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Trevor_Blake comments on Who are some of the best writers in history? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Kim Stanley Robinson. Seldom-changing human conditions (love, family, aging, conflict) projected into science fiction settings, science fiction settings used to project in convincing ways the near future based on existing tools and events.
The Three Californias
The Mars Trilogy
Antarctica (1997)
Science in the Capital
It doesn't make sense to me that everyone I know hasn't read The Mars Trilogy several times. KSR has written many books before and after these, I find these the best written and the most relevant for readers of LW.
I read Red Mars, and had to struggle just to finish the first book. Had no desire to read any further. I recall it being a whole lot of ham-fisted social commentary and not much of actual value.
I can definitely see why the Mars Trilogy isn't on everyone's multiple-read list. The premise that they wouldn't have sorted out more of the philosophy of the expedition while still on the ground is shaky. The premise that they'd send a bunch of scientists with little in the way of a command structure is credence-breaking. The way so many scientific developments come out of these scientists on Mars who have to spend so much time just staying alive as opposed to the dozens of millions of scientists and engineers on Earth who can pay others to keep them alive is absurd.
At that point, the odd gratuitous sex scene or scientific oddity (windmills to run electrical resistive heaters? multiple-meter-thick beanstalks?) is barely a blip on the radar.