What you're saying feels rather condescending. You implied earlier that Martin and Rowling were fine to be respected, despite their perhaps merely serviceable prose, because they did something else well: they told a good story and had great character development. Now, I personally found many of the characters in Foundation and the Robots series to be quite well developed, and the storytelling to be plenty captivating, but I will even give to you that he's not as good at either of those things as some others, but the fact is that he does a better job of combining those things with big ideas than most writers. Many science fiction writers do an amazing job of setting a traditional story in a science fiction universe, and some of them even do a great job fleshing out those universes, which is a beautiful thing. Often, that's my preferred type of story. Asimov does something different, in that his stories are primarily concerned with how the universe he has built works, with the story serving as a vehicle to explore that. The stories in I, Robot are each individually about the characters, but their point is not to make us like the characters, it's to fascinate us with the paradoxes of the Laws of Robotics and the Frankenstein Complex. The Caves of Steel goes even further, taking the same human psychology first explored in I, Robot to a perfectly reasonable conclusion about where Earth and humans might end up, exploring the sociological and psychological implications of that, while simultaneously telling a perfectly interesting detective story. When I think on it as a mystery, it's fine, as good as something I might pick up at an airport. When I think on it as speculative fiction, though, it sends shivers down my spine. His particular vision of future Earth is very interesting, very compelling, and very scary, mostly because it's very easy to see us heading in that direction even now.

And from your list, I'd argue that Philip K. Dick, at least, lets trying to write beautiful prose destroy the readability and understandability of his ideas. I've finished about three of his short stories in my life, despite trying many times. He's not accessible. And I think accessibility is also pretty necessary for greatness.

ETA: Honestly, after all that writing, my real statement is just that I completely disagree with "As a writer there is certainly something wrong with [servicable prose]." There is not. Writing is made up of words but words are designed to transmit the ideas. If the ideas are interesting, I could not possible care less if the words themselves are beautiful, as long as they are edited to the point of easy readability. Greatness in literature, to me, comes from the story told.

Much of Fritz Leiber hasn't aged well. Silverberg probably wrote more fiction that I'd think of as "serviceable" than Asimov; he just wrote a lot more fiction. I've never thought much of Aldiss, but that's a matter of taste, isn't it? Dick is a force onto himself; if he had treated himself better, maybe we'd have more of him. A lot of early Sturgeon -- in the same era the Asimov's major fiction was written -- was clunky. Ballard repeats himself. Farmer was erratic. I never got into Zelazny. Delany: Dhalgren. Ellison, some brilliant short fiction, but not enough because of his tendency to explode.

They all did wonderful things, though. But without the scope and imagination of writers like Asimov and Doc Smith, we might not have had them at all.

I'm only willing to damn two SF writers all together: Mark Clifton and John Norman.

Because writing is made of words and he's not particularly great at it.

Right. And words have meaning. So depending how you string them together, you could be presenting some fresh ideas or themes, even if you're doing it pretty plainly.

Style over content is a bad goal for any art, probably, but writing particularly. There are a lot of *literary novelists* out there who can write beautifully, with innovation, and in the end don't say much of anything new or interesting. I'm looking at Dave Eggers here, for the record -- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius could have packed a hell of a lot more punch if he had stopped jerking off over his own idea of his brilliance and edited the thing even a little bit.

Yes, Amy!

I just stopped reading Portnoy's Complaint because no matter how cleverly the words were strung together, and they really were, I just didn't care to read about the ridiculous sexual escapades of a completely unlikeable character any more. There wasn't anything to like beyond the cleverness, which only took me so far.

Or what Amy said.

I have less than no interest in reading self-consciously clever prose. Good writing in service of a story, sure, but I cannot work with authors who you can just feel their self-congratulations as they craft yet another... I can't even with this sentence, even.

I also think there's no worse idea than trying to be the next literary darling. You have to write what you write to the best of your ability, and you have to remember to actually *tell* a story while you play with how best to tell it. Time tells who lasts and who doesn't, and it's not always as obvious; see Dickens, for instance.

I'm going to stand here, nod vigorously, and point at what Amy and Jesse said. The authors I love that could be considered clever stylists (Bradbury, Tanith Lee, Angela Carter), but they never let those clever, lush words get in the way of the story.

Hell, even Anne Rice, queen of bombast and purple prose, had a good story and characters in Interview With The Vampire and The Vampire Lestat. It was later on that she started valuing overwrought over story.

What Amy said. And Ginger. And Gris. And Jesse. ... And Jilli.

Style over content is a bad goal for any art, probably, but writing particularly.

wrod wrod wrod

I have less than no interest in reading self-consciously clever prose. Good writing in service of a story, sure,

With wrod sauce.