C. T. Suddeth

My list includes spec writers other writers don’t claim, but I will.

1. Mr. Forgotten: Albert Payson Terhune wrote Lad, A Dog. I read the collie’s adventures when I was a kid. It predated Lassie. It made me realize animals had dignity. If you accept that animals have human-like feelings then you can accept aliens from outer space and robots as main characters.
2. Ms. Poet: Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote a long poem, “The Ballad of the Harp Weaver.” She wrote many other poems of the supernatural. Her poetry takes me out of Normal Mode into Spec Mode.
3. Mr. Fireplace: I visualize Washington Irving sitting in front of a colonial fireplace, telling stories like “Headless Horseman” and “Rip Van Winkle.” How many spinoffs of these 2 tales are there? What would Halloween be without him?
4. Mr. Steampunk: I didn’t understand steampunk, until someone said to me, “Jules Verne.” Need I say more? A serious dude who predicted computers and far more than just a huge submarine or balloon adventures.
5. Mr. Pirate: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island fascinated me as a kid. I was convinced secret treasures lurked everywhere. Astronauts landing on a distant planet, bring me back to this story. Jekyll and Hyde was an early science fiction story that has been retold a million times.
6. Just call him Professor: Sherlock Holmes was Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous character, but Professor Challenger was the character for a series of science fiction stories. The most famous one was The Lost World. Hollywood is still mining it.
7. Really old guy: I don’t know for sure, but I suspect Homer made up the Iliad and the Odyssey. He called them old tales, because bards weren’t allowed to make up new ones. After 3,000 years, his stories are still going strong.What can I say?
8. Sir, to you: When I was a kid, I loved Peter Pan. Heck, I still like it. Novelist/playwright Sir J. M. Barrie also wrote Mary Rose, which Alfred Hitchcock unsuccessfully tried to make into a movie.
9. Strange Dude: H. P. Lovecraft wrote about Cthulhu and Necronomican. He was an unabashed racist and possibly mentally ill, but his writing has been very influential, especially with Stephen King. I like him and dislike him, which would probably make sense to him.
10. Wild Child: Oscar Wilde not only wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, but he wrote at least 2 books of fairy tales. I’m not sure I’d read them to my little ones, but Oscar certainly lived up to his name.
    
    Now you know what inspires/scares me!
    
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