The Impenetrable Wall being me, I decided it would be fun to give everyone (I suppose everyone can sometimes translate as no one) an idea of the writers whose wordsmithing has inspired me since a rather young age. That is to say, I try to emulate (both consciously and subconsciously) the way these individuals have guided their implements of creation and chaos. What magical forces did they hold sway over their everflowing wands of ebon pools, and other such rubbish. Of course, I’m not trying to mimic these guys, I’m just drawn to their prose, and I aspire to be just as eloquent and proficient as they were/are. I’m not sure what originally attracted me to these artisans of language. All I know is I kept coming back. So now, without further adieu, I present to you The List…
- Stephen King (even to this day, I sometimes wonder if his stories are real)
- Ray Bradbury (not sure where I’d be without this guy)
- Raymond Chandler (people don’t realize how timeless his manuscripts are, despite being set in the ’30s and ’40s)
- William Gibson (his writing is the epitome of cool)
- Jules Verne
- J.R.R. Tolkien (when I discovered he was a linguist, it suddenly all made sense)
- Arthur Miller
- Ernest Hemingway
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Arthur C. Clarke
- Edgar Allan Poe
- George Orwell
- Harold Pinter
- Robert Frost
- Herman Melville
- Shakespeare (I’m serious)
- H. G. Wells
- Philip K. Dick
- Richard Connell
- Mary Shelley
- Thomas Jefferson
- Douglas Adams (er…)
- Samuel Clemens
- R.A. Montgomery, Edward Packard, and Jay Leibold of Choose Your Own Adventure fame (and yes, if you had walked into my bedroom when I was ten, you would have seen IT, The Hobbit, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, etc. shuffled like a deck of cards into a bunch of CYOA books)
- Gary Grady, Raymond Edwards, and Suzanne Goldberg who created The Consulting Detective
- Robert E. Howard
- H.P. Lovecraft
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Charles Schulz
- Abraham Lincoln
- Quentin Tarantino (he’s such a good writer, while watching his films I can see the dialogue written out in my head)
- Neil Gaiman (just absolutely amazing, he must have sprung out one night from one of my sleeping illusions and immediately began writing the dreams within my dreams)
- Alan Moore (The Watchmen, anyone? Or how about, V is for Vendetta)
- Alan Dean Foster
- Todd McFarlane
- Roy Thomas
- Mike Baron (this is the guy who got me hooked on The Punisher)
- Stan Lee
- John Byrne
- Jim Starlin
- Mary Jo Duffy
- Archie Goodwin
- Everyone’s name I don’t remember who wrote for Epic Illustrated and Heavy Metal (grouping such an amazing slew of writers like I just did is of a diservice to them, every one of which had just as much an impact on me as everyone else listed here)
- Jack London
- Rod Serling
- The Implementors of Infocom Steve Meretzky, Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Stu Galley, Michael Berlyn, and Brian “Professor” Moriarty
- The Two Guys from Andromeda Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy
- Bill Watterson
- And, in more ways than he’ll ever know, Ryan “Neighbor of the Beast” Bane.