Here's a quickie:
In the seventh grade I picked up my mothers copy of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, and that's how it all began. I read it 8 times through my high school years - it became somewhat of a bible to me. It also sparked interest in other subjects. I found a copy of the Principia Discordia online and started an archive on Timothy Leary, which I someday hope to make public. My high school years also saw my interest peak in the culture of "cyberpunk" - whatever that is.
Recently however, since I've graduated from college and moved on to the corporate world, I've been veering more toward the classics. Joyce, Nabokov, Kafka, and Dostoevsky... oddly enough, people I could identify with.
I think I might classify my favorite author as extropian - has anyone read the fiction of Jeff Noon? As a collector of Alice in Wonderland books, I thoroughly enjoyed his "Automated Alice".
And as for female authors, I really haven't been exposed to many that I could really stomach. The Jane Austin's and Virginia Woolf's of the world really inflicted some major damage during my college years. Luckily I could always turn to that one female that always understood me and "my kind" - St. Jude.
That's all.
Christopher Whipple
ADVANTIS Corporate Technical Support