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TheTrickster

Who are your literary influences?

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Surely dyed in the (white) wool Wurmians are active consumers of alternative-world fiction (in other words, science fiction, fantasy, space opera etc).  So, who do you read?

 

I am definitely old school;

 

  • Shelley (Mrs)
  • Stevenson
  • Wells
  • Verne
  • Tolkien
  • Orwell

 

Also, 

 

  • Donaldson
  • Feist
  • Wurts
  • Rawn
  • Jordan
  • Modesitt

 

I lean more toward science fiction than fantasy lately, mostly because I find modern fantasy a bit too derivative (I like the earlier stuff of both Donaldson and Feist, but I see very much on whose shoulders they are standing - not that their pedestals would mind that as they in turn openly stood on earlier shoulders still) , I like both space opera and hard SF, but again, old school.  Pick a name from the Golden Age and I have probably got paper with their words on it  🙂.

 

I like the world builders - Niven/Pournelle, Frank Herbert, Peter F Hamilton, Brian Aldiss, David Brin, Kim Stanley Robinson.

 

I tend to wind up reading the very short or the very long.

 

Some notable works I would recommend;

 

Press enter...   by Jack Vance

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream  by Harlan Ellison (better than his "Soldier from Tomorrow" which obviously influenced The Terminator).

-All You Zombies- by Robert Heinlein.

 

Read one of those and then try to get a sound night's sleep.

 

In a class - indeed possibly a genre - of his own was Roger Zelazny.  A master of mind-bendery.

 

 

Edited by TheTrickster

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Heinlein, particularly Friday, The Roads Must Roll, and If This Goes On... - The first for having a solid female protagonist, the second for being a very interesting idea on how highways could work other than the car system we use today, and the third for opening my eyes to how propaganda works. If you had to read just one of these, read the last.

 

Spider Robinson, for all of the Callahan and Lady Calahan books. Stories that use humor in the abstract, and essentially taught me (indirectly) that there's always room for humor, even when things are at their worst. Also for showing me that sex, including kinky sex, can be fun, and does not have to be shameful.

 

Lois McMaster Bujold, for writing fantastic space opera, with characters that are well-developed, flawed (and, in the case of her main protagonist, damaged), and human. And for showing, far better than George Lucas did, that science fiction doesn't have to dwell on the science and technology, that can simply be one element that drives some of the stories. And, again (with Shards of Honor and Barrayar, combined in an omnibus Cordelia's Honor; and also Ethan of Athos), showed me quite well that female protagonists can be strong, competent, and confident (even if Elli Quinn isn't actually the protagonist of Ethan of Athos).

 

Jim Butcher, for showing me that you can write some powerful stories off of some of the most ludicrous concepts (finding out the origin of the Codex Alera series is worth researching... after you've read the series), and again for having well-developed, flawed, and capable protagonists.

 

There's been a half-dozen other writers who have entertained me over the years, but I'm out of time, and none of the others have had the impact of these four.

 

Edit: Additional writers who have been important in my reading catalog over the years: Anne McCaffrey (Harper Hall trilogy especially; the Dragon Riders stuff wasn't as interesting to me), Robert Asprin (for the Myth series), Rick Cook* (for the Wizardry Compiled series), Terry Pratchett (all of his stuff, even the less-popular, non-Discworld stuff like the Bromeliad trilogy), and Rowling, of course (the Potterverse stuff, yes - her sociopolitical books are too dry and dull, IMO). 

 

I don't really care for some of the currently-popular fantasy big-names like Martin, Jordan, and Sanderson. 

 

Classic writers that have also been in my wheelhouse over the years include Tolkien (of course), Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, and even a little Orwell. 

 

Special mention goes to DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and Archie Comics for my entertainment over the years, even if they so brazenly stole their stories from themselves, thinking that the readers would never notice. 

 

* I mention Cook specifically because the Wizardry Compiled series will never be finished. Cook had some severe medical issues in 2000 that fundamentally changed him. He was looking at a half-completed book in the series, and just could not get himself into the mindset that inspired his writing. He wasn't that writer any more, and had no idea how to get back to that. So he ended up releasing the half-completed book online, and moved on with his life. It doesn't appear that he's been able to write anything else since then, either. 

Edited by Nekojin
Expanding the list
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Well, at least two of us can read, then.  🙂

 

Comics:-  I read TMNT before they weren't cool.  It was heavy satire played straight.  I also read a lot of Phantom in my youth.  Well, a lot of different mags, but there wasn't a lot of variety in the story.

 

Your mention of Cook changing made me think of one of the authors I mentioned above.  I won't name him, so I don't need to beat around the bush about it.  I don't know if he changed (I know he was going through some rough stuff at the time) or if it was simply a new publisher giving him a freer hand, but there was a distinct change in his style (not for the better IMO) from one book to the next.  It was particularly noticeable because there were continuing characters from the story that had gone before who reflected an altogether more cynical POV.  I had started to have some dealings with him through online newsgroups etc, and noticed not only a certain combativeness but sometimes some really aggressive belligerence.  There was a really long character attack on an Australian contributor for using a "u" where an American would not.  Words like "scum" were used and the author basically said this guy was a useless waste of oxygen.  Several of us pointed out that we thought he may have got his wires crossed (he may have been responding to something else entirely) and while there was grumbling acknowledgement that this was the case, there was never an apology.    We dubbed the contributor "the U guy" after that.  I found I couldn't look at that author's stuff the same way, though and never read any more of his work.

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I really enjoyed Horror stories when I first left school, Lovecraft I found was hard reading but really enjoyed the Cthulhu Mythos and Brian Lumley had some great reads.

 

King had some good books but was always very hit and miss for me, he was either very good or very bad but the British author James Herbert enjoyed many of his books with the Rats being one that sticks out.

 

Then of course I enjoyed my fair share of Sci-fi and fantasy books with a big favourite of mine being the dragon lance chronicles and steve Jackson's roleplay books helped pass many hours.

 

Its hard to pin point who had the greatest influence on me as I think the style and type of book i enjoyed changed with my mood, but reading got me into roleplaying games, which lead to computer games which lead to wurm many many years later, so thank the lord for reading :)

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Another vote for Terry Pratchett.  Also, if you enjoyed his style, you might like Dave Freer. 

 

Guy Gavriel Kay is an AMAZING author, although his works can be a bit harrowing. 

 

I loved the Dresden Files (Jim Butcher), although the TV series was massively disappointing.

 

For something a little different, try Tales of the Otori by Lian Hearn - historical fantasy in ancient Japan that makes you feel like you're really there. 

 

Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series is great, but probably won't ever get finished - book 4 has been delayed something like 7 years so far.  Not getting taken in by another Robert Jordan...

 

I'm currently reading C.S. Friedman - really well written, although a bit heavy going.  I particularly recommend This Alien Shore.

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On 10/6/2020 at 7:37 AM, TheTrickster said:

Niven/Pournelle, Frank Herbert, Peter F Hamilton, Brian Aldiss, David Brin, Kim Stanley Robinson

 

On 10/6/2020 at 7:37 AM, TheTrickster said:

Harlan Ellison

 

On 10/6/2020 at 7:37 AM, TheTrickster said:

Robert Heinlein

 

Yes, absolutely! All of those - and many more; don't forget Asimov, Clarke (!), Farmer, Gibson, LeGuin, Lem, Pohl, Silverberg, Simmons, Wells (of course), and Wyndham - to name just a few.

 

But if you really are into classic SF (best 70s-style) you should definitely read James Tiptree Jr.! She (yes, "James" was a lady :)) wrote some of the best short stories I ever read! (And I think I read them all...)

 

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10 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

Comics:-  I read TMNT before they weren't cool.  It was heavy satire played straight.  I also read a lot of Phantom in my youth.  Well, a lot of different mags, but there wasn't a lot of variety in the story.

I was still an avid weekly comic-shop attendee when TMNT #1 hit the stores (and yes, I know how that dates me). I thought it was ridiculous, and at that time, I thought that black-and-white comics was lazy and boring. By the time it hit issue #6, there was enough talk about it that I realized I'd missed the boat, and possibly missed out on a high-value comic in my collection. It's easy to say that the first few stories of TMNT were rough - because they were. But they improved rapidly.

 

My opinion on black-and-white comics changed when I read an indie X-Men parody titled XMEN (pronounced "Zhmen"). It was too good to need coloring. After that, I started looking at some of the other indie stuff like Usagi Yojimbo and Judge Dredd. Somehow, I missed both Hellboy and Cerebus. 

Edited by Nekojin
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Let's see
Robert Jordan
Brandon Sanderson

Terry Pratchet

Douglas Adams
Neil Gaiman

Jim Butcher

Sara Douglass
Randall Munroe

 

And all of the black library writers

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Have currently gotten sucked into the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas, but I'm all over the place for books. 

 

For Audiobooks, love mystery/thriller:
David Baldacci is excellent for this

Alex Patterson

John Grisham

 

Agree with Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman

Also enjoy John Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice series (and the Brotherband Chronicles offshoot, into the early years books as well). 

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I may be missing out, but no audio books for me.  I don't even like to read e-books.  Ink on paper for me, all the way.

 

I also have to say, I never read Pratchett.   I don't know why, I just never felt the pull.  Same with George R R Martin. I had read a short or two from him, I think and nothing grabbed me.  Not like Zelazny, whose writing I would actively look hunt down.

 

Sci Fi short fiction has always drawn me in.  I have boxes and boxes of anthologies and magazines.

 

Fantasy-wise, I will always consider Tolkien the master of the "modern" fantasy epic.  Both Tolkien and Zelazny in my opinion prove Chekhov definitively wrong.  Both tell better stories by having elements of a larger, unshared story; elements that do not advance the narrative but make the world being narrated more full than just the story in the frame  To Chekhov's gun they would have added a robin with a bandaged leg, an unfinished letter and a small blue box; and never explain any of them.

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On 10/7/2020 at 2:11 AM, Nekojin said:

Jim Butcher, for showing me that you can write some powerful stories off of some of the most ludicrous concepts

 

The key antagonist in The Legacy of Heorot by NIven/Pournelle/Barnes was based on an African frog.  😆

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On 10/6/2020 at 7:37 AM, TheTrickster said:
  • Wells
  • Verne
  • Tolkien
  • Orwell
  • Frank Herbert

 

21 hours ago, Yaga said:

Asimov, Clarke, LeGuin, Simmons, Wells

 

10 hours ago, Retrograde said:

Terry Pratchet

Douglas Adams
Neil Gaiman

 

Hard not to think about Alan E. Poe, Edgard R. Burroughs, Ray Bradbury and Bram Stoker as well.

 

I'd also like to mention David Eddings, a lesser known modern fantasy writter than Tolkien but with way more enticing worlds and characters.

 

Far from being Wurm related but the work of James S.A. Corey (The Expanse) or Richard Morgan (Altered Carbon) are quite interesting as well (far more than their TV adaptation).

 

And obviously the many comics around, specially those made by Vertigo (Lucifer being a prime example) or any of Frank Miller work.

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Oh, I also enjoyed the Eragon series by Christopher Paolini

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On 10/10/2020 at 4:42 AM, Odynn said:

... or any of Frank Miller work.

No. Frank Miller's stuff has good storylines, but hugely misogynistic tendencies in everything he touches. I have yet to see a single story he's written that didn't have women as, pardon the phrasing, "whores or warriors, or both." (Borrowed from a critique blog).


Spoilered, because I really don't want this thread to turn into an argument on Frank Miller.

Spoiler

 

I was enjoying Dark Knight Returns until Selina Kyle was introduced. She gave up being Catwoman to do what? Oh, be a Madame for a whorehouse. 😑 The story would not have changed significantly if he'd had her doing anything else with her post-rooftop-running shenanigans. Compounded when he was given control of Year One. Pre-Catwoman Selina Kyle is... again, a prostitute (a man-hating dominatrix, no less), who ends up murdering her pimp. This goes against everything that had ever been written about Selina Kyle, basically spitting in the face of Bob Kane and Bill Finger, the creators of both Batman and Catwoman. Catwoman was different from all of the other members of Batman's roster of villains, because she wasn't a murderer. Fortunately, neither of these stories are now canon - Year One has since been retconned out, and DKR was always an Elseworlds story.

 

It's easy to see this in his other big-name works. Sin City has a long line of women who are both prostitutes and assassins. And even when they aren't explicitly prostitutes, he oversexualizes women characters left and right. His writing cues for artists, when doing a scene with Vicki Vale (of the Superman cast), was to hyper-focus on her bra.

 

 

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18 minutes ago, Nekojin said:

Frank Miller's stuff has good storylines, but hugely misogynistic tendencies in everything he touches

*cough*John Norman*cough*

 

😳

 

Edit:  NOT mentioning him to endorse or in anyway attribute influence.  It was just that the phrase "hugely misogynistic" in the context of writers induced an immediate association.

Edited by TheTrickster
diclaimer

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Brandon Sanderson has kept me entertained for the past couple years with the Stormlight Archive and Mistborn series.

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18 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

*cough*John Norman*cough*

 

😳

 

Edit:  NOT mentioning him to endorse or in anyway attribute influence.  It was just that the phrase "hugely misogynistic" in the context of writers induced an immediate association.

Yes and no. IMO, there's a difference between feeding* a fetish - which is what the Gor novels do - and being simply misogynistic. I'm not sure exactly where the lines are for what's acceptable for discussion in these forums, but I'm betting that discussing the Gor novels will cross that line pretty quickly. That said, there's three counterpoints to Norman being misogynistic.

 

1.) Don't assume that a section of an artist's work is a direct reflection of the artist's actual mindset and desires. Otherwise, you'd have to assume that, say, the musician Sting has the hots for preteen/teenage girls, is suicidal, and is a creepy stalker. 

2.) The other books that Norman wrote outside of the Gor series don't have the same psychology/philosophy. (And note that Norman was a professor of psychology before he started writing)

3.) There are ample examples within the Gor books of the roles being reversed - a woman in power holding male slaves in similar fashion, something that wouldn't happen if they were purely misogynistic screeds. 

 

* Or you could call it pandering, and you would not be wrong. 

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51 minutes ago, Nekojin said:

Yes and no. IMO, there's a difference between feeding* a fetish - which is what the Gor novels do - and being simply misogynistic. I'm not sure exactly where the lines are for what's acceptable for discussion in these forums, but I'm betting that discussing the Gor novels will cross that line pretty quickly. That said, there's three counterpoints to Norman being misogynistic.

 

1.) Don't assume that a section of an artist's work is a direct reflection of the artist's actual mindset and desires. Otherwise, you'd have to assume that, say, the musician Sting has the hots for preteen/teenage girls, is suicidal, and is a creepy stalker. 

2.) The other books that Norman wrote outside of the Gor series don't have the same psychology/philosophy. (And note that Norman was a professor of psychology before he started writing)

3.) There are ample examples within the Gor books of the roles being reversed - a woman in power holding male slaves in similar fashion, something that wouldn't happen if they were purely misogynistic screeds. 

 

* Or you could call it pandering, and you would not be wrong. 

Good points.  

 

I am probably treating the persona as the person.  I can't recall if he used the Norman nom de plume for other works.  I guess I am showing that I have indeed been influenced by Tolkien, who insisted he was not trying to impart any message in LOTR beyond the story but nevertheless what he believed would inevitably influence what he wrote.  

 

In my younger days, I was a voracious consumer of fiction and I think it was in a job-lot of second-hand paperbacks that I came across a Gor novel.  I wasn't far in when I wondered how it got published.  I finished it, because I am stubborn, but found it harrowing.

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Note that I'm not saying that Gorman wasn't misogynistic, just that what you've seen of him isn't the whole story. He was very much a man of his era, and the Gor books themselves are based loosely on the John Carter of Mars books (Edgar Rice Burroughs), which is just as much of a male power fantasy series with fairly purple prose. ;)

 

But then, virtually all of the pulp-era sci-fi and fantasy books (and before) are, when you drill it down to the basics, male power fantasies. Very, very few female protagonists, and the female support characters are often either beautiful and interested in the protagonist, or already wed, or old and/or ugly. Norman's stuff just took it to an extreme that paid well. 

Edited by Nekojin
typo
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18 minutes ago, Nekojin said:

the female support characters are often either beautiful and interested in the protagonist, or already wed, or old and/or ugly.

 

Dickens, anyone?

 

 

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Thoreau, Poe, Verne, Wordsworth, Plath, Whitman, Plato, Popper, Nietzsche, Henley...seriously...there is a lot. I spent most of my youth reading and I do not regret. 😉 

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hah, well, never really noticed that about Miller when I was going through the comics, but yah... indeed after some remembering, you ain't wrong... welp... ain't the first time I like someone overall work but they are d***s.

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On 10/10/2020 at 4:37 AM, TheTrickster said:

 

The key antagonist in The Legacy of Heorot by NIven/Pournelle/Barnes was based on an African frog.  😆

If you don't mind the spoiler... 

 

Spoiler

The Codex Alera series was created because of a writing challenge from Butcher's university's writing class. The challenge was to take two completely disparate concepts, and combine them. His two writing elements? Pokémon and the Lost Roman Legion. But he did it so smoothly that it's hard to recognize either unless you're actively looking for them. 

 

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