Top 20 Sci-Fi of all time

1 Frank Herbert: Dune
2 Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game
3 Isaac Asimov: Foundation
4 William Gibson: Neuromancer
5 Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land
6 Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
7 Larry Niven: Ringworld
8 Robert A Heinlein: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
9 George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
10 Dan Simmons: Hyperion
11 Douglas Adams: The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
12 Joe Haldeman: The Forever War
13 Frederik Pohl: Gateway
14 Ursula K Le Guin: The Dispossessed
15 David Brin: Startide Rising
16 Walter M Miller: A Canticle for Leibowitiz
17 Harlan Ellison [ed]: Dangerous Visions
18 Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles
19 Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination
20 Arthur C Clark: Childhood's End

Taken from Newsline Spring 2004 Issue

Well I'm not sure that I can agree with that list entirely. There is no mention of Andre Norton, the definitions used are not listed so I would have to say that it's not really definitive. I would have a few different authors in my top ten list.

Also, although not having read many of the ones listed, I have read enough of some of the authors listed, more specifically Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Robert A Heinlein, Arthur C Clark, & Ray Bradbury, and cannot honestly say that I enjoyed their work in anyway. There was a lack of believable female characters or none at all. Some times the females were in such a oppressed/subservient role that I couldn't even finish the books.

Now I'm not saying that in women's writing things are any different for the men, for example Daughters of a Coral Dawn by Katherine V. Forrest, that they were often written for a select audience and not "commercial" in any form. Mind you Daughters is a classic example of lesbian pulp fiction so I think that would say it all!!!