Fantasy lovers: A list of the 51 Best Fantasy Series Ever Written

sassypants527 · August 2015

I've read 10 of these, and I'm thinking that NK Jemisin may be my next series. http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/fantasy-forever?utm_term=.rv4by8zM2#.uymNAP42Q

sfgiantsjo · August 2015

NK Jamisin is definitely moving to next on my list.

RevJen · August 2015

I just got the first of each series by nk jemisin

InLovewSB · August 2015

Are these supposed to be in order? Because there is no way that Wheel of Time should be #25. No. Outlander is so unlike anything Tolkien - how can they even be compared? Fantasy is so mixed. I enjoy several types of fantasy, but I wouldn't (normally) choose vampires or demons or that type. I prefer magic, knights, epic tales. This list to me is too random.

sassypants527 · August 2015

No particular order.

GilliC · August 2015

The thing that struck me most from this list?

How many fantasy authors use multiple initials:

George R.R. Martin

J.R.R. Tolkien

J.K. Rowling

C.S. Lewis

T.H. White

N.K. Jemisin

R.A. Salvatore

nocturnalintimacy · August 2015

I'm in love with this list. I've read (at least the first installment) of 13. Also, I feel like a mega-dork.

julie37619 · August 2015

I've got NK Jemison pretty high on my list too!

As far as initials go - do you think women tend to use initials in fantasy writing because of the gender stereotypes/limitations to publishing?

sassypants527 · August 2015

julie37619 said:

I've got NK Jemison pretty high on my list too!

As far as initials go - do you think women tend to use initials in fantasy writing because of the gender stereotypes/limitations to publishing?

I don't know for sure but I think that is very likely. Look at all the backlash that women have gotten in the gamer universe.

GilliC · August 2015

julie37619 said:

As far as initials go - do you think women tend to use initials in fantasy writing because of the gender stereotypes/limitations to publishing?

Except that the only women on that particular list of initials are N.K. Jemisin and J.K. Rowling.

[ETA - Nevermind. Wikipedia has corrected me... "Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers asked that she use two initials, rather than her full name."]

[ETA 2 - While that may be the case for Rowling, it's not the case for Jemisin according to her Reddit AMA:
"Great question. Honestly, it has nothing to do with hiding my gender. Frankly, when I first started publishing short stories (about 15 years ago), I was just thinking about trying to keep my work life and my writing life separate. But this was in the days before Google, and I don't think I realized how much search technology would evolve over time, so that a person using initials would be easily linked to their full name. D'oh! Now every time I do a job search, I have to explain to potential employers that yes, I'm that N. K. Jemisin, yes I write about magic and aliens, no I don't dress up as Spock at conventions, hey can we please talk about my qualifications...?

"]

On a tangentially-related note, Tracy Hickman was at the GenCon writer's symposium this year, and I think there was a picture of him with Margaret Weis in the program. One of my friends pointed it out and commented that since he was used to seeing the name alongside Margaret Weis, he had just assumed Tracy Hickman was a woman!

GilliC · August 2015

So I tried to find a reason that so many Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors (of both genders) use initials, but most of the links came up with female authors being more marketable as gender-neutral writers.

http://io9.com/5077952/women-who-pretended-to-be-men-to-publish-scifi-books

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324355904578159453918443978

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1808948-female-science-fiction-and-fantasy-authors-still-encouraged-to-use-male

Ugh.

Looking at this list of fantasy authors, of those authors that only go by initials, I counted 20 men and 13 women. A noticeable difference, however, is that of the 20 men, 12 of them were born before 1930, and it seems to be much more common among historic authors to use initials instead of full names. So among contemporary authors, we're looking at a 13:8 split.

If I had more time, I would look at the percentage of women on the list using initials compared to the percentage of men.

julie37619 · August 2015

GilliC said:

So I tried to find a reason that so many Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors (of both genders) use initials, but most of the links came up with female authors being more marketable as gender-neutral writers.
http://io9.com/5077952/women-who-pretended-to-be-men-to-publish-scifi-books
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324355904578159453918443978
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1808948-female-science-fiction-and-fantasy-authors-still-encouraged-to-use-male

Ugh.

Looking at this list of fantasy authors, of those authors that only go by initials, I counted 20 men and 13 women. A noticeable difference, however, is that of the 20 men, 12 of them were born before 1930, and it seems to be much more common among historic authors to use initials instead of full names. So among contemporary authors, we're looking at a 13:8 split.

If I had more time, I would look at the percentage of women on the list using initials compared to the percentage of men.

With the right amount of time/knowledge, an academic paper on this would be absolutely fascinating. I'm kind of contemplating how much research it would require and if I have the motivation to put in the work to find out big picture from each major publisher what the ratios and statistics are. I'd definitely want to read it if someone else wrote it. Off to my college's databases for research!

Fantasy lovers: A list of the 51 Best Fantasy Series Ever Written

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