Are Golden Age Writers Worth It For New SF Readers?

What's a "new" SF reader?

Someone who's young and reading SF is probably going to start out on Harry Potter or contemporary young adult fiction. By the time they're reading adult stuff -- be it current cutting-edge authors or golden age classics -- they're not going to be "new" to the genre and its conventions.

Someone who is coming to SF for the first time as a mature reader may well have difficulty handling the internal dialogue within contemporary adult SF, as it has been evolving for decades -- but there should be no problem starting with the likes of H. G. Wells or Jules Verne (recognized literary classics by those outside the genre) or 1984 or Brave New World and working inward from there.

Either way, I figure it's unlikely that anyone truly "new" to the genre is going to start with the likes of Asimov or Heinlein or Clarke today (which is not to say they they should be ignored, but that's a whole different argument).

Yes, although it's a mixed bag. I've found all of the Asimov stuff to hold up well.

Heinlein is hit or miss. I loved Heinlein's "The Moon is Harsh Mistress" (one of my favorites), but I found "Stranger in a Strange Land" to be utterly full of sexist behaviour that I struggled through it.

I can say for sure: definitely Clarke and definitely Asimov.

hmm, should new painting viewers bother with rembrandt, michelangelo, caravaggio, da vinci, etc?

um, yes!

asimov, bradbury, clarke, huxley, etc are worth reading no matter what century you're in.