One year ago today, I completed my month-long celebration of the Best of British SF with a list of my favourite British SF authors. Given that I’ve read a lot more books since, and am drawing ever nearer to completing my spreadsheets, I thought the first anniversary of that initial post would be a good time to post an update.

Last time out, there were ten authors on this list. This time there are fifteen. Where appropriate, I’ve included a note of their previous ranking.

The Rules

A couple of ground rules before we start. All the ratings I’ve used are my own personal scores for the books I’ve read, and I’m only including those I’ve read or listened to in the eight years I’ve been rating books. The other rules are as follows:

• Any author with a higher-than-average score will feature on the list. In this case, the average is taken to be three stars out of a possible five.
• Only books with a full rating will be taken into account. This means books I read earlier than 2017 will not be taken into account
• Only authors with three or more rated books will be taken into account This allows for a broader look at an author’s career.
• Only original works will be taken into account. I have previously created a ranking of Black Library’s authors, and there will likely be a follow-up for Star Trek novelists.

The Rankings

Jamie Sawyer 5.00 (No Change) – Sawyer retains the top spot by virtue of The Eternity War, a rare example of British Military SF. His previous trilogy, The Lazarus War remains high on my list of planned rereads.

Philip Reeve 4.50 (New Entry) – Thundering into the second position is an author enjoyable for adults and children alike. Mortal Engines is a modern classic of children’s literature, and Reeve’s recent return to the universe has me hungry for more.

George Mann 4.25 (Down from 4.43) – Mann remains the major voice in British steampunk, with the recently completed Newbury & Hobbes series his crowning achievement.

Ian Whates 4.25 (New Entry) – What is perhaps best known as the brains behind NewCon Press and editor of numerous anthologies, but his own novels are definitely worth your time. Pelquin’s Comet is the perfect starting place for someone craving some Firefly-esque antics.

Gareth L. Powell 4.17 (No Change) – Rapidly becoming the face of British space opera, Powell’s action-oriented space adventures are the perfect reads for a rainy day.

Adrian Tchaikovsky 4.11 (Up from 4.06) – As versatile as he is prolific, Tchaikovsky continues to climb the rankings thanks to recent hits like Alien Clay and Service Model, both of which have now been nominated for the Hugo Awards.

N.C. Scrimgeour 4.00 (New Entry) – One of the best things to come out of the SPSFC, Scrimgeour’s Waystations trilogy is a love letter to space opera, especially for those who grew up as PC gamers.

Stephen Baxter 3.95 (Up from 3.58) – The unsung hero of British SF, and Hard SF in particular, Baxter writes like nobody else in the genre. If you want pure, idea-driven storytelling, Baxter is the man you need to be reading.

Emma Newman 3.77 (No Change) – The Planetfall series appears to be complete as a quartet, but I am happy to see Newman returning to fiction with this year’s fantasy release The Vengeance.

Mike Brooks 3.67 (No Change) – Though he hasn’t written original SF since his Keiko trilogy, Brooks goes from strength to strength with his Warhammer 40,000 tie-in fiction.

Alastair Reynolds 3.54 (Up from 3.25) – Proof that you should never write an author off because of one misfire, Reynolds earns his place on this list by virtue of his standalone works. Slow Bullets, Terminal World, and Pushing Ice are all among the best the genre has to offer.

Eric Brown 3.40 (New Entry) – A tragically obscure name in British SF, Brown deserves to be far better known. If you read only one book of his, make it Helix, and you’ll soon see what you’ve been missing out on.

Arthur C. Clarke 3.25 (New Entry) – Arguably the most famous British SF writer of all time and one of SF’s ‘Big Three’ names, Clarke is worth sticking with even if, like me, you don’t enjoy your first encounter. He is perhaps the most accurate future visionary of the Golden Age, and Rendezvous with Rama is every inch the classic it’s claimed to be.

H. G. Wells 3.10 (Down from 3.22) – Though some of his moralising can grow repetitive, Wells is still the man who brought science fiction to the masses. The War of the Worlds. The Time Machine. The First Men in the Moon. It’s hard to argue with a track record like that.

Iain M. Banks 3.00 (New Entry) – Banks has such an influence on British SF that he has an entire subgenre named after him. A lot of modern space opera is Banksian. So many things that we think of as staples of the genre only exist because Iain M. Banks got there first.

Notable Runners-Up

Last time around, I got asked about some of the notable omissions from my rankings. To get ahead of those queries, here are a handful of noteworthy British authors who didn’t make the cut.

Brain Aldiss 2.67 – This is based purely on the Helliconia trilogy. I do plan to read more of Aldiss in the future. Hopefully in the form of shorter books.

Neal Asher 2.67 – His nihilism won’t be to everyone’s taste, but if you like your SF with a big heaping of grimdark, Asher is the writer for you.

Andrew Bannister 2.67 – Following in the footsteps of Iain M. Banks, Bannister’s Spin trilogy is fast, frenetic, and fun space opera.

John Brunner 2.67 – Brunner is a man of two halves. His early pulp works are incredibly fun, while his more series later works stagger under their own weight. Nevertheless his works mark an interesting transition point in the history of SF.

Peter F. Hamilton 2.50 – If you like your books thick, look no further than Hamilton, whose novels regularly clock in at over a thousand pages of science, deep character work, and bizarre worldbuilding tangents.

John Wyndham 2.50 – The father of the cosy apocalypse is about as British as they come, and many of his ideas still hold up today.

If your favourite British SF author isn’t on this list, it’s possible I haven’t read enough by them yet. So don’t be afraid to throw some more names in my direction. If there are gaps in my SF knowledge, I want to fill them.