Sci Fi Books

Sun Wukong said
This is probably an unpopular take, but while I understand the importance of the legendary hard scifi writers like Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, etc. to popular fiction and absolutely respect and enjoy their ideas, I never found any of them to be particularly great writers in the sense of crafting prose that draws you in or has great readability. I always found their stuff very dense and matter of fact and was never really pulled into their works because of that.

I contrast that with someone like Frank Herbert who, despite having some really out there ideas, I always found easy to read because his previous career as a journalist gave him an accessible way with words.

Just my experience.

I agree. As much as Asimov and Clarke had interesting ideas and concepts for their time, the writing isn't great. Which is why I think their stuff, while important from a study of literature aspect, isn't really great for the modern reader either because what was fiction then is reality now or because our reality is different from what they predicted. It makes their stuff feel really dated.

As far as Bradbury, all I ever read from him was Something Wicked This Way Comes which I tend to think holds up, but it is more or less told from child's perspective so that makes it more acceptable to be more "naive" and now as well written.