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They were for me significant works (primarily Global Brain) and changed the way I thought about the world.
To some degree this may have been because at that time I was bothered by a problem which Howard's effusions helped to clarify for me, and so what I think I got from the books may well be very personal and highly influenced by my needs at that time.
I'm going to try briefly to explain what my problem was and how Howard's insights helped me in this section, which may tell you more about me than it does about the books.
Then I will say one or two things about each book which I hope will be a little bit more informative about what they actually say and to what extent I agree with the main claims and themes.
As to my own predicament when I read the books, let me first mention what I think of as the only previous time I came close to a similar predicament.
This was my coming to the conclusion that there is no god, about which I have already written a few words.
This I did at the age of 12, in what was a relatively painless process.
The biggest problem to overcome was to accept that so many distinguished and important people could apparently believe in something which did not exist.
Once reconciled to the possibility of mass delusions of this kind I moved on.
I have thought very little about the matter since, and have avoided entering into debates about the existence of god, partly because I have never heard any arguments which hold water (and cannot conceive what such an argument might be like), but more because I have never even heard a coherent definition of what god is supposed to be (without which considering the existence question seems futile).
At around the age of 50 I retired from full time employment with a mind to do, among other things some philosophy.
The kind of philosophy I had in mind included problems which belong to what in that century (the last one) was called analytic philosophy, which I had previously taken to be the most rational of the kinds of philosophy.
Preliminary Notes
I read both these books some time ago, Global Brain first (online at telepolis, and some years later in hard copy) and The Lucifer Principle later.
