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If one can find a copy, "An Omnibus of Science Fiction" edited by Groff Conklin. Several editions from the Fifties, he also edited a variety of other anthologies. Excellent stories, easily accessible and though-provoking, although some will seem dated. "A Pail of Air" by Fritz Leiber has stuck with me since I read it circa '58.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?298440
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2318155.Omnibus_of_Science_Fiction
http://www.iblist.com/book12137.htm

for starters.

"Or build more rails...?"

Whoa! Dangerous, you could end up bending space/time! http://www.iblist.com/book12352.htm

For past 5 or so years over half of the titles i've been reading(i read quite alot) i got from either http://www.iblist.com/ directly (they got rating charts) or their very supportive forums. try it ! cheers

You would have gotten bonus points if you could have incorporated The Last Exit to San Breta.

As long as you remember that there is a tide.

Sheckley has a good book using the same idea (Mindswap http://www.iblist.com/book5840.htm). If you have never read one of his books, beware: it's not "hard SF", it's more like something that Syd Barret and Terry Pratchett might do if they got together after watching Star Wars. Great reading.

I recommend "How We Lost the Moon, A True Story by Frank W. Allen" by Paul J. McAuley. A humorous treatment of the moon getting eaten by a man made black hole.
http://www.iblist.com/book36355.htm
It is a short story available in various collections.

Nice to see some people still know their poetry. :-)

I will send them a copy of Dean R Koontz "Hideaway" as a congratulatory gift. :)

This is not quite the same thing, but iblist maintains a list of top books by rating. Geeks are disproportionally represented in their user base, so this is a not entirely unlike a "favorite geek books" list.

This is not quite the same thing, but iblist maintains a list of top books by rating. Geeks are disproportionally represented in their user base, so this is a not entirely unlike a "favorite geek books" list.

That would be Disclosure, but without the wiufe part. There was sexual harassment and a big dot com bomb on it, though.

I believe there was a movie about this, but wasnt too successful.

You've missed out on some woefully now out of print gems like the Joe R Lansdale compiled Razored Saddles, then.

This reminds me of an Isaac Asimov story, I think it is "The Life and Times of Multivac". As I remember it, the "ultimate penalty" is reserved for only the crime of attacking a computer, (or THE computer really). The story talked about how damage to Multivac would damage society. Very similar to the arguments being put forth here. Once more sci-fi predicts the future.

uhm, 2000 books is very few.

Project Gutenberg sports over 13,000 books (these are legal)

if you go to your local alt.binaries.ebooks or just #ebook you can easily double or triple Gutenberg count (my current library has around 30,000 books). Ofcourse would not so legal to download/own as they still would technically be under a copyright. But then, some of the books are easier to download illegaly than to get them at a library (as soon as I found out that my library has Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card I signed up and was waiting for over 7 months till I downloaded it).

and if are a maniac (as I am) of reading, but prefer to read legal things, then you could/should go with the lower quality writtings that are provided through various BBS archives various pr0n archives, as well as fan finction. Heck, there is even wikibooks.

What is needed is some project that makes a global internet library out of all of these resources. Where we have things rated per genre (tied with the iblist or, ugh, amazon) But for all the texts, not just published/bookstore works.

Also like the story "Franchise" by Isaac Asimov. If we were to do something like this in real life, I hope that Diebold wouldn't get the contract to make Multivac, the machine that was used to select the lone voter in the story.

John Shirley

Can't say I've read anything written by him either, and neither have most of IBLists users, it would seem.

Maybe he is starring in a very small legend?

I mean, real Literature with an uppercase A, not only documentation.

Two interesting books about what if all your world was virtual:

A masterwork is Charles Williams' Descent into Hell. Here a historian gets, by special providence of a kind of a genie, to recreate his own beloved as he wishes instead of disputing her with a younger, more daring rival. By doing so he ends up cutting himself from all reality, thus effectively becoming irrecuperably mad - and also committing himself to Hell too in the process.

A lighter, more to the point, but also even more overtly Christian book to the point of being a bit doctrinaire, is CS Lewis's The Great Divorce. Here, Hell is just what happens when everyone can have whatever he wants; soon enough people discover they can't live near other people's ideas of what the world should be, and the result is that everyone but the newly arrived lives in perfect isolation at ever-crescent distances from one another.

I mean, real Literature with an uppercase A, not only documentation.

Two interesting books about what if all your world was virtual:

A masterwork is Charles Williams' Descent into Hell. Here a historian gets, by special providence of a kind of a genie, to recreate his own beloved as he wishes instead of disputing her with a younger, more daring rival. By doing so he ends up cutting himself from all reality, thus effectively becoming irrecuperably mad - and also committing himself to Hell too in the process.

A lighter, more to the point, but also even more overtly Christian book to the point of being a bit doctrinaire, is CS Lewis's The Great Divorce. Here, Hell is just what happens when everyone can have whatever he wants; soon enough people discover they can't live near other people's ideas of what the world should be, and the result is that everyone but the newly arrived lives in perfect isolation at ever-crescent distances from one another.

I mean, real Literature with an uppercase A, not only documentation.

Two interesting books about what if all your world was virtual:

A masterwork is Charles Williams' Descent into Hell. Here a historian gets, by special providence of a kind of a genie, to recreate his own beloved as he wishes instead of disputing her with a younger, more daring rival. By doing so he ends up cutting himself from all reality, thus effectively becoming irrecuperably mad - and also committing himself to Hell too in the process.

A lighter, more to the point, but also even more overtly Christian book to the point of being a bit doctrinaire, is CS Lewis's The Great Divorce. Here, Hell is just what happens when everyone can have whatever he wants; soon enough people discover they can't live near other people's ideas of what the world should be, and the result is that everyone but the newly arrived lives in perfect isolation at ever-crescent distances from one another.

Its good reading.

This seems like as good a place as any to throw in a plug for Project Gutenberg (old books for free!) and the Internet Booklist (a good place to go if you don't know what to read).

-jim

More than anything else, it's the atmosphere. IMO, the Max Payne games are the only solid examples of noir storytelling in videogame form.
As for what exactly is noir: "Dead giveaways of this genre are: narration in the first person, the loneliness of the hero (or more rarely, heroine) with no hope of redemption; a stubborn adherence to a code of honor in the face of depravity and evil (although noir is never condescendingly preachy); deadpan one-liners and morbid/stoic philosophy, usually delivered in a terse manner after violence or betrayal.[..]Noir has in recent years been succesfully blended with other genres and media, such as anime, fantasy, science fiction and computer games (e.g. Blade Runner, the Max Payne games and The Dresden Files). Also called hardboiled detective fiction." (from a copy of my post to another forum).
Noir is exemplified in the writings of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It's a hard to define, and demanding genre, with literary fans. See also here for more definitions and related resources.

your link doesn't work but if you're talking about Morgan's other books they aren't available in US yet, maybe that'll change when they start making the Altered Carbon movie. For now your only recourse is ordering them from Amazon.co.uk, which I'm going to do when I order my textbooks next year.

isbn.nu appears to be targeted at comparing pricing and shipping times for purchasing books from online retailers. On the other hand the Internet Book List is more geared towards discovering new and interesting books.

isbn.nu appears to be targeted at comparing pricing and shipping times for purchasing books from online retailers. On the other hand the Internet Book List is more geared towards discovering new and interesting books.

My problem with it is that when I submitted several books [example] and took the time to write synopses, they stole the descriptions [and picture I might add] from amazon.

This is uncool.

I've never really been as into SF/Fantasy as most geeks are, though I can definitely enjoy those types of stories. Anything by Stephen King is good for me, though most other horror authors are kind of bad, IMHO.
The Internet Book List, which was mentioned in a story a while ago, is a pretty good place for finding good books, especially right now for SF/F.

As I've been contributing to IBList I've been digging through various bibliographies. One thing I came across that struck me as something I'd want to read was all the old short stories from the pulp science fiction magazines of the 40's and 50's. In particular, it seems that there were a couple of "house pseudonyms" used by the writers. I'd love to see the collected works of "Ivar Jorgensen" (at various times, works by Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, Paul Fairman and Richard Wilson) or "E.K. Jarvis", (a pseudonym used by Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, Robert Silverberg, Henry Slesar, Paul Fairman and Robert Moore Williams).

I enjoyed Sterling Lanier's Hiero's Journey and Unforsaken Hiero ...

Most of Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero books are sadly out of print...

Most of the works of Clifford D. Simak seem to be unavailable...

I can never keep up with what Harlan Ellison is available from what publisher at any given time. There's some good stuff that I was hoping White Wolf would re-publish when they were putting together the Edgeworks editions, but that series seems to have imploded.

I enjoyed Sterling Lanier's Hiero's Journey and Unforsaken Hiero ...

Most of Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero books are sadly out of print...

Most of the works of Clifford D. Simak seem to be unavailable...

I can never keep up with what Harlan Ellison is available from what publisher at any given time. There's some good stuff that I was hoping White Wolf would re-publish when they were putting together the Edgeworks editions, but that series seems to have imploded.

I enjoyed Sterling Lanier's Hiero's Journey and Unforsaken Hiero ...

Most of Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero books are sadly out of print...

Most of the works of Clifford D. Simak seem to be unavailable...

I can never keep up with what Harlan Ellison is available from what publisher at any given time. There's some good stuff that I was hoping White Wolf would re-publish when they were putting together the Edgeworks editions, but that series seems to have imploded.

How far back to game novelizations go? And I really mean novels based on the games, not just novels that mention board games or something... For sake of argument (and to avoid any Dragonlance mentions), let's limit ourselves to computer games.

So far I've tracked the Infocom novels to 1988. Anyone care to go back further?

I'd be happy to see Hitchhiker's Guide or The Stainless Steel Rat on film. I know there are scripts for both... Or how about Zucker Abrhams Zucker doing Bill, the Galactic Hero

I'd be happy to see Hitchhiker's Guide or The Stainless Steel Rat on film. I know there are scripts for both... Or how about Zucker Abrhams Zucker doing Bill, the Galactic Hero

I'd be happy to see Hitchhiker's Guide or The Stainless Steel Rat on film. I know there are scripts for both... Or how about Zucker Abrhams Zucker doing Bill, the Galactic Hero

Chapter 3

War is Peace

The plitting-up of the world into three great superstates was an event that could and indded was foreseen before the middle of the twentieth centuary. With the absoption of Europ by Russia and the British Empire by the United States, two of the three existing powers, Eurasia and Oceania, were already effectivly in being.

In one combination or another, these threww superstates are permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years. War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihalting struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth centuary. It was a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting, and are not divided by a genuine ideological difference.

war hysteria is continuos and universal in all countries, and as such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and the reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked apon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side, and ny by the enemy, meritorious. But in a physical sence warinvolves very small numbers of people, mostly highly trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties.

War has in fact changed its character.More exactly, the reasons for which war is waged have changed in their order of importance. Motives which were already preent to some small extent in the great wars of the early twentieth centuary have now become dominant and are conspiciusly reconized and acted upon.

The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously reconized and not recongnized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.

it was...clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destrution - indeed, in some sence was the destruction - of a hierarchical society. In a wolrd in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed amotorcar or even an airplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once bacem general, wealth would confer no distinction.

Is it perchance called Rinpoche?
OK, if you not read redRobe get your ass to IBList and check out Jon Courtenay Grimwood. And then I'll get round to adding reRobe when I get up tomorrow. Since I'm tired from doing the Arabesks!
Long story short though, AI gun, who's sarcastic and difficult. And a great character.

Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged

It's listed as Crime & Mystery.

What a joke.

Some of the discussion has been about whether there's anything that Amazon doesn't do that someone else needs to do. Well, Amazon doesn't carry reviews of free books, which is actually The Assayer's main focus. (You can also review non-free books on The Assayer, and such reviews are welcomed, treasured, and cherished, just like reviews of free books :-)

Everyone should also realize that by submitting a review to Amazon, they are not in any way contributing to the free information movement. The reviews become the intellectual property of Amazon, which means you would be violating their copyright if you cross-posted your review somewhere else.

I think Internet Book List and The Assayer are doing things that are mostly complementary, not duplicative. I think the most popular use of The Assayer is actually just that people use it as a database of free books.

From surfing IBL briefly, one thing that wasn't clear to me was the legal status of reviews submitted by members...? The Assayer only accepts copylefted reviews. Cross-posting on both sites is fine with me, and if there are no legal incompatibilities, we could even share data on a wholesale basis. The Assayer's database is free for downloading, except for users' private information, such as e-mail.

Best wishes for IBL's success! From my experience, the hard part has been just enticing people to write reviews.

what about it? We know that people go around on there and post ridiculous numbers of "reviews" for books. They rate them high and they sing their praises. Most of the time it's non-sense.

Let's take a look at some of the items listed on the current list of high-ranking info on IBDb...

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the (1979)

J.R.R. Tolkien

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I *hated* Hitch Hiker's Guide and I really don't care for Tolkien.

The Internet is full of opinions and sucky ones at that... No matter what, I cannot trust the views of others on the Internet to tell me which movies/books are good (especially MAJOR sites like Amazon and now this one).

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one, and EVERYONE's stinks like shit.

what about it? We know that people go around on there and post ridiculous numbers of "reviews" for books. They rate them high and they sing their praises. Most of the time it's non-sense.

Let's take a look at some of the items listed on the current list of high-ranking info on IBDb...

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the (1979)

J.R.R. Tolkien

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I *hated* Hitch Hiker's Guide and I really don't care for Tolkien.

The Internet is full of opinions and sucky ones at that... No matter what, I cannot trust the views of others on the Internet to tell me which movies/books are good (especially MAJOR sites like Amazon and now this one).

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one, and EVERYONE's stinks like shit.

what about it? We know that people go around on there and post ridiculous numbers of "reviews" for books. They rate them high and they sing their praises. Most of the time it's non-sense.

Let's take a look at some of the items listed on the current list of high-ranking info on IBDb...

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the (1979)

J.R.R. Tolkien

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I *hated* Hitch Hiker's Guide and I really don't care for Tolkien.

The Internet is full of opinions and sucky ones at that... No matter what, I cannot trust the views of others on the Internet to tell me which movies/books are good (especially MAJOR sites like Amazon and now this one).

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one, and EVERYONE's stinks like shit.