{"id":10291,"date":"2012-06-07T02:42:58","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T09:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=10291"},"modified":"2012-06-07T02:42:58","modified_gmt":"2012-06-07T09:42:58","slug":"influences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/07\/influences\/","title":{"rendered":"Influences"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

I consumed that collection of short stories as if I were discovering a new world — which, in fact, I was. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

I remember stories like “Hide and Seek”<\/a> and “Superiority,”<\/a> 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.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Above all, I was moved and horrified by the story, “Exile of the Eons”<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> was mine. But really, Atlas<\/i> is second to Clarke’s Expedition to Earth<\/i>. 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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

What about you? Aside<\/i> from the usual candidates (Atlas Shrugged<\/i> and the bible — or even, for that matter 101 Things<\/i>, 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<\/i> afterwards?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n

Continue readingInfluences<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-movies","category-mind-and-spirit","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}