Underrated Artists And Writers

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There's a guy named Bim Buckley that I like. He makes comics about how the Wii is actually good and better than the PS3 and Hexbox.
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there's a lot of old sci-fi/fantasy/horror/detective/adventure/etc. genre fic writers that are quasi-forgotten.

You got your Asimovs, Heinleins, Tolkeins, Moorcocks, Kings, Hammetts, and etc. that are omnipresent. There's a reason they're omnipresent.

But then you have guys like Edgar Pangborn, A. Merritt, Charles Brockden Brown, etc. Who aren't as well-remembered now despite being excellent.

I'll probably sperg in this thread when I get the juices, but the one that really pops to my mind now is R. A. Lafferty. Really enjoyable SF/F writer, started doing it in his middle age. He was a devout catholic and career engineer living in the midwest when he just started writing. He became one of those cult-classic writers of the 60s-80s that other writers loved. He wrote a lot of truly interesting and enjoyable works. The most well known being Past Master, a novel that's just got a whacked out premise.

There's an early short story by him that I can't remember the name of. Something about a strain of humanity that didn't come from Adam's line and all ran around with the genetic compulsion to steal and scam and con people that weren't part of their ethnic group.
 
Algernon Blackwood. What little I've read of his work makes me think he's even better than H.P. Lovecraft (an opinion that seemingly Lovecraft himself concurred upon) but nobody outside of horror fiction afficianados knows who he is.

During my brief time as a comics fan, one of the few I actually liked was Robert A. Kraus, aka RAKgraphics. His most well-known creation is Chakan the Forever Man (and even this is more known as a Sega game than as a comic), though he also did an interesting series called Thundermace, and his company published other works, which tended to all be short-lived. His stuff was a true modern successor to the likes of Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft, having a feel of being both heroic fantasy but also dark cosmic in a way.

Also the creators of a lot of animated shows tend to for some reason get shat on.. unless they're Japanese at which point they're venerated for doing the exact things people accuse their western counterparts of doing. I sort of mentioned this somewhere in my "80s Cartoons are Peak" topic when I saw people calling western-made shows toy slop, then turning around and praising anime from the same decade (because we all know that the endless barrage of formulaic robot shows had absolutely no toyetic aspects whatsoever).
 
skykiii said:
Algernon Blackwood. What little I've read of his work makes me think he's even better than H.P. Lovecraft (an opinion that seemingly Lovecraft himself concurred upon) but nobody outside of horror fiction afficianados knows who he is.

During my brief time as a comics fan, one of the few I actually liked was Robert A. Kraus, aka RAKgraphics. His most well-known creation is Chakan the Forever Man (and even this is more known as a Sega game than as a comic), though he also did an interesting series called Thundermace, and his company published other works, which tended to all be short-lived. His stuff was a true modern successor to the likes of Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft, having a feel of being both heroic fantasy but also dark cosmic in a way.

Also the creators of a lot of animated shows tend to for some reason get shat on.. unless they're Japanese at which point they're venerated for doing the exact things people accuse their western counterparts of doing. I sort of mentioned this somewhere in my "80s Cartoons are Peak" topic when I saw people calling western-made shows toy slop, then turning around and praising anime from the same decade (because we all know that the endless barrage of formulaic robot shows had absolutely no toyetic aspects whatsoever).
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Blackwood, and most of his generation of horror writers that were pre-Lovecraft and post-Poe, was well known and respected by peers and genre aficionados. Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, William Hope Hodgson, Robert W. Chambers, Ambrose Bierce, Lafcadio Hearn, and quite a few others were all contributors to turn of the 20th century "weird horror".

Heck, even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got in on the stuff.

But yeah, I'd say they're underrated. The vast majority of popular good genre writers of the early 20th century are sadly forgotten. Sure, we remember Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Dashiell Hammett, Agatha Christie, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, and etc. But for every one of those that wind up still publicly known (due to pop culture. Hammett/Bloch did get involved in Hollywood, Christie had an insane output, Lovecraft/Howard became massively influential over time, Bradbury became one of America's most renowned fiction writers in his lifetime and was also involved in film/tv iirc) there's a dozen more that wind up only being known to genre fans. Murray Leinster, Edmond Hamilton, Lord Dunsany, A. Merritt, etc.
 
Isabelle Eberhardt and Gertrude Bell.

I'm not really sure if you would call them writers, but they did write brilliantly about a world that no longer exists and are my personal heroes. I'd highly recommend to anyone who likes travel writing and modern-ish history of the Arab world.

The French government tried to have Eberhardt assassinated for her anti-colonialism, Bell helped the British government with colonial policy in the Middle East. So I guess they are kinda opposites, but I consider them to be very similar in their adventurousness and obviously they were both drawn to the Islamic world.

The fact that they were both badass women, braver than I can even conceive, also helps. Though I'm waiting for the troon squad to claim Isabelle cos she pretended to be a man to access male-only spaces.
 
Lord Dunsany, highly influential for later fantasy writers.

Jorge Luis Borges is not underated at all in the hispanic world but it might be on the english speaking side. He is just an amazing storyteller. Horacio Quiroga is also great for short stories.

JG Ballard. I really loved concrete island and Empire of the Sun, the adaptation is one of my favorite movies as well.
 
LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV] said:
Lord Dunsany, highly influential for later fantasy writers.

Jorge Luis Borges is not underated at all in the hispanic world but it might be on the english speaking side. He is just an amazing storyteller. Horacio Quiroga is also great for short stories.

JG Ballard. I really loved concrete island and Empire of the Sun, the adaptation is one of my favorite movies as well.
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Dunsany has been noted over and over, but there's only so much one can do. He's underappreciated.

Borges and Ballard are pretty beloved for the short fiction they did. I don't think either is majorly majorly widely read, but they're fairly appreciated by those who enjoy more "high lit" tastes.

Anyways, on topic.

Henry Kuttner. The Neglected Master. He's gotten some appreciation over the years, but he died young and all that. Definitely underappreciated. Very richly descriptive and imaginative.
 
Raphael Slepon. Joyce fanboy, maintainer of the annotations database for Finnegans Wake, took 5 years off work to write an ovel. Despite this inauspicious background, the book is actually good but and needs charlie_day.jpg level note-taking. Unfortunately he only sells the book through fucking Amazon, where it will be unavailable for download in two weeks unless you own Bezos's plastic shit.
(I have an epub that I dedrm'd from source. 🆓🆒🏴‍☠️)
 
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