LogFAQs > #962603212

Clarke and Asimov are absolute units. Heinlein is hit or miss. Niven was great at giant set pieces but wrote dialog like Sheldon Cooper would. He really shines when he lets others write humans being humans, and in Lucifer's Hammer you can literally see when each author tags out. Ringworld has an amazing setting and the most...robotic dialog.

Scifi in general has one major drawback to me that really breaks the immersion in a way that fantasy can't.

Fantasy never ages. Swords are always swords. Magic fireballs are always whoosh burn.

In sci-fi, it always has the stink of when it was written. I'm not shitting on classic sci-fi, but centuries in the future, people are still being couriered "holotapes". Picard sits at his desk doing personell reviews with 2 dozen PADDs on his desk because in 1986 one tablet multitasking with multiple windows was inconceivable.

Scifi is great, but it ages like milk and fish in a way fantasy just doesn't.