A Good Summer Read?

binaryhead asks: "Well, the semester has just ended, and I have graduated from school! :-) I start my full-time job in a month and want to read a good book in the mean time. Having read Snowcrash, Neuromancer, and most of the hacker biographies, I am trying to find a scifi-geek-hacker book that people like. I might try the new Kevin Mitnick book, but I wanted to see what Slashdot preferred. Thanks."

Comments

Gibson....

[objekt404]

I just picked up 'Pattern Recognition' & it is definitely a decent read (so far)

Re:Gibson....

[fingerbear]

I liked Pattern Recognition, too, but I have a question -- did reading that book affect your shopping patterns?

I read it a few months ago and STILL think of Cayce Pollard every time I'm in a clothing store. And every time I remove a label from the stuff I buy.

I think she's my new idol.

Re:Gibson....

[JebusIsLord]

Anyone else notice all the Velvet Underground references in Gibson's work?

Neuromancer's "Miss Linda Lee" is in the song "Cool It Down"

The book "All Tomorrow's Parties" appears to be named after a VU song as well.

There are others as well, but I can't recall of the top of my head.

Gullivers Travels

[rw2]

Free on PG and it's about time we, as a collective, got a little more broad in our selections.

Reading

[cje]

A lot of times in the summer, I'm too busy with other things to spend a lot of time reading major novels, but in the time that I do get to read, I like to tear into collections of short stories, things that you can get through in an abbreviated sitting. Some of the stuff I read last summer:

• The complete works of H.P. Lovecraft (Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!)
  
• The Complete Sherlock Holmes: Stories and Novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  
• Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Tales and Poems (the tales, mostly; I'm not big on poetry)
  

Not exactly sci-fi geek hacker stuff, of course, but I've read through most of Stephenson and Gibson's stuff and found that I like classic mystery/suspense as well. If it's hard sci-fi you're looking for, check out a book called The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, if you haven't already. It's old (circa 1950s or 1960s IIRC) but a great read. And then there's the classics like Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama or 2001 series.

Sci-Fi Fantasy books on a 1-10 scale

[RembrandtX]

I read alot.
I rank the books I read on a 1-10 scale.
Not everyone agrees with me :P

http://www.remsbox.com/showBooks.php

might give you some ideas if nothing else. :)

Good Read

[Anonymous Coward]

try neal stephenson's: cryptonomicon
good read, great plot, and the tech stuff isnt too shabby either.

bonus treat: perl source for the cryptographic alogrithm described [and used in the story] called solitaire [the algo, courtesy of bruce schneier of counterpane and "practical cryptography" book] presented at the back of the book...

Re:Good Omens by Niel Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

[Medieval_Thinker]

I heartily agree with this recommendation.

My mother bought me this book because she thought I would find the "motorcyclists of the apocalypse" amusing. It was a great read, and I have often laughed about some of the images.

Do yourself a favor and get this book. Then start listening to NPR. Buy the books they review. You get a wide variety of good reads this way. I got _Ice_Masters_ via NPR last summer, and I never would have bought it otherwise.

If you haven't read _Confederacy_of_Dunces_ do it soon. _Catch_22_ is another classic I have read more than once. _Jupiter's_Travels_ is a winner and the author is currently going around the world again.

I'll spare you a longer list.

Anything by Kurt Vonnegut or Chuck Palaniuk

[checkyoulater]

For the last 3 days I have been reading Breakfast of Champions. Until now, the only book I had read of his was Slaughterhouse Five. I had no idea his stuff was so great. Before that, I read Survivor by Palaniuk on a recommendation. I finished it in 2 days and then proceeded to buy and read the rest of his books within a week. Fantastic stuff, and for those not in the know he is the author of Fight Club.

How about something USEFUL?

[Jetson]

"Rich Dad, Poor Dad" would be a good starting point for someone who's fresh out of school and wondering what sort of future their diploma will bring. It might also open your eyes to the plight of the hundreds of thousands of dot-bomb paupers out there who thought a 60-hours-per-week job with a signing bonus was the epitome of success....

Re:Ender's Game

[D-Fly]

Not to offend anyone, but I've never really gotten the whole obsession with Ender's game. (I've only read the first book in the series). It seemed like a pretty good story to me, but it's not like you put it down after reading it and think "that story completely changed the way I see the world."

If I were going to recommend a couple of really excellent books for hacker summer reading, I'd aim for some quality writers who are also going to make you sit down and think a bit afterwards.

First, I'd go with Jack Womack. Strictly in terms of how he writes, I think he's one of the most interesting SF writers around. His books experiment very interestingly with language (although they are page-turner readable), with ideas about the post-national or post-government future of the world, with artificial intelligence, and even with mutant post human freaks.

The first book I read by him was Ambient, about a corporate assasin in New York City in the not-so-distant future. The main character thinks and tells the story in an oddly compelling near-future english slang that will have you thinking in Ambient yourself by the end of the book. Another, Random Acts of Senseless Violence, is a kind of prequel to Ambient, in which a young Upper East Side rich girl watches her world collapse into post-national chaos. The language in the book changes from proper english (with a snotty schoolgirl attitude) to Womack's invented post-English gradually to reflect the character's own slide into violent street life as the city collapses around her.

Another hacker classic I have not seen mentioned here (surprisingly) is Vernor Vinge's Across Realtime series(there are three, read them all), which many people credit with inventing cyberpunk (the first one precedes Gibson). A more recent Vinge book, and my favorite, is A Fire Upon the Deep. Vinge is not (I would say) as good a writer as Womack, but he is a hell of a lot better than most of the hacks I've seen mentioned in this discussion, and he's had by far some of the most interesting and influential ideas in SF writing.

some of my favorites ...

[monique]

The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card -- technically sci fi, it's really about the author's exploration of human nature: What makes us human? What makes a person great? People go on about Ender's Game, and it's pretty good, but I think the story of Jason Worthing goes much deeper.

Trader by Charles de Lint -- A story about waking up in a stranger's body sounds a bit cheesy, but this one sucked me in with its exploration of identity and personality. The ending wasn't the predictable warm, fuzzy, everything's okay type, either.

Cry to Heaven and Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice, both historical fiction with no vampires or magic whatsoever. She does a wonderful job of bringing these places and times to life.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson -- just incredibly engaging. The book is huge, but it's a page-turner from start to finish. Actually, I haven't read anything by Neal Stephenson or Steven Bury (an alternate pen name) that I haven't adored.

The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams (Dragonbone Chair, Stone of Farewell, and To Green Angel Tower). Epic, beautifully written coming of age story set within the context of a compelling war between good and evil. The characters really come alive.

Cryptonomicon's characters

[billstewart]

OK, so many of them matched the idiosyncracies of his geek friends, but some of them were *my* geek friends as well (though I haven't actually met Neal) so figuring out who was who and who was a composite and who was just a local archetype was part of the fun. For instance, all the "Enhancing Shareholder Value" bit is pure Menlo Park archetypal, and the litcrit girlfriend doing the "War as Text" conference and her snobbish leftie friends are also (or at least they're engineering-types' stereotyped perceptions of those people), though perhaps they were also influenced by specific individuals. On the other hand, the Secret Admirers were rather directly the Cypherpunks, and the little company in Los Altos was quite specific.

Also, reading it now is an opportunity to be nostalgic about that Internet Boom Thing that was so many quarters ago....

About A New Kind of Science

[rickwood]

I bought A New Kind of Science when it first came out, thinking that Wolfram is a genius and he must have come up with something really great to put out such a honkin' big book. I must admit that I never actually read it though. My reasons were two-fold.

First, the parts of the book that I flipped through when I first opened the package and took it out were either A) So self-congratulatory of Wolfram's "discoveries" so as to be annoying or B) Details of simple experiments with Cellular Automata conducted in Mathematica. You might have seen Commodore BASIC source code for similar experiments in Compute! magazine in 1982. Okay, maybe not, but you get my point. Even with those points against it, Wolfram appeared to make some interesting conclusions, so I decided to attempt it.

Which brings me to point the second: When I sat down and started to read the book, the lengthy copyright notice caught my eye. Lucky for me it did. Rather than go off on a rant, I'll let the copyright statement speak for itself:

Copyright 2002 by Stephen Wolfram, LLC

All rights reserved. Except as provided below, no part of this book, whether in physical, electronic or other form, may be copied, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, publicly performed or displayed without the prior written consent of the copyright holder. Nor may derivative works such as translations be produced. Visit www.wolframscience.com/nks/permissions for further information.

The author, copyright holder and publisher wish to encourage further development of the science in this book, while maintaining its intellectual integrity and preserving the value of their substantial creative and financial investments through the maintenance of appropriate legal and other rights.

Discoveries and ideas introduced in the this book, whether presented at length or not, and the legal rights and goodwill associated with them, represent valuable property of Stephen Wolfram, LLC, and when they or work based on them is described or presented, whether for scholarly purposes or otherwise, appropriate attribution should be given. For purposes of scholarly citation this book is a primary source and should be cited accordingly.

Individual verbatim quotations of up to twenty lines of plain text may be made for scholarly purposes if this book is clearly identified and cited as the source. Visit www.wolframscience.com/nks/reprints for information on classroom reprints and copying arrangements.

[Two sections concerning illustrations and Mathematica source code use restrictions, reading much the same as the rest of the copyright statement, which I skip for brevity's sake]

Certain material in this book may be proprietary, and may for example be or become the subject of US or foreign patents, pending or issued. Inclusion in this book shall not be construed as implying any license of any sort. Visit www.wolframscience.com/nks/licensing for licensing information.

[There's a little more but I've made my point]

I read no further than the end of the copyright statement and haven't opened the book since except for the purpose of this post.

Perhaps people might think it unreasonable, but I have to take issue with a book claiming to deliver A New Kind of Science in which all the science appears to be held under lock and key. Where the hell would we be if Newton, et al. patented calculus, or Knuth patented algorithmic analysis?

So all I can offer is my completely uninformed opinion based solely on my layman's interpetation of the copyright statement: Stop before you infect your mind with Wolfram's IP.

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

[Duchamp]

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter will blow your mind.