Inspirations
In no particular order, here's a list of things that inspired me and/or that you might enjoy if you like my fiction
- the Discworld novels by the late great Terry Pratchett
I don't recommend starting with The Color of Magic (the first novel in the setting), as it took him some time to get into the swing of things
- Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Amazon did an excellent 6-episode adaptation of it, but there's a lot in the novel you're missing without it
- The Leaky Establishment by David Langford and its satirical view on the British nuclear weapons program (unintentionally) inspired some of my view of Bell corporate culture
- Command and Control by Eric Schlosser was also an inspiration about cold war military culture and the AUTOVON system
- Exploding The Phone by Phil Lapsley is an excellent look inside the Bell System and phreaker culture in the 60s and is almost entirely why Bell is the villain
- my visit to the Telephone Museum in Ellsworth, Maine inspired my awe in telephone switching
- this 1981 article from Mother Jones served as inspiration for the coercive nature of Bell in 1ESSIE
- the SCP Foundation is a significant inspiration and I've tried to write some pieces in their writing style
- the novels of Jasper Fforde have influenced my style, especially his Thursday Next series
- Monday Starts on Saturday by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (in a decent but difficult english translation by Andrew Bromfield) paints a picture of magical academia that I rather like
Their other novels, especially The Dead Mountaineer's Inn (excellent translation by Josh Billings) are also worth a read.
- the novels of Stanisław Lem, especially Peace on Earth and Return From The Stars are also excellent and an inspiration to 75Ω Love, although I do not envy the job of his english translators
- This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is outstanding, and I hope I've captured even one tenth of the sapphic energy in that short novel
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke has made me capitalize words that I want to imbue with additional Meaning
- the Speed Demon stories by Zhange on the SCP Wiki's Third Law Hub are the type of lesbian action witchcraft I love
- "Estrogen and Brimstone" was ripped shamelessly off of this story of demon smut by @HardSundae on Twitter
- "75ohm Love" was strongly inspired by the excellent Drugs and Wires webcomic, which takes the idea much better than I ever could
- I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter by Isabel Fall has its fingerprints all over "75Ω Love" and it's a shame that she was harassed off the internet
- Scanners Live In Vain by Cordwainer Smith reminded me a fair bit of Isabel Fall's piece and led to the themes of 1ESSIE
- qntm's books and SCP Wiki pieces are a huge inspiration and led to me trying to write some in SCP style, and I shamelessly copied the look of their website for this one
- Dana Terrace's The Owl House (Disney Channel/Disney+) is an excellent kid's show that touches on witchcraft, trauma, being hispanohablante in the US, and found family that I'm very disappointed about the cutbacks to the third season
- "ChronoPost" was inspired by an offhand joke about mailing estradiol back in time and reading the Wikipedia article about the Prague pneumatic post
- Mt. Sisyphus and Bog Witch were both inspired by hikes in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York.
I wrote almost all of "Bog Witch" in the back seat of my friend's car as we headed home from a peat bog near Tupper Lake where I felt something
- the beach in the beach episode was inspired by Limekiln Lake up in the Adirondacks
- visiting the Diefenbunker and feeling weirdly cozy inspired Alice's bunker house in the witchcraft continuity
- Aviador Dro y sus Obreros Especializados is a Spanish synthpop band whose lyrics inspired some of the 75Ω vibes
and is actively making my accent in spanish worseIf I listen to too much of their music in one sitting, I start thinking about adapting Antimateria into a story - Neil Stephenson's (very lengthy) novels have probably inspired some details of my writing
- Seeming's song Reality is Afraid is quite the vibe of bending the rules of the world
- Soulfire by Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul is probably where I stole the name Soulsparking from
- Reversing/Hexing/Typing/Rewriting/Unifying The Technical Interview and its witches carefully rewriting the fabric of reality
- this tweet from @capsule_169 influenced 75ohm pretty deeply
- "Capacitive Touch" was somewhat inspired by this tweet from @quatoria and by @capsule_169's tweet above
- my use of text messages in Magic HRT and The Battery was entirely stolen from @Azure_Husky's Unknown Number
- "Sarah" was inspired by this screencap of a tumblr post
- Postcards From the End of the World by Victoria Scott hits hard and perfectly captures the loneliness of being alone in rural America
- of course, no accounting of my inspiration is complete without my wonderful friends, especially other writers on Twitter. I've bounced a lot of ideas off of my friends y les agradezco tanto para toda sus ayuda.
