Favorite non-spec. Writers

[-Deleted-]

The majority of us here are obviously fans of fantasy and/or scifi, so I'm curious, fantasy fans:

 

1 What are some of your favorite non-speculative fiction authors?

2 Favorite non-fiction author?

3 And favorite non-literature writer?

 

Mine are probably:

1 Charles Dickens, Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce and Mark Twain

2 Joseph Campbell

3 Maynard James Keenen, Tarantino, and Kevin Smith

 

[AndrewStirlingMacDonald he/him]

1: Dickens is definitely up there.

2: David Keirsey (Please Understand Me II)

3: Joss Whedon, William Shakespeare, Martin McDonagh

[Guest]

Jane Austen.

She's just the first off the top of my head.

[Seonid he/him]

1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

2. Campbell is good, but I prefer Eliade. But one of my favorite non-fiction writers would have to be Timothy Ferris, a popular science writer.

3. Non-literature - I love Shakespeare, but I think I counts as lit. Are we counting ancient Norse and Egyptian myths as non-literature? 

[Guest]

Yes, Doyle!

[-Deleted-]

1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

2. Campbell is good, but I prefer Eliade. But one of my favorite non-fiction writers would have to be Timothy Ferris, a popular science writer.

3. Non-literature - I love Shakespeare, but I think I counts as lit. Are we counting ancient Norse and Egyptian myths as non-literature? 

I like Mircea Eliade too, he's crucial to the entire field, but finding it in English is a serious pain in the chull. It took me from 13 to 20 (now) to read all of it, not because there's so much, but because of how unavailable it is. Joseph Campbell and Hamilton however, are highly obtainable because they are in English and are EVERYWHERE.

 

1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

2. Campbell is good, but I prefer Eliade. But one of my favorite non-fiction writers would have to be Timothy Ferris, a popular science writer.

3. Non-literature - I love Shakespeare, but I think I counts as lit. Are we counting ancient Norse and Egyptian myths as non-literature? 

 

Addressing 3: I think that the authors of those would count as fiction. or, as I've taken to calling it most of my life ( mostly to myself since no one else likes talking about these things the way I do) is proto-fiction. So I am saying yes, depending on the situation. 

 

The situation depends on how it is written. In the case of Norse myths, I think it's safe to say they are mostly fictional stories of origins, and in most cases are actually embellished stories of people who actually existed at one point or another. However, in the case of something like the Abrahamic Canon as I have taken to calling it (Jewish, Christian, Islamic, LDS, Gnostic, and the Apocrypha), it's a bit iffy, since we find a bit of everything: embellished stories, myths, instructions, moral tales, poems, and genuinely historical documents.

 

Also, the questions I posed target the writers, not so much as texts themselves. And since we can't pinpoint, concretely or for certain, the authors of Egyptian myths, it's a bit of a grey area. Who can say which ones were written by who, and who the authors are to begin with? However, most Scandinavian myths and legends have authorship that we can directly point to for credit. (Greek less so, but in many cases, we know who wrote what.)

 

EDIT: yes, Shakespeare counts as fiction. Everything he wrote was fiction. And even better, he can fit into both 1 & 3.

Edited February 12, 2015 by Nait Sabes