This is a good idea. I did not vote for the best SF writer I had encountered, in fact all the GrandMaster candidates were lesser writers compared to some who had come since, in many or most respects, they just, well … made SF what it is, so how could they not be GrandMasters? But it is nice to have the chance to vote for some writers with some great chops. And thanks for an entertaining series of threads!
I profoundly disagree with this: I think Asimov and Heinlein are subpar prose-writers by almost any measure, and their characters–all of them, but most especially Asimov’s women–are absurdly poorly written. They succeed as writers of ideas, but not IMO as novelists, and I can easily name half a dozen more recent SF authors who could write circles around them. Even modern hacks like Alan Dean Foster can write better prose than either of those guys.
Really I think they’re awful.
Yeah, I didn’t want to attack anybody’s favorites, but really I agree with this. I suspect people read some of this stuff when they were young and less discerning, and are voting based on happy memories.
On the contrary, I find Dr. Susan Calvin very well-written. She’s not a typical woman, maybe, but few memorable characters are ever typical.
I sort of agree, but Calvin is pretty one-dimensional. As are most Asimov characters. But very few authors in any genre are good at representing the opposite sex, so it’s faint criticism. Heinlein’s women are interesting, but they often resemble men posing as women on the internets.
Allow a great majority of us to disagree with you. Deeply and profoundly. I find most of the choices you listed in the other thread to be also-rans at best.
There is nothing dated or stilted about Caves Of Steel or The Naked Sun-they are beautiful and timeless.
The decision was deucedly* difficult, but I went with Asimov over Heinlein just because of his breadth and ability to push the limits of the genre.
- Why doesn’t the Firefox spellchecker recognize “deucedly”? It’s a deucedly good word.
I’ll second…or third, fourth, whatever, think someone else mentioned it…this notion. Well done, Czarcasm.
I thought it was douchedly, like in Blinded by the Light 
Well, I might have had an ulterior motive.
“I care not where one has been, for that can be assigned to mere circumstance. The true measure of a man is where he is willing to go, both with his life and with his mind.”
+1, for all my gripes about y’all’s awful taste in science fiction :). (I certainly acknowledge that at least in this demographic my tastes are a minority. I’ll still cling to them like an alligator grabbing hold of a poodle.)
I confess that, although I devoured his books as a teenager, as an adult I’ve only read two. Foundation is appallingly poorly written (fun game–spot the women! this is the one that convinced me he couldn’t write a female character to save his life), and The Stars Like Dust has a ridiculously hokey McGuffin whose nature I guessed in the first chapter and was all, “dude, please don’t let that be the McGuffin” and whose reveal in the book’s final sentence was like Asimov was the most patriotic stoner-philosopher ever. Duuuuuuude! It sucked.
Maybe I should try his robot novels again; those are the ones I remember most fondly from my adolescence.
Arguing about tastes in fiction is like arguing about tastes in sexual partners. Just be glad that there’s something for everybody out there if you look for it. 
I concur with this. As stated though by others. Thankfully we have a wonderful selection of authors to choose from. Even some of the later writers like David Brin had some wonderful books. Then he seems to have bogged down.
Oh, I don’t think so. Have you read Kiln People? I enjoyed that one a lot.
Very true. There are some excellent storytellers that are poor writers. There are also a lot of excellent writers that are poor storytellers. Storytelling is an art in and of itself, and everyone has their own balance in expectations between the mechanics of the writing and the storytelling.
You also want different things at different times. Sometimes the seduction is the thing, the joy of the game. That’s when you haul down the Ellison. Other times, you’re just looking to get laid. That’s where Cussler shines.
My vote is made under protest. Where’s Walter Jon Williams?
–
Just because I’ve never run into anyone else who’s ever heard of him, that doesn’t mean he’s not a grandmaster! Ok. It kind of does. But it shouldn’t.
I don’t think I’ve ever thought of Harlan McBoobengrabber Ellison as a seducer before, but de gustibus and all.