What book, books, authors, besides the obvious, have been influential?
Thank the odd gods for the inter-webs and electronic tubes, there’s always something new about old stuff.
It was a dark time in my life, perhaps part of an influence of a number of elements, I still remember, the answer was reading a lot of books. The one bookstore was close, and it had rack of Science Fiction, as it was called at the time. The Bertram Chandler stuff was released – or re-released – at the time. Pulp fiction, built a library of the stuff. Carried it around, that library, for years and years.
That particular author had a way, a nautical bearing, it was, as if, the waves were gently lapping at the prow of the space ship.
The sea-faring source, at one time, written on tramp steamers plying the Pacific waves, that’s an obvious hook. A second theme, the author was Australian. The center of the universe was not America. Quaint notion, that.
Formative fiction, really pulp, but good, even excellent, at times.