J K Rowling
You grew up reading her! How can you not vote for the most influential writer of the last twenty years? Name one person who hasn’t heard of J K Rowling and her hero, the Boy Who Survived who, with the lightning-shape scar on his forehead, his unruly wiry hair, his spectacles and his wizardly determination, defeats the forces of evil massed behind the gradually regenerating Voldemort.
Even if you haven’t read the books (and you should), you’ve seen the films. True, this isn’t exactly what you’d call literature, but these seven volumes have to be among the best page-turners ever written and, frankly, anything that could produce the totally silent absorption these books prompted in my three children when each book came out gets my vote for something…
Dr Hudson
Terry Pratchett
J K Rowling's most famous books, the Harry Potter series, have a
certain set of literary tropes that they stick to, that of the chosen
one, the evil wizard, the faithful friends and so on.
Sir Terry Pratchett's books, on the other hand, take those tropes, turn them upside down, dress them in pink tutus and make them dance the one man tango.
The Discworld itself is hard to explain to the uninitiated - a
flat world, held up on the back of 4 elephants, who are in turn
standing on the back of a ten thousand mile long turtle, that is
swimming through the endless reaches of space. This concept
is so crazy that at first you might dismiss it, but over the course of
the series there is such a depiction of ordinary, and extra-ordinary,
events that the world of the Disc gains a depth of character that has spawned a cookbook, several studies on
the science of Discworld, and even an OS standard atlas on it and its
largest city, Ankh-Morpork.
This is all without mentioning the characters: Sam Vimes, the 'good' cop, Rincewind the cowardly Wizard and of course Death, to name but a few. My favourite is the latter: in Terry Pratchett's Death we see a skeleton man, with a horse named Binky, who is very, very good at his job. He (for Pratchett's Death is a he) is inherently interested in Humanity, to the extent that he adopts a child, takes on an apprentice (in Mort), and even ends up with a grand-daughter.
This is all without mentioning the characters: Sam Vimes, the 'good' cop, Rincewind the cowardly Wizard and of course Death, to name but a few. My favourite is the latter: in Terry Pratchett's Death we see a skeleton man, with a horse named Binky, who is very, very good at his job. He (for Pratchett's Death is a he) is inherently interested in Humanity, to the extent that he adopts a child, takes on an apprentice (in Mort), and even ends up with a grand-daughter.
Overall, I think that what makes Sir Terry Pratchett's books, at least in my opinion, genre defining for fantasy is his belief that fantasy is not, as it so often has been termed, 'escapism' from the real world. It is, rather a reflection of it, including the postal service, the banks, steam trains, telegrams, government, philosophy, history, food, movies and even dodgy door-to-door salespeople. I think that The Discworld, on the back of the great A'tuin swimming through space, is a more believable representation of life than J K Rowling's books set in the real world.
Pratchett died in early 2015 aged 66, due to early onset dementia,
but as he said in his books, no man is truly dead until his name and his
deeds have stopped being spoken about in the world left behind. Do go
and read his books, no matter which way you
vote in this poll - they are all a part of an amazing world (I
recommend the Sam Vimes story line, with Night Watch being the best) and if you want to see a glimpse of the level of detail, wit and
references that Sir Terry crammed into his books, then please go to this link.
Charlie de Waal
Many thanks to Dr Hudson and Charlie for contributing: now it's time to cast your vote (if you're reading this on your phone, you'll need to go to the web version of the site to do this: click on 'see web version' below, and once you're on the web version, the poll is on the right hand side, at the top. And you need to quit the blog before you can see that your vote's been registered. That's Google Blogger for you. Sigh).
Many thanks to Dr Hudson and Charlie for contributing: now it's time to cast your vote (if you're reading this on your phone, you'll need to go to the web version of the site to do this: click on 'see web version' below, and once you're on the web version, the poll is on the right hand side, at the top. And you need to quit the blog before you can see that your vote's been registered. That's Google Blogger for you. Sigh).
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