The Most Criminally Overlooked or Underrated Writers Ever List

[Datepalm]

Well, he's underread today, compared to other authors who were popular at the time and have survived much better - Asimov, Clarke, even Zelazny or Leguin or Dick - have gone down in the pantheon, while he hasn't. But that could just be because others wrote better books that stood the test of time better.

(Skimming through the Hugo novel winner list, i'm a bit surprised at how popular Niven was too. Ringworld is remembered, but fuck if I can think of anything else by him. There was a tedious series about magic? And the incredibly navel-gazing Fallen Agels with like six other people. That's all I got.)

[The Marquis de Leech]

Niven also co-wrote a sci-fi version of Dante's Inferno, with Mussolini in place of Virgil.

[The Killer Snark]

He wrote an absolutely barking but to my mind very good book called A World Out of Time, which manages to combine a cryogenically reanimated mindwiped criminal, a sex-mad witch, a sex war waged by a government made up of adult-intelligence children, and potential destruction of its world via misalignments of Uranus and Jupiter. Totally demented, but I'd say as far as witty, well-written escapism goes, it's worth a read if you can find it; I suspect it may be out of print.

[sologdin]

Niven also co-wrote a sci-fi version of Dante's Inferno, with Mussolini in place of Virgil.

haha i normally associate big Niv with cold war liberalism. he a closet corporativist, then?

[Seli]

I've read the Jerusalem books by Whittemore, I don't know if they are underrated though, even if more people could read them.

[maarsen]

criminally overlooked : Kit Marlowe.

the original Shakespeare, if one would believe the marlovian theory

Is that the one that has him coming back from the dead to write Shakespeare's later plays?

[Metopheles]

Is that the one that has him coming back from the dead to write Shakespeare's later plays?

I just recently got into this, but "scientifically" it's absolutely plausible. Not a 9/11 plausible (haha), no. That whole time he lived was crazy about disappearing people and secrets. The thing is : Both look totally alike and Shakespeare's name surfaced for the first time only weeks after Marlowe's death and the writing style is the same etc. But I don't know. It's a nice theory. But not like coming back from the dead, but rather changing identity and naming himself Shakespeare. On another note, writing under pseudonym isn't that new.

[Darth Richard II]

If a guy got the Hugo four times, I think you cannot say he's overlooked or underrated...

There's also a TV show in development based on his GateWay books.

[Darth Richard II]

I just recently got into this, but "scientifically" it's absolutely plausible. Not a 9/11 plausible (haha), no. That whole time he lived was crazy about disappearing people and secrets. The thing is : Both look totally alike and Shakespeare's name surfaced for the first time only weeks after Marlowe's death and the writing style is the same etc. But I don't know. It's a nice theory. But not like coming back from the dead, but rather changing identity and naming himself Shakespeare. On another note, writing under pseudonym isn't that new.

Their writing styles are completely differnt actually. There are entire books devoted to debunking this "theory".

[Metopheles]

Their writing styles are completely differnt actually. There are entire books devoted to debunking this "theory".

A book doesn't make it law. Anne Coulter and Trump and all them proved that thousands of times.

Their writing style is the same, actually

[Darth Richard II]

No, its not. If that were the case, then just about anything published during that period would fall under "similar style". I had a Prof in a Lit class go over all the ways their styles differed. Maybe I can pull up the lecture, but I have a feeling you're just going to ignore facts anyway.

[Talleyrand]

Whoever wrote Biff and Chip, shit was deep - I regarded it as one of the most influential pieces of literature in my life

[The Killer Snark]

It's pretty much acknowledged that Shakespeare was not responsible for everything attributed to him. Timon of Athens is believed to be a collaboration, and the first two Acts of Pericles are almost definitely the work of a different writer. Shakespeare would have used apprentices the same as Renaissance artists and sculptors did in order to meet demands. But given that most of Shakespeare's work is by Shakespeare, his writing style is different from Kit Marlowe's. It's about the same degree of difference that separates Wordsworth from Coleridge; the difference is relatively subtle, but it's there. Part of the authorship debate surrounding Shakespeare revolves around the different pieces of penmanship on the earliest portfolios, but whole sections could either have been dictated to amanuenses, or could have simply been replacement copies made from earlier undiscovered drafts.

[Metopheles]

It's pretty much acknowledged that Shakespeare was not responsible for everything attributed to him. Timon of Athens is believe to be a collaboration, and the first two Acts of Pericles are almost definitely the work of a different writer. Shakespeare would have used apprentices the same as Renaissance artists and sculptors did in order to meet demands. But given that most of Shakespeare's work is by Shakespeare, his writing style is different from Kit Marlowe's. It's about the same degree of difference that separates Wordsworth from Coleridge; the difference is relatively subtle, but it's there. Part of the authorship debate surrounding Shakespeare revolves around the different pieces of penmanship on the earliest portfolios, but whole sections could either have been dictated to amanuenses, or could have simply been replacement copies made from earlier undiscovered drafts.

It's always been so, it's no suprise. The farther we go back in time and look at artisans, most of them have things attributed to them that were things of others. ancient philosophers or, my favorite, painters. Things like the sistine chapel or the statues in Rome from 1500 and on were made in workshops by workers, not Michelangelo personally. He may have created the plans and sketches and painted big parts of it, but in the end he had hundreds of employees.

But the Marlowe theory is quite convincing. I wouldn't put my hand in fire for it, but I like the mere theory of it. It kinda fits at certain points and would work out, but has its weak points.

AND I just wanted to throw it in, cause if it were true, Marlowe (Kit Harington's namesake fyi) would be the most overlooked writer in history. :D

[The Killer Snark]

He's my main suspect, anyway, if Shakespeare were not Shakespeare, but I think it's much more plausible that Marlowe did indeed meet his sticky end.

[Metopheles]

He's my main suspect, anyway, if Skaespeare were not Shakespeare, but I think it's much more plausible that Marlowe did indeed meet his sticky end.

I wonder why Anonymous was not about him... Why miss out such an opportunity.

And I just like the whole time there in England with John Dee and secrecy and secret agents, faked deaths and tarot, hermeticism, it's like a fantasy story but actually the reality.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I've never understood the obsession with Shakespeare not being Shakespeare. Yes, bits and pieces were collaborations, but no other author in the English language has been subjected to these sorts of conspiracy theories. I mean the theories started several centuries after Shakespeare's death, and were essentially exercises in snobbery - elites thought that a middle class guy lacking in formal education couldn't have come up with this stuff. But I'd have thought we'd have moved on from this classist nonsense in this day and age. Clearly not.

[Darth Richard II]

I've never understood the obsession with Shakespeare not being Shakespeare. Yes, bits and pieces were collaborations, but no other author in the English language has been subjected to these sorts of conspiracy theories. I mean the theories started several centuries after Shakespeare's death, and were essentially exercises in snobbery - elites thought that a middle class guy lacking in formal education couldn't have come up with this stuff. But I'd have thought we'd have moved on from this classist nonsense in this day and age. Clearly not.

Shakespeare wasn't real is one of those conpisry theories that drives me MAD. I just want to grab some of those people and just SHAKE THEM. And yeah, it orriginated with um, some descendant of Bacon ranting in some crazy, cracy essay. I have a book about it. :P

[Metopheles]

I never understood the praise for Shakespeare in the first place. He is extremely overrated. There are thousands of better authors. Goethe, Lessing, any ancient greek or roman writer, Dürrenmatt,.. Schiller wrote a better english themed drama(Maria Stuart, Mary Stuart) ;)

[The Killer Snark]

What Roose Bolton's Pet Leech said. A number of great writers and poets throughout history have either been privately tutored by educated parents or essentially self-educated, and were either of lower middle class backgrounds (Shakespeare), working class (i.e. Keats) or in the case of Blake barely even that. I thought Anonymous was a truly terrible film, and its barely disguised classist arguments were only part of what was so bad about it. We know there actually was a character from that period called William Shakespeare, so why would anyone else have wanted to give him credit for coming up with their verse and plays?