@kewpie saidSimilar here. More a fan of pulp-era SF up through the 1970s, and probably ending with Neuromancer in 1984. All the top writers had their own distinct flavors. Never read much of Stapledon, but his timelines certainly expanded my teenage imagination.
I was never a fan either, although I read an awful lot of SF in the pre-fantasy days, when it actually was still SF. Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson. The good old days.