Until I was 16, I read nothing but science fiction. I loved William Gibson and I still do. But my favourite book when I was growing up, for a long time, was 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson, which I must have read about a dozen times when I was a teenager.
Thinking up jokes is easy. The hard part is trying them out on stage, because you never know if they're funny until you get there. Not one comedian in the world ever really knows.