1) Gene Wolfe: at times his works can seem incomplete, his stories full of holes in which to put our imagination and reasoning , but when we allow these facets to flow then we see the whole, and at the same time tested ourselves.
2) Alfred Bester: a first among equals: an expert at the standard SF novel: only they are never to be under-rated, always so direct, so real, so troubling and so, in the end, of humanity.
3) Kim Stanley Robinson: here for Gold Coast, for the novels about people: forget trying to do the science of Mars for chrissakes KSR: leave them for people without your talent for people, and more talent for science: you got the awards now write the greats again.
4) Samuel Delaney: what can be said of the unorthodox genius? That his work, though influential and artistically-praised still remains intense trobling and loveable, a combination I respect.
5) Poul Anderson: productive for half the lifespan of the genre: someone whose work has reflected rich interests from deep science to Roman history: whose love of Empires and exploration has changed and mellowed, whose ideas are fresh and so many, similar and dissimilar, they seem to be drawn like strands from a quilt of wonders.
6) R. M. Meluch: personal: some of her characters share a world view with me… and books in depth enough to make you cry if that’s your way to identify with them: but otherwise the trait of adventure in these books surely merits a read at least.
7) Ursula Le Guin: The Word for World is Forest, The Dispossessed, someone said she rethinks the novel each time, never writing the same novel twice. We certainly cannot argue, just wonder.
8) Fred Pohl: Gateway, Hechee books, Years of the City, readable and focused writer. With high imagination and a trick for making the worlds kick into life.
9) Neal Stephenson: a few genius books justify a look, and there is no reason his highly organised, it would seem, talent cannot produce more of the same intense tales, laden with their loveable believable characters.
10) Kurt Vonnegut /Vonnegut Jnr: the same guy, despite some people’s contrary opinions! When his father died he dropped junior…. A man whose twist on the world is somehow evocative of the best of free thought and Zappa and Beefheart.Does that make sense?
11) Orson Scott Card: used to be I bought every book I saw, but recently I realised his complete over-rating of meandering recent material and complete under-rating of his intense classic material means he doesn’t even realise Xenocide was mediocre tosh, and will be continuing to churn it out. This impression was generated through some skim reading of recent material and his own interview on his home page. A decent writer, but I thought he was the best. But no-one should go without reading Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead or Wyrms.
12) Frank Herbert: long-lost and long-missed writer, whose works still remind us that SF is more tan what people accuse it of: it is not a pointless exercise in imagination, but often an exercise in the greatnesses and weaknesses of people.
Those who I feel a need to mention, but who extol themselves:
Roger Zelazny… writing at all levels that works and inspires.
John Brunner, a writer of excellence with The Sheep Look Up in his back pocket he can be rated as among the best of the British( and thereby... ), with.
Arthur C. Clarke, here for his vision and the power of the insight and vision, and his telling of it not cos he's an icon of science.ff…
J.G. Ballard…a top writer in any genre… who wrote a few genuinely appalling books (subject not quality )but whose ability to conjure pictures and stories filled with intense pictures is rivalled by few.. which of course reminds us of rangy old dead genius
Philip K. Dick, whose A Scanner Darkly I had the good fortune to read before any other dark novel about ourselves. In the end I’d choose Vonnegut or Delaney: but he deserves memory as a wrier of wonders.
Brian Aldiss a charming writer, the only one of all these I ever saw, of great books;
Robert Heinlein, a man of the ugly and the beautiful, who brought wonderful creation but who seems filled with hate...
Robert Silverberg I could read him all day, from the masterful world of Valentine Pontifex to the masterpiece of personal collapse Dying Inside, a man of rare talent.
Philip Jose Farmer, an air of mystery involved in the writing of a creator, a joker at times, at others, Day World, simply a master of the tale with his own take on life. ,
Vonda McIntyre for books like Dreamsnake to read again and again.
Ian Watson for books I used to read and read: but I have not read in so long I can barely recall..
Ray Bradbury For making the world so lonely( the Martian Chronicles- ) .
Other favourites:
Lucius Sheperd: Life During Wartime best written SF book on war ever, tense, terse and somewhat disturbing... now he shzould be in tat top 12...
Tea With The Black Dragon: R. A McAvoy
Consider Phlebus: Iain M. Banks. Despite title and reputation, one of the most readable
longer SF books,
Neuromancer: William Gibson: less original than believed, but still justified in being called a bloody good book.
Not For Glory: Joel Rosenberg Great short stories: space wars, as human as they get, by someone more reputed for low key fantasy.