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Fame and quality, in a perfect world, should travel hand-in-hand, but that is not always the case. In this case, concerning science fiction authors, the importance of an author usually involves his impact in the genre. How much has this author made a difference to what we read, what we expect and what we write.

First of all are the ancient marvels, the innovative individuals who birthed a new genre. Whether or not we quibble about whether work belongs in the category of science fiction or fantasy, it would be difficult not to acknowledge their importance in the realm of science fiction.

1) Mary Shelley. Although her nearly unreadable work, The Last Man on Earth, qualifies as science fiction, it is Frankenstein, a novel about creating about animating dead body parts, that really got the whole ball rolling.

2) Edgar Allen Poe. Descent into the Maelstrom or Narrative of A Gordon Pym are both tangentially science fiction. His essay Eureka, demonstrates his thinking. But it is Poe's movement from the simply gothic, like Mary Shelley, into the twentieth century way of thinking about modernism that makes him important.

3) Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. It is best to think of these two writers in the same way. Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the like are very similar in the way they take Victorian ideals and ethos and turn them toward an instinctive pessimism about the future that science and technology can ameliorate.

4) Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs' short novels are filled with a lot of silliness, more magic than science. But his influence on the flabby pulps of his generation moved us in the direction of seeing science fiction as a separate genre.

Then come the Great names of the 20th Century. These are the giants that wrote for pulps but turned our thinking about science fiction toward viewing them as literature first, and then genre second.

1) Ray Bradbury. His science may seem quaint by today's standards, and the man has always been more poet than novelist, but his short stories still stand as the best science fiction literature of the 20th century.

2) Philip K. Dick. If judged simply by quality by the pound, Dick is the best science fiction writer of all time. His novels are groundbreaking and enthusiastically insightful. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, The Man in the High Castle. Every novel is challenging, but rewarding.

3) Robert Heinlein. He is roundly praised and vilified, sometimes even at the same time. His lightweight

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