An interesting correlated effect of perceiving someone as awesome is the “we’re not worthy” starstruck reaction to meeting the object of your admiration in person. And as Eliezer mentions, you often find reality diverges from the perception that you had. I noticed that a number of bloggers that attended the SXSW conference expressed surprise at the amount of cognitive dissonance that they encountered both in meeting other bloggers whose work they admired, and when admirers of theirs exhibited starstruck behaviors.
I find that in the rare instance where I meet somebody whose work I admire in person, I find myself deliberately suppressing any untoward fanboyish behaviors. I do believe in expressing honest and heartfelt admiration, but gushing and fawning are too much. Maybe I need to devise some sort of metric to calibrate the appropriate expression of admiration… :)
I’ll also cast my vote for most hard sci-fi. My exceptionally fundamentalist parents tried to keep me from reading fiction of any sort, particularly sci-fi and fantasy. Once I managed to get my own library card it was all over pretty quickly. In particular I recall being impressed by Heinlein’s protagonist’s stubborn individualism and resistance to dogma.