Due to a terminal lack of time, my "to be read soon" list is backing up quite seriously. As a result, the list below is criminally incomplete, and inevitably a large number of excellent writers have been omitted.
A rather better compilation of the great and the good in fantasy has been put together by Amy Sheldon, assisted by a large number of contributors to the alt.fan.eddings newsgroup, and is known as The Recommended Fantasy Author List.
Here are some of the authors I've enjoyed at various stages - more reviews are coming soon, assuming I ever get round to it. A lot of discussion takes place on Usenet (some of it even useful); I have listed the relevant newsgroups where known, and you can find general SF/fantasy discussion at rec.arts.sf.written.
Newsgroup: alt.fan.douglas-adams
Newsgroup: alt.books.terry-brooks
The Shannara series are good old-fashioned sword-and-sorcery epics in the Tolkien mould with all the standard ingredients: druids, elves, dwarves, magical stones, and so on. Terry Brooks manages to throw in a pretty decent plot to glue the whole thing together, and the two series, together with First King of Shannara (of which a sample chapter is available from Del Rey Books), span more centuries than any book or books I've read apart from The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien and Belgarath the Sorcerer/Polgara the Sorceress by David Eddings.
The Magic Kingdom series is more light-hearted, with an American lawyer turned king of a fantasy kingdom, whose chief advisers are a talking dog and an incompetent wizard. Good, cheerful fun.
David and Leigh Eddings are a husband-and-wife team (though many of their books are billed as being by David Eddings alone) and two of today's best-selling fantasy authors, specialising in series of the type popularly known as "sword-and-sorcery". Judging by the traffic on the alt.fan.eddings newsgroup, they're very popular among the Net community; there are also a lot of pages floating around the Web dedicated to their works.
This is my collection of miscellaneous stuff about them, called Guardians of the West.
Newsgroups:
Spectacular fantasy epic with some outstanding writing, though it can be a little heavy going at times. A trio of young village men are torn from their quiet life and thrown into the grip of a dreadful prophecy that threatens to destroy all the world in a vast war with the Dark One, imprisoned by the Creator at the beginning of Time.
Newsgroup: alt.books.julian-may
Newsgroups:
Comedian-in-chief of the fantasy genre, Terry Pratchett is also one of the most prolific fantasy authors around, averaging something like a book every six months. Despite this unfeasibly high level of output, he has managed to keep up a wonderful standard of writing and a marvellous sense of fun. His Discworld series is set on a world supported by four elephants standing on the back of a turtle swimming through space. Need I say more? The books don't have to be read in strict order, though several subplots run through the series, and form several sort of mini-series.
Newsgroup: alt.fan.tolkien
Tolkien virtually defined fantasy with The Lord of the Rings, which seems as popular today as ever. Even Hollywood is getting in on the act now.
Newsgroup: alt.fan.dragonlance
Weis and Hickman started the Dragonlance world way back when, and it has since evolved into a huge shared world. Unfortunately, most of the novels, novellas, and short stories written by other authors fell far short of the standards set by the originals. The Chronicles and Legends are by far the best of the pack. Fans of role-playing games will experience acute déjà vu at the magic system. The Death Gate Cycle has an excellent cosmology and an interesting magic system, which develops as the series progresses. Technically, it's set in the far future, though this doesn't really come out until the later books. Some people have found the conclusion a little on the contrived side, but the earlier books are certainly worth a look.