The 8 best fantasy and sci-fi writers you're not reading

One of the most frustrating parts about the convergence of critical and popular opinion caused by the social media age is that some stellar creators get left by the wayside. This trend is most visible when it comes to literature, and since Winter Is Coming is dedicated to bringing you coverage of the world’s best science-fiction and fantasy stories, we thought it was about time to fill in some of the blind spots that very well might be showing up on your reading list.

When putting together our picks for this list, we realized that it would be impossible to point out every single overlooked author in these genres. One could spend their entire career writing about such a thing and likely only scratch the surface. So we tried to put together a list full of the brightest authors representing the past, present, and future of sci-fi and fantasy. The biggest mistake you could make while reading this — outside of choosing not to drop everything you're doing to put some of the titles we mention on hold at your local library — is to think these authors are unknown to the reading public. Indeed, many of them are already superstars in their own right. It’s just likely that you haven’t given all of them a chance to occupy space on your bedside table. And whether they’re the creators of old standards or indie up-and-comers, this is the sign to change your ways and give them each a try.

N.K. Jemisin

Jemisin has won five Hugo Awards in her career for everything from novelettes to graphic novels. She’s written for The New York Times, has published multiple fantasy trilogies in addition to more speculative takes on the genre, and was included on Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021. And, still, a lot of folks you ask have never given her writing a try.

Her evocative themes that delve into the darker sides of cultural unrest and oppressive tendencies within dystopian societies make her fantasy settings feel lived-in and provoke real-world reflection. Jemisin is a master of straddling fantastical escapes and practical investigation of the very human tendencies that cause marginalization.

Reading Jemisin’s work is a must for anyone looking to experience cultural commentary alongside stunning plot, character development, and narrative execution, all within the kinds of innovative fantasy settings longtime readers have come to expect from this master author. While you can’t really go wrong with any of her work, I still find myself recommending her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and its ensuing Inheritance trilogy for readers looking to get into Jemisin’s sweeping, richly imagined worlds. The series follows a young woman named Yeine Darr who is summoned to the floating city of Sky to claim a royal inheritance. Along the way, she encounters dark rituals, hierarchical power struggles, and familial secrets, all which make for a thrilling and oftentimes chilling take on epic fantasy.

Ryka Aoki

Aoki is known for her novels and poetry. She is also a professor of English and Gender Studies at the university level. She is a two-time Lambda Literary Awards finalist, and her 2021 novel Light from Uncommon Stars was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel.

While Aoki’s work can be best described as redemptive fiction, she backs her perspective with a background in environmental engineering, lending a satisfying crunch to the logistics of her writing. Aoki is a transgender woman who strives to write for the relatives of trans folks as much as the trans community themselves, in order to build connective tissue through the lens of lived experience in genre fiction.

Go ahead and read Light from Uncommon Stars if you’re looking for an entry point into Aoki’s work. Her goal with the book was "to open [her] own literary donut shop" in a sci-fi setting, and the writing within is as mouth-watering as it is cathartic. The novel is predominantly about the trans experience as told through Asian-American cultural inheritance, food, and the violin. A whimsical fantasy element which adds intergalactic travel and demonology into the mix creates a truly unique read that has much to say about our world and those beyond.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I could write a master’s thesis on Le Guin and still have only barely addressed the scope and impact of her career. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction that span both sci-fi and fantasy. She wrote more than 20 novels and over a hundred short stories in her lifetime.

Curious about the impact Le Guin’s work has had on practitioners and audiences alike? She was the recipient of eight Hugo awards, six Nebula awards, and 25 Locus awards, and in 2003 she became the second woman in all of history to be honored as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Meditation, world philosophy, and Taoism had a major impact on Le Guin as a thinker and writer. If you’re looking for classic works in our genres of focus with a generous accompaniment of moral quandaries and ethical reflection, Le Guin’s your author. A Wizard of Earthsea, set on a string of islands where magic permeates everyday life, and The Left Hand of Darkness are her masterpieces. Start there.

Tade Thompson

Thompson is a trained psychiatrist in addition to being a writer, and his background in psychological medicine comes through in surprising and satisfying ways when reading his works of science fiction. In fact, he’s still a practicing doctor, helping physically limited patients with mental illness while also continuing to write. 

Thompson is a Nommo Award and a Kitschies Golden Tentacle Award winner. He has also been shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award during his career and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, to which he was elected in 2023.

His novels and short stories are imbued with a vastness that belies their oftentimes extremely personal narratives of claustrophobia and cultural history. If you’re interested in getting into Thompson’s work, I would recommend Rosewater, the first book in the Wormwood trilogy. The trilogy concerns an alien invasion and its impact on humans set largely in 2060s Nigeria. It's a genre-blending, Afrofuturist masterpiece that carries all the suspense of a well-plotted murder mystery in a mind-bending sci-fi package. You won't be able to put it down.

Lois McMaster Bujold

Bujold is a giant of the sci-fi and fantasy genres, having won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, matching Robert A. Heinlein's record. The bulk of Bujold’s work comprises three standout series: the Vorkosigan Saga, the World of the Five Gods, and the Sharing Knife.

Bujold is best known for the Vorkosigan Saga, a sci-fi epic which features a disabled protagonist, Miles Vorkosigan, living 1,000 years in the future. The series includes entire books told from the perspectives of different people in Miles’ life, including his parents.

While Bujold’s fantasy works like the World of the Five Gods series are slightly lesser-known than the Vorkosigan Saga, they are absolutely captivating to read and show off the author’s chops as a writer of grand narrative fiction in addition to romance. That said, you have to start with Vorkosigan, and it’s probably best not to go in the order the books were published. Here’s the guide we trust for figuring out what book in the series to pick up first. 

Yōko Tawada

Tawada is a Japanese writer who currently lives in Berlin. Her work has won numerous awards, including the Noma Literary Prize, the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature, the Goethe Medal, and a National Book Award, to name a few. Tawada writes in Japanese and German and is known for her ability to translate her writing between the two languages, offering her dystopian and sci-fi fiction a unique tone borne out of the intersection of two very distinct cultural inheritances.

Tawada’s fiction is heavily influenced by her fascination with language and translation, and she has been quoted saying that language is not natural but rather "artificial and magical.” She even encourages translators of her work to replace wordplay in her manuscripts with new phrases that have a similar meaning in their own languages, rather than striving for a perfect one-to-one match.

I would recommend The Last Children of Tokyo or Kentoshi as two works representative of Tawada’s mind-bending take on speculative fiction. These read a lot closer to hard sci-fi than fantasy, and are in fact something entirely different than both. I wanted to make sure I gave that caveat alongside my full-throated recommendation of Tawada’s writing.

Gene Wolfe

Wolfe has been called "the Melville of science fiction," and just like Ursula K. Le Guin was honored as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is one of the most notable sci-fi/fantasy writers of all time, which is why I feel a little strange including him on this list. However, just like Jemisin, Bujold, and Le Guin, Wolfe’s accomplishments still often go unnoticed.

As might be expected of someone known for writing science fiction realistic enough to rust the hinges on your kitchen cabinets, Wolfe was an engineer before he was a writer. And though he would eventually retire from engineering to write full-time, he sometimes struggled to find an audience. Some of this probably has to do with the off-kilter vocabulary he chose to write with; his fascination with language — similar to Tawada's, in a way — even prompted him to include a fictional “translator” in some of his books to add another layer of diegetic intrigue. That said, although his published works rarely reached popular acclaim in his lifetime, he was often considered to be not only one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time, but one of the best American writers regardless of genre by critics and peers alike.

Wolfe is best known for The Book of the New Sun series, in which one member of a shadowy order is exiled from his guild for showing compassion to someone he was supposed to be torturing. What follows is an epic like no other. Start with The Shadow of the Torturer, and go from there. You’ll be delighted by what you find.

Tom Francis

And now we arrive at the least-known writer on this list, a man who I’m sure would laugh if you told him he was listed in the company of Nebula award-winning authors. This is Tom Francis, the developer of beloved strategy video games Tactical Breach Wizards, Gunpoint, and Heat Signature. While Francis’ writing chops are on full display in these games’ narrative arcs, especially in Tactical Breach Wizards, he’s also written two notable short stories I’d like to draw your attention to.

Those are “Exploded” and “Lazarus Reactor Fission Sequence,” and each can be found in the Machine of Death series, a run of two books full of short stories about the idea of a machine that has the ability to predict how you’ll die. Each story in the books takes this prompt and runs with it in whatever way the author interprets, and Francis’ interpretations — especially the one expressed in “Lazarus” — are absolutely worth reading. "Lazarus" is about a supervillain’s henchman tasked with the job of having their enemies killed in a way that doesn’t contradict their predicted deaths.

You can pick up the collections for relatively cheap; they’re called Machine of Death and This Is How You Die. While I would recommend looking at Francis’ stories first, all of them are worth reading. Who knows? You might just find your next favorite indie author within those pages. If not, I can guarantee you’ll find a laugh.

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