I'm Way Out There!!!
As an example, it always riled up my kids for them to hear me say that certain portions of "their" music sounded like that of a musician of my era. And, for my wonderful granddaughter, Liz, it has been no different when I say, "That sounds like a bit of Eric Clapton."
And, rock and roll itself? How about its precursors: boogie woogie, barrel house, blues, R&B, jazz, black spirituals,and so on.
In my case, there have been certain authors in the genre of Science Fiction (SF), and, in particular, a more obscure form, cyberpunk. You can't escape the "echoes" of what you read. What I produce, in large part, might be called speculative fiction. This latter is "what if?" writing, and it includes many other writing genres. Much of my writing concerns time travel, alternate or parallel universes, and other aspects of the 4th Dimension (time).
Here are some authors whose writings and ideas have influenced me. Click on the underlined names to reach websites discussing them. In most cases, I have used a Wikipedia link, but, I encourage you to "Google" for more concerning authors of interest to you.
Finally, a writer who walks with heavy boots, known to all who read Science Fiction: Philip K. Dick. Foreshadowing the cyberpunk sub-genre, Philip K. Dick brought the anomic world of California to many of his works, exploring sociological and political themes in novels which were often dominated by monopolistic corporations and authoritarian governments. In his later works, Dick addressed the nature of drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, religious experience and theology, drawing upon his own life experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.
His novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternative history and science fiction, earning a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is completely unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real." Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty.
Dick's stories have been adapted into popular films such as Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Imposter and others.
