Best modern Authors

Science fiction is having a moment.

Posters for Amazon’s serialisation of Philip K Dick’s Man In The High Castle have shocked and confused public transport users worldwide, while the hype around Ben Wheatley’s highly-anticipated adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise, out in March, is reaching fever pitch.

There’s a battered copy of A Clockwork Orange littering every teenage boy’s bedroom, and Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut are just a few of many iconic names to have reached literary classic status.

But science fiction didn’t die with H.G. Wells. If you don’t know your Brandon Sanderson from your Brian Staveley, here are 11 authors you might be missing out on.

1. Lauren Beukes

Beukes’ award winning 2010 novel Zoo City was critically acclaimed, and the South African author didn’t disappoint with last year’s follow up Broken Monsters. In a city that represents the death of the American dream, a killer is on the loose.

It’s well worth a read, but if you don’t believe us, listen to Stephen King. He said of Broken Monsters: ‘Scary as hell and hypnotic. I couldn’t put it down…I’d grab it if I were you.’

2. China Mieville

The self described ‘weird fiction’ author has dominated the New Weird scene in recent years. The City and the City (2009) won him his third Arthur C. Clarke Award, among others, and frequently tops must-read lists. A crime novel with a difference, Mieville straddles genres with influences including H. P. Lovecraft and Ursula K. Le Guin.

3. Pierce Brown

A New York Times bestseller in 2015, Golden Son is the second book in the Red Rising trilogy from debut author Brown. The series follows Darrow, a miner on Mars, who just happens to be humanity’s last chance of survival. Catch up now before the final installment, Morning Star, hits the shelves this month.

4. Ann Leckie

Another trilogy, this time a vivid space opera from debut American author Leckie. The first book in the Ancillary series, Ancillary Justice (2013), earned her a clutch of awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, but that’s not the only reason to pick her up. No other novelist on this list has captured the zeitgeist quite so clearly as Leckie has.

5. Neil Gaiman

Multiple bestselling author Gaiman is no stranger to success, his award winning American Gods is one of the most talked about books of the decade, but still many readers have missed him. His newest collection of short fiction, 2015’s Trigger Warning, returns to a tried and tested formula. The blend of sci-fi and fairy tale includes previously published pieces and new writing, but is an effective opening into Gaiman’s world.

6. Geoff Ryman

Critically acclaimed Air won Ryman his second Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2004 and tells the story of a woman in a remote village in Central Asia who suddenly finds her brain connected to the internet. Gripping, humane and powerful, you won’t be able to put it down.

7. Paulo Bacigalupi

A powerful and controversial novel, The Wind Up Girl shared a Hugo Award with China Mieville’s The City and the City in 2009. Bacigalupi’s sixth novel, The Water Knife, came out in May and is set in a near-future America where a drought has blighted the southwest. Both paint vivid and harrowing pictures of life after an ecological disaster that seems to be inevitable today.

8. Paul McAuley

McAuley is part of the British boom in sci-fi that has focused on revisiting old classic styles and updating them. A proponent of hard sci-fi, McAuley’s The Quiet War Series does this better than almost anyone else. The final of the four books, Evening’s Empires, was published in 2013 and picks up 1, 500 years after the first, as the descendants of warring colonists are picking out lives across the solar system. If you like your sci-fi hard on the science, McAuley’s for you.

9. Ernest Cline

Cline had phenomenal success with 2011’s Ready Player One, a love note to classic gaming that defined modern geek culture. He returned in July with a surprising thriller, a coming of age, space-fighting adventure which will thrill sci-fi fans and gamers alike.

10. David Anthony Durham

Durham shrugged off his literary historian’s coat with a flourish when he published the first of Acacia Trilogy novels in 2007. The fantasy sci-fi epic he produced is set in the Akaran Utopia, a world mired in corruption, slavery, drugs and deception. Big in Durham’s native America, the series is long overdue a look over here.

11. Adam Roberts

Classic sci-fi meets hard-boiled crime in Roberts’ soon-to-be classic Jack Glass (2012). The Cambridge University academic made his name in 2000 with his debut novel Salt and has since established himself as a prolific and popular author.The three-time Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee is a joy to read.