kerravonsen | Meme Sheep

Author influence meme from various people:

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets [and comic book authors] 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.

1. C.S. Lewis (Narnia stories)
2. J. R. R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings)
3. Andrew Lang (coloured fairy books)

These three authors had an influence on me before I could read, because my father would read these books to us. He also recorded The Hobbit, the Narnia stories and The Lord of the Rings on reel-to-reel tape and we would listen to them in the summer holidays, so I know them almost word-for-word.
Technically I suppose Andrew Lang isn't an author, since he compiled and edited the Fairy Stories rather than writing them himself, but it still counts.

4. G. K. Chesterton

My favourite by him isn't his more famous "The Man Who Was Thursday" but the less well known "The Napoleon of Notting Hill", which epitomises one of my favourite themes: the familiar made strange, and also a touch of "reading about an enchanted wood makes all woods a bit enchanted".

5. Patricia McKillip

Beautiful atmospheric prose.

6. Anne McCaffrey

The first author I read who wrote a trilogy (the first three Dragon books) where the middle book wasn't the weakest book. Pity she burnt out later.

7. Andre Norton

Someone gave me a book of hers for my 11th birthday and I never looked back. Sure, her later stuff is weak, but her good stuff is bursting with wonder and heroism.

8. John Wyndham
9. Isaac Asimov
10. Robert Heinlein

Good, solid SF of differing kinds. Wyndham is thoughtful about social issues, Asimov is more scientific, and Heinlein is a mixed-bag, with earlier stuff being good solid adventure and his later stuff just being weird.

11. Rosemary Suttcliff
12. E.J McGraw
13. Paul Brickhill
14. Gillian Bradshaw

My favourite historical authors who wrote in some of my favourite eras.
Gillian Bradshaw is my favourite of them all, and she doesn't write just historicals.
Suttcliff wrote some great Roman Empire historicals.
E.J. McGraw wrote "The Golden Goblet" which was a great Ancient Egypt historical.
Paul Brickhill has his awesome WWII stories.

15. Joan Vinge

"The Snow Queen" has an amazing synthesis of fairy tale and full-on SF epic that I don't think anyone else has managed to do with such seamless ease.

Of course, if I'd taken more than fifteen minutes, or actually perused my bookshelves, I would probably have given different answers.