Sci-Fi / Fantasy for an extreme snob

I love the genres of sci-fi and fantasy. It's interesting to see how people adhere to a different set of rules and what their lives are like.

I despise most of the sci-fi and fantasy I read, though. I swear the genres attract authors with no life experience who are unable to say anything sincere or meaningful, or just fail to wield language in any engaging way.

Modern authors are usually the biggest offenders at this. There's always a Deus Ex Machina saving the day, most characters are a walking set of tropes at best and an empty shell with no personality at worst.
There are constant wish fulfillments, contrived conveniences, self-inserts, or writers treating a book like their personal D&D tabletop campaign and inserting 10 pages of wiki on how the powers of the protagonist work.

Most of the time, though, the book is just a collection of events with no story behind it.

I recently switched to reading classics like Shakespeare and Dostoevsky. Those might be harder to read, but at least you can see the author cared about what he wrote.

Do I sound like a hopeless elitist bastard? I'm sorry, I swear I tried not to be, but I couldn't.

I think Tolkien is good. I even think Martin is good. You can can say the guy is lazy and vain, and you'd be right, but at least his writing is on point. Although I don't find his earlier works to be as engaging.

A number of older authors are great, like Bradbury or Belyaev.

I think Stephen King is hit or miss.

I tried Annihilation trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. The guy's language is insane, he does have a way with words, but the story is just a nothing burger, he clearly didn't know where to go with this one.

I tried The Blade Itself by Abercrombie and couldn't get past the first book. I think everything except Inquisitor chapters was very silly and amateur.

I tried the first Mistborn trilogy by Sanderson and it's the finest comedy, I swear. It starts with the original premise that a prophesied hero didn't have a plot armor and failed, and then we get protagonist(s) succeeding due to a severe case of plot armor.

Couldn't finish a single book by Zelazny, as I found the guy was more interested in the setting of the world and it's mythology, yet his characters felt flat and uninspired.

I know that I'm not much familiar with the modern landscape and suspect there's a number of great books and authors that I just don't know about. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. Or just say that I'm a hopeless snob, that also works, I guess.