8 Best Fantasy Book Writers of All Time

Fantasy writers are often undervalued by the mainstream literary community. However, a few select fantasy authors are so good at what they do that even the non-fantasy critics take notice.

R. A. Salvatore

R. A. Salvatore is definitely one of the greatest fantasy authors of all time. His works stood out early on among the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy writers in the early eighties. While most writers tried to write stories based on effects and styles of gameplay in D&D, Salvatore actually weaved real stories out of little fleshed out races in the Forgotten Realms universe. Although he has contributed many wonderful stories to fantasy literature, by far his best accomplishment is his work in Forgotten Realms, the most famous of which is his Drzzt Do'Urden series. If you haven't read him before, start with Homeland in the Dark Elf Trilogy, and you'll have dozens upon dozens of sequels to plow through before you get to the end of the story.

Lewis Carroll

Charles Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll, is well known for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and for good reason. What many do not realize is that he was also an accomplished logician, and his works definitely show this in force. His fantasy works consistently show what it is like to have a logical system set up with a strange set of premises. Just as the sci-fi community has a subsection of authors who write "hard" science fiction, so too does Lewis Carroll contribute to that small group of fantasy writers who work in "hard" fantasy; works that are fantastic in nature, but that are strictly grounded in a realistic internally consistent framework. If you haven't read him in a while, go back and reread Alice's Adventures in Wonderland while looking for his logician background in the text.

J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien has really only authored one major fantasy work, but that addition to our genre is so grand that he definitely deserves a spot on this list. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are so influential to today's fantasy writings that the term "high fantasy" basically refers to his universe of Arda's Middle-earth legendarium itself. Movies based on his works have been extraordinarily good all on their own merit, yet nothing quite fulfills like reading Tolkien's original words yourself.

L. Frank Baum

L. Frank Baum is the creator of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and its thirteen sequels. Strangely, most fantasy readers I meet seem to have neglected his works, thinking watching the movie was enough for them. That perception is wrong. Baum's Oz series is yet another "hard" fantasy world, where while events in the world of Oz are unexpected, they follow certain rules that make everything incredibly internally consistent. Many of these rules are paradox based; Baum loved taking what would be a paradox in our word and seeing how he could build a realistic system around that paradox.

Other Top Fantasy Authors

Many other authors are famed for their contribution to fantasy literature. No true top list would be complete without their presence. Because every list must end somewhere, here are the other authors among the top 8 fantasy writers of all time.

C. S. Lewis, famous for his Chronicles of Narnia series, is also well-known in the Christian apologist community for his philosophically-inspired fantasy works, such as Out of the Silent Planet and The Screwtape Letters. If you're at all into theology, you should definitely check them out.

Robert E. Howard is less well known now, but he single-handedly created the sword and sorcery genre with his introduction of Conan the Barbarian in The Phoenix on the Sword. If you're interested in reading the original Conan stories, look for The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, which anthologizes Howard's Conan works.

H. P. Lovecraft is well known among horror fantasy for his Cthulhu mythos. Many writers have expounded on the universe he created, but for a definitive start to reading his works, you should check out The Call of Cthulhu. It's not the first chronologically, but it was written specifically to introduce new readers to the "series".

Terry Pratchett is, for lack of a better term, an acquired taste. Nevertheless, his unique brand of comic fantasy has attracted millions of fans. Even though his Discworld novels are usually disconnected stories within the same world setting, those stories that do intersect do so chronologically, so you should start with The Colour of Magic.

In Conclusion

Of course, many other fantasy authors may have made your personal list, from Robert Jordan to J. K. Rowling. This article's choices will definitely give you a good start to appreciating some of the best fantasy authors of all time.