It never fails to amaze me how well "old school" science fiction authors do in these surveys, but that does lead me to wonder who votes in the surveys.
CBC Books announced Top 10 Science Fiction Writers (as chosen by you) on October 1 and the top three writers were Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Sawyer.
Unlike Herbert and Asimov, Sawyer is still very much among us and writing. Most of the writers in the list are dead. We'll probably see no more books from them, except the occasional posthumous publication of early works (such as Roger Zelazny and J.R.R. Tolkien.
On the one hand, I'm glad to see writers whose works I have enjoyed throughout my life remain popular, but I'm also very conscious of the fact that some generations hang on to habits that are not passed on to others. It would be nice to see one of these "top ten" surveys publish some demographic data.
An author's true impact can only be measured by the number of generations that admire his work. That is why William Shakespeare remains one of the top-selling and among the most admired of all authors in the English language -- there are people who truly appreciate his creativity and writing. His plays go on and on.
Some writers you would probably never read if you were not required to do so in high school and college. I would consider academic critical longevity to be both a sign of success and failure. It marks success because what you wrote rises above so many other potential works that could be used to teach literature. It marks failure if people only remember you because they had to read your books in high school or college.
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