If you could pick just five - which authors influenced you the most or impressed you the most or you just like?
Some great names in there. Never been able to get into Dickens myself. Phililp K Dick just seems to get more and more influential and prophetic every year. There would be no Black Mirror without Dick. Donaldson, not read much, tried the Thomas Covenant bit, didn't get very far past the gratuitous rape scene (and others who have read the whole thing have told me that never really goes anywhere) Feist I found enjoyable but derivative, and the things he may have done before others have since been done better if you ask me. Orwell, obviously a giant, but not one I'd read for pleasure. Read the Road to Wigan Pier at Uni, essential stuff, but grim and drab.
For me:
Douglas Adams: Not only a very funny writer, but a very intelligent one. Some of the best ideas in sci fi turn up in his books, and if you get past the gags, the ideas behind them are startling.
Jeff Noon: I read the Vurt cycle as a teenager and it totally opened my eyes to a lot of things. Again, massive ideas and such a unique voice. One of the few writers who actually creates original content on twitter worth reading, and re-reading.
Joseph Heller: Just for the one book, but what a fucking book. He was asked why he never wrote anything else as good as Catch-22. His reply - "Who has?" Spot on, too.
China Mieville: From the dizzying scale of the fantasy world he created for Perdido St Station (and the follow-ups) to the brilliant originality of the concept of The City and The City, Mieville's imagination is utterly magnificent and very weird.
Iain Banks: Either writing the ultimate story of twisted teen angst, identity and rage in The Wasp Factory, or creating the greatest Utopian Sci-Fi setting known to man with his Culture series (written as Iain M. Banks) there are very few writers who I can just pick up any book by and know I'm going to be taken somewhere compelling in the company of convincing, vital characters who stay in the mind long after the last page.
Others that might make this list any other day: Moorcock, Borges, Gaiman, Vandermeer, King. And Guy N Smith, author of the Crabs series of horror novels. Not because he was good, he was awful, but so readable.