The Glowing Edge

Tag: Dan Simmons

  • My All-Time Favorite Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Xenofiction, and Post-Apocalyptic Novels and Series

    My All-Time Favorite Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Xenofiction, and Post-Apocalyptic Novels and Series

    It was really hard to figure out what, exactly, this category of books was. In fact, I didn’t figure it out, preferring instead to name them all in one ridiculous and exhaustive title. On your blog, you can be much tidier…

    The Rifters trilogy: Starfish, Maelstrom, Behemoth / Peter Watts
    The Hyperion Cantos: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion / Dan Simmons
    Watership Down / Richard Adams
    The Farseer trilogy, The Tawny Man trilogy, & the Liveship Traders trilogy / Robin Hobb
    The Arbai trilogy: Grass, Raising the Stones, Sideshow / Sherri S. Tepper
    Pattern Recognition, Neuromancer / William Gibson
    The Stand / Steven King
    Swan Song / Robert R. McCammon
    On the Beach / Nevil Shute
    “The Martian” from The Martian Chronicles / Ray Bradbury
    The Lord of the Rings trilogy / R.S.S. Tolkien
    The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever / Stephen R. Donaldson
    Foundation trilogy, Isaac Asimov
    A Canticle for Leibowitz / Walter Miller, Jr.

    Honorable Mentions from my childhood:
    The Belgariad series / David Eddings
    Harper Hall and Crystal Singer books / Anne McCaffrey
    The Chronicles of Amber / Roger Zelazny
    Apprentice Adept series / Piers Anthony

    Image credit: Stefan on Flickr

  • Top Ten Most Influential Books


    The rule about this list is that these are the books that were most influential. They shifted the course of my life, rather than being my “favorites” or entertaining me for a week or two.

    The image above is the books in the order in which I encountered them (15 was a big year for me). The list below is the books in order of their magnitude of influence.

    Wise Blood, Flannery O’Conner
    The Odyssey, Homer (Fitzgerald translation)
    Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose
    The Little Flowers of St. Frances
    The World’s Best Fairy Tales, Reader’s Digest Anthology
    Uncle Remus, Joel Chandler Harris
    The Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien
    Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
    Webster’s First New Wickedary of the English Language, Mary Daly
    The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene

    It was really hard to cull it down to only ten. Here are the next ten (or so) books of influence.

    Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood
    New and Selected Poems, Volume 2, Mary Oliver
    After Virtue, Alisdair MacIntyre / No Contest, Alphie Kohn
    Diet for a New America, John Robbins / The Moosewood Cookbook, Mollie Katzen
    The Parables of the Kingdom / Grace / Judgment, Robert Farrar Capon
    “So Much Depends” / “This is Just to Say”, William Carlos Williams
    Practice in Christianity, Soren Kierkegaard
    No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre
    Hyperion, Dan Simmons
    Shogun, James Clavell