It’s a strange thing, tracing the origin of a voice.
Not the polished one people hear now… not the measured cadence that comes with time and repetition… but the earlier version, the one that was still forming in the quiet corners of a life not yet fully understood. The voice that hadn’t decided what it stood for, only that it had something it needed to say.
For me, that thread leads back to a book that doesn’t often make the polite lists.
A Book That Didn’t Ask Permission
Somewhere along the line, I came across The Overman Culture by Edmund Cooper.
Not handed to me with ceremony… not framed as important… just one of those quiet collisions that ends up mattering far more than expected.
It wasn’t Dickens. It didn’t arrive with the weight of literary approval or the comfort of familiarity. There were no classrooms gently guiding you through its meaning, no polite discussions about symbolism over neatly underlined passages.
It simply presented itself… and then it got on with unsettling me.
Because that’s what it did.
It unsettled.
The world Cooper built wasn’t loud in its warning. It didn’t shout. It didn’t need to. Instead, it carried a kind of clinical calm… a society shaped by control, by design, by a quiet erosion of something fundamentally human. Not through catastrophe, but through adjustment. Through acceptance.
And that’s always the more dangerous path, isn’t it?
Not the dramatic fall… but the gradual accommodation.
The Quiet Realisation
At the time, I wouldn’t have had the language for it.
You don’t, when you’re younger. You don’t sit there analysing themes of societal drift or philosophical surrender. You just feel it. Something sits slightly off. Something lingers after the final page.
A discomfort… but not the kind you reject.
The kind you carry.
Looking back now, that book didn’t teach me how to write. It did something far more useful. It showed me what writing could do.
It could question without asking directly.
It could hold a mirror up at just the right angle so you weren’t entirely sure whether you were looking at fiction… or something uncomfortably close to reality.
And perhaps most importantly, it didn’t try to be liked.
That part stays with you.
Somewhere Between Dickens and Disorder
It would be easy, and probably expected, to say that my early influences were rooted firmly in the established greats. And to a degree, that’s true.
You don’t grow up around writing without crossing paths with Charles Dickens. His work is woven into the cultural fabric… unavoidable in the best possible way. The rhythm, the observation, the ability to capture entire worlds through detail… all of that leaves a mark.
But Dickens, for all his brilliance, operates within a certain understanding. His worlds, however complex, still feel anchored. There’s a moral gravity. A structure that, even when chaotic, ultimately resolves into something recognisable.
Cooper didn’t offer that comfort.
There was no reassurance waiting at the end.
No quiet sense that things would settle into place if you just kept reading.
Instead, there was ambiguity… and something colder beneath it. A suggestion that systems, once set in motion, don’t always correct themselves. That progress isn’t always a forward movement… sometimes it’s simply a more efficient form of loss.
That contrast mattered.
It widened the frame.
It made space for a different kind of thought… the kind that doesn’t rush to resolve itself neatly.
Writing Without Permission
If I strip it back, that early encounter left me with a quiet but persistent understanding…
You don’t need permission to write something that unsettles people.
You don’t need approval to explore ideas that don’t sit comfortably in the room.
And perhaps more importantly… you don’t need to resolve everything.
That last part took longer to accept.
There’s a natural instinct, especially early on, to tidy things up. To make your writing agreeable. To smooth out the rough edges so it lands well, so it’s received without resistance.
But the pieces that stay with people… the ones that echo… they rarely come from that place.
They come from honesty. From tension. From allowing something to remain slightly unresolved.
From trusting the reader enough to sit with it.
The Long Echo
Time does something interesting to early influences.
They don’t always stay visible. You’re not consciously thinking about them as you write. You’re not referencing them, not tracing lines back to where it all began.
But they’re there.
In the tone.
In the willingness to question.
In the refusal to package everything neatly for consumption.
That early encounter with The Overman Culture didn’t define my writing… but it shaped the edges of it. It introduced the idea that writing could operate outside of approval. That it could observe without immediately judging. That it could leave space… and trust that space to do its work.
And perhaps that’s the real influence.
Not style. Not structure.
Permission.
Closing Thought
When people talk about what inspired them to write, there’s often a tendency to reach for the expected names… the safe answers… the ones that sit comfortably in conversation.
But the truth is usually quieter than that.
It’s often a single book, found without ceremony, that doesn’t quite fit… that lingers longer than it should… that shifts something just enough to change direction without announcing itself.
For me, that book wasn’t the obvious choice.
It didn’t arrive with applause.
It simply stayed.
And in its own quiet way… it still does.
Until Next Time
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