Even though I only like his juvenile books (his adult fiction, with all its incest and libertinism and irreligion and speechifying, leaves me cold), I consider RAH to be the best science fiction writer of all time, and I am a better person for having read him in my youth.My take exactly. I loved Heinlein in my youth, but as time went on and he kept writing, I found myself more and more uninterested and eventually just turned off. I tolerated Asimov for considerably longer, but eventually got tired of his "message." But they both got me reading SF, and while I'm no longer a SF fanatic, I still enjoy good SF as much as any good literature. I credit these two with that.
I confess... the very first book I ever purchased for myself was a Ray Bradbury collection titled Golden Apples of the Sun. It was an Avon paperback, and it cost me 75 cents. From then on, there was no turning back.