no subject

[firecat]

Which Science-Fiction Writer Are You? (seen in elynne's journal).

I am

Hal Clement (Harry C. Stubbs)

A quiet and underrated master of "hard science" fiction who, among other things, foresaw integrated circuits back in the 1940s.


Minor tweaks to my original answers produced:

Kurt Vonnegut
For years, this unique creator of absurd and haunting tales denied that he had anything to do with science fiction.

William Gibson
The chief inspirer of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.


Gregory Benford
A master literary stylist who is also a working scientist.

Arthur C. Clarke
Well known for nonfiction science writing and for early promotion of the effort toward space travel, his fiction was often grand and visionary.

Ayn Rand
This charismatic cult leader used science fiction as her most effective recruiting tool for new converts.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Have you met Hal Clement? You'd like him. Everybody'd like him, actually.

What I want to see is the (living) authors who are listed in that test to take it, and see who they come out to be. I mean, in the "Which Comic Creator Are You" test, Neil Gaiman didn't come out as Neil Gaiman . . .

[firecat]

Not only have I not met him, I've scarcely even heard of him. Clearly this should be remedied, if we're so much alike. ;-)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I've been assiduously going out and reading everything he's ever written, partially 'cause I like intelligent juvies, partially 'cause I like and admire the guy. His earlier works, anyway, tend to be, "okay, let's make a world that's REALLY different than Earth. What kind of intelligent critter can live there? Let's make a story where that critter meets up with humans!" Fun stuff; the weakness is that his aliens, while physically very alien, don't think alien-ly -- they'd all basically fit in perfectly well at a PTA meeting, as long as you adjusted for the sulphur-based blood or whatever.

Often as not, the aliens are his viewpoint characters, and he only writes viewpoint characters that he can sympathise with, so you end up with a lot of aliens that you could see doing a decent job teaching high school physics (his day job, until he retired a decade or two ago).

He goes to about thirty cons a year, so it'd not be too difficult to meet him, if you were on THIS coast instead of THAT coast.

[firecat]

don't think alien-ly

Ooh, that bugs me. But I'll definitely try reading some of his stuff anyway at some point.