This thread is tough to keep track of. Sometimes I'll miss it and 2 votes will go by.

Butcher2016

I guess I'll fly in the face of common sense and take Thucy's post seriously?

Butcher: 4
Martin: 3

...I'm getting the feeling this is more a "fuck you" to Martin than anything else, lol...

Obi has it

But most importantly

http://sfrevu.com/IMAGES/Authors/Jim_Butcher.jpg

Thucy, you voted twice again.

Martin: 3
Butcher: 3

who voted twice? I voted once

oh obi counted me twice huh. meh, not my fault

"Butcher2016" was me boosting his presidential bid

OK, well, we're in OT now...

If no one else votes by midnight PST, I'll break the tie.

Martin

Fuck yeah

Aaaaand Thoreau leads the pack!

So, Martin beats Butcher 4-3...hooray?

Today--

W.E.B. Griffin, a machine-like writer of military fiction vs...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of "The Lost World" (I think he wrote a few stories with a detective in it, too.)

Conan Doyle: 1
Griffin: 0

Doyle

Doyle

Doyle, though Griffin beats Martin and Butcher in a landslide, so this is /bullshit

this is just a winnowing so that laozi can win

Not having read Martin or Griffin, why does the latter trounce the former, bo_sox?

Popularity's not always a barometer of quality (case in point, 20-something fantasy and sci fi writers getting nominated over Dante, Milton, Hemingway, Toni Morrison, Oscar Wilde, etc.) but still...I don't see any multi-million dollar HBO specials for Griffin.

...I don't see any for Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens and anyone else on this list, but hey, I think those three, at least, might've had just a few screen adaptations here and there... :p

But isn't it at least some kind of barometer? We don't choose to spend millions of dollars adapting just anyth--

OK, well, we do (Twilight and 50 Shades and a ton of Tom Clancy and Stephen King works...to name a few) but still, I think the point's valid, if not invulnerable?

So if Martin's struck enough of a popular chord to get his books adapted into a critically-acclaimed TV series, what is your argument for Griffin?

"a ton of Tom Clancy and Stephen King works...to name a few) but still, I think the point's valid, if not invulnerable?"
Oh come on, Tom Clancy books are brilliant Obi, and I all the Stephen King adaptations that I've seen have been great (I've never read a book of his though).

1. King himself doesn't like some of his adaptations--he's famously anti-Kubrick's "The Shining"--so yeah...there's that...

2. Ulysses is brilliant. 1984 is brilliant. Great Expectations, Women in Love, The Grapes of Wrath, and (as much as people either love or hate it) Pride and Prejudice is brilliant(ly written, the story...eh...)

In much the same way "epic" = Homer, Dante, Milton, and NOT just "good"...

Tom Clancy's books were not brilliant. That doesn't mean they were BAD...but come on...let's not trivialize the word here...more so than we've already done...

So unless you think Clancy's works represent some kind of true literary genius that will last throughout the ages and 200 years from now a Future Obi will be accessing the Internet via an implant in his head and mentally-typing a long, long rant on why Tom Clancy was a brilliant auteur on the order of Shakespeare (because no matter how much things change, the pretentious Obis of the future will STILL be suckers for Shakespeare)...no.

Not brilliant. Not bad, but not brilliant.

Doyle.

Doyle: 5
Griffin: 0

doyle: 6
griffin: 0

OVERRATED

Griffin

Doyle.

obi, this isn't fair. You put two of my suggestions against each other!

Griffin! Best military fiction writer I've ever read. As much as I love Doyle, I enjoy reading Griffin more.

Doyle is overrated, but he is still one of my favourite authors.

I'm starting to regret not nominating Kipling.

By the way, I vote Doyle.