Spin by Robert Charles Wilson and the books in the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy by Robert Sawyer got under my skin, and over a period of years, have inspired my trilogy.  Following is the publisher’s blurbs on the books:

One night when he was 10, Tyler stood in his backyard and watched the stars go out. They flared into brilliance, then disappeared, replaced by an empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

The “sun” is now a featureless disk – a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. The world’s artificial satellites have fallen out of orbit. Eventually, space probes reveal that the barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time passes faster outside the barrier – more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death of the sun is only about forty years away.

Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who’s forged a religion out of the fears of the masses.

Earth sends terraforming machines, then humans, to Mars…and immediately an emissary returns with thousands of stories about the settling of Mars. Then an identical barrier appears around Mars.

Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

In the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy

• Hominoids - Neanderthals have developed a radically different civilization on a parallel Earth. A Neanderthal physicist, Ponter Boddit, accidentally passes from his universe into a Canadian underground research facility. Fortunately, a team of human scientists, including expert paleo-anthropologist Mary Vaughan, promptly identifies and warmly receives Ponter. Solving the language problem and much else is a mini-computer, called a Companion, implanted in the brain of every Neanderthal. A computerized guardian spirit, however, doesn’t eliminate cross-cultural confusion; permanent male-female sexuality, rape, and overpopulation are all alien to Ponter. Nor can it help his housemate and fellow scientist back in his world, Adikor Huld, when the authorities charge Adikor with his murder.
• Humans - In this Hugo-nominated novel, Neanderthal physicist Ponter Boddit brings Canadian geneticist Mary Vaughan back to his world to explore the near-utopian civilization of the Neanderthals. Boddit serves as a Candide figure, the naive visitor whose ignorance about our society makes him a perfect tool to analyze human tendencies toward violence, over-population, and environmental degradation. The Neanderthals have developed a highly artistic, ethical, and scientific culture without ever inventing farming – they’re still hunters and gatherers – and this allows the author to make some interesting and generally unrecognized points about the downside of the discovery of agriculture.

• Hybrids - Scientists (and lovers) Mary Vaughan, who is human, and Ponter Boddit, who is Neanderthal, embark on the harrowing adventure of conceiving a child together. To overcome the genetic barbed wire of mismatched chromosomes, they must use banned technology obtainable only from a Neanderthal scientist living in the northern wilderness.

Please return to this page from time-to-time.  It will be updated. In alphabetical order by the name of the book:

• Chase, The (and many of Clive Cussler’s  novels) – The evil brother and sister in this book convinced me that I should make the black unicorn and the Evil Empress brother and sister, rather than husband and wife.  Also,  I consider Clive Cussler the master of the use of the Prologue.
• Davinci Code, The by Dan Brown -  I’ve studied the Prologue and the many twists and turns in this thriller, as well as the development of characters.  Dan Brown sets up many crises that do not involve violent warfare.  I admire the excellent balance of narrative and dialogue.  The story successfully conveys a wealth of information about many subjects that relate Goddess culture.
• Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss is the only punctuation book that I know that was a New York Times best seller.  The book combines dry wit and humor in its discussions on apostrophes, commas,  semicolons and colons,  exclamation marks, question marks, and quotation marks, italic type, dashes, brackets, ellipses, and emoticons and hyphens. Truss explores the history of punctuation and includes many anecdotes, which make her explanations of grammatical rules enjoyable to read. In the book’s final chapter, she explains the importance of maintaining punctuation rules and even discusses the way that e-mail and the web affect punctuation.
• Eragon - I enjoy the way Christopher Paolini has created the character of Eragon, and the relationship of Eragon and his dragon.  More specifics to follow.
• Dean Koontz’s Dragon Tears - I read this years ago, and I still love the character of the dog, and the book’s exploration of good and evil.  The ability of Dean Koontz to explore good vs. evil in so many of his novels has helped me to understand that I don’t have to accomplish all of my goals in one book.
• How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey – A concise book that’s filled with succinct, practical advice.  It explains how to create characters, the reason for conflict,  how to establish and maintain conflict.  The book has one of the best explanations of a premise that I’ve read, and it helped me to understand when I’ve identified a genuine premise.  It gave me a better understanding of climax, viewpoint and dialog. I agee with the many practical tips on rewriting it provides, including how to select the best writers’ group to help you rewrite.
• Bruce Coville’s Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher - See the page About Harmony for details.
• Lost Symbol, The by Dan Brown – As I read and re-read this book and , I appreciate Dan Brown’s excellent use of narrative.  Also, it inspired me to look into the field of  noetic sciences and to research the Institute for Noetic Sciences.  More specifics to follow.
• One Shot -A fast-reading Jack Reacher novel by Lee Childs – The character of Duke in The Occluded Emerald has been influenced by the character of Jack Reacher.
• Self Editing for Fiction Writers – How to Edit Yourself Into Print by Renni Browne and Dave King- A to-the-point book, complete with exercises that helped me to look at my writing dispassionately, and improve my early drafts.  It covers everything from “show vs. tell” to point-of-view to sophistication and voice.  I can easily find a book on every subject covered in this manual, but I’d have a hard time getting more out some of those books than I get out of a chapter in this book.

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Tags: books, Bruce Coville, Chrisopher Paolini, Clive Cussler, Dan Brown, Dean Koontz, Hominoids, Humans, Hybrids, Influences, Lee Childs, Robert Charles Wilson, Robert Sawyer, Spin