Robert Heinlein once posed a question:

[KitSileya]

10. I never liked "Stranger in a Strange Land" to be honest.

My favorites were his very last books - Friday, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, and Numbers of the Beast. I don't know whether it was his TIA that had an impact on the way he wrote (detrimental impact according to those who loved his juveniles) or whether it was age, but I find those books a lot more philosophical and fun. Really gets into questions like what makes a human human, and what is the universe, and morality.

I think that unfortunately John Campbell pretty much had sole power over what kind of sci-fi was published in the seminal period of the 40s and 50s, and he chose men like Heinlein, Asimov and their ilk - libertarian, intelligent, and men. They got their breakthroughs, an went on to become the grand old men of sci-fi in the 70s and 80s, but there was no diversity, no women, no persons of color, no political progressives. That means that most of the classic books from that era have the same deficiencies. Not to mention, we still see hostility towards female-centered, minority-centered sci-fi, as witnessed by the recent Hugo awards ballot-stuffing scandal.