Ryk E. Spoor
That'd be quite a list if I were a completist. I realized I wanted to be a writer at the age of 6, and had solidified that desire by the age of 11, so while many other authors afterward influenced what I wrote, the authors from my earlier years would qualify as "made me want to be a writer".
First on that list would have to be L. Frank Baum, the author of the original 14 Oz books. Oz remains an influence on me to this day, and he was the first real author whose name I specifically knew as someone I wanted to read more from, and who I thought of as an example of "author" that I wanted to be like.
By the time I was 8 I found and read all of Hugh Lofting's "Doctor Doolittle" books, along with Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books. While the Doolittle books were of course much more fantastic in their content than Wilder's fictionalized biographies, they were both glimpses into worlds that were, to me, quite alien -- the America of the late 1800s, and the United Kingdom/England of the Victorian era. Not much later, I encountered both Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who both expanded drastically my understanding of what kind of stories authors could tell, as well as both writing in the same Victorian era.
Another influential pair of authors were the D'Aulaires, who produced two magnificent mythological compendiums, one for the Greek and one for the Norse mythology cycles. This was actually my first exposure to religion in any detail; my parents may have believed in something or not but I was never clear as to what, if anything, they believed in a religious sense, and it was in fact many years before I would realize that religion was still a real and significant force in many people's lives.
Robert Heinlein, James Schmitz, and Isaac Asimov became very significant to me by the age of 10, when I really started going through my dad's library of SF.
The final, and in many ways most influential, author was one I encountered when my 5th grade teacher handed me a battered old copy of "Second-Stage Lensmen": E. E. "Doc" Smith. Smith's books were pure concentrated sensawunda, and it was reading that book, and also Christopher Anvil's "Pandora's Planet", that solidified my desire to be a writer into "I want to be a SCIENCE-FICTION writer."
Thanks for asking!!
First on that list would have to be L. Frank Baum, the author of the original 14 Oz books. Oz remains an influence on me to this day, and he was the first real author whose name I specifically knew as someone I wanted to read more from, and who I thought of as an example of "author" that I wanted to be like.
By the time I was 8 I found and read all of Hugh Lofting's "Doctor Doolittle" books, along with Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books. While the Doolittle books were of course much more fantastic in their content than Wilder's fictionalized biographies, they were both glimpses into worlds that were, to me, quite alien -- the America of the late 1800s, and the United Kingdom/England of the Victorian era. Not much later, I encountered both Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who both expanded drastically my understanding of what kind of stories authors could tell, as well as both writing in the same Victorian era.
Another influential pair of authors were the D'Aulaires, who produced two magnificent mythological compendiums, one for the Greek and one for the Norse mythology cycles. This was actually my first exposure to religion in any detail; my parents may have believed in something or not but I was never clear as to what, if anything, they believed in a religious sense, and it was in fact many years before I would realize that religion was still a real and significant force in many people's lives.
Robert Heinlein, James Schmitz, and Isaac Asimov became very significant to me by the age of 10, when I really started going through my dad's library of SF.
The final, and in many ways most influential, author was one I encountered when my 5th grade teacher handed me a battered old copy of "Second-Stage Lensmen": E. E. "Doc" Smith. Smith's books were pure concentrated sensawunda, and it was reading that book, and also Christopher Anvil's "Pandora's Planet", that solidified my desire to be a writer into "I want to be a SCIENCE-FICTION writer."
Thanks for asking!!
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