1. Robert Anton Wilson. (home)

I haven’t looked at Illuminatus! for a while, but it blew me away when I was at university (something it does to a lot of people). So while you may quibble, this is someone I admired greatly, and soaked up. Mad ideas, political skits, angry satire, cheeky references. I loved it. Of course, I was a callow youth. In fact, I’m still probably a callow youth, except for the youth part. I’ve heard people complain, since then, that the prose isn’t up to much. I honestly don’t care; he was a moment in my life.

2. Eric Frank Russell.

Sometimes, you just can’t do better than the old pros. Russell’s occasionally hilarious, always exciting storytelling is spare, dry-voiced, and excellent. The first of his I ever read was Three to Conquer, and I spent the next two years hunting down everything else I could find. This is pure SF, from the era of shameless high concept, but it’s also profoundly human and rooted in an understanding of the human traits which land us in such a pickle. Russell would have had plenty to say about Guantánamo and the Iraq War – but it’s okay that he missed them, because a lot of what he said is timeless anyway.