tooth soup

Okay, so Aditi tagged me to do this quite some time ago, and I recently got a poke by A. R. as well. The idea is to list twenty-five authors that have influenced your writing at one point or another.

Since my memory is such that I couldn’t even begin to think of twenty-five authors, I prompted myself with various stages of my reading ‘career’. So now you’ll get influential children’s, fantasy, comic, science fiction, and literary authors.

As a disclaimer, I wouldn’t say my writing is up to the standards of any of these folks.

Children’s authors:

Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was one of the first authors that I read a reasonably long fiction story of on my own (Matilda, in grade one). As a kid I didn’t have much of an idea of style and technique, I just loved his crazy characters and the plot twists that always had me gasping! Charlie inhereting a chocolate factory, witches that could turn you into mice, a girl who gained telekinetic powers, a washing company composed of a giraffe, a pelican, and a monkey! They were all gentle, moral stories that I just couldn’t put down. Throughout my teens I continued to read Dahl with his collections of short stories that were less suited for children, and I found them just as well crafted and whimsical as ever. Even now, I can’t help but pick up one of his books for a quick afternoon read if I wander past my old bookshelves.

Enid Blyton
Enid Blyton is on the same par as Roald Dahl as far as enthralling my childhood goes, although she nabbed it a bit earlier than Dahl did. Her Magic Faraway Tree series sits in my book shelf still, and there wasn’t a week went by when I used to sit and be thrust along with the Famous Five and Secret Seven clubs. Good, honest, well-written plots with loveable characters and clean fun. She is probably the reason I enjoyed boy scouts so much.

Fantasy authors:

David (and Leigh) Eddings

How many times did I read David Eddings’ various series? Impossible to say. Introduced to me by my best friend Cian, the Eddingses quickly became my very favourite books to read whenever I had nothing else to read, and even when I did. Okay, so they’re not the most complicated of stories, but they’re well-written, character-driven, sword slashing, magic using, drama loving books in which nothing really bad ever happens, and you know who’s going to win from page one. But it doesn’t matter! Because the journey is so much fun. The dry wit and comradeship of the characters always inspired me to seek the same in my friends, and I’m happy to say that reading these books always reminds me of hanging out with my high school (for it was high school when I read these) buddies. Do yourself a favour and put aside your genre prejudice and give these a read on a rainy day.

Stephen Donaldson

The first time I read Stephen Donaldson, I hated him. I was, of course, reading the Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series, one that turns people off his work regularly. If I’m honest, I still haven’t gone back and read the whole thing with more mature eyes, and I should really remedy that one day, since I’ve been told by people with similar taste that they enjoyed it a lot more when they were older. But my love of Donaldson happened first with The Gap series, which is the best example of a melodramatic, well-realised, psychological space opera around. It sucks you in, brutalises you, and thrills until the very end. His second coming was the political fantasy doublet, Mordant’s Need. I’d never really read intrigue fantasy before, and it was, again, very well realised and conceived. One of the greatest challenges in fantasy, if I’m any judge, is to produce worlds that are fundamentally different to ours, but never have it raised as an issue, despite the impossibilities that are flying around and spitting fire. And Donaldson achieves this with an ease that is surprising and enviable. I now know that fantasy can be a very effective mirror, but one that can be distorted to emphasize certain aspects of what it is reflecting. A powerful thought.

Sir Terry Pratchett

Sir Terry Pratchett is responsible for most of my mother’s woes in my earlier years. I met Terry when I was around eleven or twelve years old (actually, it was when he had just released The Last Continent, so it must’ve been when I  was thirteen). I’d read his Diggers! series when I was a wee lad and laughed so hard I just about wet myself. So when I heard he was coming to Midland shopping centre I was pretty enthusiastic to get there. Mum duly obliged and we waited in a queue for what seemed like forever until we got to the front and he was sitting there, much like he appears in the picture above, except probably more jetlagged given Perth’s premier spot out in the Middle of Fucking Nowhere. He asked me what my name was, and Mum, ever protective, started answering for me. Mr. Pratchett (he wasn’t quite a knight yet), calmly but firmly hushed her and said, grinning,  ‘Let him speak for himself.’ I was in awe. And I never looked back as far as speaking for myself went.

Science Fiction authors:

Ray Bradbury

I am an avid amirer of Ray Bradbury’s short stories as much as his novels. Obviously Fahrenheit 451 is a favourite–it’s my firm belief that no-one that reads that book could think of it as anything else–but my favourite body of works by him is by far Quicker Than The Eye, which contains some of the most wistful, delightful short stories with a genre edge that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. To read Bradbury is to read gently the mind of a man that had more ideas, more endless invention than anyone that has ever written.

Isaac Asimov

Well. What is there to say? Speculative fiction never saw the likes of him before and it’ll be a hard task for it to ever do so again. Asimov always awakens in me a sense of how small we are. I know that may not sound like a particularly good thing, but it is. His ideas are so spacious, they pushed me to think of stories as infinite.
Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter is in the same vague league as Asmivo. His ideas are more modern though, and his science is more applicable to what I was learning at the time of reading. It’s not unuusal to see quantum mechanics making realistic, modern appearances in his well-researched speculative stories. His work made me realise that science and creativity (in the form of writing) are not mutually exclusive.

Comic authors:

Alan Moore

The original nutter. Alan Moore may be batshit insane, but at least he’s able to channel it. His various obsessions have resulted in some of the most amazingly convuluted and brilliantly researched graphic novels to grace the comic genre. From Hell, V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, and of course, Watchmen are definitely among my favourites for their brilliant characterisation, dark nature, and effortless world creation. Alan Moore showed me that worlds can be created from scratch, that research is not a dirty word, that comics are valid, that being a complete nutbag isn’t so much of a bad thing if you can pull it off.

Neil Gaiman

Ahh, Neil Gaiman. I could fanboy all day, but I’ll resist. I’m more of a fan of his comic medium work, although I’ll admit a weakness for American Gods. His latest couple of books, Anansi Boys and The Graveyard Book didn’t really strike me so much, but I can appreciate the ideas if not the execution. Gaiman has always inspired me with his ideas that, individually, are straightforward, but which combine and resonate to produce something incredible. It’s that resonation that inspires me every time I pick up his Sandman series, which I’m reading through again in Absolute format at the moment.

Tycho Erasmus Brahe (Jerry Holkins)

Probably the one that non-geeks aren’t going to have heard of. Jerry Holkins is the guy behind the musings of Penny Arcade‘s Tycho Brahe. How has this guy influenced me? His vocabulary. It’s immense. Seeing someone using the words he does (without seeming like a pretentious twat) makes me want to pick up the nearest dictionary and get an edjookashun.

Literary authors:

Actually, literary authors haven’t really influenced me that much yet. So instead of claiming to be influenced by a bunch of guys I’ve only ever read the one novel of, I’m going to just list the remaining authors and their particular book that has inspired me to go and write something, anything:

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

1984, by George Orwell

Fight Club, by Chuck Palanhiuk

Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

The Cheese Monkeys, by Chip Kidd

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Divided Kingdom, by Rupert Thomson

Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler

Each and every one of the above novels struck something in me. The language used, a character presented, a storyline elucidated; whatever it was, it made me want to go write something like it. I think that’s probably as close to the definition of influence as you can likely get. Alrighty, that’s all folks. This post has taken way too long to type up, so I’ll be taking my leave to go and write something :)

No related posts.