I was eight or nine. I was bored. With nothing of my own to read, I tried a book from the grown-ups’ shelves for the first time.
My parents weren’t readers. They had just two shelves of hardbound books, which, lacking pictures, had never interested me. That day I found a lone paperback. Although it, too, had no illustrations, its cover was bright and strange enough to attract me.
I had never heard of Arthur C. Clarke. I had no concept of science fiction. I didn’t know there were such things as grownup stories about spaceships or time travel.
How that lone book came to be there, I still don’t know. Mine were practical, down-to-earth, blue-collar people. Thinking about “impossible” things was okay for pre-schoolers, but surely useless and to be discouraged in anyone older. Never before had anybody in my family possessed a science fiction book. Never afterward did anybody in my family, but me, ever own or even read one.
I consumed that collection of short stories as if I were discovering a new world — which, in fact, I was.
To this day I remember most of the stories — and how I felt while I explored them. Gob-smacked. Mind-warped. As if my brain, and indeed my entire being, was expanding at lightspeed. I didn’t know what I’d stumbled onto — only that it was astonishing and that it changed me.
I remember stories like “Hide and Seek” and “Superiority,” which impressed on me that the big and strong don’t always win (a hopeful message in an adversarial household where I was at the bottom of the pecking order). I recall the sorrow of “If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth.”
Above all, I was moved and horrified by the story, “Exile of the Eons” in which a gentle philosopher, exiled into solitude, finds a companion — only to realize that the man he’s discovered is one of history’s monsters. The philosopher’s wrenching moral dilemma stayed with me for years.
On any other day, if I were kicking back with friends and the topic of “most influential book” came up, I’d probably say Atlas Shrugged was mine. But really, Atlas is second to Clarke’s Expedition to Earth. When I was almost grown, Rand helped me define a worldview I was already developing. When I was at a much more impressionable age, Clarke taught me that there were worlds of the mind with profound adult emotions and moral conflicts I’d never even imagined.
I was thinking about this yesterday after learning Ray Bradbury had died. I was never a big Bradbury fan. Clarke eventually became a plotless bore. Asimov — okay. Heinlein — two good books. But having the fortune to discover SF so young via an anthology so filled with excellence and wonders … that was something.
What about you? Aside from the usual candidates (Atlas Shrugged and the bible — or even, for that matter 101 Things, which someone might bring up just to embarrass me), what book, writer, movie, story, or work of art changed you when you were young and made your life forever different afterwards?
I know that this is going to sound strange but Stephen King’s THE STAND had a huge influence on my life when I was 20.
1. It made me think about the big stuff the government was hiding from us
2. It made me consider teotwawki, and how I’d
react. My thought process advanced from thinking about my small world toward “the big picture.”
3. I had already been writing a bit, but after reading THE STAND, I knew I wanted to be a novelist.
4. It made me more interested in speculative fiction.
5. I began to consider the nature of evil and how it is defined.
ATLAS SHRUGGED didn’t have that much of an influence on me because I read it only in 1999, after my political views had already changed. I really enjoyed the dystopian aspects of ATLAS SHRUGGED.
Books are strange and wonderful things!
the moon is a harsh mistress, really turned me on to SciFi but Starship Troopers got me hooked. At the time I was in Jump School and floored with the idea of 1) jumping from low orbit and 2) the idea that citizenship had to be earned. This was sooooo not what I had learned in government schools. That you could even think such a thing was unheard of to me.
It was that book that got me thinking and questioning everything.
Another book that would have influenced me greatly had it been written when I was young is “The Two-Space War” by Dave Grossman and Leo Frankowski caused me as an “adult” to take an interest in poetry and understanding how the mind works in combat.
For me it was ‘The Survivalist Series’ by Jerry Ahern. I read this as a teenager in the 80’s. This series brought me to Atlas Shrugged since it was mentioned several times in the series and helped me to shape my world view.
Claire, I was/am a sucker for Phillip Jose Farmer’s ‘Riverworld’ series, ‘The Mind Parasites’ and some of the Steely Dan songs like ‘Sign In Stranger’ and ‘King of the World’ for a little bite-size SF.
-Tom
While I’ve always enjoyed reading Rand (no, I’m not a masochist, she’s a light, breezy read compared to what I have to read for work every day), I never saw her work as more than utopian fiction, somewhere between Tolkein’s middle earth and Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. I have no more desire to live in the world of Atlas than in the world of the Handmaid’s Tale.
But books are supposed to take us to a special place, and Ayn definately succeeded in taking me somewhere I’ve never been and making me think in ways I never did.
I was more influenced by the works of Abbey, especially MWG. My kids both read it as children (6th grade book report, a call from the school and her name was put on someone’s “list”).
Last year I did a cross country with my teenage daughter. She did her 1st east ocean to west ocean with a friend in 53 hours (can’t miss the bluegrass fest in SF!), we took a couple of weeks thru Utah, Nevada, Colorado to get home. She was very moved by Lake Powell, Glenn Canyon, and there are no words for the effect of realizing that the very electric lines she was looking at were THE lines Abbey so eloquently detested. To see the land of Hayduke, to walk in the same places, what she read as a child came to life before her eyes.
For me it was and always will be Heinlein, although there are a number of authors jockeying for second place. Heinlein snared me at an early age when a librarian introduced me to his juveniles, and the image of man he painted was so in contrast to the world around me, and felt so right, that I was forever hooked. Even his lesser works have something to recommend them, and I’m always transported to a happy place by picking up a Heinlein.
Which two of Heinlein’s books are the good ones? Just curious.
Influential books…
I would have to say one of the most life-changing books I read was “My Side of the Mountain” by Jean Craighead George. I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I read it- early elementary school age- but that book did “something” to me that I never recovered from.
Then, when I was in high school a librarian handed me a book the library had just gotten (I suspect they got it just for me) called “The Tracker” by Tom Brown Jr. (It has since come out that the author is most likely a fraud, but that book gave me a big kick in a direction I was already inclined toward, and inspired me to pursue “skills” instead of just daydreaming.)
Politically I would have to say I would not “be here” if it weren’t for L. Neil Smith’s “Lever Action“. I was already libertarian- mostly- but I didn’t know there was a word for where I stood. I assumed that, like in just about every other area of life, no one else was anything like me. I assumed I was completely unfit, and didn’t fit in. (This was before I had ever gotten online.) Had I not read that book as my life as-it-was began to unravel, I’m not sure it would have had such an impact. Like I say, it didn’t change my opinion as much as comfort me by showing me that at least someone, somewhere, “got me”.
In the 80’s at 12 and 13 years old I read:
The Hobbit-Tolkien and the Chronicles of Narnia-Lewis. They taught me believe with my heart and head not my eyes and they gave me my lifelong love of the book.
Then came Enders Game by Orson Scott Card. It is an amazing book. It taught me that the needs of the one are just as important as the needs of the many and how horrible it is when the needs of the many overwhelm the needs of the few or one.
Then came Way of the Peaceful Warrior -dan millman and Tao of Pooh. Both of those books opened my eyes to other paths in life that I had never dreamed of. That freedom of the mind body and soul are important. To not let anyone stop me from doing what needs to be done.
Those books changed my life as an early teen.
But books still infect my mind just this year I read the Hunger Games series and was again blown away. The horrors of government out of control. And my favorite book of the past few years: Corey Doctorow’s Little Brother.
Fantastic books. Great topic!
Zenna Henderson and her stories about “the people” were very influential in my teen years. Mother had started us on von Mises, and other great individualist thinkers at an early age, but Zenna’s wonderful stories put non-aggression and freedom into sharp perspective – with wonderful, thought provoking illustrations of how it could be lived… and how other humans would probably react to it!
Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson
http://www.amazon.com/Ingathering-Complete-People-Stories-Henderson/dp/0915368587/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339078487&sr=1-1
Of Heinlein’s stories, I really like”The Door Into Summer” best. “The Puppet Masters,” “Double Star,” and “The Moon” were also good, but I was always more or less disappointed in most of the rest of his work. I know that makes me a heretic… but I can’t help it.
I found Asimov’s first two “Foundation” stories horrifying in many ways and never read the rest of them. “Atlas Shrugged” was interesting in a number of ways, but it was never good fiction – and truly nothing I’d ever want to read again.
After spending most of my adult life reading non-fiction, including a great deal of technical and medical material, I’m having a wonderful time exploring the world of fiction now in my retirement. I’ll have to look at some of Clark’s writing. I don’t recall ever seeing any. 🙂
Wow, there were so many. I was fortunatee to be in government schools that had teachers, librarians and libraries that enticed kids to read. The list of influential books would go on and on.
Johnny Tremain is one of them. It got me interested the early history of our country.
In the house we had a set of books on liberty, small affairs covered most of the pre-1900 history of the U.S. I read them all multiple times.
We also has a set of books on natural science that was written for youn gteens, just facts, no politics. That got me interested in the natural sciences, particulary the outdoors sciences.
The Boy Scout Handbook.
I didn’t get into Heinlein until my adult years. First was Farnham’s Freehold which opened me up to the possibilies of preparing. Read Starship Troopers the first time a few months ago, was not impressed overall. It captured why governmnets go forth and attack other countries, but wasn’t that interesting. I did like the concepts on citizenship.
Heinlein’s juveniles. Pick any of them. It was a revelation that people could be – should be? – actually driven by principle even if it seemed to harm them in the short run.
I read almost nothing but SF when I was young. All the “big four” discussed yesterday, among many others, but while they were all entertaining only Heinlein did anything to change me.
The Brothers Karamazov, when I was 18 and in the Navy, which led to one of the “usual candidates” (i.e., the bible, especially Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Gospel of John). What particularly impressed me was my knowledge that the author of that book was a “believer” despite that book containing one of the most powerful arguments against the existence of God in literature. Although I didn’t become a libertarian let alone an anarchist until much later (Nock’s Our Enemy, the State is the strongest influence on me on that score), my newfound respect for God as the center of life and the highest “authority,” beside which the pretensions of men to authority were exposed as usurpation and blasphemy, had immediate libertarian repercussions for my life that were more fully developed later. I resigned from the Naval Academy within a couple years, and got out of the Navy as quickly as I could, explaining to myself and others that I no longer wanted to be a “cogwheel in the war machine of a godless State.”
I grew up reading Tolkien and Robert E. Howard’s ‘Conan” books… and I still have all my copies from the 80’s. The books that actually influenced me in my younger days were “The Worldly Philosophers” and Goldwater’s “Conscience of a Conservative.” And I bought those for my step-kids and nephews as they were old enough… along with many copies of “RebelFire.” (Thrown in to embarrass you.)
Heinlein’s juveniles. Bova’s Kinsman books, plus Star Watchman. And a librarian handed me The Golden Bough when I was in the third grade, which did strange things to my mind.
A couple of years later The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris an Language, Truth and Logic by AJ Ayers twisted my brain further.
And a sleeper: El Neil’s The Probability Broach kept resurfacing…at first I liked the story but found the political premises outlandish & less than credible. But…time passed. I saw things happen. I’ll probably give it to my daughter soon after she learns to read. Or read at a higher level, anyway–she’s not quite three & only recognizes a few words so far
Along those lines, I’m looking forward to giving her Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother. Any other suggestions for messing with a little girl’s head?
Robert Heinlein. My Mom was an elementary school teacher and I started in her school but she stayed for a few hours after school. The solution was for me to to go to my small town library which was exactly midway between home and the school. The librarians knew my Mom so I behaved myself and read until she’d pick me up.
When I turned 7 I was allowed upstairs to the adult section. It was overwhelming – all those books! I just grabbed one at random and checked it out. Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. It was a struggle and I had to renew it a bunch but I finished it and was converted to scifi and ideas in general.
THe first science fiction book I read was Heinlein’s “Red Planet”, followed by “Rocketship Galileo”(that was the school’s entire SF section)-I was maybe 7 or 8. The books that really stand out to me were Zenna Henderson’s “The People” and “Welcome to Mars” by James Blish(early teens).
I read all the classic SF authors in high school(Asimov, Clarke,Pohl and a lot of the “first fandom” authors).
One single book that really made me question a lot was L.Neil Smith’s ” The Probability Broach” and “Taflak Lysandra”(this might be good for David’s girl, since the one of main characters is female).
I have never really cared much for fantasy-especially the very tired swords-n-sorcery medieval type stuff..but there are a few exceptions. The first I read was in the mid 1980s, a series of books called “Borderland”, “Bordertown”(short story shared universe collection), and a novel called “Finder” by Emma Bull and Will Shetterly(I think) set in the same universe. There’s also “Danceland Blood” and “Never Never” set in the same universe.
A series of books by Kim Harrison are fun to read-all the titles are parodies of Clint Eastwood movies(the first is “Dead Witch Walking”).
Raised in a family of teachers, I was influenced by Twain, Jack London, Paul Brickhill (The Great Escape-the book, NOT the movie) which I read three or four times, and Arthur Clarke (who also wrote good nonfiction). At 20, however, I discovered Karl Hess and his treatise on the rising welfare state in a book titled DEAR AMERICA. Although dated in many respects to the specific examples used, he described the encroaching Nanny State and the need (and attempt of a small area of Washington D.C.) to become more self-sufficient- indeed he introduced me to Libertarian principles-this was the first time I realized that Mordor was real and gaining power. Needless to expand, but it made an impact on me and if I could find a copy I would purchase it for my library.
In no particular order….
H. Beam Piper, who leads one to Edward Gibbon and the Durants. Especially the Fuzzy stories. Space Viking.
Heinlein’s “If This Goes On…”. You can see the Nehemiah Scudder wannabes all over the place. The Man who Sold the Moon, and Destination Moon. “The Menace from Earth”.
Poul Anderson. Orion Shall Rise. “Sam Hall”, and, in the same universe, Three Worlds to Conquer. The Winter of the World. “No Truce with Kings”. Anything with Nicholas van Rijn, Dominic Flandry or David Falkyn in it. The High Crusade, that SCA wet dream. I have more than two shelf-meters of Poul’s works.
Polybius. Cicero. Tacitus.
Tolkien. Consider the Ring as a metaphor for political power.
Murray Rothbard. The Tannehills. Sam Konkin.
Ayn Rand, both for what she wrote and said, and for how she flubbed living up to what she wrote and said.
It all started with a little movie when I was a kid called “Star Wars.” Of course I had to get my hands on anything connected to the movie, including my first sci-fi books, the Han Solo trilogy. I fact, they were the FIRST books I ever read. Then I began exploring other works by the author of said books, Brian Daley, and have been hooked on sci-fi and fantasy ever since.
Read his “Jinx on a Terran Inheritance” trilogy if you ever get a chance.
It’s just coincidence L.N. Smith just happened to write the sequal Lando books (which ironically I’ve never read.)
Like many here, for me Heinlein’s juveniles are near the top of the list. I was introduced to them by a friendly librarian and read them all. I like many of his adult works, too (notably “Moon” and “Glory Road”), although some (especially the later ones) leave me cold. But even before I discovered Heinlein I devoured another juvenile science fiction series called “Tom Swift, Jr.” They were an outgrowth of the original Tom Swift series from back in the 20’s (and I’ve since learned they were written by a series of contract writers under a single pseudonym), but they were exciting and revelatory about what science could aspire to. Roughly 50 years later I still have them all, and I read them to my son when he was old enough. (I’ve found some of the original Tom Swift books, too, but to me they’re not as good as the “Jr.” series.)
I’d have to add a nod to Ayn Rand, too. I was introduced to her writings in my late teens, when I was in the Army, by another guy in my unit. I had heard a little about libertarianism (my father was a proto-libertarian), but The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were extremely thought-provoking and, in many ways, life-changing for me.
Some of the books that tweaked me well when I was younger, aside from sci-fi/fantasy genre in general:
“Alan & Naomi”
“1984”
“Lord of the Flies”
“The Chocolate War”
“The Handmaid’s Tale”
I can’t remember any of the titles of the many science books I read that demonstrated the rewards of empirical, rational thinking, but they deserve a spot on the list too.
I’ve been thinking a lot about role models and influences recently. I’ve come to a very odd list.
– Heinlein (Lazarus Long, John Rico, etc)
-“The Bandit” from Smokey and the Bandit
-Bo and Luke Duke
-Buck Rogers (Gil Gerard)
-Starbuck (the original 80’s played by Dirk Benedict, Apollo was a dork)
Seems to be a bit of unrealized swashbuckle and daring-do in my personal make-up. I have worked hard on the ladies-man and lack of respect for authority things, though.
I first ran across Hermann Hesse in my mid-teens – probably attracted by the racy cover art on the paperbacks! “Steppenwolf”, “Narcissus and Goldmund”, “Beneath the Wheel”, and particularly “Rosshalde” all made an impression on me. I think they first clued me to the idea that there were others who had less interest in the commerce of living and that there was a life of mind and soul that had value.
A decade later I came across E. Abbey and Solzhenitsyn. Abbey conveyed his feelings for the land of the SW US in a way that I also felt. Solzhenitsyn impressed on me what people can and will do to each other.
Another decade and it was Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, John Nichols, and Frank Waters.
I almost hesitate to mention Bill Burroughs…
Great mental exercise here, Claire–and as usual some interesting responses.
The one that came to me immediately was “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More” by Roald Dahl, which I apparently first digested well before double-digit age. What I remember most about those stories were what they said about individual will and capacity; whether or not any of this was specifically intentional I don’t know, but the messages carry with me to this day. I of course digested much other Dahl, but it’s this one I come back to as the most personally inspiring. (And given the excellence of “Danny, the Champion of the World” as a father-son story, I’d argue that’s saying something.)
Given how I turned out–late-blooming political heretic and all–I’m now inspired by this conversation to find out just when I first read “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NiMH”. After a gulf of many years, I found that book again just recently and was amazed at how strong a freedom message it contains. I’m just thinking that some things must have had an effect that it took me many years to realize.
Pooh was always important from an early age, but I was very late in recognizing just how important. I must credit Benjamin Hoff for “The Tao of Pooh”, which showed me a new and marvelous way of looking at the “bear of little brain”, but I can never forgive him for completely undermining everything he spent so much time developing as he brings that book to a close with (hock, spit) file-tape calls for political action right out of the standard political playbook. (For those unfamiliar: read it for the concept, rant at the final pages, and discard the book in favor of the two source texts, Milne’s Pooh books and the Tao Te Ching. And don’t bother with The Te of Piglet, that will just piss you off. Once you understand the Tao of Pooh–the concept, not the book–you’ll see the Te of Piglet right away.)
As far as the evolution of necessary challenges to my thinking that ultimately brought me to where I am today (which is a subtext of the comment stream that is worthwhile), again I came late to the game, and what is most interesting to acknowledge is that none of it was fiction. The first and probably most formative, was reading Jeff Cooper from about age 13; despite his right-statist tendencies (which at the time were persuasive to me) he nonetheless instilled a need for personal excellence and first spoke plainly to me about recognizing reality over sophistry in interpersonal conflict. Later–too much later, gawd I’m dense–it was one Claire Wolfe who spoke plainly about recognizing reality over sophistry in intersocial conflict, and Harry Browne who codified that attitude into a unified “platform” that I could (finally) see as a whole, and realize as so clearly superior to what I had always known as to qualify for double-facepalm status. The next step didn’t take nearly as long (hell, I was actually LISTENING by this point) and that was Butler Shaffer’s embrace of chaos concepts to advocate for discarding the state entirely. That one, when I consider it fairly, was probably the biggest step of all, as it finally addressed the cause at its root rather than the symptoms. Since then, no challenge to the core worldview has even scratched the skin, but I still find that I need both the “recognize the dystopia” angst along with a counteractive dose of “what can we do to live the lives that we want?” I find it fascinating that I now come to Claire for the latter, where she first got my attention with the former. (These days, my gold standards for fire and brimstone are William Grigg and Arthur Silber; with their delightfully different backgrounds they nonetheless bookend the same concept with inspiringly direct and refreshingly heretical writing.)
Again, thanks for the exercise!
Somebody apparently has to say it – “101 Things…” by C. Wolfe.
Mostly because that was the source of the infamous “you’re a girl and don’t know nothin’ ’bout guns!” email which influenced me to accept your generous offer* of half a chapter in “101 More Things”…. 😉
*for an interesting definition of “generous offer,” of course.
I started reading Terry Brooks’ Shannara series when I was a tween, and was strongly influenced by his descriptions of the sword of Shannara and it’s effects. I was still young enough that when I questioned things, I was most often met with “because I SAID so, that’s why,” whether it was from my parents, teachers, pastor, whoever. Thus, the idea that people relied on millions of tiny deceptions in their daily lives just to keep from going insane, that was mind-boggling. And the thought of having those deceptions striped away, to see your own actions with brutal clarity, no excuses, no justifications, no mitigating circumstances, just pure, unyeilding truth.
For a second, I think I finally understood what Judgement Day meant.
Later I discovered Timothy Zahn and got into his books. I literally discovered the person before the books, I was at a sci-fi convention and he sat next to me at dinner. He was a physics major before he became an author, and I was 15 years old and designing space colonies in the margins of my notebooks. Something he said got me babbling about that, and unlike all the other adults I’d ever talked to, he took me seriously! He asked questions about certain details, but he treated me like an equal, even though I wasn’t even old enough to drive yet.
Zahn’s books are incredible in their detail. He tries to craft every world in a way that makes it seem so real, you’d swear you could touch it. He especially likes going into the psyche when dealing with the “law of unintended consequences”.
Have Space Suit, Will Travel from my grade scholl library introduced me to SF. I can no longer remember everything I read, I was also fortunate enough to live in a place where every other week the bookmobile would setup shop right outside my front door. I’d trade in one 2′ stack of books for another and devour them as fast as I could.
I forgot to add Childhood’s End! Which was silly, given that you started right off with Clarke.
I don’t know how much it influenced me, but that book scared the crap out of me. I still have my copy…not sure, 35 years later, whether I should reread it.
I mean: scary. Even my little sister says so.
Well…When I was in maybe 3rd grade I was given a whole box of John Norman’s Gor series, that series made a huge impression. Anything by lovecraft as well.
There’s this comic called Preacher that a friend introduced me to when I was 11 or so, I’m slowly re-aquiring and re-reading that series now and it still blows me away, though not the way it did when I was 11 and still kinda had the ability to be shocked.
Clockwork orange scared the crap out of me when I first read it because i thought they could actually do that to misbehaving kids.
Nietzche and Evola have always been favorites
One more recent work that I absolutely love…E.E. Knight’s way of the wolf series. This ones gonna be a classic someday I hope, well worth checking out.
Heinlein … “Stranger in a Strange Land”
I was just out of the Navy (1969) and looking around for “What I want to be when I grow up”. It seriously made me actually look at my morals and lifestyle. (bad juju for an ex-military brat.) I wound up seriously Not Happy with the status quo.
Clarke, Azimov, Bradbury and most of the others named hereabouts had their parts to play as well. But RAH started the ball rolling.
Then, much later, I ran into the writings of “some woman” [rolls eyes] who offered to share her ideas on what I could possibly “do while I waited for the revolution to start”.
The rest is …
yep you got it.
I discovered Heinlein’s _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ when I was fairly young and still re-read it once a year or so. I love most of his stuff, but that one in particular has stuck with me hard all these years.
Heinlein has to have been the biggest literary influence in my life. In many ways, one could say he was my third parent. My folks were both scifi buffs and libertarian-minded, and Dad handed me Stranger in a Strange Land when I was 10. I’ve read all Heinlein’s books, most more than once, and some of them have something new to tell me each time. For example, Double Star was not nearly as interesting when I was in middle school as it is now. Anne McCaffrey and Orson Scott Card have also been big influences. John Ross’ Unintended Consequences taught me a lot, as well.
Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden”.
The Beatles were the first artists who influenced me because of the breathtaking speed and power of their evolution. It quickly became clear that they meant to keep pushing beyond where they were at all costs, and that is as precise and concise a definition of the artist’s mission as I can think of. Like most other children of the sixties I was influenced by the content of their work also, but it was really their creative mission and method that most inspired me. They showed how even in a popular art form it was possible to have commercial viability and aesthetic value.
The first time I heard audio comedy troupe the Firesign Theatre (themselves inspired by the Beatles) I knew I wanted to become a comedy writer. I was also raised on old time radio (both American and British), so I was always more impressed with audio than video as a medium. And I was taught to revere the humor writing of Robert Benchley, James Thurber and S.J. Perelman.
Watching the British TV series The Prisoner by Patrick McGoohan pointed me toward libertarianism.
The original film of Invasion of the Body Snatchers was more than entertainment to me. It underscored that the thing most greatly to be feared is loss of freedom and individuality. Dr. Strangelove taught me to disrespect governmental and military authority, and to have a lot of laughs doing so.
Later, in my twenties, reading Human Action by Mises blew the top of my head off. I devoured every book by every Austrian economist, Hayek, Rothbard, Kirzner, all of them. Also got into Public Choice and a little Chicago School (though not too much as I believe in most of their arguments with the Austrians, the Austrians were correct).
The first book of poetry I discovered by myself was Shall We Gather at the River by James Wright. That led to five years of trying to be a poet, a quest I eventually abandoned when I became professionally interested in humor, though I never lost my love for poetry and still follow it as best I can. Again, it was each poet’s individual vision that excited me, not their political views, which usually ranged from naive to repugnant. One of the greatest poets of the last century was the Chilean Pablo Neruda, an ardent communist who was happy to receive something call the Stalin Prize.
I was heavily influenced by the British Catholic novelists Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark and Brian Moore. Also Francois Mauriac in France and Shusaku Endo in Japan. I do not share their religious views (and Moore was not a believer though that was all he wrote about) but I find that they have a better sense than most of their peers on what the real stakes are in human life.
Lately I find that I read science and very little else. Cosmology, physics, complexity theory, evolution — whatever the exact subject, I find science writing to be the most hopeful and inspiring because this is where most of the actual improvements in the human condition have originated. And the notion of plumbing the deepest secrets of the universe is very seductive. Of course science as we know it would not exist without the combination of freedom and prosperity that is our chief legacy in the West.
From the age of five I grew up in Hungary reading about American Indians and was determined to go there and become one. Was especially impressed with the struggle of natives for their freedom and independence. Later, influenced by Jeffersonian philosophy and finally participating as a freedom fighter and political organizer in the ’56 revolution and our brief war for freedom and independence against the USSR, I did end up coming to the USA, and am now living in the Rocky Mountains region among several dozen Indian tribes (Pueblos), even spent working as a psychologist for an Apache tribe in Arizona.
During my college years a fellow student questioned why I was calling myself a “liberal”. She said, “You are not a liberal, you are a libertarian” and gave me Atlas Shrugged to read. I became one of the first to join the Libertarian Party when it was founded, served as LP candidate for State House and State Senate and as State Chair of the LP. Of course as many others, I also treasure the work of Heinlein and other libertarian authors, and in many of my discussion about political trends, I also like to refer to THE NEW CLASS by Milovan Djilas.