Shipman's reading list: fantasy and ``soft SF''

For an appetizer, see my homage to classic short short stories.

I give fantasy authors two ratings: a letter grade, indicating general quality; and a Tolkien Number, a statistic I invented for rating how much their work resembles Lord of the Rings. A value of 1 means nothing like it, and LotR itself is of course a 10.

• Guy Gavriel Kay: A+, 2.
• Gene Wolfe: A+, 3.
• R. A. MacAvoy: A+, 2.
• Raymond Feist: A, 5.
• Evangeline Walton: A+, 3.
• Ernest Bramah: A+, 2. This page links to a complete 169-page book by Bramah.
• Robert Jordan: B+, 8.8.
• Terry Pratchett: A+, 1. The Douglas Adams of fantasy.
• J. R. R. Tolkien: A, 10.
• Terry Brooks: C-, 9.7. Gallstones of Shannara---feh.

Last updated: 2010/01/24 00:50:31
URL: http://www.nmt.edu/~shipman/reading/fantasy.html