Isaac Asimov
One of the Big Three of Golden Age SF.
Golden Age SF
The Campbell-era boom of the 1940s and 50s: competent engineers, big ideas, galactic empires and a magazine culture that built the modern genre.
The authors (6)
Alfred Bester
The proto-New-Wave and proto-cyberpunk in one package: Gibson, Moorcock and Delany all name him as the spark.
Robert A. Heinlein
The first SF writer to crack the big general-fiction magazines and bestseller lists, and the genre's most influential craftsman.
Clifford D. Simak
The genre's great humanist.
E. E. 'Doc' Smith
The founder of space opera.
Jack Williamson
A bridge from the Gernsback pulps to the modern field who kept evolving for eight decades.
Essential books, oldest first (6)
The Humanoids
The definitive 'benevolent AI catastrophe' — the alignment problem stated in 1947 with a clarity AI researchers still cite.
I, Robot
Established the Three Laws, science fiction's most influential ethical framework for machines, and replaced the Frankenstein-robot with the engineering problem.
Foundation
Cornerstone of the future-history tradition; Hugo for Best All-Time Series (1966).
City
Winner of the International Fantasy Award (1953) and a cornerstone of pastoral SF; Jenkins is the genre's most touching robot this side of Asimov.
The Demolished Man
Winner of the first-ever Hugo Award for Best Novel (1953).
The Caves of Steel
The template SF-mystery hybrid and origin of fiction's first great human/robot buddy partnership; Baley and Daneel's successors staff half of modern SF television.