This week I finished Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson, and with it, the Sprawl Trilogy. Ever since I read Neuromancer, i have been recognizing its influence everywhere.
To me it feels like Neuromancer and Lord of the Rings are very similar in that they are foundational works in their genres, and you can see their influence in everything that follows after their success. Of course the modern fantasy genre is much bigger than cyberpunk, so LotR's influence is much more visible.
I also read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" but I just don't see its impact as much as with William Gibsons work, maybe I need to watch the 1982 movie to understand its influence. Pride and Prejudice was also one of the books I read last year, but there are so many (different) views on the book, its a little overwhelming to try and find out the truth about its cultural impact. I am sure there was contemporary romance like it before? Did it popularize it more?
I am thinking about what other works are there, that had a similar impact.
What other books were able to create a new genre?
What could be the most recent example of something like this?
And do you think, that having a pioneer like these two benefits a genre, or does the giant influence stories like Neuromancer or Lord of the Rings restrict a genre?
We still have elves, dwarfs and goblins, maybe the genre could have evolved faster, if LotR was a little less successful.
I would love to hear other opinions, and sorry for the spelling, english is not my first language. ^^
by Improvement2242
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Dune is a huge one.
Frankenstein
The Castle of Otranto
We
Skylark
Barsoom
Starship Troopers – genre/content more than style
Gibson’s Bridge trilogy is also really worth reading.
I’m not sure how comparable he is to the likes of Tolkien, Gibson, Herbert, or many of the other authors already mentioned, but after rereading some H. P. Lovecraft recently I was reminded just how much cosmic horror media I’ve consumed that is influenced by his stories.
The *Gormenghast* trilogy
Much more so than Tolkien, Peake’s books informed ‘fantasy of manners’ works by M. John Harrison (the *Viriconium* sequence), China Miéville (*Perdido Street Station*), Michael Moorcock (*Gloriana*), George R. R. Martin (the *A Song of Ice and Fire* series, where there is even a House Peake with a “Titus” as its head), Susannah Clark (*Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell*), and Ursula K. le Guin (the *Earthsea* books).
The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius | First fully preserved novel
The Princess Of Clèves by Mme de La Fayette | Psychological novel
Lazarillo de Tormes | Picaresque
The Castle Of Ortranto by Horace Walpole | Gothic novel
All romances by Chrétien de Troyes | Chivalric romance; by extension it also laid many foundations for the modern novel, as well as our view of the middle ages and medieval fantasy
The Murders in the Rue Morgue is considered the first modern mystery or Detective Story.
I’d add whatever book would be considered the first modern Romantasy. I don’t know the genre and would have no idea which that would be.
Edgar Allen Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (and the other two stories featuring the same detective) is a foundational work of the detective/whodunnit genre.
Off the top of my head —
– Mary Shelley
– Edgar Allan Poe
– Jules Verne and HG Wells
– H Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Arthur Conan Doyle
– HP Lovecraft , Robert E Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith
The actual list would be longer.
HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos
A Study in Scarlet is definitely a foundational work in the realm of detective fiction.
Dark Souls
Robert E. Howard’s The Shadow Kingdom is often marked as the first Sword and Sorcery story.
Foundation (ba dum tss)
For modern genre fiction I think Weird Takes is the most influential thing there is. It features writers who went on to write for Star Trek, and Twilight Zone. Everyone read it. Some of the biggest names to appear are Lovecraft, Howard, Robert Bloche, Manly Wade Wellman, Frank Belknap Long. The influences of these stories show up in everything from video games to table top games like Warhammer and D&D. Stephen King has several references to stories from there. It isn’t something everyone was reading, but its something a lot of creative people were into.
I would say Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens exist in this conversation. I would argue Carroll popularized the concept of portal fantasy, and Dickens solidified the modern form of the character arc.
The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin is another.
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. While reading I could see how the book inspired a lot of zombie stories and it became one of my favorites
Tom Brown’s School Days (1857), by Thomas Hughes, was a foundational work in the boarding school genre, which was popular in British children literature from mid 19th century to mid 20th century.
Tom Brown was not the first story to be set in a school, but it codified many of the tropes that became standard, and its fenomenal success made the genre commercially viable.
The influence of that genre can be seen as recently as Harry Potter, which takes many of the tropes of that genre and adds an epic fantasy story.