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Last updated: Sun Sep 29 2024

These are the ten storytellers or works that have probably had the most influence on me:

• Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
• Bryan Lee O’Malley (Scott Pilgrim, Seconds)
• Helen deWitt (The Last Samurai, The English Understand Wool)
• Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Paranoia Agent, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika)
• Don Hertzfeldt (It’s Such A Beautiful Day, World of Tomorrow)
• Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion (+ FLCL which is thematically related if not actually production-related)
• Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love
• Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel
• Jorge Luis Borges (Collected Fictions)
• Warhammer 40,000 (yes, really)

As well as a few honorable mentions that didn’t quite make the top ten:

• Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow)
• Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master & Margarita)
• Phillip Pullman (His Dark Materials)
• Voltaire (Candide)
• Sarah Ruhl (Eurydice: A Play)
• Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, A Wizard of Earthsea)
• Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves)
• Leonora Carrington (The Hearing Trumpet, Complete Stories)
• Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis)
• The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All At Once

There’s also a few “internet writers” who have had an outsize impact on me:

• Robin Sloan’s various newsletters
• Jason Kottke, Kottke.org
• Ryan North, Dinosaur Comics
• Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne, Oglaf (very NSFW)
• Simon Willison

There’s also a few Western classics that I reference incessantly:

• Dante’s Divine Comedy
• Milton’s Paradise Lost
• Shakespeare’s The Tempest
• Goethe’s Faust
• Cervantes’ Don Quixote