My Favorite Fantasy Writers
Lists of...fill in your favorite topic...are always contentious because it is impossible to compile comprehensively. So I won’t try. Here’s a list of my favorite five fantasy writers.

5. Jack Vance. This isn’t an obvious one since he managed to wrap even the most fantastical story in science fiction trappings. Something like “The Moon Moth” is sociological as much as fantastical but Vance was a master at merging society with his protagonists’ dilemmas.

4. Thomas Burnett Swann. Hardly a household name. He was a college prof but put classical creatures into stories that were entertaining. Day of the Minotaur and Cry Silver Bells are probably his most famous.

3. Robert Silverberg. What can I say? He does it all. Well. The Majipoor Cycle, with the wonderful Lord Valentine’s Castle, set him firmly on this list.

2. Michael Moorcock. His Elric stories are so eerily different they stand out. I was invited to write a story set in the Elric universe for Pawn of Chaos and “Isle of Lost Souls” is still one of my personal favorites, as much because the characters are so powerful that not even I could sabotage them but also because of the chance to hobnob with Moorcock literarily.

1. Fritz Leiber. He managed to combine sword and sorcery with colorful characters and intriguing backgrounds. Even after a dozen readings, I still find his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories delightfully entertaining. My first introduction was the Gnome Press collection Two Sought Adventure. Since then I have found about all the Leiber stories in pb. My Legends story “The Hostile Dark” is an homage to Fafhrd & the Mouser and Geo Proctor’s and my series, Swords of Raemllyn, tried to recapture some of the camaraderie and derring-do of those stories.

That’s my list and I’m sticking with it.

Bob Vardeman
www.cenotaphroad.com