Gonnosuke

Please recommend reading material if you're familiar with these authors:

Neal Stephenson
J.G. Ballard
Steve Aylett
Neil Gaiman
C. Palahniuk

If you love the previously listed authors please post recommended books!

Thanks in advance,

-Gonnosuke

benedict

I recognise three of your choices; Stephenson, Ballard and Gaiman.

I've read Snowcrash and several Ballard novels and short stories as well as some Gaiman comics. You seem to like the inventive and bordering on the literary writer of speculative fiction.

Two of my favourites are David Zindell and Gene Wolfe.

If they are available/in print I would first recommend Gene Wolfe's two Soldier Of.... books set in ancient Greece and its environs and concerning the travels of an amnesiac soldier who may be more than he seems.

Zindell's Neverness sequence (Requiem for Homosapiens is the proper series name, I think) is a substantial read and contains much evocative description as well as philosophical speculations. I've mentioned a new science fantasy of his in another thread which you may wish to view.

As it happens, Wolfe himself is the commensurate writer of science fantasy and if you succeed with the "Soldier of" books you may wish to try his New Sun and Long Sun multi-part works: formerly each was published in four volumes but you can now get each series in two consolidated volumes, although the former has a companion work, The Urth of the New Sun. (A further sequence following on from the Long Sun books is now in progess).

Anyhow, I'd recommend both of these before the redoubtable Thomas Pynchon who may come up in other replies!

Edited to rectify omissions....

.... another writer who may be of interest is Iain Banks.

Although - using the "pseudonym" Iain M Banks - he writes science-fiction, he has also written several "straight" fiction novels. I found one, Canal Dreams, to be particularly Ballardian, and I believe that all of them were well-received.

It must be said that they are of varying complexity. To ease in gently I have seen it suggested that one try this sequence:

• Espedair Street (straightforward)
• The Wasp Factory (promising first novel)
• The Bridge (complex)

You might care to slot in Complicity and The Crow Road somewhere early in the list: each seems to be highly regarded.

And, seeing as how I'm moving in the direction of "slipstream" writing , you might also care to sample the works of Haruki Murakami. So far I've only part-read The Wind Up Bird Chronicles but what I've read I enjoyed!