Who is the Grand Master of Science Fiction Writers

[Bluestocking]

Having read all of his sci-fi books, I think it is Asimov. However, might it be Arthur C Clarke?

[DBoon]

1. HG Wells

Time travel, alien invasions, dystopian societies - he invented all of this.

[Bluestocking]

2. I have only read "The Time Machine"

I need to read more of his books.

[thucythucy]

11. War of the Worlds is amazing.

The first time I read it I was in junior high, and the first paragraph can still send chills down my spine:

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

[Maninacan]

3. Joe Haldeman

We all know the big names but this guy really wrote a story that foresaw machines making decisions.

[The Blue Flower]

4. Asimov is number one

His ideas fueled books, movies, and tv shows for years. He was the source of so much we expect and enjoy.

[FBaggins]

8. As an author overall, yes

For just sci fi specifically… I’d say Heinlein

[FalloutShelter]

5. I like Clifford Simak.

Also rec… Cities in Flight, by James Blish.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. Robert Heinlein /nt

[Bluestocking]

19. I put Heinlein at number 3

Behind Asimov and Clarke

[Lochloosa]

7. Heavy ScFi - Charles Sheffield

Charles Sheffield (25 June 1935 – 2 November 2002),[1] was an English-born mathematician, physicist, and science-fiction writer who served as a President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronautical Society.[2]

His novel The Web Between the Worlds, featuring the construction of a space elevator, was published almost simultaneously with Arthur C. Clarke's novel on the subject, The Fountains of Paradise - a coincidence that amused them both.[3] Excerpts from both Sheffield's The Web Between the Worlds and Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise have appeared recently in a space-elevator anthology, Towering Yarns.[4]

Sheffield served as Chief Scientist of Earth Satellite Corporation, a company that processed remote-sensing satellite data.[5] The association gave rise to many technical papers and two popular non-fiction books, Earthwatch (1981) and Man on Earth (1983), both collections of false-colour and enhanced images of Earth from space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sheffield

[Bluestocking]

20. I will have to add him to my list

[Lochloosa]

22. Might as well add his wife to that list. Nancy Kress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Kress

[The Madcap]

9. Frank Herbert.

The "Dune" series.

[Bluestocking]

21. I really liked the first three books

But then the rest were not as good. I tried one of his son’s Dune books and was not impressed. The thing about Herbert was he was a one hit wonder. There was Dune and that was it.

[Aviation Pro]

10. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke.

[Timewas]

12. No Doubt

Robert Heinlein

[byronius]

13. He's the Ultra for sure.

When he died, all my friends went into deep mourning.

[Timewas]

14. I Have

I have read every book he wrote way back to Podkayne of Mars and Have space suit will travel.. Although I do place Asimov a very close second

[FBaggins]

23. Have you seen Variable Star?

It's an interesting hybrid of a story concept and beginning that is clearly Heinlein - but finished by Spider Robinson.

[NewLarry]

15. According to the SFWA,

(Science Fiction Writers of America), there are 43 of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:SFWA_Grand_Masters

[Pluvious]

16. Phillip K. Dick

[hunter]

17. No women?

Might as well start with one who lit the fire:

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)

I've read most of Asimov, certainly all his major works, fiction and non-fiction, but he's always seemed a bit cold to me. Clarke? I'm distressed by him.

Ursula K. Le Guin I love like family.

Bumped into Heinlein once, literally, during his final descent into icky weirdness.

Harlan Ellison was always icky, but brilliant. My wife and I had separately disturbing encounters with him before we met and married. Years later my wife and I were walking in Santa Monica and we saw him coming our way. When he saw us he crossed the street. I thought it was me, My wife thought it was her. Only when my wife commented on it did we discover we had another something in common. Sigh. Ellison's last days were sad.

Philip K. Dick is one of my favorites. Maybe because we are both nuts.

Octavia E. Butler ... of course.

Most of the science fiction I read these days is written by women. It's a great tragedy that science fiction was such a boy's club, in the worst way, for most of the twentieth century.

[Easterncedar]

18. James Tiptree was the best female science fiction writer of all, IMHO.