We have authors who will emerge as our greats, I'm sure.  Card, Bear, Kress, LeGuin.  Or Scalzi, Bear (the other Bear) and Doctorow and Stross.  Vinge, for sure.  I could go on.  So that's one question and answer.  A slight subgenre twist produces different lists. There are plenty of excellent authors to populate best of lists with.

And sure, we're living in a golden age.  We have rocket racers and rocket men and rocket women (although no rocket packs).  We have so much stuff in space there's surely no one decent inventory, and we are  poised to find life here or planets that could have life elsewhere.  What better time to be alive?  It just measn we have to work harder to find the wow factor in our fiction.