Steve's Books Page

I read a lot. I'm a two books a week kind of guy, and my "to-be-read" pile is currently at around 200 books.
So what do I read? Well mainly it's SF and fantasy, most of which is the usual stuff, but some is pretty obscure. Here are some of my favourite authors, some you'll have heard of; some maybe you haven't.
Maybe you'll find something new here!

Stephen Baxter

The Best "Hard" SF author out there. There are unfortunately very few websites devoted to his work.

I'm certainly interested in discussing his work with anyone interested. Feel free to get in touch!

Steven Erikson

The author of one of the darkest fantasy series in years. The first 3 books are currently available in the UK and Canada, but no publishing deal has yet been arranged in the US. Very bizarre. If you thought Glen Cook was dark then you should try this guy.

There is a website at Malazan Empire.com, however I found it a touch disappointing. I would certainly be interested in talking with fans of his work. Anyone fancy setting up a yahoogroup for him?

Apparently the story goes (and I don't know how apocraphal it is or not), that after the publication of "Gardens of the Moon" the book received little notice until several superb reviews appeared on the internet. Most notably at SFSite.com. The book then became a phenomenon.
Based on this Erikson secured a contract for 9 more books. I'll admit I heard about his books first via sfsite.com.

  • Gardens of the Moon
  • Deadhouse Gates
  • Memories of Ice

    Julian May

    I'm a big fan of Julian's rather cyclical Exiles/Galactic Milieu series. She's not a terribly prolific author, but when she does publish it's usually worth a read.

    Her most recent series The Rampart Worlds are a bit different in style.

    Robert Charles Wilson

    Robert Charles Wilson is probably the best SF author you've never heard of. The Toronto based author publishes very sporadically and usually quite short books, but what he does publish is always of excellent quality. His work is a lot more character based than most SF; his books also usually concentrate on the small scale personal stories in the setting of major events.

    Harry Turtledove

    Harry Turtledove is regarded as the king of alternate history (or uchronia as the anally minded tend to call it :-)). He currently has several ongoing series exploring various departures from our history. My only real complaints about him is that sometimes his series don't really go anywhere they just end so they seem more like snapshots than a whole story (the Colonisation sequence is very guilty of this). The other is that he tends to overpublish a bit. It is not unusual for him to publish 5 books a year!

    Doctor Who Books

    Two years after the series cancellation in 1991 Virgin Publishing gained the rights to publish new original adventures of the seventh Doctor, as portrayed by Sylvester McCoy. These were a bimonthly (soon monthly) series of books written by both professional writers and new writers from fandom. These books have been going for over 10 years now (changing to BBC publishing in 1997 and featuring the eighth Doctor) and are still a strong read. In 1994 a series of past or missing adventures was added to the range. They have been such a success that there are now more print adventures than there are tv adventures.

    Understandably the quality of the books have varied wildly from stories that could easily be published as stand-alone SF to little more than hack work.

    However the main thing that these books achieve that no other series of books do anywhere in the world (AFAIK) is accept unsolicited manuscripts. The BBC receives several hundred proposals each year from fans and every one is read. One or two of these each year end up being commissioned as novels. This I think does immense good for the British science fiction community.

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    Please Email me at steve.traylen@att.net

    Last update 17/OCTOBER/2002