5. Frank Herbert
Franklin Patrick Herbert is a commercially successful and critically claimed writer. Although he is originally a short story writer, he is known for the Dune Universe, which is depicted in a series of six novels. It includes many issues familiar in modern society such as intersection of power, politics and religion. The first Dune novel won him a Nebula Award in 1965 and shared a Hugo Award in 1966. Dune is considered an epic work, because Frank Herbert managed to create a complete world; essentially a sci-fi version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings universe. As a soft science fiction, technology in Dune is less dominant, allowing Herbert to explore the future of society instead the future of technology.