science fiction

A short story a day keeps the critic at bay

Fantasy, science fiction, Short Fiction
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I want to read more short science fiction and fantasy, even have subscribed to Clarkesworld and Apex Magazine but the digital issues keep piling up on my virtual coffee table. I need to set myself a challenge, to actually start reading short fiction again.

Enter Monsieur Caution’s nicely curated list of noticable fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories published in 2014. That seems like a nice challenge to plough through. Read one or two a day, jot down some notes about them here, see if I can get through it before the Hugo nominations close.

The list:

  1. Charlie Jane Anders, “The Unfathomable Sisterhood of Ick.” Lightspeed, June 2014 (“Women Destroy Science Fiction!” special issue); reprinted at Tor.com. [LM]
  2. Eleanor Arnason, “The Scrivener.” Subterranean, Winter 2014. [JS; LM]
  3. Dale Bailey, “The End of the End of Everything.” Tor.com, April 23, 2014. [LM; UM]
  4. Jessica Barber, “Coma Kings.” Lightspeed, February 2014. [GD]
  5. Elizabeth Bear, “Covenant.” Slate, September 11, 2014. [GD; JS; LM]
  6. Elizabeth Bear, “This Chance Planet.” Tor.com, October 22, 2014. [FW; LM]
  7. Helena Bell, “Lovecraft.” Clarkesworld, October 2014. [UM]
  8. Holly Black, “Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (the Successful Kind).” Lightspeed, September 2014. [JS; LM]
  9. Aliette de Bodard, “The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile.” Subterranean, Spring 2014. [GD; LM]
  10. Richard Butner, “Circa.” Interfictions Online #3, May 2014. [UM]
  11. Richard Bowes, “Sleep Walking Now and Then.” Tor.com, July 9, 2014. [FW; LM; UM]
  12. Chaz Brenchley, “The Burial of Sir John Mawe at Cassini.” Subterranean, Spring 2014. [GD]
  13. Siobhan Carroll, “The Year of Silent Birds.” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, January 9, 2014. [FW]
  14. Dario Ciriello, “Free Verse.” Free Verse and Other Stories, Panverse, 2014. [KL]
  15. C. S. E. Cooney, “Witch, Beast, Saint: an Erotic Fairy Tale.” Strange Horizons, July 21, 2014. [LM]
  16. Julio Cortázar, “Headache.” Tor.com, September 3, 2014 (first English translation). [K&K]
  17. Tom Crosshill, “The Magician and Laplace’s Demon.” Clarkesworld, December 2014. [KL; LM; UM]
  18. Amanda C. Davis, “Loving Armageddon.” Crossed Genres, July 2, 2014. [K&K]
  19. Amal El-Mohtar, “The Truth About Owls.” Strange Horizons, January 26, 2015 (originally published in Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios (eds.), Kaleidoscope, Twelfth Planet Press, 2014). [JS; LM]
  20. Ruthanna Emrys, “The Litany of Earth.” Tor.com, May 14, 2014. [LM]
  21. K. M. Ferebee, “The Earth and Everything Under.” Shimmer #19, 2014. [FW; K&K]
  22. Jeffrey Ford, “The Prelate’s Commission.” Subterranean, Winter 2014. [LM]
  23. Karen Joy Fowler, “Nanny Anne and the Christmas Story.” Subterranean, Winter 2014. [K&K; LM]
  24. Max Gladstone, “A Kiss with Teeth.” Tor.com, October 29, 2014. [TC; previously on MeFi]
  25. Kathleen Ann Goonan, “A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon A Star.” Tor.com, July 20, 2014. [LM]
  26. Theodora Goss, “Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology.” Lightspeed, July 2014. [JS; LM]
  27. Nicola Griffith, “Cold Wind.” Tor.com, April 16, 2014. [JS]
  28. Shane Halbach, “Copy Machine.” Flash Fiction Online, June 2014. [KL]
  29. Maria Dahvana Headley, “The Tallest Doll in New York City.” Tor.com, February 14, 2014. [FW; LM]
  30. Kat Howard, “The Saint of the Sidewalks.” Clarkesworld, August 2014. [LM]
  31. Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, “Where the Trains Turn.” Tor.com, November 19, 2014. [LM]
  32. N. K. Jemisin, “Stone Hunger.” Clarkesworld, July 2014. [FW]
  33. Xia Jia, “Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy.” Translated by Ken Liu. Clarkesworld, September 2014. [KL; UM]
  34. Xia Jia, “Tongtong’s Summer.” Translated by Ken Liu. Clarkesworld, December 2014 (originally in Neil Clarke (ed.), Upgraded, Wyrm Publishing, 2014). [KL]
  35. Rachael K. Jones, “Makeisha in Time.” Crossed Genres #20, August 2014. [BC]
  36. Stephen Graham Jones, “Chapter Six.” Tor.com, June 11, 2014. [LM]
  37. Vylar Kaftan, “Ink of My Bones, Blood of My Hands.” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, June 12, 2014. [FW]
  38. Caitlín R. Kiernan, “Bus Fare.” Subterranean, Spring 2014. [K&K]
  39. Ellen Klages, “Caligo Lane.” Subterranean, Winter 2014. [LM]
  40. Jay Lake, “West to East.” Subterranean, Summer 2014. [GD; LM]
  41. Rich Larson, “The Air We Breathe is Stormy, Stormy.” Strange Horizons, August 11, 2014. [K&K]
  42. Yoon Ha Lee, “Combustion Hour.” Tor.com, June 18, 2014. [FW; LM; UM; previously on MeFi]
  43. Yoon Ha Lee, “The Contemporary Foxwife.” Clarkesworld, July 2014. [LM; previously on MeFi]
  44. Yoon Ha Lee, “Wine.” Clarkesworld, January 2014. [LM; previously on MeFi]
  45. Rose Lemberg, “A City on Its Tentacles.” Lackington’s, Winter 2014. [SS]
  46. Kelly Link, “I Can See Right Through You.” McSweeney’s Quarterly 48, 2014. [LM]
  47. Ken Liu, “Reborn.” Tor.com, January 29, 2014. [UM]
  48. Ken Liu, “The Long Haul, From the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009.” Clarkesworld, November 2014. [GD; JS; LM]
  49. Carmen Maria Machado, “Observations About Eggs from the Man Sitting Next to Me on a Flight from Chicago, Illinois to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.” Lightspeed, April 2014. [K&K; SS]
  50. Carmen Maria Machado, “The Husband Stitch.” Granta, October 28, 2014. [K&K; UM; SS]
  51. Usman T. Malik, “Resurrection Points.” Strange Horizons, August 4, 2014. [FW; K&K; KL]
  52. Usman T. Malik, “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family.” Medium, October 22, 2014 (originally in Michael Bailey (ed.), Qualia Nous, Written Backwards, 2014). [JS; KL; LM]
  53. Tim Maughan, “Four Days of Christmas.” Vice, December 24, 2014. [JS; LM]
  54. Sandra McDonald, “Selfie.” Lightspeed, May 2014. [LM]
  55. Sam J. Miller, “Kenneth: A User’s Manual.” Strange Horizons, December 1, 2014. [CMM]
  56. Mary Anne Mohanraj, “Communion.” Clarkesworld, June 2014. [GD]
  57. Sunny Moraine, “So Sharp That Blood Must Flow.” Lightspeed, February 2014. [K&K]
  58. Sunny Moraine, “What Glistens Back.” Lightspeed, November 2014. [UM]
  59. John P. Murphy, “Still Life, With Oranges.” Lakeside Circus, January 6, 2014. [KL]
  60. Anna Noyes, “Becoming.” Guernica, November 3, 2014. [CMM]
  61. An Owomoyela, “And Wash Out by Tides of War.” Clarkesworld, February 2014. [LM]
  62. Susan Palwick, “Weather.” Clarkesworld, September 2014. [GD]
  63. K. J. Parker, “Heaven Thunders the Truth.” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, October 2, 2014. [LM]
  64. K. J. Parker, “I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There.” Subterranean, Winter 2014. [JS; LM]
  65. K. J. Parker, “The Things We Do For Love.” Subterranean, Summer 2014. [LM]
  66. Richard Parks, “The Manor of Lost Time.” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, June 26, 2014. [LM]
  67. Richard Parks, “The Sorrow of Rain.” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, October 2, 2014. [LM]
  68. Shannon Peavey, “Dogs From Other Places” (audio only). Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, Issue 38, March 2014. [UM]
  69. Robert Reed, “Pernicious Romance.” Clarkesworld, November 2014. [LM]
  70. Alastair Reynolds, “The Last Log of the Lachrimosa.” Subterranean, Summer 2014. [LM]
  71. Mary Rickert, “The Mothers of Voorhisville.” Tor.com, April 30, 2014. [FW; LM; UM]
  72. Sofia Samatar, “How to Get Back to the Forest.” Lightspeed, March 2014. [CMM; LM]
  73. Kelly Sandoval, “The One They Took Before.” Shimmer #22, November 2014. [UM]
  74. John Scalzi, “Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome.” Tor.com, May 13, 2014. [MU]
  75. Veronica Schanoes, “Among the Thorns.” Tor.com, May 7, 2014. [LM]
  76. Karl Schroeder, “Jubilee.” Tor.com, February 26, 2014. [GD]
  77. Lewis Shiner, “The Black Sun.” Subterranean, Summer 2014. [LM]
  78. Alex Shvartsman, “Icarus Falls.” Daily Science Fiction, September 23, 2014. [KL]
  79. Vandana Singh, “Wake-Rider.” Lightspeed, December 2014. [LM]
  80. Michael Swanwick, “Passage of Earth.” Clarkesworld, April 2014. [BN (winner); GD; LM]
  81. Rachel Swirsky, “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap).” Subterranean, Summer 2014. [GD; JS; KL; LM]
  82. Bogi Takács, “This Shall Serve as a Demarcation.” Scigentasy: Gender Stories in Science Fiction and Fantasy #6, July 5, 2014. [SS]
  83. Anna Tambour, “The Walking-Stick Forest.” Tor.com, May 21, 2014. [LM]
  84. Natalia Theodoridou, “The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul.” Clarkesworld, February 2014. [KL]
  85. E. Catherine Tobler, “Migratory Patterns of Underground Birds.” Clarkesworld, May 2014. [FW]
  86. Jeremiah Tolbert, “In the Dying Light, We Saw a Shape.” Lightspeed, January 2014. [BN]
  87. Harry Turtledove, “The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging.” Tor.com, January 8, 2014. [BC]
  88. Genevieve Valentine, “The Insects of Love.” Tor.com, May 28, 2014. [FW; JS; LM]
  89. Damien Angelica Walters, “The Floating Girls: A Documentary.” Jamais Vu 3, September 2014. [KL; UM]
  90. Damien Angelica Walters, “The Serial Killer’s Astronaut Daughter.” Strange Horizons, January 6, 2014. [BC]
  91. LaShawn M. Wanak, “21 Steps to Enlightenment (Minus One).” Strange Horizons, February 3, 2014. [FW; TC]
  92. Peter Watts, “The Colonel.” Tor.com, July 29, 2014. [GD; LM]
  93. Kai Ashante Wilson, “The Devil in America.” Tor.com, April 2, 2014. [JS; LM; UM]
  94. Alyssa Wong, “Santos de Sampaguitas” (also, part two). Strange Horizons, October 13, 2014. [UM]
  95. Alyssa Wong, “The Fisher Queen.” F&SF, May/June 2014. [KL; UM]
  96. Jy Yang, “Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points.” Clarkesworld, September 2014. [UM]
  97. Isabel Yap, “A Cup of Salt Tears.” Tor.com, August 27, 2014. [K&K; UM]
  98. Caroline Yoachim, “Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion.” Clarkesworld, August 2014. [BN; KL; TC]

The initials at the end of each entry correspond to the critics, writers or anthologists who found these noticable:

Pandora’s Planet — Christopher Anvil

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Cover of Pandora's Planet


Pandora’s Planet
Christopher Anvil
192 pages
published in 1972 (original in 1956)

Libertarianism has a well deserved bad reputation in science fiction, largely because so many writers who profess to be adherents also are godawful people who write jack off fantasies about how freedom requires their jackbooted thugs putting their boot in somebody else’s face, whether it’s Heinlein’s repeated wish to kill off all the lawyers or Kratman resurrecting the Waffen SS to deal with an alien invasion. But once upon a time there was a gentler, more humane sort of libertarianism, one that still catered to the prejudices of Analog notorious editor John Campbell Jr, but that hadn’t quite lost its humanity. H. Beam Piper was its best known representative, but there were others, like Christopher Anvil.

Anvil is one of those writers I only ever had heard about, but had never read simply because I’d never seen any of his work for sale, new or secondhand. He was never translated in Dutch as far as I know, one of those minor Analog writers who’d been reasonably popular in the sixties and seventies but was passed by when the genre moved on. From what I gather he specialised in stories in which clever humans put one over militaristic aliens and Pandora’s Planet is in that mold, gently cocking a snoot at authority in general in the process. It’s gentle and not very humourous satire, but much better than the modern libertarian habit of genociding every alien race that looks at Earth funny.

Anvil uses an idea that other writers, like Niven & Pournelle or Harry Turtledove, would later use in more “serious” novels, that of Earth being invaded by aliens who have found the one simple trick of interstellar travel but are actually somewhat dimmer than us earthlings. The Centrans have been conquering star systems for thousands of years, but never had as much trouble as they had with Earth. But while Earth, divided between nations nowhere else seen by them, is able to keep the invaders busy, they can’t win due to the overwhelming numerical supremacy of the Centrans.

For the moment at stalemate, with Earth nominally conquered but the Centrans harassed and harried at every corner, they try a different tactic: don’t conquer, but let the Earthlings be assimilated in the Integral Union. The Centran High Council has thought up this plan because it has been impressed by Earthmen’s intelligence and drive. They however are smart enough to not give the Terrans access to the entire Union, only a part to see if Terran intelligence and drive could help improve the Union, but in such a way that any possible damage would be limited.

So the Earthmen were let loose in the galaxy and chaos reigns on the various Centran colonies they visit and settle on. All which is shown through the eyes of Klide Horsip, the Planetary Integrator who was supposed to have Earth integrated in the Integral Union. Now assigned to keep track of their progress to that part of the Galaxy known to them, Horsip and his righthand man Brak Moffis are firsthand witnesses to what happens if you let communists, fascist dictators and snake oil salesmen loose on an unsuspecting, innocent alien empire…

All of which is fairly dated, mainly satiric riffing on modern life, mid-fifties vintage, but Anvil is an engaging enough writer that you plow through this. What’s more interesting is the sympathetic treatment of the Centrans, which really isn’t an evil empire but seems to follow the same impulses as say the Federation in Star Trek. And while they may not have the same intelligence and drive as Earthmen, they have their own strengths, rather than just being fanatical warriors. Anvil is also smart enough to realise that in group differences in intelligence may very well overshadow differences between groups. In a society as large as the Integral union there will therefore be many Centrans as smart or smarter than humans and best of those are on the High Council because the Centrans don’t waste talent the way Earthmen do.

That’s what sets Pandora’s Planet apart from the flood of other Campbellian adventures where tricksy humans outsmart hidebound aliens. Anvil’s sympathies lie with the Centrans more than with the Earthmen and while the Earthmen do wreak havoc in the Union, it doesn’t get nasty. An entertaining if ultimately shallow read.

Schismatrix Plus — Bruce Sterling

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Cover of Schismatrix Plus


Schismatrix Plus
Bruce Sterling
319 pages
published in 1996

As a literary movement, cyberpunk has had the misfortune to be dominated by not just one particular writer, (William Gibson) but by one particular novel: Neuromancer, which ever since its first publication in 1984 has served as a template for what is and isn’t cyberpunk, stultifying the genre almost from its birth. I do not blame Gibson or Neuromancer for this, but rather the legion of mediocre writers who jumped on the cyberpunk bandwagon after it, churning out third and fourth rate copies. Everything that was original and good about cyberpunk got lost in this flood, anything that deviated from the Neuromancer template shoved aside.

Which unfortunately included Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix, which never quite got the acclaim it deserved. Coming out only a year after Gibson’s Neuromancer, it should’ve taken its rightful place beside it as one of the acknowledged classics of the genre. However, this never quite happened. Somehow, cyberpunk had already solidified too much for Schismatrix to fit in comfortably. It was just too different from the low life with high tech template put forth by Neuromancer and its imitators. Schismatrix‘s influence would only be felt later, in writers like Charlie Stross and Neal Stephenson, after cyberpunk had crashed and burned.

For me personally, Schismatrix was one of the seminal cyberpunk novels, one of the few available to me when I was still almost entirely dependent on the Middelburg library for my science fiction fix. Together with of course Neuromancer and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion series I’d discovered at the same time, it was a first taste of modern science fiction, because until then the library mainly had stocked Golden Age and New Wave science fiction, not so much new stuff.

What Schismatrix showed me was a future in which space stations needed not be clean and sterile, but could actually decay and smell funky. A future in which space travel was boring, something you had to do to get from one place to another, not an adventure or a noble striving to be free of the ties of Earth. That was new to me.

Looking back, Schismatrix was of course very much influenced by the Cold War environment in which it was written, with its Solar System divided between Shapers and Mechanists. The first are those who use genetic enginering and psychological training to shape their bodies and minds, while the Mechanics use cybernetics and software. In the 23rd century, these are the conservative faction struggling for supremacy. Caught up in this battle for power are the various independent and not so independent colonies on the Moon and in L5, ruled by or allied to one faction or another.

The Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic is one of these colonies, ruled by ancient Mechanist families, whose innate conservatism strangles the possibilities for the younger generations in the colony. In hindsight, a very eighties concern as the baby boomers came of age and started grappling with political power. Something Sterling would also come back to in the later Holy Fire. Abelard Lindsay and Philip Constantine are two friends who’ve both been trained as Shaper diplomats in nominal service to the colony, rebellious and wanting to make a grand gesture to change its politics. That fails, it kills Vera Kelland, the woman they both loved and sets them against each other. Constantine remains at the colony, Lindsay is exiled.

As Lindsay moves from colony to colony, Constantine stages a coup and assumes control of the Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic. His presence remains as a menace in the background, driving much of the plot of the first half of the novel, as Lindsay attempts to get away from his influence. Ultimately he ends up on an asteroid colony originally founded by a Shaper clan and now taken over by a Mechanist cartel. His attempts to keep peace between the two factions fail and open war breaks out, which he and his new love only survive due to the coming of the aliens, the socalled Investors.

The second half of Schismatrix is taken up with the impact their arrival has on the Solar System’s political scene and economy, as it’s soon clear they care nothing for the Shaper/Mechanist squabbles. Détente sets in, but isn’t kept. In the meantime the struggle between Constantine and Lindsay continues, half hidden in the everyday political manoeuvring of the various powers. This part of the story stretches over decades and centuries.

Unlike Neuromancer, Schismatrix has dated much less, even if its politics are very eighties. Sterling has a knack for creating believeable, lived in, dense political and cultural futures and a scope that’s at easy with centuries and the entire Solar System to play in, in contrast to Gibson’s more cramped, Earthbound futures. Nevertheless there are similarities. The dirty secret of the cyberpunks is that, despite their rebellious stance, they were science fiction True Believers, confident that humanity’s future lies in space and in both novels that future is in progress. If you squint hard enough, they could be part of the same future.

Apart from Schismatrix itself, Schismatrix Plus also contains the Shaper/Mechanist short stories originally collected in Crystal Express:

  • Swarm (1982)
  • Spider Rose (1982)
  • Cicada Queen (1982)
  • Sunken Gardens (1984)
  • Twenty Evocations (1984)

The Instrumentality of Mankind – Cordwainer Smith

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Cover of The Instrumentality of Mankind


The Instrumentality of Mankind
Cordwainer Smith
238 pages
published in 1979

Cordwainer Smith was one of the more interesting science fiction writers of the fifties and sixties. Under his real name, Paul Linebarger, he had been instrumental in the development of psychological warfare, worked in China in WWII to coordinate military intelligence there, became a confidant of Chiang K’ai-Shek and consulted for the US Army in the Korean War. His science fiction reflected his life, much more literate and creative than was the norm in the genre at the time, influenced by Chinese literature and culture among other things and not afraid to be poetic, especially in the titles.

Smith had a real knack for creating gorgeously strange far future worlds, on display here even in the earliest story in the novel, “War No. 81-Q, written in 1928 when he was still in high school. Most of his stories, including the majority here, are set in the same universe, The Instrumentality of Mankind as in the title. It’s a future that stretches out from 2000 AD to 16000 AD, with the Instrumentality itself established around 5000 AD. There’s almost no continuity with our own time, though two stories here do star timelost refugees from the collapse of nazi-Germany, the Vonacht sisters, in “Mark Elf” and “The Queen of the Afternoon”, set early in the revitalisation of humanity after the devestation of the Ancient Wars that had destroyed civilisation.

All the instrumentality stories in this volume, from “No, No, Not Rogov! to “Drunkboat” are in chronological order, with the non-Instrumentality stories bunched up at the end of the book. Short text pieces connect each of the first couple of the Instrumentality stories with each other. To be honest, the stories here aren’t the best Cordwainer Smith has written. As the back cover makes clear, The Instrumentality of Mankind was the last in Del Rey’s seventies republishing of Smith’s oeuvre and some of these stories clearly are leftovers.

But these aren’t bad stories and although this isn’t perhaps the best volume to try Smith with, there’s enough merit here to pick it up if you find it. Otherwise, there’s the NESFA Press collection The Rediscovery of Man which has all of Smith’s stories in one convenient volume.

Stories in this volume:

  • No, No, Not Rogov!
  • War No. 81-Q
  • Mark Elf
  • The Queen of the Afternoon
  • When the People Fell
  • Think Blue, Count Two
  • The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All
  • From Gustible’s Planet
  • Drunkboat
  • Western Science Is So Wonderful
  • Nancy
  • The Fife of Bodidharma
  • Angerhelm
  • The Good Friends

How diverse are my book shelves?

Fantasy, post interesting only to me, science fiction
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Not very it turns out. Below are the fifty science fiction and fantasy writers I’ve bought the most books of, according to Librarything. Thirtyeight male, twelve female writers, one writer of colour. Part of that discrepancy is of course the inertia of any collection: it takes time and effort to get new writers into the top fifty. But I think part of it is due to the fact that it has been easier for white, male writers to keep their career going than it has been for women/writers of colour. It hasn’t been that long since there were only two first grade Black writers in science fiction: Butler and Delany. I like to think that if I look at this list again in one or two years time, it will be more diverse.

  1. Terry Pratchett (55)
  2. Poul Anderson (45)
  3. Robert A. Heinlein (37)
  4. C. J. Cherryh (34)
  5. Andre Norton (34)
  6. Michael Moorcock (33)
  7. Jack Vance (33)
  8. Robert Silverberg (30)
  9. Frederik Pohl (24)
  10. Philip K. Dick (23)
  11. Charlie Stross (23)
  12. Glen Cook (21)
  13. Roger Zelazny (20)
  14. Steven Brust (19)
  15. Samuel R. Delany (19)
  16. Isaac Asimov (18)
  17. Lois McMaster Bujold (18)
  18. Paul J. McAuley (17)
  19. Tanya Huff (16)
  20. Keith Laumer (16)
  21. Philip Jose Farmer (15)
  22. Ursula K. Le Guin (15)
  23. Larry Niven (15)
  24. Walter Jon Williams (15)
  25. Iain M. Banks (14)
  26. John Barnes (14)
  27. Elizabeth Bear (14)
  28. Ken MacLeod (14)
  29. Brian W. Aldiss (13)
  30. Avram Davidson (13)
  31. Diane Duane (13)
  32. Christopher Priest (13)
  33. Neal Asher (12)
  34. Leigh Brackett (12)
  35. Mary Gentle (12)
  36. Harry Harrison (12)
  37. E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith (12)
  38. Bruce Sterling (12)
  39. Jo Walton (12)
  40. David Weber (12)
  41. James Blish (11)
  42. Lloyd Biggle Jr. (10)
  43. Steven Erikson (10)
  44. M. John Harrison (10)
  45. Gwyneth Jones (10)
  46. Fritz Leiber (10)
  47. China Mieville (10)
  48. Alastair Reynolds (10)
  49. Kate Wilhelm (10)
  50. John Wyndham (10)