VV is up there with Stephenson and Gibson as the top 3. I don't put Asimov, etc in there since Asimov was hard sci-fi to the max and couldn't write a character to save his life, much like later Stephenson.
I wish I could find something else like VV's work that's sort of under-the-radar. I do have to mention that things like The Three Body Problem get hype, but are several tiers below VVs work.
> Human knowledge of the universe has widened and deepened since Verne's day, but for sheer intellectual and adventurous wonder about what that universe might contain, has any writer, from any era or land, outdone him since?
No, I don't think so. It seems sci fi went the way of the graduate thesis: hyper specialized, hyper focused. I think this might have been out of necessity. Maybe Stephenson has come close though.
He's covered nonfictional history, space travel (anathem, seven eves), colonization of Earth orbit and the moon (seven eves), generational space travel (anathem), multiple universe theories (anathem), and to come back down to earth, cryptography (cryptonomicon, reamde, fall), AI (diamond age), wetware hacking (snow crash), VR (snow crash, fall), post mortem VR (fall), nanotech (fall, diamond age), and layered simulated universes (fall).
So beyond Stephenson I don't think anyone comes close to fantastical exploration at the level of Verne. Crichton didn't. Watts is highly focused in biology. Banks deals with cosmic horror, AI, and a touch of multiverse. Doctorow is fantastic "realistic near future" exploration but he never takes us to space, and I don't think he really even explores AI.
Ah, you're right, Asimov definitely tops the list. He explored the fuck out of AI and then jumped straight into the question of whether human psychology is deterministic. Space travel, galaxy colonization, hell even telekinesis and other wild shit.
I think he doesn't have the breadth of topic of Neal Stephenson but he's definitely prolific.
As an addendum, that professor I mentioned in the GP comment thought Asimov was obviously important, but not worthy of inclusion in the survey, given other great works (like Dune, Ender’s Game, Neuronancer, Left Hand of Darkness, ...).
I think Asimov’s “The Last Question”, like “They’re Made Out of Meat” are triumphs of short stories. With Asimov, character development is a weakness, but he’s still more than worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of great sci-fi writers.
Off the top of my head, I'd count Asimov's Foundation, Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, Niven's Ringworld, Gibson's Neuromancer, Bear's Darwin's Radio, and Stephenson's Snow Crash.
I have always understood that everyone agrees that he is one of the greatest sci-fi writers ever. His writing and philosophy has depth and he understood the future would be interaction between the society and technology.
Maybe he is underrated in the sense that while he is considered a great, many of his writings are still relatively unknown.
His nonfiction is also remarkable (Golem XIV is technically sci-fi, but it's so philosophically heavy that it can be seen as philosophical work).
Sure. I'd even put Gibson, Wallace, Stephenson, Asimov, and Martin on my own subjective list, just on pure influence and enjoyment. The other ones though are at least in the running by most objective criteria, I'd imagine.
We have a number of very good modern science fiction authors that easily rival them. While none of them may be as iconic, I think that has more to do with competition in the genre and breadth of the market.
I'm surprised to not find Stanley G. Weinbaum in the list or the comments. He was early in sci-fi (mid 1930s) and died not too long after his career took off, but a bunch of his writing laid the foundation for many SF writers that came after.
I can heartily recommend most of the stuff in the 4+ comments: Ursula Le Guin, Lem, Strugatsky, Kurt Vonnegut... and of course Alfred Bester, especially "The Stars my Destination", proto cyberpunk.
I wish I could find something else like VV's work that's sort of under-the-radar. I do have to mention that things like The Three Body Problem get hype, but are several tiers below VVs work.
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