Robert Heinlein has patrimonial claims on fifty per cent of the good scifi ever written, and deserves more credit than he's gotten for his anthropological observations and his studies of the mating rituals and defense behavbiors of homo sapiens sapientes.

That said, I think you guys have said it all, except I didn't see Poisonwood Bible authoress Barbara Kingsolver on the list, and she is a fo' shuah don't miss.

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