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The most important question for me before going to Best Buy to purchase is really how much of the proceeds go to the Ubuntu project. If it's 0 or a paltry sum (as I suspect) I'll go out of my way to tell people NOT to buy it from Best Buy. Preloaded on a computer, sure, but for anything else, get an Official Copy. Or, wait for a free CD from shipit and spend the money on an awesome T-shirt.

Hi there,

Hope you'll read through all 1000+ comments and find this. :-)

It's too new to be a 'classic' but I just read Cory Docrorow's Little Brother and thought it was fantastic. I'm in my 30s but it's about teenagers and I think teens would love it. The best part is it is available online as a free e-book.

Also, Lois' Lowry's The Giver is absolutely fantastic.

Both are bordering on the light edge of Sci-Fi but they're both great books.

Excellent points all, though I would say you missed one:

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. It raises important, fundamental questions about sexual identity and why we think about sex the way we do. I imagine it could provide an excellent, non-scary opening for kids to talk to parents about what is usually a very awkward and difficult subject.

Of course, I'm talking out of my ass because I didn't read the book until I was an adult with a well-established sexual identity. But hey, my first child is due in about two weeks. I'll get back to you in twelve years or so and let you know how it went.

Nice suggestions, thank you!

Speaking about books, I would like to suggest Japanese: Step-by-Step as well.

To quote a review:

..this would be the programmer's tech manual.

JAPANESE STEP BY STEP was written by a former IBM engineer. He applied tech-manual principles to the organization and presentation of the inner workings of the Japanese language. The author makes heavy use of logic flow charts to show how Japanese verbs are conjugated, and how present, negative, past and past-negative tenses are developed. He also presents five basic sentence patterns to be used as building blocks for more complex and compound sentences. And, the roman-alphabet representations of Japanese use CAPITAL letters to show the raised pitch accent.

And as a programmer, I personally like the flow chart programming approach. :)

Where did we get the idea that pre-teens can't be exposed to sex in any way? It's a good idea to read books before recommending them to your children to make sure the presentation of sex isn't sinister in any way, but the mere presence of sex shouldn't disqualify a book.

I see several posts on this page where people rule out any sex whatsoever, but nothing at all lamenting the fact that most classic sci-fi is absurdly sexist. Usually naively and unintentionally sexist, perhaps, and only occasionally misogynistic, but not suitable to be the bulk of your kid's literary diet.

In fact, the best reason for tolerating a little sex is that most of the non-chauvinistic sci-fi does contain sex. Plus, it is a good idea for kids to be self-consciously, abstractly wondering about sex before they encounter their own urges in a concrete form. They aren't going to take their ideas from you, their parents, and the alternatives are books, movies, TV, and peers. Obviously, good books and a few movies are your best hope if you want your kids to take a thoughtful, critical approach.

I don't know ANYTHING about pre-teens except what I know from being one, but I know I read several books about sex as a pre-teen and was alternately amused and horrified by the unreflective, superstitious, fetishistic approach to sex that my peers took to sex. Whatever they heard from anyone between their age and twenty-one, they took as gospel truth. Whatever they knew at a given time was assumed to be pretty close to the whole truth. Good science fiction is a wonderful inoculation against those attitudes. (Unfortunately, it seems that most science fiction is optimized to sell to people who would rather fantasize about sex than think about it, but you just have to find the exceptions.)

Here are a few books that might be suitable for preteens.

Island , by Aldous Huxley. I actually read this as a pre-teen. The main thing I took away from it is that sex and love present some thorny problems, and different people have come up with many very different ways of coping with them. It influenced me to approach sex with a combination of compassion, love, and pragmatism, in that order. I learned to keep that attitude to myself in the macho culture I grew up in, and gave up on it altogether by the time I went to college, but eventually my adult experiences with sex brought me right back to where Aldous Huxley started me out. This is a no-brainer choice to give to freethinking kids. It does advocate judicious use of hallucinogens for spiritual purposes, but I read and admired it as a preteen and was never tempted to test that particular idea. (Twenty years later, I still haven't.)

Fledgling , by Octavia Butler. Perhaps this one should be saved for older teens. I really don't know what to say about this book except that it made me think. I'm normally a pretty quick reader, but I kept putting this one down just so I could think for a while. (I know, I'm supposed to do that with every book. So I'm a philistine; sue me.) The takeaway lesson from this book is that people have to be very ethically careful about relations of power and dependency.

Stranger in a Strange Land , by Robert Heinlein. The older I get the more I realize that Heinlein was a pompous dick who loved to put ridiculous ideas over on people, take undeserved adulation from naive people (like my teenage self,) and then defend himself against the critics by saying he was just "throwing things out there" or "seeing who would take him seriously." So I would definitely rer

Where did we get the idea that pre-teens can't be exposed to sex in any way? It's a good idea to read books before recommending them to your children to make sure the presentation of sex isn't sinister in any way, but the mere presence of sex shouldn't disqualify a book.

I see several posts on this page where people rule out any sex whatsoever, but nothing at all lamenting the fact that most classic sci-fi is absurdly sexist. Usually naively and unintentionally sexist, perhaps, and only occasionally misogynistic, but not suitable to be the bulk of your kid's literary diet.

In fact, the best reason for tolerating a little sex is that most of the non-chauvinistic sci-fi does contain sex. Plus, it is a good idea for kids to be self-consciously, abstractly wondering about sex before they encounter their own urges in a concrete form. They aren't going to take their ideas from you, their parents, and the alternatives are books, movies, TV, and peers. Obviously, good books and a few movies are your best hope if you want your kids to take a thoughtful, critical approach.

I don't know ANYTHING about pre-teens except what I know from being one, but I know I read several books about sex as a pre-teen and was alternately amused and horrified by the unreflective, superstitious, fetishistic approach to sex that my peers took to sex. Whatever they heard from anyone between their age and twenty-one, they took as gospel truth. Whatever they knew at a given time was assumed to be pretty close to the whole truth. Good science fiction is a wonderful inoculation against those attitudes. (Unfortunately, it seems that most science fiction is optimized to sell to people who would rather fantasize about sex than think about it, but you just have to find the exceptions.)

Here are a few books that might be suitable for preteens.

Island , by Aldous Huxley. I actually read this as a pre-teen. The main thing I took away from it is that sex and love present some thorny problems, and different people have come up with many very different ways of coping with them. It influenced me to approach sex with a combination of compassion, love, and pragmatism, in that order. I learned to keep that attitude to myself in the macho culture I grew up in, and gave up on it altogether by the time I went to college, but eventually my adult experiences with sex brought me right back to where Aldous Huxley started me out. This is a no-brainer choice to give to freethinking kids. It does advocate judicious use of hallucinogens for spiritual purposes, but I read and admired it as a preteen and was never tempted to test that particular idea. (Twenty years later, I still haven't.)

Fledgling , by Octavia Butler. Perhaps this one should be saved for older teens. I really don't know what to say about this book except that it made me think. I'm normally a pretty quick reader, but I kept putting this one down just so I could think for a while. (I know, I'm supposed to do that with every book. So I'm a philistine; sue me.) The takeaway lesson from this book is that people have to be very ethically careful about relations of power and dependency.

Stranger in a Strange Land , by Robert Heinlein. The older I get the more I realize that Heinlein was a pompous dick who loved to put ridiculous ideas over on people, take undeserved adulation from naive people (like my teenage self,) and then defend himself against the critics by saying he was just "throwing things out there" or "seeing who would take him seriously." So I would definitely rer

Where did we get the idea that pre-teens can't be exposed to sex in any way? It's a good idea to read books before recommending them to your children to make sure the presentation of sex isn't sinister in any way, but the mere presence of sex shouldn't disqualify a book.

I see several posts on this page where people rule out any sex whatsoever, but nothing at all lamenting the fact that most classic sci-fi is absurdly sexist. Usually naively and unintentionally sexist, perhaps, and only occasionally misogynistic, but not suitable to be the bulk of your kid's literary diet.

In fact, the best reason for tolerating a little sex is that most of the non-chauvinistic sci-fi does contain sex. Plus, it is a good idea for kids to be self-consciously, abstractly wondering about sex before they encounter their own urges in a concrete form. They aren't going to take their ideas from you, their parents, and the alternatives are books, movies, TV, and peers. Obviously, good books and a few movies are your best hope if you want your kids to take a thoughtful, critical approach.

I don't know ANYTHING about pre-teens except what I know from being one, but I know I read several books about sex as a pre-teen and was alternately amused and horrified by the unreflective, superstitious, fetishistic approach to sex that my peers took to sex. Whatever they heard from anyone between their age and twenty-one, they took as gospel truth. Whatever they knew at a given time was assumed to be pretty close to the whole truth. Good science fiction is a wonderful inoculation against those attitudes. (Unfortunately, it seems that most science fiction is optimized to sell to people who would rather fantasize about sex than think about it, but you just have to find the exceptions.)

Here are a few books that might be suitable for preteens.

Island , by Aldous Huxley. I actually read this as a pre-teen. The main thing I took away from it is that sex and love present some thorny problems, and different people have come up with many very different ways of coping with them. It influenced me to approach sex with a combination of compassion, love, and pragmatism, in that order. I learned to keep that attitude to myself in the macho culture I grew up in, and gave up on it altogether by the time I went to college, but eventually my adult experiences with sex brought me right back to where Aldous Huxley started me out. This is a no-brainer choice to give to freethinking kids. It does advocate judicious use of hallucinogens for spiritual purposes, but I read and admired it as a preteen and was never tempted to test that particular idea. (Twenty years later, I still haven't.)

Fledgling , by Octavia Butler. Perhaps this one should be saved for older teens. I really don't know what to say about this book except that it made me think. I'm normally a pretty quick reader, but I kept putting this one down just so I could think for a while. (I know, I'm supposed to do that with every book. So I'm a philistine; sue me.) The takeaway lesson from this book is that people have to be very ethically careful about relations of power and dependency.

Stranger in a Strange Land , by Robert Heinlein. The older I get the more I realize that Heinlein was a pompous dick who loved to put ridiculous ideas over on people, take undeserved adulation from naive people (like my teenage self,) and then defend himself against the critics by saying he was just "throwing things out there" or "seeing who would take him seriously." So I would definitely rer

Amazon has Linux on the Kindle.

As a matter of fact, I do work in the embedded industry. More than anything I am still seeing commercial RTOSes like Nucleus, MicroC/OS, or VxWorks being used on embedded devices. Linux is gaining popularity, but in general you need a system that is more powerful (more RAM, better processor, an MMU).

Linux is mainly being opposed by companies that want to limit what you can do on their hardware. For example, Cisco was getting upset with people hacking their WRT54G routers to do things only the more expensive models could do. Companies that don't care are happy to use linux (like Amazon).

Make Way for Dragons! by Thorarinn Gunnarsson is great. There's simply no other way to describe this as - other than to say that a 5-star rating doesn't quite do it justice. It's definitely more fantasy than sci-fi, but it was one of my favorite reads, ever. The rest of the series, Human, Beware! and Dragons on the Town are also both excellent. The prequel, Dragons' Domain is honestly a bit dark, but it's the sort of pyrrhic ending... I'll not spoil it. These are simply excellently written and I can't recommend them highly enough.

Make Way for Dragons! by Thorarinn Gunnarsson is great. There's simply no other way to describe this as - other than to say that a 5-star rating doesn't quite do it justice. It's definitely more fantasy than sci-fi, but it was one of my favorite reads, ever. The rest of the series, Human, Beware! and Dragons on the Town are also both excellent. The prequel, Dragons' Domain is honestly a bit dark, but it's the sort of pyrrhic ending... I'll not spoil it. These are simply excellently written and I can't recommend them highly enough.

Make Way for Dragons! by Thorarinn Gunnarsson is great. There's simply no other way to describe this as - other than to say that a 5-star rating doesn't quite do it justice. It's definitely more fantasy than sci-fi, but it was one of my favorite reads, ever. The rest of the series, Human, Beware! and Dragons on the Town are also both excellent. The prequel, Dragons' Domain is honestly a bit dark, but it's the sort of pyrrhic ending... I'll not spoil it. These are simply excellently written and I can't recommend them highly enough.

Make Way for Dragons! by Thorarinn Gunnarsson is great. There's simply no other way to describe this as - other than to say that a 5-star rating doesn't quite do it justice. It's definitely more fantasy than sci-fi, but it was one of my favorite reads, ever. The rest of the series, Human, Beware! and Dragons on the Town are also both excellent. The prequel, Dragons' Domain is honestly a bit dark, but it's the sort of pyrrhic ending... I'll not spoil it. These are simply excellently written and I can't recommend them highly enough.

One fantasy series that'll keep any kid busy for a good long while is the " Redwall " collection. I've known more than a few people who were profoundly affected by Jacques clever tales of animal adventure. Most notable (to me, at least) are the numerous people I've known who found these books to be delightful, despite a lack of interest in SF or fantasy.

One fantasy series that'll keep any kid busy for a good long while is the " Redwall " collection. I've known more than a few people who were profoundly affected by Jacques clever tales of animal adventure. Most notable (to me, at least) are the numerous people I've known who found these books to be delightful, despite a lack of interest in SF or fantasy.

I'd like to reinforce one of Sierran's authors:

Never having seen the film "Jumper", I feel the need to warn against judging any of Stephen C. Gould's three books ( "Jumper" , "Wildside , and "Reflex" ) on the basis of the film.

Whatever the the Hollywood production may have been, Gould's books are boy adventure novels with conscience and character. Subtler than Heinlein's "Have space suit -- will travel", "Space Cadet", "Rocket Ship Galileo", "Farmer in the sky" and the like, Gould's books share a similar sense of adventure coupled with a deep sense of responsibility and voices that I believe are more identifiable to modern readers. When I first discovered "Wildside" in my teen years, I reread it repeatedly.

Gould doesn't have the historical inertia of Bradbury, Heinlein, LeGuinn, Butler, Verne, and the countless others who introduced so many of us to worlds of wonder; but I feel he's got the hallmark of an author who will similarly stand the tests of time. While not nearly as prolific as, say, Orson Scott Card; Gould has consistently produced high quality young adult material. He depicts young characters anyone can identify with as they learn how to stand up and do something about the world around them.

I personally prefered Wildside; but don't take my word for it - read them all yourself.

I'd like to reinforce one of Sierran's authors:

Never having seen the film "Jumper", I feel the need to warn against judging any of Stephen C. Gould's three books ( "Jumper" , "Wildside , and "Reflex" ) on the basis of the film.

Whatever the the Hollywood production may have been, Gould's books are boy adventure novels with conscience and character. Subtler than Heinlein's "Have space suit -- will travel", "Space Cadet", "Rocket Ship Galileo", "Farmer in the sky" and the like, Gould's books share a similar sense of adventure coupled with a deep sense of responsibility and voices that I believe are more identifiable to modern readers. When I first discovered "Wildside" in my teen years, I reread it repeatedly.

Gould doesn't have the historical inertia of Bradbury, Heinlein, LeGuinn, Butler, Verne, and the countless others who introduced so many of us to worlds of wonder; but I feel he's got the hallmark of an author who will similarly stand the tests of time. While not nearly as prolific as, say, Orson Scott Card; Gould has consistently produced high quality young adult material. He depicts young characters anyone can identify with as they learn how to stand up and do something about the world around them.

I personally prefered Wildside; but don't take my word for it - read them all yourself.

I'd like to reinforce one of Sierran's authors:

Never having seen the film "Jumper", I feel the need to warn against judging any of Stephen C. Gould's three books ( "Jumper" , "Wildside , and "Reflex" ) on the basis of the film.

Whatever the the Hollywood production may have been, Gould's books are boy adventure novels with conscience and character. Subtler than Heinlein's "Have space suit -- will travel", "Space Cadet", "Rocket Ship Galileo", "Farmer in the sky" and the like, Gould's books share a similar sense of adventure coupled with a deep sense of responsibility and voices that I believe are more identifiable to modern readers. When I first discovered "Wildside" in my teen years, I reread it repeatedly.

Gould doesn't have the historical inertia of Bradbury, Heinlein, LeGuinn, Butler, Verne, and the countless others who introduced so many of us to worlds of wonder; but I feel he's got the hallmark of an author who will similarly stand the tests of time. While not nearly as prolific as, say, Orson Scott Card; Gould has consistently produced high quality young adult material. He depicts young characters anyone can identify with as they learn how to stand up and do something about the world around them.

I personally prefered Wildside; but don't take my word for it - read them all yourself.

Gemini Game by Michael Scott. It was one of my favorite books when I was a young'in.

Card catalog description
When players of their virtual reality computer game fall into a coma, Liz and BJ O'Connor, teenage owners of a computer games company, flee from the police in an attempt to locate a copy of their game and correct the programming.

I remember liking it:

http://www.amazon.com/Revolving-Boy-Gertrude-Friedberg/dp/0345287703

Guys, there has to be something better than this dinosaur SF. Especially that Asimov drivel or gods-help-us Heinlein's absolute CRUD (do you really want moronic hippy lasseiz-faire capitalist individualist fascist dross shoved down their young throats??). Somebody must have written some good SF for young readers out there, just hunt around. If you are REALLY determined to go after "the Classics", ie. stuff written long ago, but you want GOOD rather than just PULP: One thing I can recommend is the 'The White Mountains' trilogy by John Christopher. Its based on the idea that Wells' tripods won the war but didn't completely terraform the earth. More adventure than pure SF but still a very good read and quite intelligent and pithy. One of the best SF stories I ever read was a young-readers book and I've still got it in my collection, namely: The Missing Persons League - by Frank Bonham. http://www.amazon.com/Missing-Persons-League-Point/dp/0590338471 I'm sure there are others, if I think of them I'll put them up here, but I'd seriously question the value of going after the dinosaurs just because they got a lot of publicity: they usually weren't actually that good or even particularly 'Science' fiction. And don't forget - Short Stories! There were some very very good short stories and some excellent anthologies exist. Try 'Who Goes There' by John W. Cambell - this will give them nightmares, especially when you show them 'The Thing' which is a fairly faithful telling of it. :)

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
http://www.amazon.com/Stalin-Court-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/1400042305
It might not be scifi, but after reading that however "dark" a scifi (or any other genre) is trying to be it don't compare. And there is no bad guy in fiction that quite comes close. Also it should remove any nightmares they watched the new alien movie at a friends house (now they have new nightmares about camps and purges instead).

Seriously though. I think it is good to read some dark, cynical and edge stories when you are young; it is afterall the periode of your life when you are supposed to learn. And learning that the world is a cruel place that causes the majority of the populace to suffer is something that should be faced at an early age. If not, there is no-one to blame, but ourselves, when our children stick their heads in the sand and pretend all the bad things happening in the world is something they just have to close their senses to. Sheltering the young from pain is instinctual and a part of being a parent, but overprotecting can do more harm than good.

Then again they are pre-teens, so letting them read The Gap Series might not be the best first step in getting them into Scifi.

Personally I started with people like John Bing (norwegian author) who has written a ton of decent scifi books; than I enjoyed a lot when I was in my early teens (and before I seem to vaguely recall). However I can't seem to find any translated into English.

I think I prefer censorship, conducted under public scrutiny, to any idiot with an agenda being able to whip up chaos.

You don't fight bad speech by censoring it you fight it with good speech.

Not that the US doesn't have censorship - for all intents and purposes, if Walmart won't carry your work you've been censored.

Funny, I buy most of my books and magazines, the ones I don't subscribe to, at Barnes and Noble though I also order books from Amazon. And if B&N doesn't have it and won't order it, which I've never had them do, I can go to Borders or another store. I don't recall ever buying a book at Walmart. And as for the First Amendment, it only restricts government from censorship, not businesses.

eBay forcing PayPal in Australia, which was ruled a monopoly action but probably would have happened in the US

eBay could lose a lot of customers. Some sellers only accept certain forms of payment, like VISA. Amazon would love to take some of eBay's customers. As would Yahoo!. My sister both buys and sells on eBay and I bet she'd switch in a heart beat if she had to use a payment system she didn't want to use. Ah, competition.

Whose rights, whose laws, do we respect on the Internet? Should the rest of the world be forced to respect America's laws when America isn't willing to do the same?

You follow the laws of the country you're in when you connect, unless you're willing to pay the price.

Falcon

I agree with everything you said.

However, in case o2binbuzios doesn't believe you that Foundation is not too dry, etc...

I started reading Asimov with the I Robot short stories. They are what got me interested in the rest of Asimov. They are completely approachable and will almost certainly inspire interest in the Robot and Foundation novels.

I have recently come to believe that the short story is in some ways the ideal medium for scifi. By that, I don't mean that it's a replacement for the novel, but merely that it does some amazing things that novels can't. A year ago I read through The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke. I had mostly stuck to novels since I was about 14, but this completely renewed my childhood wonder with the genre. I don't can think I can describe it adequately, but there's really nothing like the adventure of being thrown headlong into a completely new universe every 5-20 pages.

I agree with everything you said.

However, in case o2binbuzios doesn't believe you that Foundation is not too dry, etc...

I started reading Asimov with the I Robot short stories. They are what got me interested in the rest of Asimov. They are completely approachable and will almost certainly inspire interest in the Robot and Foundation novels.

I have recently come to believe that the short story is in some ways the ideal medium for scifi. By that, I don't mean that it's a replacement for the novel, but merely that it does some amazing things that novels can't. A year ago I read through The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke. I had mostly stuck to novels since I was about 14, but this completely renewed my childhood wonder with the genre. I don't can think I can describe it adequately, but there's really nothing like the adventure of being thrown headlong into a completely new universe every 5-20 pages.

The Fuzzy series is great!

And I think Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens are bound together in The Fuzzy Papers . That's how I read them.

As for the Heinlein juveniles, which I realize have come up several times already, I favor Podkayne of Mars and the The Rolling Stones for their strong female characters and good plots.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here (and should probably go somewhere else as it's off-topic for a reply), is Asimov's Lucky Starr series. They might be even a bit too young for, say, a twelve year old, but I loved them when I was 6 or so.

--sabre86

A compilation edited by Isaac Asimov.
Really great storeis in here. Not too many books concerning Sci-Fi crime!

http://www.amazon.com/Protocols-Elders-Zion-Nilus/dp/1599869446/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215570257&sr=8-2

It is about the danger of zionism and the danger of Jew World Domination.

The Tripods Series is a great Sci-Fi read for that age. It's a vaguely Orwellian world of the future, ruled by aliens with man in controlled virtual slavery. Kids try to break free of control and rescue man, etc, etc....

When the Tripods Came/White Mountains/City of Gold and Lead/Pool of Fire.

I'm pretty sure the books are labelled in sequence order

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+pool+of+fire&x=0&y=0

My wife is a junior high teacher and I raid her book supply for commuter reading. The best of the lot that I've come across is the Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. It's tongue in cheek fantasy about a brilliant young thief who decides to steal gold from the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance (LEPRecon for short). The sixth book in the series has just been released.

Check these out: I read these in elementary school and remember loving them: Wrinkle in Time and the Tripod Series: http://www.amazon.com/Tripods-Trilogy-John-Christopher/dp/0020425716

Especially The Star Diaries. You may know Lem from his other writings, like Solaris, but his Ijon Tichy series, of which The Star Diaries is a part, is more lighthearted. For younger readers, a collection of short stories like The Star Diaries can be easy to read as well.

About the rest of Discworld, they probably will miss a good part of the fun, but will enjoy them.

I don't have kids, but I would suggest some of the Timothy Zahn novels. I have only read his Star Wars books and they keep my simple mind entertained. Not that I'm saying your kids are simple or anything. The Thrawn Trilogy was the first of his I read and I enjoyed his vision of the post-Emperor period. The Hand of Thrawn series and Outbound Flight were also enjoyable.

Feed by M.T. Anderson is some nice light reading.
http://www.amazon.com/Feed-M-T-Anderson/dp/0763622591

Not almost anything. As much as I love his stuff, there's a mighty whopping of violence and/or death (plus a few naughty words) in some of his Discworld novels. "Maskerade", for instance, is one that I would recommend for a slightly older audience (who would also appreciate the "subtle" Phantom of the Opera references).

That being said, "Going Postal" (and Making Money), as well as "The Truth", would probably go over well.

Not almost anything. As much as I love his stuff, there's a mighty whopping of violence and/or death (plus a few naughty words) in some of his Discworld novels. "Maskerade", for instance, is one that I would recommend for a slightly older audience (who would also appreciate the "subtle" Phantom of the Opera references).

That being said, "Going Postal" (and Making Money), as well as "The Truth", would probably go over well.

Not almost anything. As much as I love his stuff, there's a mighty whopping of violence and/or death (plus a few naughty words) in some of his Discworld novels. "Maskerade", for instance, is one that I would recommend for a slightly older audience (who would also appreciate the "subtle" Phantom of the Opera references).

That being said, "Going Postal" (and Making Money), as well as "The Truth", would probably go over well.

Not almost anything. As much as I love his stuff, there's a mighty whopping of violence and/or death (plus a few naughty words) in some of his Discworld novels. "Maskerade", for instance, is one that I would recommend for a slightly older audience (who would also appreciate the "subtle" Phantom of the Opera references).

That being said, "Going Postal" (and Making Money), as well as "The Truth", would probably go over well.

Seconded. Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun are his sci-fi books. (But his fantasy is the really good stuff.)

Seconded. Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun are his sci-fi books. (But his fantasy is the really good stuff.)

Back in six grade, we read "Invitation to the Game" by Monica Hughes, and I've been hooked on scifi ever since.

Brief plot synopsis: unemployment is skyrocketing due to mass mechanization of society, although the unemployed are well taken-care-of due to the same efficient use of resources. It can be dull to be unemployed, at least until you get an invitation on your doorstep mentioning a secret game with a very exclusive list of players.

Mystery/adventure/scifi, very highly rated, but do not read the Amazon editorials (thar be spoilers afoot).

These two books, Kanji Pict-o-Graphix and Kana Pict-o-Graphix: Mnemonics for Japanese Hiragana and Katakana, are great, they have mnemonics for each character. I used the small, Kana book when traveling to Japan for years to translate ads while riding the train (since most kana is used to transliterate foreign words, often English). I got so I could decipher menus at Starbucks or an Italian restaurant. I could read Ka Fa Ra Te.

These two books, Kanji Pict-o-Graphix and Kana Pict-o-Graphix: Mnemonics for Japanese Hiragana and Katakana, are great, they have mnemonics for each character. I used the small, Kana book when traveling to Japan for years to translate ads while riding the train (since most kana is used to transliterate foreign words, often English). I got so I could decipher menus at Starbucks or an Italian restaurant. I could read Ka Fa Ra Te.

Absolutely agree that cloud hosting services offer significant economies over traditional hosting. While we're naming vendors, a more complete list of cloud vendors includes the following (and most offer a much fuller range of web hosting services than EC2!):

US: Amazon EC2, MediaTemple, GoGrid, Mosso, Linode, Joyent

UK: ElasticHosts, FlexiScale

maybe they'll let him code in prison

no access to the web, but he may be able to successfully request an offline computer for coding purposes

coding is such a monklike existence anyway, he may actually get a lot of work done in prison

he could wind up like this guy in terms of being a murdering asshole but still contributing to the world in the realm of scholarly pursuits

I purchased this book while in London recently under its British title THE SURGEON OF CROWTHORNE. Apparently for American readers, the publishers felt it necessary to "tart up" the title to THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN. Regardless, Simon Winchester's story between the covers is splendidly told, without sensationalising even the most horrific details, revealed matter of factly well into the book. The story is that of Dr. Minor - an American Civil War surgeon - who went mad amid the horrors of "The Wilderness." Pursued by his nightly demons, he later wound up in grim South London where he shot dead a totally innocent man. Sent to Broadmoor - a sprawling lunatic asylum near London - he became one of the most valuable contributors to the compilation of the magisterial Oxford English Dictionary. Winchester recounts - correcting but not spoiling a wonderful story - the meeting between the OED's legendary James Murray and his reclusive contributor. While ultimately Dr Minor's story is a tragic one - not the least for his hapless victim - it is also a tribute to the persistence of the human mind. Cleverly presented with appropriate OED citings, this book is not to be missed for anyone interested in words. If you'll excuse the expression, this is the "definitive" work.

Learning C++ with just cout and cin is the best way to start -- it allows one to focus purely on understanding the language and its standard library. And if you continue with C++, you'll create numerous quickie CLI programs to try out language features (or your understanding of them!) in isolation that you're contemplating using in a project.

For GUI's in C++, you should probably look at Qt. This book, for example looks up-to-date and it and its previous edition is pretty well-reviewed on Amazon. I don't favor Qt (uses a bunch of macros for things to get around poor advanced language support in early compilers), but it's Windows and UNIX, and MS' GUI focus these days is on C#/.NET, so I can't in good conscience recommend the ancient API's that I know and learned long ago (Win32 and MFC).

Learning C++ with just cout and cin is the best way to start -- it allows one to focus purely on understanding the language and its standard library. And if you continue with C++, you'll create numerous quickie CLI programs to try out language features (or your understanding of them!) in isolation that you're contemplating using in a project.

For GUI's in C++, you should probably look at Qt. This book, for example looks up-to-date and it and its previous edition is pretty well-reviewed on Amazon. I don't favor Qt (uses a bunch of macros for things to get around poor advanced language support in early compilers), but it's Windows and UNIX, and MS' GUI focus these days is on C#/.NET, so I can't in good conscience recommend the ancient API's that I know and learned long ago (Win32 and MFC).

Learning C++ with just cout and cin is the best way to start -- it allows one to focus purely on understanding the language and its standard library. And if you continue with C++, you'll create numerous quickie CLI programs to try out language features (or your understanding of them!) in isolation that you're contemplating using in a project.

For GUI's in C++, you should probably look at Qt. This book, for example looks up-to-date and it and its previous edition is pretty well-reviewed on Amazon. I don't favor Qt (uses a bunch of macros for things to get around poor advanced language support in early compilers), but it's Windows and UNIX, and MS' GUI focus these days is on C#/.NET, so I can't in good conscience recommend the ancient API's that I know and learned long ago (Win32 and MFC).

So when did you learn the thousands apon thousands of Kunji required to read traditional Chinese?

Do you mean kanji, which is a Japanese rendition? "Chinese characters are conventionally called ideographs or ideograms". As for how many are needed to understand written Chinese, though there are more the 60,000 ideograms which represent words or concepts the average Chinese gets by knowing only about 3000. To tell the truth though there's not many ideograms compared to the number of English words, I've got two dictionaries and the smaller one has more than 100,000 entries. The last tyme I looked the full edition of the "Oxford English Dictionary" had more than 20 printed volumes. Oops, here's one listing from Amazon of the OED with 20 volumes. And those aren't pocket dictionaries. Now, how many native English speakers know even 1% of the words?

Falcon

Western economies in the early 21st century are more socialist than the USSR ever was in terms of wealth redistribution and state support of industry.

Excuse me? I thought the USSR had two levels of wealth: none or all. For the US, we have a large continuum from zero to massive. ...

To compare the US to the USSR is unfathomable. Although I will grant you that Obama would definitely like to move us towards a much more communistic economy with nationalization of another 30% of the GDP...

There's an entire continent of Western Economies you didn't mention. Most of Europe is currently Socialist to some extent (mostly with government provided universal education and health care, though some other aspects are also sometimes included), and doing quite well with it. They are far more socialist than the USSR, though they are not more communist. In blending the socialist ideals with the free-market mobility, they've raised the quality of life for the entire population and enhanced that mobility for those born in bad circumstances to allow them to move along the continuum far more freely than is possible in the U.S.

Who knows whether Leninism could work today - probably not without some radical rethinking - but green issues are making this kind of discussion more urgent, as capitalism is inherently wasteful of resources.

Completely false. The gains we've made in productivity - meaning more output for less input - are entirely from the capitalist economies. The USSR (now Russia) and China are ecological nightmares because of communism, not because of capitalism.

Look no further than your local farmer's market. Clearly the farmer wants to make a dollar, right? Why does the food he sells cost 2-3X as much as the produce you can buy at your local grocery store? Even when you have to ship grapes from Chile, or lettuce from California.

And look no further than the decline of pollinators to see where mono-cultures generated through capitalism will get you. Or the wonders of the Ford Pinto, made for profit by salesmen, rather than for people to use safely by engineers.

The new production method will kill everyone in the world in 20 years? Under corporate capitalism, that's fine if it means you can manufacture at 10% less cost and be the one on top when the world ends. Or even if it only kills the consumers of the product, like cigarettes. Or if it destroys the means of production, like mono-culture farming without land replenishment.

Capitalism seeks to control the means of production and then to artificially inflate prices to derive additional profit. It is not, in any way, inherently seeking the most efficient means of production, or the best final product. If it were, they'd chop out advertising (does nothing for either the efficiency of production or the quality of the final product -- exists purely to increase sales) and the overall compensation packages of the corporate boards wouldn't be one thousand times higher than that of the ones actually producing the product.

Green economics isn't inherently against a large company, it's inherently against the modern, amoral, sociopathic, multi-national corporation. A corporation's sole goal is profit, and the pursuit of profit. All possible costs that can be delayed or pushed onto someone else will be -- for example, pollution. Green economics seeks to make those costs direct and apparent to the entities which generate them, forcing them to utilize more sustainable methods of production.