Ones that many people have mentioned: Atwood, Wallace, Murakami

One I don’t think anyone has said yet - Paul Auster. I’ve only read New York Trilogy so far, but I thought it was superb.

Stephen King.

King of Horror.

He has written hundreds if not thousands of stories over the last half century. So many of those have turned into Blockbuster movie, lame TV movies, Indie films, and TV shows. We can argue later about how “literary” many of those stories are, but his impact on popular culture today is undeniable.

Although he has occasionally written or said some cringey things out of touch with the current zeitgeist (who hasn’t?) and has struggled with his own demons, from what I’ve seen he has always demonstrated that at his core he’s a decent human being struggling, like we all do, in a scary world.

David Mitchell

Nick Hornby

Alan Dean Foster

Gene Wolfe - the style of his sci-fi is mesmerizingly mysterious, even the mundane things described take on sinister tones

This isn’t a perfect example but Cormac McCarthy has been my favourite author for years now, and his first major work Suttree was from '79.

My all time favourites novel is Blood Meridian from 1985. If you’re familiar with metamodernism, which is basically very modern works that have their cake and eat it when it comes to modernist ideals and postmodern critique, you’d clock that practically every western is either a modernist white hat western or a metamodern “the west is grim and hard, but also fucking cool” western. The only straight postmodern takes on the west that I know of are either Blood Meridian or pieces of work that take direct notes from it, such as the films Dead Man from ‘95 (except maybe the Oregon Trail video game from. 85’). Blood Meridian otherwise is a fantastic novel which meditates on madness and cruelty, religion and fate, race, war and conquest and so many other themes. It also has one of the best antagonists ever written in Judge Holden, a character who I would have called a direct insert of Satan if not for the fact that his deeds and the novel as a whole are closely inspired by true events. I feel the novel takes inspiration from Apocalypse Now, specifically the '79 film and not Conrad’s 1899 novel Heart of Darkness. If you enjoy that film, you’re likely to enjoy this book. The opening and closing chapters are fantastic, but I often find myself re-reading chapter 14. It has some of the best prose and monologues of the entire novel, and encompasses in my opinion the main turning point of the novel.

His other legendary work is The Road, a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel. I’ll talk on this one less but as our climate crisis grows and our cultural zeitgeist swings more towards this being the critical issue of our time, the novel fantastically paints itself as both a fantastic warning to our 21st century apocalypse and the unresolved 20th century shadow of nuclear winter. Despite this, it hones in on a meditation of parenthood and could be considered solely about that, with other themes of death, trauma, survival and mortality being explored through parenthood. Of course the unsalvageable deatg of the world that make the setting also makes this theme extra tragic. There is an adaptation into a film from 2008 but it isn’t anywhere near as potent as the novel and I’d suggest should only be seen in tandem with reading the novel. The prize of this novel has really evolved to fit the novel too. McCarthy is renowned for his punctuation lacking prose, but where Blood Meridian is practically biblical in its dramatic and beautiful prose which juxtaposes the plain and brutal violence, The Road sacrifices no beauty in it’s language but is so somber and meanders from mostly terse to so florid, while also always perfectly feels like how the protagonists are seeing their world.

Terry Pratchett! The Discworld books have kept me busy for years now and I don’t even consider myself much of a reader.

Roger Zelazny. Even though he started in the sixties, he was active through the 70s, 80s, and early 90s until his death. Fantastic world building and characters that feel very much like real people.

My nominations will be limited in scope to fantasy and sci-fi, but there are a few stand outs. Now, on to my nominations.

There are so many amazing authors in our era, but I’ll stick to a few only.

1. Brandon Sanderson - he writes like a machine, churning out books in-between other books. He’s unstoppable. I haven’t enjoyed his latest stuff, but his early stuff is outstanding high fantasy. Way of Kings blew my mind when I read it, and Mistborn was so original and awesome.

2. Joe Ambercrombie - The Blade Itself is a wonderful book, as are all the follow-up novels

3. Dan Simmons - The Hyperion Cantos is the most complex, outstanding, high-minded, thought provoking science fiction I’ve ever read.

4. N. K. Jemisin - The Fifth Season and it’s sequels are some of the most unique ideas I’ve ever read. It’s incomparable to anything else. It stands alone in creativity.

Honorable mentions: William Gibson, Dennis E. Taylor,

For me The Name of the Rose is a real masterpiece. I enjoyed The Prague Cemetery as much as Foucault’s Pendulum but I’d personally put Baudolino before those two.

Edit: this was a reply for @ThisIsNotHim@sopuli.xyz, for some reason I keep pressing the wrong reply arrow on the Voyager app.

I haven’t seen Chuck Palahniuk mentioned, and he was very influential to a bunch of us millenials, I imagine. He is very good at writing about the nihilism of modern times.

Fight Club is the most popular example of his novels, and its a great read. I am also really particular to, Rant:The Oral Biography of Buster. Its such a weird story, and was one of the first books to really spark my interest in reading fiction. He has a bunch of other good novels I would recommend, like Snuff, Choke, and Lullaby.

Vonnegut

Lots of great sf/fantasy authors mentioned already, including some I’d argue for as great writers regardless of genre (Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, N. K. Jemisin).

I have three more to suggest in this genre and from this period:

• C. J. Cherryh (Cyteen, Foreigner series, lots more) uses the lens of alien societies – just different enough from ours – to make us look critically at the structure of our own;

• Sheri S. Tepper (Grass, Raising the Stones, The Gate to Women’s Country) carries one or another of the dark currents underlying our culture to its horrifying conclusion, and shows us what we get;

• Lois McMaster Bujold (Vorkosigan saga) gives us a hilarious and improbable hero who utterly transcends his disabilities, in the end perfectly embodying what it seems he could never hope to be.

So many good answers already that I agree with. So I’ll add James Ellroy and Clive Barker

For Ellroy, the entire LA Quartet remains a pivotal sea change in “hard boiled” crime fiction; taking a lot of the conventions created by the likes of Hammett and Chandler and updating them for a modern audience.

Barker is a more personal choice. But his writing is just so evocative and descriptive that I couldn’t NOT mention him. Imajica literally changed my literary life, with Weaveworld being (in my opinion) a less dense, more reader friendly version of Imajica.

Iain (M) Banks

China Mieville

Two of my faves

To me, it has to be Steven Erikson. Malazan series is simply amazing.