Who is on your "Cabinet of Invisible Counselors"

[Cthulhu.Science]

Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich suggested that one way of focusing your energy for success by creating a Cabinet of Invisible Counselors.

As writers, if you could invite any five people, living or dead, to act as counselors who would it be?

My initial group would be:
1. Umberto Eco
2. Kurt Vonnegut
3. Isaac Asimov
4. HP Lovecraft
5. _________

One left blank for me to contemplate further.

 

[paranoid marvin]

1. Shakespeare
2. H.G. Wells
3. Douglas Adams
4. M.R. James
5. George Orwell

Although I fear that I would be their intellectual inferiors by quite some distance.

 

[Guttersnipe]

1. Ray Bradbury (seemed to have a lot of heart)
2. Richard Matheson (quite creative)
3. H.G. Wells (for his ideas' prescience)
4. Neil Gaiman (my favorite fantasy author)
5. Harlan Ellison (he had a big mouth but I think he had interesting ideas)

 

[Vince W]

1. Philip K. Dick
2. Robert Silverberg
3. George Orwell
4. P. G. Wodehouse
5. Charles Dickens

This list is in pencil at the moment.

 

[Alex The G and T]

Mark Twain
Kurt Vonnegut
PG Wodehouse
Terry Pratchet
Douglas Adams

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Gene Wolfe
Jack Vance
Mary Gentle
Spike Milligan
Brian Aldiss

 

[CupofJoe]

Tony Hillerman [or his daughter Anne] - He writes the way I want to [and she is pretty good too]
Sir Terry Pratchett - I think he would be a good sounding board [as well as an all-round good egg]
Whoever wrote the Nibelungenlied - when I read it and then I "got" what Tolkien was doing [and you know... Wagner]
David Gemmell - Another sparse dry writer, who could make a few words say a lot [and also taken too soon]
My friend Dani - the best writer I know, and always calls me of my sh!t.

 

[Astro Pen]

J.G. Ballard
John Updike
Dean Koontz
George Orwell
Arthur C. Clarke

 

[AllanR]

R. Feynman
B.M. Fuller
L. Wittgenstein
U.K. Le Guin
Heraclitus and Parmenides

 

[Elckerlyc]

Homer (provided someone can help me with understanding his Greek.)
Shakespeare
Jules Verne
Jack Vance
Gene Wolfe

 

[Toby Frost]

Definitely George Orwell and Tom Lehrer, but after that, I'm not sure.

 

[Rodders]

No list is ever complete, or final.

I think my list would include Iain M. Banks, Douglas Adams, George Lucas and i think, perhaps the comedian Bill Hicks. (I'd love to know what he thinks of the societal issues of today.)