re: I've actually corresponded with Fred Hoyle.
I wrote Dr Hoyle when the steady state theory was still in vogue, and I was in agreement with him on it, until the evidence started pointing the other way. But Hoyle was not a flake, and no one ever called him that. The jury is out on panspermia, and he may have been wrong on cosmology, but he pretty much founded the fields of stellar structure and evolution and nucleogenesis. His reputation in astronomy is secure.
By the way, I was 13 years old, and he very graciously answered me with a long and inspiring letter which, unfortunately, I lost years ago.