So, continuing my occasional trawl through my bookselves to find my A-Z favourites, H comes pummeling me over the head with countless options. Ask me tomorrow and I might go for Peter F Hamilton, because he’s so damn readable. But he’d be nowhere without Robert A Heinlein and this is certainly a case of giving due respect to your elders,

Heinlein was one of the big three of science fiction’s golden age, of course, alongside Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, emerging from the pulps and going on to dominate the field through the 50s, 60s and 70s until age dimmed his talent and the next generation emerged. But, like Shakespeare and the Beatles, his legacy is evident everywhere. There would be no Peter Hamilton (as we know his writing) without Robert Heinlein, No John Scalzi, no Gareth Powell, no Alastair Reynolds, no Stephen Baxter, no Dan Simmonds and no James A Corey. Probably no Star Trek either, because Heinlein was out in space seeking out strange new worlds long before Gene Roddenbery put pen to paper.

As a kid I couldn’t get enough. I worked through his ‘juveniles’ (Tunnel in the Sky, Red Planet, the Star Beast etc etc) and quickly on to his books aimed at older readers. Mid peirod Heinlein classics included Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, Glory Road and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and I’ve returned to them all many times. Later additions were longer, rambling, more indulgent and best forgotten but those early classics have a freshness and energy to them that is rarely evident in more modern work.

Tunnel in the Sky, one of his ‘juveniles’ is my favourite. A bunch of kids on some sort of outward bound survival ecercise on a new planet get stranded with all the adults and teachers cut off when their wormhole link goes down. It doesn’t quite turn into Lord of the Flies in space, not quite.

Heinlein’s politics got dodgy as he got older, and as the spiritual father of military SF he’s got a lot to answer for. But his grunts-in-space classic Starship Troopers also inspired Joe Haldeman’s seminal anti-war novel The Forever War, and early Heinlein would probably have barely recognised his later incarnation. So take him in the round, and like your grandad try and overlook his slightly dubious take on the world and remember what you love about him – strong storytelling, great characters, vivid imagination and the chance to live out your dreams, page by page. H is for Robert A Heinlein, then, and Tunnel in the Sky is my pick of his books.

Because Birdsong is the Dog’s Bollocks. End of.

Longer version: continuing my bookshelf A-Z of favourite authors and their top stories. F’s not a prolific author surname, but there are some standouts, Ian Fleming, much derided in the 1050s by sniffy contemporaries like Graham Greene for being a hack not an artist – but um, let’s see – Brighton Rock or 25 Bond films and counting? Then there’s Jonathan Frantzen for his magnifient The Corrections – surely one of the finest novels of recent generations, And the incomparable F. Scott Fitzgerald with his masterpiece The Great Gatsby – period-heavy tale of love, obsession, class and teh American Dream (again sniffed at by his contemporaries).

So why am I choosing Sebastian Faulks’ BIrdsong over Bond or Gatsby? Well The Bond novels don’t represent great writing even though the character is, undewniably, iconic and enduring. And Gatsby? There’s a car-crawh plot contrivance at the end that’s always bothered me. Bridsong’s not without its issues either, It’s mostly set against the backdrop of the First World War but for the first 100 pages or so (it’s a long novel) there’s nary a trench in sight – early on, the story concentrates on an illicit love affair between a British businessman and a married Frenchwoman. And then the war kicks in. Layered, intricate and engaging, Birdsong timeslips before, during and after the war to great effect examining love, loss, war and sacrifice. The (relatively) modern day sections are probably a mistake, but they’re short. And there’s a sequence towards the end – where our hero is trapped in tunnels under enemy lines – that build up suspense and tension better than any writing I can recall. Astounding writing. F is for Faulks and for Birdsong.

Continuing my A-Z roundup of best on my shelves.

I know, I know – all getting literary around here and no zombies or space opera in sight. But George Eliot’s Middlemarch is the standout best book of the 19th Century, in my opinion. And then there’s The Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda, Silas Marner…

I think part of the reason for my choice is that poor old Mary Anne Evans had to change her name in order to get published. I can’t imagine how difficult it would have been for her to find a publisher, let alone the encouragement to continue writing in such a male-dominated world. Her writing was far from stereotypical either – Middlemarch is all about death, obligation, debt and disgrace. It challenges the notion that women can’t be strong and independent as it entertainingly portrays 19th century life. This book, and this writer, have stayed with me for decades, so this selection is straightforward. E is for Eliot and particularly for Middlemarch.

Darker more contemporary choices would be Bret Easton Ellis for the disturbing but magnificent American Pshycho and Harlan Ellison for just about everything, though he could have been a bit nicer about it (a legendary staight talking curmudgen). F will be more modern, I promise!

Continuing my A-Z of (my bookshelf greats.

Choosing an author whose surname begins with the letter ‘C’ wasn’t straightforward. A was always going to be for Atwood and B for Banks, but C? Orson Scott Card wrote one of my favourite books (Ender’s Game) and Arthur C Clarke takes most of a shelf, but both are flawed and neither is truly great.  Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is surely one of the best fantasy novels of recent times (though her back catalogue is too sparse for this selection) and Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler (from very different perspectives) have filled many of my hours with gripping tales of crime and detection (though I prefer my writers to take themselves – and their characters – a little more seriously). Lewis Carrol’s there, as are Jack L Chalker and Edmund Cooper (relatively obscure hidden pleasures), but again they’re too light for my selection. James A Corey (author of the Expanse series) would have been there, and probably would have been my choice if he actually existed, but the two people who actually write the books, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, haven’t done enough on their own to demand a place on this list.

For style and substance, there’s only one real choice. Angela Carter. Read her 1979 short story collection, The Bloody Chamber for a profoundly unsettling experience (particularly the title story), or pick up one of her layered novels such as Nights at the Circus (1984) or The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972).

Magic realism? Fantasy? Horror? All of these and more. Here tales are feminist gothic mixed with the fantastic and sinister, and her ideas are challenging and subversive, making her one of the great writers of the 20^th century. She died when only 52 in 1992. C is for Carter and The Bloody Chamber is my book choice.

Choosing my favourite author on my shelves with a surname beginning B was much easier when I stopped thinking too hard about it and went with my gut. Iain Banks. Or Iain M Banks if you only like his sci-fi. I remember being grossed out by his first novel, The Wasp Factory, then astonished by his science fiction Cultureseries, which did what (to me) Frank Herbert’s Dune series and Asimov’s Foundation books couldn’t – create a manifestly credible future galactic diaspora and make it entertaining.

It’s a tragedy that Banks is no longer with us, taken by cancer in 2013 when he was only 59 years old. He would undoubtedly have gone on to even greater success, but he is, and will remain, one of Scotland’s greatest writers.

My Banks book choice (if only the other letters could be so alliterative) is The Player of Games, the second of the Cuture novels, where a board game specialist is recruited on a mission to a the Empire of Azad, where social position, wealth and political influence depends on success in the game which gave its name to the entire Empire: Azad. If he succeeds in mastering the game, then the Culture’s influence will spread, but if not…

Another notable bookshelf B (damn, I’m going to miss this letter) is Octavia Butler – vastly underrated writer suffering the indefensible disadvantages of being a woman and being black writing at a time when white men’s domination of speculative fiction (amongst other things) was barely questioned (and, frighteningly, that’s really not that long ago). 1979’s Kindred is a must-read. She, too, died an untimely death aged 58 in 2006.

Other Bs jostling for third place on my shelves are another Scot, the prolific Steven Baxter, whose books are often entertaining (I particularly love Anti-Ice) but often frustrating (for instance, the hugely readable Flood made me think for ages -still am – about how irrational and (worse) unlikely the world’s response in the book to inexorably rising sea levels. Then there’s the impressive Paulo Bacigalupi (don’t miss The Windup Girl), Ray Bradbury and James Blish. I was tempted to select (relative) newcomer Chris Beckett, for his engaging Dark Eden books, but his latest, Two Tribes, is (in my opinion) a mis-step.

Outside the comforting confines of the geek halls, though, Charlotte Bronte’s enduring work still resonates with me – Jane Eyre is magnificent.  If I did succumb to the indulgence of a third choice, however, it would be James lee Burke, with his gritty and wry pulp-ish crime novels, often set in the Deep South. My favourite is Dixie City Jam – but there’s a long list.

So there you have it: Banks, Butler and Burke. Sounds like a particularly dependable law firm. Or a trio of exceptional writers.