Books and Corrections:
“that author” is Herman Melville, Brian Aldiss’s book titles are Galactic Empires volume 1 and 2, the other classic I had laying around is F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
Honorable mentions : Ursula K Leguin, Anne McCaffrey, Jack Vance, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Ann Laurance and Cassandra Rising and gawd knows who else I might be forgetting. HG Wells and George RR Martin it goes without saying. Or did I just say it? 🙂