Best science fiction story of all-time nomination thread

[ QUOTE ]
Hijack :

Who do you guys think is best? Clark, Asimov, or Heinlein? I am going with Asimov but they're all very close.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heinlein for me, but that's because I like character driven stories. Asimov was great, but his was more about the story and less about the characters. The foundation series is a good example as hundreds, even thousands of years pass over the series. It's not until later foundation books he has real character, rather than just plot, development. Various robot books are often more about the philosophical issues about sentient robots than the characters themselves. Not a knock on him, just a style difference.

Heinlein has other issues, but I liked his characters.

However, for me, all 3 of them pale in comparison to Robert Forward. He had incredible characters, human and alien, as well as very hard-core sci-fi backing up everything.

I very much like Julian May's pliocene exiles series, but again, very character driven. The sci-fi part is basically fluff/background.

Card's Ender's Game I also thought was great. Again though, it's character driven whereas the sci-fi is mostly just setting.