UKC

Perusing my bookshelves I realised that you don't seem to hear much about Michael Moorcock anymore. He was hugely prolific and popular in my youth. I loved the Elric series, Dancers at the End of time, the Jerry Cornelius novels and "Behold the Man" is a favourite book from my late teens. However later books seemed to trail off into self-referential navel gazing. It was pulp sci-fi but entertaining pulp sci-fi.

I read a fair few of his books as a teenager.  I have always liked a brief piece in a booklet included with Hawkwind's 'In Search Of Space' LP (just the original issue, not the re-issues; though the content of the booklet is included in the insert with the CD I have, it's in very small print) which begins 'He sat in the dsrk and there was no-one else', which I assumed was Michael Moorcock's work.

I should imagine he's getting on a bit now, assuming he's still with us.  Very influential chap.

T.

Moorcock was ridiculously proplific and his best work was very highly praised by some major critics:  Mother London, The Cornelius novels and the Between the Wars novels. I've liked almost everything he wrote, from the pulp fantasy to the literary. In particular Gloriana was a wonderful tribute to Peake (and major award winner) and a must for anyone who enjoyed the Gormenghast novels.  The Whispering Swarm, 2015, shows he is still on form.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock

As Pursued said, he did work with Hawkwind.

As a great Ballard fan, and something of a warrior on the edge of time myself, it always gave me a certain frisson to think of the fastidious sage of Shepperton linked to Hawkwind through his great friendship with Moorcock. I liked the Elric books, got a bit bemused by Jerry Cornelius and gave up post-Gloriana. 

A female equivalent might be Angela Carter, big in the 70s-90s, not heard of much these days.

Gloriana is great (must read it again). Interesting take on John Dee and Elizabeth

I think its one of the best fantasy novels I've read...,not our Elizabeth I but one from omewhere else in his multiverse of course:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloriana_(novel)

Moorcock's books are always cropping up in my local Oxfam bookshop. They tend to be dumped in large quantities at once, so I can't ignore him! There was a piece about him in the Guardian the other year - he had a semi-autobiographical novel out. 

Otherwise, I suppose it depends how far you want to go back. Thinking about the things  that were on the bookshelves of my parents' generation, there's all those writers of what would now be called airport books: Neville Shute, Harold Robbins, Henry Miller, Leon Uris, Len Deighton... but I'm not sure if you're interested in dead people? Are you just thinking about authors who are still alive but disappeared? 

Pretty much live authors. But a few dead ones are good too.

It is interesting how some authors persist down the years like Tolkien, Dickens, Austin, etc. While others vanish.

This week, I am staying at my mother's house. She's 82 and has always been a great reader of fiction.

Looking along her shelves, I see many authors that punctuated my early reading days, who are less heard of now.

I mean for example Elizabeth Jane Bowen, Barbara Pym, Susan Hill, Penelope Lively, Edna O'Brien, and Jenni Diski and William Trevor, plus others who still seem popular, such as Anne Tyler and Pat Barker.

Redmond O’Hanlon - great naturalist/travel writer.

Not sure what happened to him. 

Like you I first came across Moorcock with the Elric series, and much later the Pyat Quartet, which was a million miles away from his early SF work, and totally absorbing.

Dennis Wheatley - another author who was very popular and productive up to the 1960's (thrillers and occult) - he and his books are pretty much passe. 

In the world of SF, Piers Anthony is still alive but you don't hear much of his work these days.

Must be our age?

Dave

Not read any Piers Anthony... any recommendations for a starter novel? 

I ended up defending pulp Sc-iFi and Fantasy at my college interview (ie as intelligently written escapism) when I expected tricky questions in Physics.

Incarnations of Immortality is an 8 book series and was my first outing with Piers Anthony, and is as good a place as any to give him a go. Should be possible to track used copies fairly cheaply? Maybe!

I assume you were accepted on the basis of your arguments!

Dave

Yes... another reason I have a soft spot for Moorcock and co. 

Cheers for the tip.

Prostho Plus (kidnapped earth dentist inventively treats various aliens eg explosive for leviathan tooth decay), Should be on every dentist's bookshelf (unlike Goldman's Marathon Man).

Triple Detente (planets needing politically unacceptable solutions to major problems pretend they have been conquered by aliens but actually swap governments so these can take drastic and tyrannical  remedial action).

Macroscope.

Plot and tech has been plundered for a couple of big Hollywood sci-fi hits. 

Can't abide his fantasy stuff - very poor- get the feeling it may have been ghost written.

 D

Orson Scott Card

A few authors I keep coming back to - H E Bates, Neville Shute (very un-PC even for his day, so perhaps understandable  - but powerful stuff) and C S Forester, whose 'Death to the French' is a vastly superior template for any of the Sharpe series. He also wrote a book of short stories about Nazi Germany that haunt me to this day.

Good lord Dennis Wheatley. He was my gateway drug into the occult when I were a lad (Which I am sure wasn't his intent or that of my father, who put me onto him). Proper Hammer horror stuff which I loved as a teenage kid. I wouldn't regard him as high fiction now though

Tom Robbins - loved Jitterbug Perfume and several others.

But then he is 86!

Me too. Great book

George R. R. Martin has been quiet for a while.

Tolkein is marmite but Dickens and Austen persist because they are amongst the very best novelists of all time. 

While I wouldn't dispute that Dickens and Austin are among the best novelists. They persist because they had universal appeal and in some way open a window on the times in which they were set. Dickens was a great social reformer who commented on the lives of the ordinary people of his day, similarly Austen deals with romance and the social mores of her time. In a way they are also marmite because i know people don't like either authors. Also there were many other novelists now forgotten but who were highly praised at their time.

PG Wodehouse, easily eclipsed in popular culture by his creation, and in that vein Tom Sharpe.