In any field, you have a few individuals who are truly good at what they do, artists in the purest sense of the word. This especially applies in literature. These people are known even past their own lifetimes, even if they are obscure in life.

Then there are the best-sellers.

Admittedly, there are a few individuals who achieve popular success who also seduce the critics, but they are few and far between. Anyway, just about every generation has a bevy of popular writers in any particular genre that will be virtually unknown less than a decade after they stop writing. So, from a pool of currently hot (and occasionally �classic�) fantasy and science-fiction writers, who has staying power and who�s the flavor of the decade? Being an admitted fantasy geek (I�m in a twelve-step), and knowing that very few other than my own kind will know or care about who I�m writing about, I�ll go through them in brief instead of doing each author or book individually (that could get extensive. Some of these people could build an effective bomb shelter out of their novels without repeating).

Robert Jordan
�The Wheel of Time�

The current 800-pound gorilla of fantasy. He has a large following that meets Wednesdays and Saturdays for chanting and donuts. He�s quite the artist, and language is his chosen medium�the literary version of the people who build hundred-foot fiberglass hotdogs beside their homes. In other words, he�s verbose. Talky. Fond of his own voice. A wordsmith, shaped by the spaces between words, the silence between letters . . .

Ahem.

His tomes typically average around 900 pages, and can be used to lethal effect when hurled. There�s some speculation over whether he�s paid by the line; a theory supported by the quality of his last four books or so. Bottom Line: No pimping for him, except for hardcore fantasy fanatics and masochists. Even then I�d recommend waiting till he finishes writing the damn thing. Hopefully he should be finishing up just before the aliens arrive to destroy humanity in May 2037.

Terry Goodkind
�The Sword of Truth�

If you pretend the author died just after the second book, the series becomes a great deal more enjoyable.

I have more than a handful of problems with this series. I can deal with one-dimensional characters�the genre is often more about world-building than character-building, to be honest�but I want a little development through a series. For one thing, you�d think that a novice wizard who�s been running around defeating all manner of evil for nigh on three years would learn something about his powers during that time. Nope, still clueless.

Also, doesn�t the progression of villains usually go: evil, more evil, more evil still, evilest? Not here. It goes: evil wizard who may destroy the world in quest for power, evil lord of the dead who just wants to destroy the world, and unpleasant emperor. Unpleasant Emperor? Sure, he has some unappealing dietary habits and a poor view on women, but shouldn�t unpleasant emperor be lower on the evilness scale? That�s like following up Nazis with One-eyed Tim, the pickpocket with leprosy and a heart of gold. Even more importantly, why has said unpleasant emperor yet to receive the righteous protagonist smack-down, even after FIVE BOOKS (well, six now), when Forbidden Magic Guy and Supreme Evil Guy lasted only survived a pair of books between them?

Betcha Evil Wizard Guy didn�t have any life insurance.

Bottom Line: I pimp the first two to anyone with any interest in fantasy. As for anyone else: try it, you might like it. As for the last five, I pimp them to no one.

Terry Brooks
�Shannara� & �The Word and the Void�

The other Terry. Brooks is an odd duck, in that I find two of his series worthy of my attention. Well, technically four, but I�ll get to that.

First, The Word and the Void. First, it�s contemporary fantasy, which I usually dig more than traditional sword-and-sorcery I-shalt-slay-thee-foul-braggart types. I personally think that this is hot shit, and if anyone tells me different I cover my ears and yell my own lyrics to �Row Your Boat.� And cry.

Okay, so admittedly Brooks� style is sometimes a little . . . concise (read: he takes shortcuts), and the second book verges on the laughably predicable (c�mon, everybody knew who the villain was three sentences after she was introduced), the first and third books deliver up plenty of flesh-crawliness and redemption-versus-damnation goodness.

Now, Shannara. Hm. Where to begin? There are actually three different series written in this world, the first of which was actually written in the late seventies. He wrote them, they established him as a fantasy force to be reckoned with, and he moved on to another world which no one now remembers, let alone reads. Then, something strange happened. The three little novels in the Shannara trilogy whispered in their insidious little voices that they were lonely, all cold and alone up there on the bookshelf. So Brooks plunged into the greatest sin an author can possibly commit: returning to a story that was damn well finished.

Four more books were written, this time about the descendants of the original characters. So how were they? Fine. Better written, in fact, than the first series�understandable when you consider that he had fifteen years of writing experience under his belt now. You could even argue that he had reason to write it�his first series ended with the death of a near-immortal protector without a successor, and the second chronicles the rise of his successor. But the third�the third series is just trying to cash in on past fame. Bottom Line: If you like fantasy, try the first Shannara series. If you like that, read the second series. Read the third if you like spending money. As for Word, I pimp it with an enthusiasm that verges on the orgasmic.

J. R. R. Tolkein
�The Lord of the Rings�

Tolkein. THE Tolkein. The one. The only. Yes, that Tolkein. No, not that other one; he�s just coasting off daddy�s old notes. This is the original.

The Master.

Tolkein didn�t just write a story, he wrote an epic. He found Britain to be sadly lacking in legends, and he wanted to give it one of its own. Admittedly it has a few flaws, but then so does the Odyssey, and we don�t see anybody bitching out Homer for making his title character a trifle bloodthirsty, do we?

Bottom Line: Oh god, do I pimp this. The language might be a little off-putting to some, but persevere. It�ll be worth it.

And if you don�t think it is, then you�ve lost some essential part of your humanity and should be locked in a cage until they can stuff it back in.

David Eddings
�The Belgariad� & �The Mallorean�

Another classic. The Belgariad follows a painfully na�ve youth through his adventures like a camera man on a reality TV show, except that it stays out of the bathroom and won�t let you bum a smoke. It�s formulaic, but since it was actually written around the time the formula was being concocted (by evil Russian nano-technologists), it can be forgiven. Also, the dialogue is often amusing, and the characters are usually likable.

The Mallorean is about the same youth, all grown up and fresh from smiting the hell out of an evil deity. Some group of equally evil cultists have kidnapped his infant son, and he has to chase them around and give them a taste of his big iron fist. While he�s off doing this, he leaves his country to fend for itself from the various evils that always seem to be springing up. I know he has divine birthright and all, but he�s gone so often you�d think that after awhile his people would just throw up their hands and give Generalissimo Joe Goatherd the reigns of power.

And why do these evil cultists seem so interested in kidnapping the children of powerful people? You�d think by now that they�d realize it�s more trouble than it�s worth. One minute you�re demanding free worship for Toodle the Ant God during school hours, and the next minute some angry demi-god has pulled a mountain range down on your village. Definitely not worth it.

I mean, unless your mother-in-law was the only one there . . .

Bottom Line: Total genre piece. If you like the genre, you�ll like this. If you hate �typical� fantasy with a burning hatred matched only by your fiery passion for pomegranates, then you should probably steer clear.

Robert Heinlen
Nothing in particular

A handy rule of thumb for Heinlen: the quality of the book is inversely proportional to the amount of nooky contained therein. Example: Starship Troopers. Main character never gets laid as far as you can see, but the book has action, adventure, giant insects, and an outstanding mortality rate. Oh, and all that stuff about civic duty and military service and all that.

Opposite example: Friday. Friday is an engineered human being, and the biggest slut who ever slutted. She jumps the bones of more or less every male she meets, excepting one hundred-year-old scmuck on crutches, who also happens to be her father figure. Basically, she�s a man in a female body. Worse than that, the book just plain out sucks. There�s no overreaching plot, no hidden motive to that one character introduced a hundred pages back, and no real point. The �plot� is just a vehicle for Friday to have sex with more people, or to fantasize about having sex with more people.

These are the two opposite extremes. There are a few books in the middle ground that are pretty good, but selectivity is required. One tip�the later it was written, the worse it�s likely to be. Heinlen was a horny, bitter old man by the end.

Bottom Line: Read Starship Troopers. It�s good for you and will make you regular. Don�t read Friday. Even though it�s smut, it�s bad smut, which is just plain unforgivable.

L. E. Modesitt
�Recluse Saga�

L. E. Modesitt: author of fifteen novels in thirty-three volumes. Only eleven of those volumes are in the Recluse series, each of them containing the same two books written over and over and over again.

Admittedly, the first time I read the series I didn�t even notice it. It was only when I reread them about half a year later that I noticed the first truly damning clue�he used the same jokes over in each book. Suddenly, he became a hack, just spewing out novels for the paycheck, unconcerned with quality control or his lamenting, disillusioned fans.

Okay, most of us weren�t lamenting. In fact, most of us didn�t even care. Reading the same two stories from him five times apiece was more appealing than reading new, original, crappy stories some other, lesser author. Whatever else, these books are obscurely entertaining. The things is, they shouldn�t be. They should be putting me to sleep faster than the sound of snoring cats. Most of them center around an artisan, either a blacksmith or a carpenter, and most of the book deals with the day to day stuff of running a business in a pre-steam civilization ruled by the forces of order and chaos.

Snoring yet? And yet just talking about it makes me want to read the damn things again.

Something is terribly, terribly wrong with me.

Bottom Line: Entertaining in a way I don�t understand, like talking to a chimpanzee after ingesting him some quasi-legal substances. Read it if you dare.

Raymond E. Feist
�Riftwar Saga� & �Serpentwar Saga�

The great thing about these series is that you can actually see Feist learn how to write as the books go on.

In the first book, he has this inexplicable habit of jumping months and years between chapters. It�s very disconcerting, especially when the main character is shacking it up with a slave woman in one chapter and then being presented with his four-year-old son by said slave bimbo a literary eyeblink later.

Thankfully, he grows out of this tendency rather quickly. Also, as he matures as a writer, he shifts his focus from the mighty sorcery and the ancient warrior to a common soldier and criminal rising through the ranks in wartime. His characters begin making mistakes, both moral and tactical, and they�re more human for it.

Bottom Line: The Serpentwar Saga is definitely a worthy read of the sword-and-sorcery variety, and the Riftwar Saga is fairly necessary background. Read both.

Frank Herbert
�Dune�

Dune is probably his most famous work. What most people don�t know is that it�s actually the first in a series of six books that span something like 5,000 years, and that he wasn�t finished writing it when he died. Recently his son has taken to releasing prequels to the series, derived from the notes he left behind. Avoid them, they�re painful.

And I think they have fleas.

In some ways, Dune is to Science Fiction what The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy: bold, original, and with new tangy ranch. It�s a future so far flung that it could be our past. Humanity has conquered the stars, and it has changed nothing of our nature. It�s a future with warriors and mystics, psychics and dukes, shapeshifters and sandworms. The only real irritation is Herbert�s propensity for making up words, and his tragic abuse of apostrophes.

Bottom Line: I pimp, therefore I am. Just get past the first fifty pages, and it gets interesting. Promise.

If you want a list of titles in the various series, click here.
And yes, with one exception, I have read all of them.
I am so pathetic.