Re:The Most Influential Books Ever Written (2010)
by blumkvist on Sunday January 26, 2014 @01:17PM
(#7126077)
I don't like comperative statements when talking about exceptional work. Can you say the Beatles are more popular/influential than Queen? How can you even decide something like that? The words themselves (exceptional,influential) do not have comparative/superlative forms.
Agreed on Mao and Marx.
I'd argue that HGW, Verne and Asimov created or helped significantly in shaping a literary genre which has a high impact on our psychological and cultural behavior and currently paves the way to our future. Whether their ideas last only a 100 years is irrelevant. Is Baroque, or better yet - Rococo - irrelevant?
There will be a handful of books that make a big, permament paradigm shift in society as a whole (or in big parts of it). But in order for the authors who will write those books to be born, society has to constantly move and spawn new trends.
Agreed on Mao and Marx.
I'd argue that HGW, Verne and Asimov created or helped significantly in shaping a literary genre which has a high impact on our psychological and cultural behavior and currently paves the way to our future. Whether their ideas last only a 100 years is irrelevant. Is Baroque, or better yet - Rococo - irrelevant?
There will be a handful of books that make a big, permament paradigm shift in society as a whole (or in big parts of it). But in order for the authors who will write those books to be born, society has to constantly move and spawn new trends.