7 Books that Inspired Elegant Threat

I was thinking about what books fascinated me so much that I'd want to write a story like Elegant Threat.  I thought I'd offer another list post while awaiting the Double's publication at the end of the month.  The interesting thing about these books is that in each case they work withing a given structure or trope while refusing the limitation often implied by such a tale.  I like that.  I hope that Elegant Threat, individually, and the larger story of Oasis, succeeds in that same task.

1. The Blue World -- It would be easy for me to choose The Tschai books or Demon Princes, but Blue World is Vance's SFnal story of inadvertent settlers on a watery world and thus has more overt similarities to Elegant Threat.  In The Blue World human society has grown rigid and static in servitude to the largest of that ocean's dominant life form until the main character challenges the status quo.  The intricate societies that Vance created were often the big attraction in his stories more than an intricate or mind-blowing storyline.  So much SF takes for granted 'normal conditions' and our alien planets become little more than different geography from earth, with smeeps instead of rabbits and blue trees instead of green.  That rings false, and in the Oasis story that Elegant Threat begins, I knew its people to be in similar servitude due the the conditions of the places they might live in the system.  Geography as identity.  Ecological niche as identity.  This is the sort of fun and stimulating subject-matter that is a feature of science fiction's own homeland.
2. Solaris -- Forget the rancid George Clooney movie.  Stanislaw Lem's book is one of the great works of science fiction, taking the classic tropes of exploring new worlds and the encounter with alien intelligence and then probing how we might cope with a truly alien intelligence that is beyond our ability to comprehend.  It's been awhile since I read it, but in my recollection is the feeling that subtextually Solaris is also addressing how alien we are to each other.  How difficult it is to penetrate the totally alien intelligence staring back at us in our fellow .  I have been known to read into things, but there you go.  What I love about Solaris (and what the recent movie adaptation didn't 'get' to its detriment) is that it is very much about the human experience, while also being about the encounter with an alien intelligence.  By refusing satisfaction with the typical SFnal scenario, we delve deep into the characters, but Lem never lets that render the facts of the story into an allegorical space.  These themes are oblique in Elegant Threat, but central to the full Oasis story.
3. The Starry Rift -- Alice Sheldon, who wrote most of her stories as James Tiptree Jr., was badass of the first order.  Her stories pulled you in, unsuspecting, and then tore you apart with their brutal honesty and clarity of sight.  The Starry Rift, a sort of fix-up novel, is not the best of her work or even representational of her typical work.  But it contains The Only Neat Thing to Do, a story of a young lady making ethical choices at great personal cost.  It's a story that brought tears to my eyes when I first read it.  There is another story in the book that I can't name offhand, but in which a first contact scenario is played out where despite noble intentions from the characters, virtually nothing goes well for them.  There's more to that story, but these are the themes pertinent to Elegant Threat.
4. Hyperion  -- It is never stated in Elegant Threat, but when Fantomas makes a comment about 'the final Bushido' it is very much a reference to Dan Simmons' Hyperion, in which Colonel Kassad tale features what Simmons called 'the new Bushido.'  The society of the Rigel Kent system is composed of refugees from Post-Singularity Sol System, and hence their knowledge of human history is largely a familiarity with twentieth century media.  Hence these references that no one would ever notice were I not to point them out!  Beyond that, though, is the tradition of SF stories that Hyperion well represents, of stories set after some event that renders earth inhospitable.
5. Schismatrix Plus -- Sterling-suits have featured in my stories beginning with Best Gift in Hadley Rille's Return to Luna.  When I read Schismatrix, the 'Lobsters' (I think that's what Sterling called them) struck me as expressions of Marshall Savage's similar ideas about self-contained life-support suits from The Millennial Project.  If we ever become a space-faring species, these suits are a given in my mind.  What does a future look like that is aware of all of Twen Cen's dreaming?  That's part of Elegant Threat too.
6. Dune -- Every writer working in a tradition probably hopes that their work pays homage to the seminal works that came before, while not being merely derivative.  No difference here, and of all the planet stories I can think of, Dune is the one that bears the most superficial resemblance to Elegant Threat.  If I were pitching to James Cameron, I'd begin with, "Imagine Dune on an ocean planet...."  But that's misleading, if it led a reader to expect Bene Gesserit witch analogues or a Spice Guild, and so on.  Instead, I mean merely that in each story, we have a planet with unique characteristics and resources, and then disparate groups with motivations related to those resources.  
7. Humanist Texts: The Lotus Sutra, Bhagavad Gita, Rumi's The Glance, TNH's Call Me By My True Names... I'm missing some texts that played into Elegant Threat, but these are some of the ones that had the biggest influence on me.  From the Kosei translation of The Lotus Sutra comes phrases like 'the great assembly' that worked their way into my story.  A Poem from TNH's book led to the central image from which all of Elegant Threat sprang.  That poem is called Recommendation.  From the Bhagavad Gita comes lines quoted in the book that address fear and uncertainty and help to define the code by which the slicks seek to live and to die if necessary.  We in the West, I think, miss out on so much wisdom in other traditions, and that passage is one of the greatest in all of religions thought.  So a little bonus for my readers.  The universality of truth, expressed through disparate sources, unlikely sources, helped to shape my narrative in which there are not, necessarily bad guys, simply people acting out their ideas of what is right, or at least what is right for them at that moment.

So, I have some trepidation with this post because it would be easy to come across as though I am comparing myself to the above tales or being a bit pompous with the final entry.  Instead, I hope that if the above books are familiar to you, you might decide that Elegant Threat might be interesting too.  And even better, if you are not familiar with these book, you might just have some more reading material to add to your list.  :)

BB