Here’s the latest one of the quiz virus things to hit my mailbox. It’s a nice cop-out from having to think up an original topic; I can just answer the questions and call it a blog entry. I especially enjoy that the instructions set a concrete time limit and specifically discourage any deep thought. I promise to obey both the letter and spirit of these instructions.
Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.
- JRR Tolkien.
If I have to explain… - Richard Halliburton.
A real-life adventurer. Everyone should read his ‘Book of Marvels‘ at the proper age. At least, that’s what I keep telling my kids… - Fritz Leiber.
Trashy fantasy pulp fiction that I couldn’t get enough of as a twelve-year-old. - Whoever wrote all those Tom Swift books.
I don’t know why this popped into my head, and I guess I’m not allowed to think about it too long. I didn’t read many of these, but they set the standard for hard-core bullshit science fiction for years to come. - Thomas Pynchon.
Of course. - Richard Brautigan.
I don’t have time to explain how awesomely awesome his awesome writing is. He writes like Pynchon with a page budget. - Ursula K. Le Guin.
I liked the EarthSea concept very, very much. Except for the last two books, especially the last one, which is remarkably horrible and undermines everything that came before. Still, it was a good twenty-year run. - P.G. Wodehouse.
This requires no explanation. - Neal Stephenson.
‘Snowcrash‘ and, to a slightly lesser extent ‘A young lady’s illustrated primer‘ are masterpieces. You should go read them right now. I’ll wait. - Anthony Trollope.
Someone told me I should like his writings, and perhaps that why I did. I was impressionable for a few moments, during sophomore year in high school. - Jack Kerouac.
Let’s have some fun here, shall we? - T.S. Eliot.
I kinda liked some of his poems. - Stephen King.
I read the first part of ‘The Dark Tower‘ when it was published in Fantasy and Science Fiction back in 1978, or some such, and thought it was great and wanted more. Unfortunately, I didn’t make note of the author, and therefore it took about twenty years for me to figure out that there were more books. It took King almost twenty years to finish the story, however, so it all worked out nicely. Unfortunately, the final book should never have been written. (Stephen, you might want to have a chat with Ursula about the temptation to try to wrap everything up nicely with a bow on it–it’s seems to be a really bad idea.)
Well, I’m out of time and ideas.
Those are all very good authors.
1. Robert Heinlein. He taught me that space travel was fun! And that it was ok if girls don’t like you.
2. Isaac Asimov. The robots, of course. And Foundation. I dreamed of living on a solid metal planet that was one city. Now I see that it would be a lot like New York. Been there, done that. Not so great.
3. Jack Vance. I love weirdness. Jack is weird. And can’t stop writing. So I can’t stop reading. His “Moon Moth” was an early hit with me, and I was fascinated by the idea of a world where you weren’t allowed to speak except through complex clicking instruments.
4. Ray Bradbury. We had one of his scary short stories in grade school, and I scared myself to death reading it. After that I kept scaring myself on his short stories. Fahrenheit 451 spooked me. Sci-fi introduced me (sneakily) to political misgivings, the thought that there was more to my country than The Pledge of Allegiance.
5. Ohhhh, a bunch more. Harry Harrison and the Death World series. The idea that our behavior is key in how the world appears to us. A.E. Van Voght. Weird, cynical, a negative view of a hostile universe. C.S. Lewis, makes God seem like a rational idea. Nice and confusing. Andre Norton, full of grand ideas and not a single ending. Umberto Eco, for documenting a very difficult concept in Foucault’s Pendulum.
Out of time.
Comment by alendar — November 8, 2010 @ 11:02 am