There’s a meme doing the rounds at the moment: choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. Post one book per day, no explanations, no reviews. Since I’m generally not organised enough to remember to post something regularly every day for three weeks, I decided to post my 20 books here. In one go. And much as I like lists, I like annotated lists more. So there will be comments.
The books, in roughly the order I first encountered them, are:
Dan Dare: The Red Moon Mystery (1951, UK), Frank Hampson. I was given the Dan Dare 1974 Annual (1974, UK) for Christmas. It contained two complete stories: ‘Safari in Space’ and ‘The Red Moon Mystery’. One scene in the latter has haunted me ever since — when Hank Hogan and Pierre Lafayette borrow Dare’s spaceship, Anastasia, to investigate the surface of the mysterious moon, and discover something horrifying. Years later, I collected all of the Hawk Publishing Dan Dare reprint collections.
Starman Jones (1953, USA), Robert A Heinlein. This was the first ever category science fiction novel I read, and was lent to me by a classmate when I was ten years old. Even among Heinlein’s oeuvre it’s unremarkable, and for me it’s only notable because it was the first actual science fiction novel I read.
Dune (1966, USA), Frank Herbert. I saw another kid at school reading this, asked him about it, and it sounded interesting enough I persuaded parents to buy me the trilogy for Christmas (the NEL paperbacks with the Bruce Pennington cover art). I loved it. These days, I consider it a phenomenal piece of world-building, problematic in places, with prose that veers from bad to competent. But I still admire its universe as a literary creation.
The Undercover Aliens (1950, USA), AE Van Vogt. The three sf authors whose books I collected in my early teens were James Blish, Clifford D Simak and AE van Vogt. To be honest, I’ve no idea why I fastened on those three — with Blish, I suspect the Chris Foss covers on the Arrow paperback editions may have been a factor. Van Vogt… Well, perhaps it was his ideas, and the breakneck pace of his narratives. Now I find him almost unreadable. But The Undercover Aliens (originally published as The House That Stood Still), I still like a great deal. I once described it as the mutant offspring of Flash Gordon and Philip Marlowe, and I think that still fits.
Dhalgren (1975, USA), Samuel R Delany. I’d read some Delany, and knew he was an important writer, but I had no idea what to expect when I bought a copy of Dhalgren at the school bookshop (it wasn’t a real bookshop, it was an “activity”, run by and for the pupils, and open one afternoon a week). The novel has remained one of my favourites ever since, and I’ve reread it several times. I’ve no idea why it appeals to me so much.
The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977, USA), John Varley. I’m pretty sure I read Varley’s short fiction before I read his debut novel. The Ophiuchi Hotline was all the good stuff from those, and more besides. I have, of course, reread it many times since — and I always find something new in it. (I wrote about it here.)
Angel with the Sword, CJ Cherryh (1985, USA). I don’t actually recall which novel by Cherryh was the first of hers I read. I thought it had been The Faded Sun Trilogy (1987, USA, see here), but I’m pretty sure I read her much earlier than 1987. It was probably Serpent’s Reach (1980, USA). Angel with the Sword has stayed with me more than those two books, even though it’s only science fiction by authorial fiat, and a little problematic in parts, if I’m being honest. But it has bags of charm.
The Far Pavilions (1978, UK), MM Kaye. During the school holidays, I would visit my parents in the Middle East, and my reading was pretty much limited to the books they had on the wall-unit in their living-room — which were usually best-sellers, such as Lace (1982, USA), Shirley Conran, I’ll Take Manhattan (1982, USA), Judith Krantz, or The Ninja (1980, USA), Eric Van Lustbader. Among these was Kaye’s novel set during the days of the Raj. It appeals in much the same way way as Dune, although its universe is not invented (although not entirely real either, as it’s a British view of nineteenth-century India).
Kairos (1988, UK), Gwyneth Jones. I was already a fan of Jones’s fiction when I read Kairos, but this novel persuaded me to track down and read everything she’d written, including a handful of YA novels published in the 1970s. Which were extremely difficult to find. But I managed. I’ve always felt Jones is one of the best science fiction writers the UK has produced.
Take Back Plenty (1990, UK), Colin Greenland. I remember the buzz when this was published. Greenland had previously written a trio of literary fantasies, and was known as a critic and a co-editor of Interzone, the UK’s only professional genre fiction magazine. Take Back Plenty was something new in science fiction, everyone said. Sadly, other than two sequels by Greenland, Take Back Plenty had very little effect on British science fiction — unlike Iain M Banks’s Consider Phlebas (1987, UK), published three years earlier. (I greatly admire Banks’s sf novels, but none of them as much as Take Back Plenty.)
Guardian Angel (1992, USA), Sara Paretsky. This was the first VI Warshawski novel I read; I think I read my first Sue Grafton novel soon afterwards. I’ve since read every Paretsky and Grafton novel, and I much prefer crime novels with female protagonists. Grafton sadly died before completing her “alphabet series” — one letter short, heartbreakingly; but Paretsky is still going. I’ve looked for suitable successors but have yet to find one.
Cotillion (1953, UK), Georgette Heyer. After a chance remark on reading a Jane Austen novel for the first time, a friend recommended Heyer’s novels. So I read Cotillion— and I’ve been a fan of her books ever since. I find the politics and privileges embedded in her novels much less acceptable these days, and as a result some of them are not as readable as they once were. But they’re mostly still fun, and she remains one of my first choices of comfort reading.
Coelestis (1993, USA), Paul Park. After my years in the Middle East, science fiction which comments on the expatriate experience has had an added appeal. Coelestis is not especially rigorous, which I think gives it an air of timelessness, and it’s definitely a book of two plots, but the prose is excellent, and there’s a feel to the novel that very much speaks to me. Park has been a favourite writer ever since, and I especially enjoy his use of metafiction and autobiography.
The Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960, UK), Lawrence Durrell. I forget why I decided to read this, but once I had, Durrell became a favourite writer and I started collecting everything he’d done. In first edition. I now have quite an extensive collection of his novels and poetry collections, and even the many chapbooks he published during his lifetime. I value his books for the quality of his prose. Rereading The Alexandria Quartet recently, it struck me how rigorously it was plotted — its creative structure disguises how carefully it was put together.
The Incal (1980, France), Alejandro Jodorowsky & Moebius. Back in the 1980s, I used to fly from the UK to the Middle East for the holidays via Amsterdam. There was a bookshop in Schiphol Airport where I bought copies of Heavy Metal, Epic and 1984 (later 1994), which were science fiction comics aimed at an adult readership. It was a short jump from there to French sf bandes dessinées, and so to The Incal. Which I still think is the best of the Jodorowsky-penned sf bandes dessinées; and my first read of it gave me the same thrill I received when I read my first issue of 2000 AD at twelve years old.
Ascent (2007, UK), Jed Mercurio. My father mentioned this novel by, yes, the man behind the Line of Duty TV series (although they didn’t appear until later), after seeing a review of it in a newspaper. Some months later, I saw the book in Waterstone’s, and bought a copy. I loved the clinical, factual prose, and Ascent became touchstone work in my own writing, and an inspiration for my Apollo Quartet. Mercurio wrote another novel, about John F Kennedy, but has since focused wholly on TV writing and production. A shame.
Poems, John Jarmain (1945, UK). Jarmain was a poet and author who died during World War II. He was originally stationed in North Africa, and was part of the British literary movement located there — which included, among others, Lawrence Durrell, Olivia Manning, Keith Douglas, Bernard Spencer, Terence Tiller and GS Fraser. There were two groups — the Salamander group, and the Personal Landscapes group; I have collections published by both. Jarmain’s poetry collection, and sole novel, Priddy Barrows (1944, UK), are hard to find now, although a book about him was published in 2012. My discovery of Jarmain, via Durrell, kicked off an interest in the poetry of the time, and I bought collections by Tiller and Spencer, and several anthologies.
The Raj Quartet (1966–1975, UK), Paul Scott. Like every Brit of my age, I watched the TV adaptation of this when it was broadcast. I thought it good, but nothing of it beyond that. In 2008, I found the quartet in a charity shop in paperback for 69p each, buy one get one free (total cost £1.38 for four books), bought them — and fell in love with Scott’s prose. And these novels are definitely about the expatriate experience. They’re a difficult read in places because of their subject, but Barbara Batchelor is one of postwar British literature’s best-drawn characters.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928, UK), DH Lawrence. My father was a big fan of Lawrence, so much so he dragged my mother to see his shrine in Taos during a visit to the US. So Lawrence was a writer I was very much aware of growing up. But I never tried reading any of his books. Back in 2010, I challenged myself to read one classic novel each month, and one of them was Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I found myself drawn to Lawrence’s prose… and have gone on to read many more of his novels and stories.
Girl Reading (2011, UK), Katie Ward. I forget who recommended this, but it’s one of the few novels that, to use a hated phrase, “blew me away” when I read it. I picked it as the best novel I read that year, and it was an easy choice. Sadly, Ward had trouble following it up — and about which she has spoken — and a second novel, The Woman in the Green Coat, never materialised. She finally produced a new novel this year, Pathways (2024, UK). I’m looking forward to reading it.
So there you have it. Twenty novels that have stayed with me or influenced me. And the list has stayed pretty constant these last ten to twenty years. But I expect it will change, as my taste in literature changes, as I reread and re-evaluate what I’ve previously read, as literature itself — including science fiction, my preferred genre — changes.
