[Aulirophile]

Robet Heinlein
Terry Pratchett
Frank Herbert
Neal Stephenson
Orson Scott Card
William Gibson
Vernor Vinge

I'll doubtless think of the other three later. Heinlein is Heinlein, the clarity of thought he put into his books is something I grew up with and influenced me greatly.

Pratchett is one of the best humor as social commentary people I've ever read.

Frank Herbert just... put things together. Systems. If you read between the lines in his Dune series there was so much there, a whole developed and detailed universe with its own history that you could reach in and grab.

Neal Stephenson might, in some ways, be better then Heinlein. What he does in the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon, and a lesser degree in Snow Crash and Diamond Age, is by far some of the most amazing writing I've ever imagined.

Card has a lot of interesting works, mostly religious and philosophical in nature, though I first started reading him because of Ender's Game.

Gibson invented the term "cyberspace." What more needs to be said?

Vinge wrote one really amazing book, A Deepness in the Sky, and some other very good but not, in my opinion, as good stuff, but that one book was good enough to get a mention.

I could probably toss out Neil Gaiman, Lois McMaster Bujold (the Vorkosigan books are fun, but her two most recent fantasy novels are out and out amazing reads), George R.R. Martin (who will make the list if he finishes ASoIF without screwing it up...), Stephen King, etc. Dean Ing is fun to read to. Asimov gets an honorable mention because he's the only person alive who has at least one book in every general category of the dewey decimal system, all of which are very informative in the non-fiction categories.