My Favorite (Living) Science Fiction Writer

Daniel Keys Moran is God

And he blogs.

If you're not lucky enough to have read the writings of Daniel Keys Moran, wow... lucky you.

As a serious science fiction reader since age seven or eight when I first figured out that the rocket ship on the end of the library book meant good reading, usually, and who grew up on Robert Heinlein and other greats, I'm here to tell you...

I believe Daniel Keys Moran is the greatest science fiction writer alive today.

Yes, I know some people will say it is John Varley, just on the strength of The Persistence of Vision with the novelette by the same name, which I at least feel is the greatest novelette I've read in my life, just as I think Of Mice and Men is the greatest novel, and The Sandman as a whole, is maybe the best literary work as a whole I've ever read. And I include all those great Russian novels and the boring English ones. And even Steinbeck whom I love so much, such as The Winter of our Discontent, and the brilliance of Shakespeare. (I'm talking here strictly about the written versions -- movies are a different deal.)

Daniel Keys Moran is something else.

Yes, I know you have your opinions. You should post them in comments.

I recommend you start with The Long Run, followed by The Last Dancer. Then go back and pick up The Armageddon Blues and the minor works, which I hesitate to call minor -- really I should say shorter -- as some of them haunt me to this day.

(Yes, I do mean Realtime.)

Who do you think is the best living science fiction writer? And why? What one or two books should people new to this author read to best learn to love her or him? What is a great short story by them on line we might read?

And yes, okay fine... you can include fantasy as well. Just so we don't get into that old argument. *grins*

Be polite to each other please. Even if they are obliviously (also obviously) dumber than dirt and know nothing about real science fiction, and you are showing them the greatest writer in history, if the dumb fools would only listen!

If they won't get it... move on.