyd Alexander [Fond memories, I am sure of our childhood and Prydin]
Susan Cooper [Young-Adultish take on the Quest for Holy Grail among many other things]
Jack Vance [Dying Earth, Lyonesse, a very fine author considered a mentor by many current day fantasy authors]
Charles De Lint [gaint in young-adult urban fantasy]
Jonathan Carroll [A slightly less-talented, and dumbed down version of Time Powers with some William S. Burrough and Joyce poured in for good]
L'Engle Madelien [A Wrinkle In Time, many a times have I heard old bummers reminscing about this one]
Steven Erickson [Getting pretty popular, epic scope]
R.A.Salvatore [Sword and Sorcery master]
Glen Cook [Black Company, good sound fantasy]
C.S. Friedman [famous of her semi-fantasy coldfire trilogy]
Michael Ende [Not many fantasy books better then the Neverending story in terms of creativity and sheer richness of scope
Lyndon Hardy
Michael D. Larabeiti [Forgotten author, criminally underappreciated. best work: the Borrible trilogy. Gives a whole new prespective to subways, thames, and the grimy old streets of Industrial London]
M. John Harrison
Ian R. Macleod [Light ages is one of the best urban fantasy books to have come out n a long long time]
C. S. Lewis [Chronicles of Narnia, among the most famous (and beloved) children stories out there]
Philip Pullman [The polar opposite of Lewis. While Lewis' books are sugarcoated with thinly veiled Christian symbolism, Pullman doesn't even bother with that, managing to offend numerous Christians in the process of forking off on his aethistical rant.s On the face of it, his most famous work, The Dark Materials Trilogy details the adventures of a child named Lyra living in a alternate realty Oxford. Many people enjoy them, but almost all agree that the stories could have done with the annoying religion-baiting undertones specially prominent in the third book]
C.J. Cheeryh [One of the most prominent authors of the genre marketed as 'Science Fantasy]
Jacqueline Carey [Wrote one of the most amazing and thought-provoking books in the genre: 'Kushiel's Choosen', book one of the Kushiel Trilogy]
Marion Zimmer Bradley [Mist of Avalon, an interesting (and at the time of its writing) and unique take on the Arthurian saga]
Mercedes Lackey
Richard Adams [Watership Down, The Plauge Dogs]
Lewis Carroll [Alice in Wonderland, Through the looking glass]


Star Wars/ Star Trek and other Science Fantasies/Space Opera's out there.

Edit: I have improved the list and included most of the titles listed below. Thanks for the contribution.

[Diceman]

This'll make you cringe, but anyways:

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, originally by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson.

Adventure games for eighties-era kids who didn't have microcomputers

[Dyrwen]

I see no Timothy Zahn, writer of many of the Star Wars books, whom I like. The Thrawn Triology is pure gold, I swear. Seeing the movies you almost imagine no book can compare to them, but the way he writes a story makes you believe there are lightsaber battles happening right in front of you.

[Oliver Twist]

I really like Lord of the Rings and the books by Anne McCaffrey about Pern. I also like the Chronicles of Theyn, though they're more of Mediaeval Fiction.

[Jester]

love terry brooks, looking for more... mary brown who does fantasy in medieval europe, actually europe but adds magic, marion zimmer bradley, tolkien, JK Rowling (have to add her, ill admit it, im a harry potter fan though not as obsessed as soem people seem to be) Andre Norton, I have a book upstairs from ursula leguin but i haven gotten to it yet, hopefully i will soon...

One of my all time favorites, Dr Suess, Hans Christian Anderson and the Grim Brothers ... its fantasy!

[EAP]

Star War, I am afraid, is Science-fiction.

And so is Pern, though some think otherwise.

Oops, totally forgot Marion Zimmer Bradley and Hans Christian Anderson. Not to mention Lewis Carroll.

[Dyrwen]

Star War, I am afraid, is Science-fiction.

Heh, not according to Lucas and everyone else.

Edited to add: The glaring scientific errors and centralized ideas based on myth and symbolism makes it fantasy, for those unaware.

[Monica]

is Italo Calvino a fantasy book writer? i like his cosmicomics, but i don't really know what genre that is. what about Carrol's alice's dventures in the wonderland? is it also a kind of fantasy?

[Taliesin]

Our favourites:

Tolkien (this probably needs no comments)
Pratchett (were there any possibility to measure sense of humour, his would still be unmeasurably high)
Hobb (our thanks to her for not falling into any stamps of fantasy but creating her own, new world, and for smashingly good intrigues)
Le Guin (We do not have the words to eexpress how we like her works)
De Lint (We've only read "Someplace to be flying" and it is like smashing. The crow girls are absolutely fantastic characters
Bradley (for making all the Arthurian myths real but not ridiculous)
Gaiman (We love his dark style; have only read his "American Gods", co-work with TP "Good omens" and a short story "Snow, blood and apples" which is extremely good, shows the Snowwhite story from the stepmother's point of view)
Zelazny ("Lonesome October night" was awesome)
Michael Scott Rohan (dark, northern, snowy, smithy fantasy)

And a question to you: We remember that once We read an extremely good horror story called "Sand kings". Who wrote it? It had won eother Hugo or Nebula, We remember.

[EAP]

And a question to you: We remember that once We read an extremely good horror story called "Sand kings". Who wrote it? It had won eother Hugo or Nebula, We remember.

That was written by George R.R. Martin. Won both Hugo and the Nebula. I agree, excellent execution.

[EAP]

Very well then, I stand corrected. Not that I have any first-hand experience of StarWars. I am probably the only person on earth who has never watched either StarWars or StarTrek or read the assorted material.

Yup, Alice's Adventures are pretty much fantasy. Not sure about Italo Calvino though.

Another one I missed earlier:

Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down.

[trismegistus]

The glaring scientific errors and centralized ideas based on myth and symbolism makes it fantasy, for those unaware.

A specious argument but not surprising from Lucas.

[SuicideKitten]

Mercedes Lackey- Valdemar series

crap why can't i remember her name right now.....Pern series.

[Dyrwen]

A specious argument but not surprising from Lucas.

Heh, well he had to justify all the years he spent backing up his movies with underlying mythic imagery and studying Joseph Campell's work to produce a genuinely easy to get storyline for everyone involved.

Basically, when "The Force" got added to it all, Sci-Fi went out the window and Fantasy began. But um, yeah, Star Wars books, good stuff. Surprisingly better than the movies some of the time, so I'd recommend a few of Zahn's work in particular.

[trismegistus]

Heh, well he had to justify all the years he spent backing up his movies with underlying mythic imagery and studying Joseph Campell's work to produce a genuinely easy to get storyline for everyone involved.

Well enough but just because the plot is structured as a monomyth hardly makes it a fantasy because monomyth is not limited to fantasy. It can form the foundation of any genre from science fiction to film noir. The genre is merely a lens through which the myth is viewed, whatever George Lucas may claim.

Basically, when "The Force" got added to it all, Sci-Fi went out the window and Fantasy began.

I disagree. The Star Wars films meet all the conventions of science fiction. Cross-fertilizing it with a single element from a different genre hardly changes the basics of the films.