I thought this might be a nice idea. Bit of a twist on the whole 'recommended reading thread.'
There are countless authors selling books around the world. Nobody could ever hope to read books by them all. However, now we all live on Internet Street, those continents have never seemed closer.
Hype up your favorite authors from the country you live in. Authors that the people here on Litreactor might be interested in checking out. You Americanos might want to just go with a State, that's what you get for having such a huge country. A brief overview should do, enough to peak interest and send folks in search of a review or a wiki page. Go for the obscure and the semi-obscure, not much point posting about Stephen King or J K Rowling.
I'll start.
Jeff Noon (England) - Crazy sci-fi mixed with elements of cyberpunk and transgressive fiction. Noon's books are full of headfuckery, wordplay, and altered states of consciousness. Drugs often feature in his stories, get in too deep and you might start to wonder if it isn't you who is tripping.
His first book was Vurt, which is William Gibson meets The Matrix meets a massive sack of narcotics. Colour-coded feathers are sucked in order to enter various kinds of virtual reality. There are robots, dogmen, shadow-people, and things-from-another-dimension to meet along the way.
Vurt is the start of a loose series, and he has a book of fifty short stories called Pixel Juice. His last book, Falling Out Of Cars, is maybe the strangest road-novel I've ever read.
If you like them weird, then check this guy out.
Right, now it's your turn.
I'll be back soon with some more from little old England.
Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman by Mark Wisniewski. Funny sex book. Not the greatest writing ever but it's still funny. I think its probably the only book the guy has ever wrote.
Paul Neilan. Everybody should read Apathy and Other Small Victories. It's a well written, quick, funny read.
Something I've read and no-one else has... OH YEAH! Go ask aliensoul if you could read some of his stuff, it is beyond fucking fantastic. Sick, yes, but brilliant
Vurt was my favorite book in his high school for a while. Probably the first "strange" book I ever read. I haven't read Jeff Noon in an extremely long time.
@Pete - I have a new appreciation for salt shakers.
Axis Mundi Sum by DA Smith is a sprawling pseudo-conspiracy satire that's a good read through from a Texan writer.
@ Bradley - Yeah Vurt rocks. One of those books I wish I'd discovered earlier. Have you read any of Noon's short stories? They are a special kind of weird.
@ Pete, I like the sound of that one. Might have to order that at some point.
So, a couple more authors from England that some of you guys might like.
Will Self - This guys is quite popular over here, but I'm not sure how much success he has had overseas. He writes a mixture of social satire and grotesque strangeness. His novels include Cock and Bull, in which a man and a woman begin to grow the opposite sexual organs, with very bizarre results, and How The Dead Live, in which a londoner dies and moves to the afterlife only to find it's just another suburb.
Personally I prefer his short stories though. The collection Tough, Tough Toys For Tough, Tough, Boys is my favorite of his books that I have read. The stories include The Rock Of Crack As Big As The Ritz and Flytopia, which are as fun as they sound.
David Devereux - This guy used to be an practising exorcist apparently (wtf?) but has since gone on to write two novels about a government endorsed magician/hitman called 'Jack' who uses a combo of occult arts and machine guns to bring down the bad guys. The antagonists include BDSM sex cults and Neo-nazi's with an interest in reincarnation. Daft stuff but humourous, the novels are light hearted and seem to poke more a little fun at the current vogue for magical and supernatural fantasy.
Yeah. Lets hear about some more from your parts of the world.
I really liked Apathy and other small victories, by neilan. A book called Beat the Reaper by josh bazell came out a while ago, and reminded me of it quite a bit. Totally different stories, but a similiar voice.
@wickedvoodoo - No, I haven't read Jeff Noon's stories (or Pixel Juice). I guess I should add that to the immense list of books that I went to read. Besides Vurt, I've only read Pollen and Automated Alice.
I used to really be into Jack Womack's books, which are similar to Noon's although slightly more conventional. But he hasn't published a new book in a long time. I think he works in NYC publishing. And I came across him on facebook and sent a message, and he mentioned something about working on a literary fiction book (perhaps for a long time) rather than a science fiction book. His novels are a little cyberpunk-y and they're all related to each other (except for maybe one of them).
