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.

Let me posit the lost Italian Renaissance painter Asimovetti. He was a contemporary of Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Titian. His compositions were static, his use of color derivative, and his humans were all flat. But he was the first person to paint gryphons with blue tinged wings and everybody after painted them that way. He was influential. But you don't put him in the same rank with Da Vinci, Michelangleo and Titian because he's not as good.

The analogy doesn't really work because the idea is more significant in SF than the gryphon on painting. It would be fairer to posit your Asimovetti as someone who, say, was a groundbreaker (or genius, if you prefer) in composition but derivative color and flat humans.

If you don't want to put him in the top tier, you'd have a case. But at the same time, a self-respecting museum wouldn't necessarily be ashamed to show his work.

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

Also, this is my biggest fear as a writer.

And a lot of names on your list are authors that came after Asimov. Of course they're going to try to improve on him and the genre, just like Asimov tried to lift the genre out of the pulp-fiction gutter that it lived in the 30s and 40s.

I agree about self-serving cleverness, but that leaves out those writers who have good ideas AND writing which matches them. It seems to me calling Asimov a good writer because his ideas are good is doing a diservice to truly great Science Fiction writers. To have ideas, prose, characters and plot all on the same level is what makes a great writer--and that shit is HARD.

You might like a ground-breaking plot the best and I may be a sucker for well-rounded characters, and we can enjoy books which work to our own interests, but the REALLY great writers offer the whole enchilada. They may not do it with every book or they may only manage it with one story, but they DO manage it, and I don't think they should be rated the same as a writer who only manages to do part of the job. We can still enjoy that writer, but I think writers who do amazing work shouldget the most accolades because, as I said, that shit is hard.

I think a lot of it is subjective.

I read Asimov's Foundation Triology in high school - in one large gulp I read the whole series straight through, I think in 2 weeks. I have to admit I remember more about the actual experience of reading than the story at this point. But I remember sitting crosslegged on my bed, hunched over, reading until it was physically painful and not putting the books down. Sometimes it wasn't the easiest read for me, but I kept wanting to know where teh story would go.

On the other hand when I tried to read Nine Princes of Amber I just couldn't get into it, it wasn't compelling to me.

Although I keep putting it in mental "try again" book list.

I also think a writer can be vitally important without being great. Asimov is vitally important AND a founding father, and that is a huge accomplishment in itself.

(It should go without saying that I have nothing to say about Asimov or SF as a genre.)

the REALLY great writers offer the whole enchilada

Absolutely. There just aren't that many of them. And there are a whole lot of authors who write really beloved novels and rich characters without being prose innovators.

I also think a writer can be vitally important without being great.

Me, too.

It would be fairer to posit your Asimovetti as someone who, say, was a groundbreaker (or genius, if you prefer) in composition but derivative color and flat humans.

I just now got that there wasn't a real painter named Asimovetti who painted gryphons.

I haven't read any Asimov, but I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't really like him. I tend to like influenced work more than their influences.