[frui]

Hi krapo, thank you for the list. I am an ardent SF fan. My favourite writer is Frank Herbert. I'd whole heartedly recommend the Dune series to everyone here. No words can express my admiration towards this monument.

Yet I'd think SF might be a little hard to be included in the category I am persuing in this thread. Great SF must deal with a lot of matters: culture, technology, religion, philosophy, etc. While plot is stll very important in SF, it is not of utmost concern, and its speed has to be sacrificed now and then for the building of the world. For example, even if Dune does have one of the most complicated and most satisfying stories I have ever read in any genre of fictions, it is slow. Slow in its best sense. Many of the passages have to be devoted to the history of the known universe, the ecology of Dune, and the religion of Freman. Make no mistake, fans of Dune, including me, will never think of this world building as boring.

Michael Crichton might look like an exception. He is fast indeed. But this is not without a price. His world is floppy. He is more a thriller writer than a SF writer. And somehow he can't blend the human factor with technology well. The plot is fast, but weak.

Frankly I think Dan Brown is a better writer than Michael Crichton. This is not a comparison of orange and appple. They do have something in common. We can't tell if Tolstoy or Shakespear is better, but thriller writers are comparable. They use more or less the same tricks, cliche, rules, and conventions. Only some play the game better.