"Best Science-Fiction Novel Ever Written (Round 1C)" Topic

Never meet your heroes.
I saw one of the writers in this poll at a convention nearly letting fans kiss his ring. I half expected to see him cure the King's Itch. 🙄
So, I never bought another book of his, and haven't voted for him in these polls.
There's another one I actually have met, and fully intend to not vote for him either. 😄👎

If we were being polled on "nicest SF writer" that would make sense, OFM. Don't confuse the quality of the book with the character of the author. (1) No perfect people. (2) No way to assess the book if that's the standard and you don't know the author, and (3) for the sake of whatever they do/have done wrong, you're blipping out the part of the author's life he got right. Which of us could stand such a test?

If I'd thought of them in time, I'd have nominated "Final Blackout" and "To the Stars." You don't have to be a Scientologist to know that twice in his life L. Ron Hubbard wrote first-rate science fiction. Next bookcase to the left holds "The Undefeated." Howard Fast was the worst sort of Stalinist Communist, but I've read no better fiction set in the AWI.

Hmph. I also don't recommend grading wargame rules based on how nice a guy the author is or was. Trust me on this.

TBH, I didn't like his writing all that much either. 😄
I thought he was wordy and predictable.

As for Howard Fast and Communism, from Wikipedia 🙄:
"In his autobiographical work titled The Naked God: The Writer and the Communist Party published in 1957, he wrote: "There was the evil in what we dreamed of as Communists: we took the noblest dreams and hopes of mankind as our credo; the evil we did was to accept the degradation of our own souls—and because we surrendered in ourselves, in our own party existence, all the best and most precious gains and liberties of mankind—because we did this, we betrayed mankind, and the Communist party became a thing of destruction."
This was after Kruschev condemned the "personality cult" of Stalin, but Kruschev also suppressed the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.

I was a huge Asimov fan in my teens.

"I was a huge Asimov fan in my teens."

I've tried to be "a fan", but I have found a lot of his writing to be quite the opposite of what I was expecting. A lot of it is aged, and very dry, and in some of his forewards he spends a lot of time singing his praises and blowing his own horn.

I find myself liking Bradbury a lot better, and Heinlein more than others for the most part.

Ray Bradbury is my fave sci-fi author but few of his works qualify as "novels," alas. I don't really have any other true fave novels that wouldn't crossover into Fantasy (e.g., Jack Vance). I *am* fond of Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle, but it's pretty old now and no doubt seen as cheesy.

+1 robert piepenbrink

One of my favourite (non-SF as it happens) authors I'm pretty convinced was a detestable person. But his writing!