1.
This author wrote like he was paying for words by the letter and really hated adverbs.
2.
Created a world where walking everywhere is considered an epic adventure and jewelry causes global warfare.
3.
Predicted that Big Brother would be watching you, but probably didn't expect him to have a reality TV show.
4.
Wrote about rich people being miserable in the 1920s, basically inventing the "first world problems" genre.
5.
Made everyone cry about migrant workers and proved that grapes can indeed be wrathful.
6.
Wrote an entire novel on one continuous scroll because apparently paragraphs were too mainstream.
7.
Created a teenager so annoying that adults still quote him decades later.
8.
Made war seem absurd by adding aliens and the phrase "so it goes" to everything.
9.
Won a Nobel Prize for making readers simultaneously enlightened and emotionally devastated.
10.
Wrote dystopian futures so realistic that politicians use them as instruction manuals.
11.
Convinced an entire generation that clowns, hotels, and small Maine towns are terrifying.
12.
Turned a story about a boarding school into a billion-dollar empire and made everyone wish they were wizards.
13.
Wrote magical realism so well that reality got jealous and issued a death threat.
14.
Creates stories where cats talk, wells are portals, and everything is vaguely mysterious for no reason.
15.
Writes books so complex that English professors need other English professors to explain them.
16.
Proved that poetry could be both beautiful and deeply concerning to guidance counselors.
17.
Showed that autobiographies could be more powerful than any fiction, one cage at a time.
18.
Predicted that people would stare at screens all day, but thought books would be banned instead of ignored.
19.
Created robot laws that are more ethical than most human laws.
20.
Wrote about a future where people are happy but vacant, basically predicting social media.
21.
Wrote a controversial masterpiece that made everyone uncomfortable but couldn't stop reading.
22.
Invented the nonfiction novel and threw legendary parties that were probably better than his books.
23.
Chronicled suburban despair so perfectly that it became a literary genre.
24.
Wrote about middle-class anxiety with such precision that readers felt personally attacked.
25.
Spent decades writing about being Jewish in America and somehow made it universally relatable.
26.
Wrote essays so sharp they could cut glass and made chronic anxiety seem glamorous.
27.
Wrote sentences longer than most people's grocery lists and somehow made them brilliant.
28.
Makes mythology accessible to modern readers by adding British humor and making gods relatable.
