The Campaign Builder's Guild

Well, I have to say my favorites are definately

Jonathan Strange and Mr.Norrel by Susannah Clark. Oh my god. This book is the best fantasy book I have ever read. It takes the old mythology and the current mythos and melds them beautifully. The characters are amazingly round and amusingly humorous. The best part is the copius foot notes, quoting made-up fairytales. Great stuff. And the Raven King is the coolest representation of a mage I have yet to see. And the King's Roads. Just awesome. Those made me have a nerdgasm.

Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay. This is another masterpiece. Honestly, I'm still not certain whether or not it is Sci Fi or Fantasy. It could be both, but I'm not entirely sure... The imagery is amazing, and it is possibly the craziest book I've ever read. When you start it seems kind of normal, but then you get to arcturus. Then it just gets beyond amazing. And when Crystalman is finally revealed, that is the most accurate description of a god that I'll ever read. Honestly, I think that he may have been having a few bad trips on LSD.

And the last one that hasn't been maentioned is Dark Lord of Derkholm. It is the best parody of DND ever. I mean ever.
 

Buttoned down due to my long-windedness.

[spoiler=The Stuff I Like]My current favorite unfinished series is War Against the Chtorr, by David Gerrold, the same guy who wrote the screenplay for the ST: TOS episode The Trouble With Tribbles.  In this series, the aliens are invading an Earth of the near future, but in a kind of inversion of Wells' War of the Worlds, the aliens are sending their ecology first.  First micro-organisms, then sopraphytes, then plants, invertebrate animals, then major animals - including a huge worm-like creature seemingly ecologically adapted for the explicit purpose of exterminating H. Sapiens.  It is narrated from the POV of one of the foot soldiers in this war, who slowly reveals himself to have an unusual insight into the alien mind - and who slowly discovers that humanity has almost as many secrets as the invader...

H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy Sapiens books.  Shut up, I like them.

Kieth Laumer's Bolo books, and most of his successors.  Tanks on future battlefields are entirely umnanned, controlled by awesomely powerful tactical computers, so powerful they qualify as fully sentient beings in their own right.  So how does humanity keep control of such hellishly armed sentiences?  Simple.  Give them an utterly unswerving sense of honor and nobility.  Meet the Paladin, v. 2.0...

Spider Robinson's Callahan series.  His other works aren't bad, but there's no question that his stories of a Time Traveller who comes back to the 20th century to save the world - by running a saloon.  And making puns.  And telling stories.  And sowing compassion.  Replace 'time traveller' with 'celestial', and you could just about transplant this series into any standard D&D setting.

E. E. 'Doc' Smith - Very nearly the inventor of space opera.  I have yet to hear of anyone reading his stuff without becoming captivated.  Heinlein was his student and successor.

And yes, I like Heinlein too.  Also Arthur C. Clarke.  His collaboration with Stephen Baxter, The Light of Other Days, is pure science fiction - take the ordinary world, and add a single wondrous twist, in this case an omniscience device.  

And speaking of Stephen Baxter, I haven't read much of his work but Evolution was spectacular.  The story of humanity from 65 million years ago to 500 million years into the future.  Of course in all that time the term 'humanity' must be interpreted rather loosely.

Regarding fantasy, Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories are wonderfully evocative, as is the previously mentioned Voyage to Arcturus.  Someone asked about the author, David Lindsey - to give you some idea, he died of an infection from his own rotten teeth.  Not a stable monkey, but his writing had wonderful esthetic depths.

Then there is C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce.  His Space Trilogy can't be neglected, and The Great Divorce is more of a parable than a true fantasy, but it's still worth the read.  I've gotten more of the flavor of my Upper Planes from him than I have from the D&D sources - the plot involves a group of damned souls taking a kind of vacation from Hell to the outskirts of Heaven, which looks an awful lot like my version of Elysium.

Gregory Maguire's Wicked deserves a mention.  It's a fascinating and intricate story with the same kind of mythic self-awareness as found in Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn.  Dated?  Not really - the movie is coming out next year.

I enjoy books that mingle fantasy with horror.  Stephen King's The Gunslinger and Clive Barker's Weaveworld both had their appeal for me.  

Recently, a writer named Tim Lebbon came out with a book entitled Berserk.  It's the story of a man who learned that his son might not have died in the military accident that was reported, so he goes to the site he was given by his cryptic source and starts to dig.  What he finds is a mass grave, bodies tangled in a horrible mass, and mingled with the bodies of the soldiers are the dessicated bodies of people with strange deformities.  And one of these, the body of a little girl, reaches up and grabs his arm...  For those interested in the WoD vampires/werewolves in the modern world, Lebbon's berserkers are a whole new plate of beef.  Rare, of course.

A movie I don't think the world should be without is Dark City.  Change some of the terminology, and the tropes work just as well for fantasy as for sci-fi, where it is usually classified.

Not comprehensive, but I think that represents my tastes.  Happy reading![/spoiler]

In no particular order:
I enjoy Robert Jordan's work, though it's long and that makes it hard to find enough time.
I read Tolkien really young and it got me into fantasy.  I respect it for its vision and achievement, though the Zoroastrian good/evil dichotomy is not something I usually try to emulate in my own work.  Usually.  I actually have read some of the less read stuff like the Silmarillion and a couple of his short stories.
I liked what I've seen of Dune and hope to get through the series eventually.
I read the first book in the Enders series and loved it.
Star Wars and Star Trek are pretty good.  I think I actually liked some of the new Star Wars movies as much as the old ones.  :gasp:
Excalibur (1981) was good.

I'm a huge fan of Babylon 5 which is really inspiring as a piece of writing.  J.M. Straczynski is one of my heroes.  Along with Amy Henning (Legacy of Kain).

Speaking of writing in games, Legacy of Kain, Xenosaga, and some of the final fantasies have had great plots.  A few other games are pretty good, too.

I thought Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel was both amazing and amazingly crap.  I read it about a third of the way through and thought "You know, I want to read this through, but to hell with this.  I can't afford to wait another page for something interesting to happen."  Oh sure, stuff happened, but to whom?  Those characters were colourfully hollow.

I love the new Battlestar Galactica, so long as I don't have to see any cylons.  Never have I seen a worse interpretation of the Killer Cyborg.  But the rest of the show is great, and under the right screen settings the space battles look absolutely beautiful.

Did any of you guys know they're making a movie of American McGee's Alice in Wonderland?  Should be fun...

Focusing on books only, I would have to say my favorites would be

Fantasy
Song of Fire and Ice - George RR Martin.
Meaty, surprising and very fulfilling, I found this collection to be one of the best fantasy written in the last 15 years.

Books of the Fallen (Malazan Empire) - Steven Erikson
Although his style can make it hard to keep track of who's who and where the new characters fit into the story, his dark, deadly and complex world is fantastic.

Dread Empire & Black Company - Both series by Glen Cook
If you enjoyed the tales of the Black Company, then try to get your hands on the Dread Empire series.  Less angst but more actions.

Other favorites include Tolkien, ER Burroughs (Tarzan and John Carter), RE Howard (Conan, Kull and Kane), David Gemmell (Druss, Waylander and so many more), Paul Kearney (Monarchies of the Gods) and finally Karl Edward Wagner's Kane series.

Sci Fi
Santiago - Mike Resnick
A fantastic tale of criminals, bounty hunters and the far future.

Continuing Time series - Daniel Keys Moran
If you can find The Long Run, you will fall in love with Trent the Uncatchable!

Almost anything by Asimov, Heinlien and William Gibson

Quote from: Machinegun PoliticsDid any of you guys know they're making a movie of American McGee's Alice in Wonderland?  Should be fun...

Hell yes.  They better do it right...

(Also, its just Alice for both the game and the movie.)

Erm...

Fantasy:

Ditto whoever mentionbed Redwall. It's been so long, I really need to look out some of those books again. I used to adore them when I was younger.

Also... Guy Gavriel Kay. One of my favourite authors, despite his annoying tendency to include sex scenes. Don't ask me why, but sex scenes in books always annoy the Hel out of me.
But yeah, he writes brilliantly.

R. E. Howard. Conan just owns. Everyone. Seriously. Plus he actually had some pretty good descriptive passages, albeit in that certain style (the old "mighty thews" and so forth)

David Gemmel. Very good writer. Plus his heroes (and quite a few other characters, too) can all wreak absolute havoc in battle. From Skilgannon the Damned through Decado the Ice Killer to Druss the Legend, they all own.

Also, Zelazny. I've only read one short story, The Bells of Shoredan, but I do absolutely love it, and re-read it on a regular basis. Maybe I should try and track down some of his other stuff.

Pratchett's work is brilliant. Humerous, well-written, good storylines, nicely realised characters... Once I pick up one of his books I can barely put it down until its finished.

Tolkein is good too.

Sci-Fi:

Iain M Banks. Just amazing. Nothing more really to add to that.

William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, just for cyberpunky goodness.

Oh, and I absolutely LOVE Ian M... oh wait... already said him :P

PS. About David Eddings... I kind of enjoyed the Elenium, in a silly kind of way, but really... His writing is pretty poor, the storylines repetative and... well, basically I'm not a fan.
Although strangely enough, I did end up reading three whole series' of his... so maybe he does have something. Definitely not up there with the greats, though.

Im a big fan of the top five list. But not of the movie High Fidelity.

Greatest stories ever told according to battleaxbaby:

5. Alice in Wonderland
4. Excalibur
3. The Hobbit
2. The Star Wars trilogy
1. The Sandman series

Ack. Im such a cliche.

QuoteAlso, Zelazny. I've only read one short story, The Bells of Shoredan, but I do absolutely love it, and re-read it on a regular basis. Maybe I should try and track down some of his other stuff.

Isle of the Deas.
To Die in Italbar.

His best stuff.  

Yeah, I forgot Battlestar Galactica (the new one).  And Farscape.

Quote from: Machinegun PoliticsDid any of you guys know they're making a movie of American McGee's Alice in Wonderland?  Should be fun...

Ever see "Alice" by Jan Svankmeyer? Visually this is one of my favorite films.

link to some clips:
http://www.awn.com/heaven_and_hell/svank/svank2.htm

Quote from: Phoenix KnightYeah, I forgot Battlestar Galactica (the new one).  And Farscape.

Both great shows.  

Currently reading Orcs, by Stan Nicholls. What does everyone think of that?

Túrin

Quote from: battleaxbabyEver see "Alice" by Jan Svankmeyer? Visually this is one of my favorite films.

link to some clips:
http://www.awn.com/heaven_and_hell/svank/svank2.htm

I saw this a million years ago, in the nineties.  Amazing film.  Didn't know what it was called, though, so thanks.  Maybe I can track it down now.

Odd... my signature is contained within the quote.