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14th November 2006, 04:06 AM
| #199 (permalink) |
| Moderator  Join Date: May 2006 Location: Texas
Posts: 8,635
| Re: Alphabetical SFF Here we go with V for Vendetta (obviously) Jack Vance -- prose stylist extraordinaire, who also could cobble up more ideas in a single chapter than many writers could in several books; creator of The Dying Earth and "The Dragon Masters" and "The Last Castle" as well as that inimitable rogue, Cugel the Clever. Herbert Van Thal -- Though not a writer, certainly his name has long been known as editor of some of the more famous horror anthologies of the latter part of the 20th century George Sylvester Vierick -- mostly known for his unpopular beliefs (he leaned heavily toward National Socialism, among other things), he was also one of the first to tackle the theme of a psychic vampire in The House of the Vampire (1907) Villiers de L'Isle Adam -- called the first French Symbolist writer, he was a master of the conte cruel, writing what is one of the most famous horror tales of all, "Torture by Hope" E. H. Visiak -- though Visiak's work is difficult to obtain these days, at least one of his novels, Medusa, is considered by many writers to be one of the best horror novels in the field. E. C. Vivian -- another nearly forgotten writer, Evelyn Charles Vivian was one of the most popular writers of the lost-race fantasy adventures, with such books as City of Wonder (1922) and Fields of Sleep (1923) to his credit. He also wrote a series involving an occult detective, Gregory George Gordon Green, which included Grey Shapes, Nightmare Farm, Maker of Shadows, and several others. Vathek -- or, more properly, The History of the Caliph Vathek (1787), by William Beckford, one of the most famous fantasies of all time, straddling that line between the Arabian Nights adventures and the Gothic novel, it is also spiced with wit and a sly sexuality, and remains a thoroughly enjoyable book to this day. "The Vampyre" -- aptly titled, this tale by Dr. John William Polidori was the first tale in English about the vampire legend, and had its origin in the same meeting at the Villa Deodati that produced Frankenstein. It was also an idea stolen from Lord Byron, which caused no little controversy in its day. Varney, the Vampire -- one of the most famous of the "Penny Dreadfuls", for a long time the authorship of this was in doubt, but most authorities now agree that this tremendously long, gory, and sensational (in the pejorative sense) novel was the work of one of the glories of the genre, Thomas Peckett Prest Jules Verne -- one of the most prolific writers, and one of the true fathers (along with H. G. Wells) of science fiction as we know it. Visible and Invisible -- title of a collection of supernatural stories by E. H. Benson "The Visitor from Down Under" -- certainly one of the most unsettling of horror tales, which reads much like a fever dream... and written by a man known today largely for his humorous tales, L. P. Hartley |
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22nd November 2006, 09:09 AM
| #204 (permalink) |
| Moderator Join Date: May 2006 Location: Texas
Posts: 8,635
| Re: Alphabetical SFF James Wade -- composer and musical critic, he also wrote several pieces using Lovecraftian themes, bringing them to a more modern setting in the 1960s and 1970s, such as "The Deep Ones"; he also worked on an opera based upon a story by Vernon Lee, "A Wicked Voice" Karl Edward Wagner -- beginning as a practicing psychiatrist, Wagner moved in the 1970s into a prominent position in the horror and fantasy fields with a series of books involving Kane, the mystic swordsman, a complex antihero who is an alternate version of the Biblical Cain, as well as writing several quite powerful horror tales in various veins. He also edited many anthologies of horror tales and ran Carcosa, a small press which issued huge volumes of some of the more prominent pulp writers, such as E. Hoffmann Price, Manly Wade Wellman and Hugh B. Cave H. Russell Wakefield -- counted by many to be high in the second rank of writers of the English ghost story (right behind M. R. James and Sheridan Le Fanu), Wakefield wrote 5 books of ghostly tales, a sixth of uncollected tales has been published since his death. His most famous tale would probably still be "The Red Lodge", though he wrote many memorable tales in the weird vein John W. Wall -- known by his pseudonym of "Sarban", his most famous work remains the alternate-world tale The Sound of His Horn (1952), set in an England where the Nazis won the war, and the enemy is hunted for sport Horace Walpole -- the father of the Gothic tale, with his Castle of Otranto (1764), he was also indirectly one of the fathers of the science fiction tale, by ushering in a new age of imaginative literature which produced the likes of Mary Shelley and Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as making possible a refinement of the tale of terror into a unique genre of its own Sir Hugh Walpole -- descendant of Horace, Hugh himself wrote several ghastly tales, recently gathered together as Tarnhelm, as well as novels in the macabre vein, the most famous being Portrait of a Man with Red Hair (1925) Evangeline Walton -- she authored a modern retelling of the Welsh Mabinogion in four novels: The Virgin and the Swine (a.k.a. The Island of the Mighty; 1936), The Children of Lyr (1971), The Song of Rhiannon (1972) and The Prince of Annwn (1974). She also wrote a brief supernatural horror novel, Witch House (1945), published by August Derleth through Arkham House Donald and Howard Wandrei -- both of these wrote science fiction and horror tales, though Donald is the more well-known. He was also co-founder, with August Derleth, of Arkham House Publishers, in 1939. His brother Howard leaned more toward art, often illustrating Donald's work with vivid and powerful images capturing the mood of Donald's work better than any other illustrator has ever done. Donald's work has mostly been gathered together now into two collections, Don't Dream (horror and dark fantasy) and Colossus (his science fiction tales); a reissue with complete text of his Dead Titans Wake (a.k.a. The Web of Easter Island) is supposed to be forthcoming soon Manley Wade Wellman -- a versatile and prolific writer of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mysteries, Wellman was already building a name for himself as early as 1927 in the pages of Weird Tales; he also drew on his regional knowledge in creating the character of John the Balladeer in a series of fantasies beginning with Who Fears the Devil (1963) H. G. Wells -- the father of the "scientific romance", and author of more famous novels and short stories than can be easily listed, from The Time Machine (1895) and War of the Worlds (1897) through The Shape of Things to Come (1933) and The Land Ironclads (1943) |
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22nd November 2006, 05:15 PM
| #205 (permalink) |
| wandering & wondering  Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: California
Posts: 945
| Re: Alphabetical SFF Connie Willis Howard Waldrop Tad Williams Liz Williams Gene Wolfe Terri Windling Patricia Wrede Kate Wilhelm Wind-in-the-Willows (Kenneth Grahame) Wildside (Steven Gould) Winnie-the-Pooh (A. A. Milne) When Demons Walk (Patricia Briggs) Warchild (Karin Lowachee) Windhaven (George R.R. Martin) Water Witch (Cynthia Felice and Connie Willis) Wheel of the Winds (M.J. Engh) When Harlie Was One (David Gerrold) Walkabout Woman (Michaela Roessner) Watchstar (Pamela Sargent) Witch World (Andre Norton) Worldwired (Elizabeth Bear) Wizard (John Varley) Wyrms (Orson Scott Card) Walk to the End of the World (Suzy M. Charnas) |
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5th February 2007, 05:24 PM
| #207 (permalink) |
| wandering & wondering Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: California
Posts: 945
| Re: Alphabetical SFF It's driving me nuts that we're so close to the end of this thread yet can't seem to make it to Z. (Sort of like that hypothetical arrow in physics class that never reaches the target because it always has half the distance to go.) So Y not finish? Jane Yolen Chelsea Quinn Yarbro Laurence Yep Yarrow by Charles de Lint |
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