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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."
I just picked up 'Pattern Recognition' & it is definitely a decent read (so far)
"Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun."
Ender's Game. Not sure about the sequels though. You may want the crossover(quasi-sequel) Ender's Shadow after that.
Free on PG and it's about time we, as a collective, got a little more broad in our selections.
A complete Unix manual.
Didn't you read slashdot? You'd be better off playing video games then reading!
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
If you like fantasy at all, I'd recommned Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series, Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series (which is all but a blatant ripoff of Jordan's work, mind), or any of the Forgotten Realms mini-series (RA Salvatore is the best writer of FR books, imo).
;-), and can at least tolerate fantasy, you _must_ read Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" books. Absolutely must.
;-)
If you like humour (yes, the British version of it
I'd also recommend Asian folklore; those stories are surprisingly good, considering the plots seem like they were thought up by someone using the peace pipe...
...something not "scifi-geek-hacker" for a change? It's a big world out there.
Good book, includes guys wearing bow down for I am root T-Shirts.
Good stuff to read before starting your first job. Check out the Illuminatus! trilogy.
"I know together we'll make the possible totally impossible" - Homme
I have to recommend the old sci-fi classic, Dune. It did a marvelous job of creating a strange yet self-consistent world. Gread read. The other books in the series are sometimes dry and uninteresting, but still worth it.
Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Cliff Stoll
Good documentary account of tracing international hackers from a sysadmin-like guy's point of view. A little dated now but well-written, humorous and very entertaining.
I recommend The Hobbit or anything else by J.R.R. Tolkien
... it was a great series.
Or if you have already read those too many times, try out The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
and leave you feeling dirty.
Like Naked Lunch
Check out Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl?
The Powers comic series is ground breaking and really well done. The basic premise is that there is a cop investigating the murder of a superhero.
Really stunning work and surprisingly moving. Great written dialog.
I am actually finishing up the new Gibson book, Pattern Recognition, as part of my summer reading, it's definitely a sci-fi/hacker/geek/saavycool book that people like. They assigned it to my entire freshman class at a respected liberal arts university. I read the Art of Deception a few months ago. While good, it wasn't exactly what I'd call summer reading material. Hope this all helps.
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
The Hyperion series ("Hyperion" and "Fall of Hyperion" by Dan Simmons) is one of the best, if not the best, works of Sci-Fi I've ever read. Better than Dune, IMHO.
:)
It's something fresh and original and it'll change the way you think
Nothing like Shadow of the Torturer and its companion novels by Gene Wolfe. Also props to those who suggested Dune and The Cyberiad.
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
I'm reading Mitnick's book right now- I can't say I reccomend it. So far it just seems like 'how not to give out your password For Dummies'. It has all these little "Lingo" and "Mitnick Message" sections to try and clue you in on key points, in case you didn't pick up from the stories that you shouldn't give out potentially sensitive info to people you don't know. Maybe it get's better later on, but up to like chapter 8 it's kinda boring.
IMnvHO it's better than Snowcrash, even
- The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand, of course, then onto- Atlas Shrugged
...There are few better favors you can do yourself before entering the working world in earnest than to have a nice philosophical framework.
Good luck!
Those who give up their power willingly deserve none.
but you could check out the classics like Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, Illuminatis Trilogy, anything by Rand...those all seem to appeal to geek sensibilities.
I'd stay away from the Mitnick book, if I were you. It reads like an executive summary of a much more interesting book. There's not much there: it's got large print and bullet points every few pages.
Slaughterhouse Five
Cat's Cradle
Player Piano
The Sirens of Titan
I enjoyed them 30 yrs ago as much as in the past few weeks. Unemployed and all. Don't forget 1984, The Doors of Perception and Fahrenheit 451. Enjoy.
- 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.We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
If you want a good perspective bender, check out Wicked: The life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire. It totally re-draws the whole Oz story from a different direction, makes you think about how good and evil depend on the perspective you take, and who you believe. One of the best books I've read in a while
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
Something you might find interesting that satisfies your "Sci-fi" requirement with added humor. the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series is a great read.
Science will save us. The question is, will it destroy us first?
a hard day coding. A hot 22 old whore getting her pussy fucked in the bright pages of a magazine makes my day. It'll make yours too.
One book in a month of nothing to do? Maybe one book a week, if you're slow!
Anyways, Cryptonomicon was a good read, if a little lengthy. In fact, anything by Stephenson that you haven't read (Zodiac and Diamond Age were great). Just ignore the complaints about endings and enjoy the rest of the story.
Asimov's Foundation series is a great choice as well. Not so much with the hacker angle (well, hacking of a different kind, surely) but very interesting.
If you want to go military geek sci-fi, David Weber's Honor Harrington series is excellent. You can get the first book, On Basilisk Station from the Baen Free Library. And if you buy the most recent book, War of Honor, in hardcover, you get a CD that has all the books in the series on it. Or you can just download the CD somewhere online.
Just a few suggestions. I have a ton of other things on my reading list, but that's a start.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Personally I wasn't all that impressed with the new mitnick book, you can get more information online. Which, in and of itself is a wonderful resource if you want to read something fun and learn at the same time. Make sure you have read all of BOFH, and the browse satirewire.com's archives for a bit of humor. Then move on to safari, the SANs Reading room and some hacking sites and read up on the latest tech.
Another thing to look into is some of the more esoteric cool networking software out there... not exactly reading but something to do... kernel patches are fun!
I touch computers in naughty places
just a cool book on the history of codes and encryption - It' been reviewed on /. - history of codes...the Codebreakers is good too, though pretty long and mostly centered on the WWII Enigma cracking.
don't waste your time though trying to solve the puzzles at the end, unless you're bored...the puzzle and 10,000 pounds were won less then a year after the challenge was issued, I think...
RB
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
How about the complete works of Shakespeare?
Nothing beats a nice assortment of Elizabethan plays.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Or the whole series if you have the time. This guy pulls out everything from Canturbury Tales to cyberfreakiness in this work. Definitely a well-rounded read and incredibly absorbing. If you enjoyed any of the books you mentioned then you should like the Hyperion Cantos.
Got sushi? The Sushi FAQ
Then there's that little sci fi novel by George Orwell called 1984 -- which is important for geeks who want to be informed citizens
Absolutely stellar story. Check Amazon.
Pratchett (of Discworld fame) and Gaiman (of Sandman fame) may seem an unlikely combination, but the topic (Armageddon) of this fast-paced novel is old hat to both. Pratchett's wackiness collaborates with Gaiman's morbid humor; the result is a humanist delight to be savored and reread again and again. You see, there was a bit of a mixup when the Antichrist was born, due in part to the machinations of Crowley, who did not so much fall as saunter downwards, and in part to the mysterious ways as manifested in the form of a part-time rare book dealer, an angel named Aziraphale. Like top agents everywhere, they've long had more in common with each other than the sides they represent, or the conflict they are nominally engaged in. The only person who knows how it will all end is Agnes Nutter, a witch whose prophecies all come true, if one can only manage to decipher them. The minor characters along the way (Famine makes an appearance as diet crazes, no-calorie food and anorexia epidemics) are as much fun as the story as a whole, which adds up to one of those rare books which is enormous fun to read the first time, and the second time, and the third time... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Michael C. Hollinger
Anything not tech-related (sci-fi excluded, of course).
Seriously, books with pictures of obscure animals on the cover, done in a faux-woodprint style, count as what we call "reference books".
When you have a specific question about how to use a particular construct in Malbolge, you pick up the book with the woodcut of the naked molerat(tm) and turn to the chapter on painless suicide methods.
You don't just READ such a book from cover-to-cover, a feat only slightly less painful than Vogon poetry.
Which brings me to my real suggestion - Reread the entire works of Douglas Adams. Most folks know the HHgttG series, but not the joys of "Dirk Gently's Holsitic detective agency" or "The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul". Great books in their own rights.
I think that Vernor Vinge is an essential geek read, most especially the loosely-related and absolutely fantastic pair, "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky". And the Motie Books, "The Mote in God's Eye" and "The Gripping Hand" by Niven and Pournelle, are a great first contact story. Also, anything by Robert Forward (especially Dragon's Egg and Starquake) is guaranteed to by intellectually fascinating and horribly written.
The XANTH series is an absolute riot. I highly recommend it.
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/
The Foundation Trilogy (Asimov) won the Hugo award for best sci-fi/fantasy trilogy ever (this award has only been given out once, obviously). Definitely worth reading.
All of these SF books are pretty good. He writes pretty good fiction as well.
Reading "Consider Phlebas" (title is a nod to T S Eliot's "The Waste Land") right now.
Every geek reads Gibson and Stephenson (and rightly so) but you ought to have a look at some stuff by Greg Egan, Michael Marshall Smith, Bruce Sterling and Pat Cadigan. Their names crop up less often, but their writings are excellent. I'm re-reading Egan's "Quarantine", and it's amazing stuff. I've read Sterling's "Islands in the Net" so many times I've lost count.
Hey, you're already a qualified geek, so why don't you try to broaden your perspective a bit and read something else, like Wittgenstein. Seriously, as a former fresh graduate: take advantage of the time to see what else is out there... don't pigeon-hole yourself- read something random.
-spmd
Summerland, by Michael Chabon, is definitely a geek book. It's hard to describe what it is without giving a lot of the fun away. It's a fast read, and very rewarding though. Chabon is the guy who wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, about two cousins who live during WW2 and create a Golden Age comic hero. If you've not read Kavalier and Klay, it's very good, but it's pretty dense. I'm a fast reader, and it took me a solid two weeks to mow through it.
///Will
I also read Masters of Doom recently, which is about the early days of id software, Carmack, and Romero. It's a New Journalism book, where the author recreated dialog in conversations and things like that so it reads more like a novel than non-fiction. The writing's not the best, but it's entertaining, especially if you remember reading the trials and tribulations of Quake, Quake2, and Daikatana on the Shugashack and Bluesnews.
Finally, if you've not read William Gibsons Count Zero, it's excellent. I've read Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition, Idoru and am finishing Virtual Light right now, but I think I like Count Zero better than the others. Virtual Light, Pattern Recognition, Idoru, and Count Zero all share similar themes (strong but secretly vulnerable heroines in trouble with big corporations) but Count Zero does it better than the others.
I also just finished The Diamond Age, by Stevenson. I was pretty unimpressed with it. Its plotlines aren't as intricate as Cryptonomicons, and it seems kind of like Stevenson trying to be Gibson. I was pretty unimpressed. I'm going to pick up another Stevenson book after I finish with Virtual Light.
I could dig up some Amazon links, but I'm too lazy.
Hope this helps!
The man responsible for the stories that spawed minority report and blade runner deserves some attention here. I highly recomment the valis trilogy: Valis, The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I've seen two people (and replied to one) recommend Robert Jordan's horrible "Wheel of Time" series. Unless you like tedium I suggest you stay away from all but perhaps the first two books.
As for my list, Frank Herbert's Dune is always a good read and, though I know many people would disagree, the fourth book, God Emperor of Dune is my favorite of the series. It's the culmination of the subtle (in the first book) Nietzschean subtext involving becoming the greatest predator ever to live, and so forth. Sounds goofy, I suppose, but I liked it.
Another, possibly less well-known though, again in my opinion, much better written series is Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. Gene Wolfe loves to play mind games with his readers and more often than not you're presented with puzzles that at first you don't even realize are puzzles. The whole thing is very novel and, while short (four books with about 200 pages each -- compare that to Jordan's drivel which is 7, or maybe more now, at around 1000 each) it is intense and well worth the read. Aside from the intellectual motivation to read the series, it is also simply a great story. You won't see Gene Wolfe using science-fiction as a way to retell mostly old stories(*) in some sort of "futuristic" setting. Could I possibly gush some more? Maybe, but seriously, this is one of the finest pieces of real science-fiction to come out in a long time, perhaps ever.
(*)Ok, I lie, he does retell old stories and seemingly use the old ploys most science fiction authors do, but always in a way to poke fun at that way of writing. For example, all of his characters' names sound like science-fiction character names (Severian, Ymar, Palaemon, etc.), but in reality they're all names of obscure Catholic saints. Also, his retelling of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur using 19th century ships (which ones, I won't say, since even this fact isn't all that obvious when reading it) is wonderful.
Anyhow, in summary, etc., and so forth, I suggest you give Gene Wolfe a try. Really. Do it. HURRY!
I feel kind of obliged to point out that you need to be ready to read those books. They're full of hatred for communism, and a dogmatic obsession with Ayn Rand's objectivism. Be careful lest you get to involved with those books, take a moment to step aside and try to view them from a different context than they present. Very powerful work, but on another level it is propaganda and you should always remember that.
In addition, The Fountainhead has one of the ugliest scenes I have ever come across in any piece of literature. I'm referring to the scene involving Roarke and Dominique, which in my mind, seems more or less equivalent to rape, yet is not treated as such in the book.
I'm just trying to give adequate warning for those who don't know what to expect from the books, they are very powerful and well written.
Dune if you haven't already - the best.
City by Clifford Simak - classic.
Shockwave Rider - the first real computer/scifi cyberpunkish book. The term 'worm' comes from this book.
Naked Sun - Asimov - genesis of R. Daneel Olivaw, the character that Commander Data was based on.
Nine Princes in Amber - after Lord of the Rings my favorite fantasy book.
Left Hand of Darkness - IMHO the 2nd best scifi novel ever written after only Dune.
Ringworld by Larry Niven - extrodinary world building and imagination in hard scifi genre.
Gateway by Frederick Pohl - ditto.
Startide Rising, David Brin - wonderful novel set in world where man is lifting other species to intelligence. Terrific writing, and the sequels are excellent too.
If you like mystery/suspense mixed in with your hacker lit, then check out The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. It's the true story of a Unix (copyright Novell) administrator who is able to track and help capture someone hacking into his systems at the Lawrence Berkeley labs in the late 80's. A very good read.
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Propaganda by Jacques Ellul
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
And here is a book I'm working on now...I'm still about 1,100 pages from knowing if it will deliver the goods:I read alot. :P
:)
I rank the books I read on a 1-10 scale.
Not everyone agrees with me
http://www.remsbox.com/showBooks.php
might give you some ideas if nothing else.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
.. by Douglas Adams. It's a classic and I finally got around to reading it.. plus the other four parts! ;)
And I have to say, it was the most fun I've had reading a book in a LOOONNNGGG time! It's a fairly quick read, but it's completely enjoyable. I highly recommend picking it up if you haven't already read it.
Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid . Good stuff. A thinking book.
The other is George Dyson's Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence. Incredible history of communication and computing with a pretty cool argument abuot the possible future of computer intelligence. He doesn't follow the well-worn tracks of those who basically posit a Short-Circuit-esque Johnny5 for the future of computers, instead exploring the actual nature of intelligence and how it may emerge uniquely among computer networks. A presentation of the thesis is available at Edge.org.
You won't go wrong with these books.
Etc, etc, ad nauseam, and so on and so forth.
Read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (by JRR Tolkien) and the Narnia books (by CS Lewis) every year. Otherwise you'll grow older. Keeping the magic of your youth alive in you is essential for having an interesting, flavorful life.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
All 6 books: Sundiver, Startide Rising, The Uplift War, Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, and Heaven's reach. David Brin's best work; entertaining and thought provoking at the same time.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
But the NY Times current #1 best seller, The Da Vinci Code is a gripping read. I started and couldn't put it down until I finished the book less than 18 hours later. (I do read faster than that-- One has to sleep, take care of family, etc..)
Not only is the plot fast and compelling, but the pseudo-history secret society stuff is fascinating. You'll never look at Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' the same way again, guaranteed!
Sure, you may be reading the same book as the guy next to you on the train-- but it's popular for a reason!
I've got it! Are there any books about two young lovers who meet in a chat room, but they are destined never to be together because one is a Mac user and one is Linux user? They try to pursue their love in secret chat rooms using fake handles, but then the LUG/MUG finds out and forbids them to ever speak again! In desperation she pretends to have switched to Windows, and he in his despair formats his HDD and really does install Windows! She comes online, realizes her lover has been seized by the cold, inhuman clutches of Redmond and she formats and installs Windows too! No greater a love story has ever been told.
Now that's literature, why didn't anyone ever come up with an idea like that!
Same with Poe. Last summer I read the complete works of Poe and two things stuck out. First is his prose. It is absolutely fantastic. People just don't give Poe credit for the quality of his writing. Unfortunately the second thing that sticks out is the redundancy. The guy really only had about 3 themes he worked over and over.
Lovecraft is much the same. Read Cthulu, be disappointed at the ending, ask "Is this it?" and move on. The rest of his stories are reformulations of the same.
"The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli./ qid=1054175326/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/104-6756848-13519 66.
It was written in 1505, and has some interesting insights on how to gain and keep power.
Google it, it's free. Or at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553212788
Absolutely essential Vinge, and a short story mentioned in ``The Jargon File'' is his ``True Names'' which is a prototypical story of cyberspace. It's available in the short story collection _True Names and Other Dangers_ and is the gem of the lot.
Another story like to that (which was amazingly prophetic) was the short story ``Catacomb'' which was published in _Dragon Magazine_ a long while back.
Another excellent short story collection is Hal Clement's _Space Lash_ (originally published as _Small Changes_). ``The Mechanic'' is a fascinating story (though badly described on the back cover text) of genegeneering by ``mechanics'' whose knowledge encompasses that of several PhDs of the previous generation.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I noticed a lot of people put The Code Book by Simon Singh in this thread, which I think is a good recommendation.
I'd also suggest Chaos: The New Science by James Gleick. Has plenty of good geeky computer stuff and is also accessible to the layman.
And, I think David Foster Wallace's essay collection, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is the epitome of summer reading. The title essay is about his observations on a luxury cruise..and it's not literary bubble gum either. David Foster Wallace is practically a "geek" in his own right. His novel Infinite Jest also has some interesting popular pharmaceutical chemistry and high math content, which should be right up any geek's alley.
C. S Friedman's This Alien Shore .
Also, I would second the Daniel Keyes Moran titles cited earlier.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
Ahh yes, nothing like a clasic. This is comonly considerd the best fiction of all time ;)
seriously thow, don't mean to ofend anyone, just kidding around
Don't save your orgasms for Heaven; Heaven knows we need them here.
_The_Dispossessed_, Ursula K. LeGuine _, Robert Pirsig, Richard Farina
:
_Stand_on_Zanzibar_, John Brunner
_Lucifer's_Hammer_, Larry Niven
_The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness_, Ursula K. LeGuin
_Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenanc
_Gateway_, Fred Pohl
_The_Forever_War_, Joe Haldeman
_Slow_River_, Nicola Griffith
_The_Sheep_Look_Up_, John Brunner
_Lord_of_Light_, Roger Zelazny
_The_Doomsday_Book_, Connie Willis
_The_War_of_the_Worlds_, H.G. Wells
_Earth_Abides_, George R. Stewart
_A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz_, Walter Miller
_Been_Down_So_Long_It_Look_Like_Up_To_Me_
_The_Folk_of_the_Air_, Peter S. Beagle
_Aegypt_, John Crowley
_The_Day_of_the_Triffids_, John Wyndham
_Rocannon's_World_, Ursula K. Leguin
_Planet_of_Exile_, Ursulak K. Leguin
_Ringworld_, Larry Niven
_The_Long_Walk_, Slavomir Rawicz
_We_Die_Alone_, David Howarth
all that being said, two books tower above all other summer reading
_Treasure_Island_, Robert Louis Stevenson
_Huckleberry_Finn_, Mark Twain
Wait a minute. Didn't I say that on the other side of the record? I'd better check
I just recently finished Glen Cook's Black Company series. It's amazingly good. Dark Fantasy setting about the Black Company, a merchant band. Can't recommend enough.
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...
In the preface to the unabridged version of "The Stand", Stephen King (truly an American icon) writes:LOTR is certainly not short on words, but taking all of the pages that describe the world of Middle-Earth and boiling them down to single Cliffs Notes-style sentences would kill the narrative. There are portions where Tolkien goes overboard (i.e., some of the details of Middle-Earth's history and the lineages of his characters) but on the whole, I thought that LOTR was pretty well-paced.
I mean, the trilogy isn't a Michael Crichton airport reader or a Thomas Harris psycho thriller. It's an epic journey through a world of splendor and grandeur. The guy invented his own languages for Middle-Earth, dude.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
When in doubt, re-read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You can't go wrong with that.
I highly recommend the Dark Tower series, starting with The Gunslinger, by Stephen King. It kinda sorta falls into the class of sci-fi, but it is also a fantasy type of book. So maybe not your exact genre, but if you like that type of book you would probably like this one.
In my pleasure reading, I try to vary between fiction and non-fiction. Right now I'm reading The Seekers by Daniel Boorstin. I highly recommend it as well as The Discoverers by the same author. These books are narrative historical surveys of search for meaning in the former, and science and technology in the latter. A little non-fiction does the mind great. I can't tell you how many jeopardy answers I get because of this non-fiction reading or that.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
I find my ignorance slapping me around too often. I wish I had a better background in literature so I could understand Western culture, the one I live in. More accurately, I'd just like to catch the gist; I know the culture is beyond anyone. I'd like to know more about the rest of the world's cultures, too.
Don Quixote by Cervantes
The Divine Comedy by Dante
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
War and Peace by Tolstoy
Various Mark Twain works
The Bible
so much more. Curse me for my laziness.
Stuff I have read and recommend highly...
Kurt Vonnegut books, particulary Slaughterhouse Five It is hilarious.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller It, too, is hilarious and biting.
J. D. Sallinger books and stories
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
That book changed my world view by applying game theory to behaviour of evolved creatures. The Selfish Gene is probably the best book on popular science I've read in my life. (If you know any better books, please add them as comments!)
Be aware that religious people (e.g. christians, marxists, etc) tend to hate the research presented by TSG. The idealists can't accept that some of people's mental characteristics are partially genetic. (Personally, I have the ambition to look at facts first and build opinions on how the world works after that. No theory that goes the other way will succeed since there are so many more ways of being totally wrong than close to correct.)
Also, be sure to read the notes in the second edition -- they are as interesting as the book itself.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
His first few books are decent thrillers, particularly Hunt For Red October and The Sum of All Fears (and perhaps Rainbow Six), but his later Jack Ryan books become ever-lengthier hymns to conservatism in general and Ronald Reagan in particular. If his editor had some spine he or she would send his drafts back with lots of red lines through the more egregious sermonizing.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I have postulated a new law, entitled "Ender's Law"
"Every time the subject of science fiction is raised on Slashdot, Ender's Game will be mentioned in the first 10 messages."
I think Slashcode needs an Ender filter, just like it has a First Post filter.
Interesting list. Quite agree about Frank Herbert's _Dune_ and Roger Zelazny's _Nine Princes of Amber_ (and the series which they spawned), but not so sure on the rest---_Gateway_ didn't do much for me (though it was a good read), and other books by Ursula K. LeGuin are better (esp. _The Lathe of Heaven_).
:(
:(
;)
I haven't been reading for quite forty years... but... some books / series to add (in no particular order) which I haven't seen added elsewhere in this list:
- _Wild Cards_ - comic books w/ almost realistic physics
- _The Stainless Steel Rat_ by Harry Harrison - classic science fiction, and available in Esperanto!
- Barry Hughart's ``Master Li Novels'' - _Bridge of Birds_, _The Story of the Stone_ and _Eight Skilled Gentleman_ --- read these in private if you're embarrassed by laughing out loud. Fantasies of a China which never was but should have been.
- Roger Zelazny's _Damnation Alley_ and its sequel _Hardwired_ by Walter Jon Williams (who says ``thanks'' to RZ for ``letting me play in his alley'' in the foreword).
- Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion cycle, esp. the Jeremiah Cornelius books. This is where the concept of ``multiverse'' reaches its full breadth and depth.
- Stephen Brust's ``Taltos'' books, _Jhereg_, _Yendi_, &c. (Spoiler: Interesting application of Clarke's law). There's a prequel series written in the style of Alexandre Dumas which are a lot of fun (everyone did read Dumas as a child, right? If not, go and read _The Count of Monte Cristo_ and all the other books first)
- John Varley's Gaea trilogy - _Titan_, _Wizard_ and _Demon_
- _The Princess Bride_ S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure --- the good parts version by William Goldman. Get the older edition (Ballantine Books 1973 if possible 'cause the newer editions have a bunch of typos
- L.E. Modesitt, Jr. _The Forever Hero_, _Dawn for a Distant Earth_, &c. - fun to read as a pastiche of other books which doesn't require that much thought
- Steve Perry's Matador books are a lot of fun and an interesting view of human potential (though he cops out and punts on the immortality issue when he did the Stellar Ranger books
- Jack Chalker, esp. his Well of Souls books
- C. J. Cherryh, - her Merchanter novels are classics, _Rimrunner_ is particularly good (though one pretty much needs to read _Downbelow Station_ first for the background. Her Morgaine books are also fantasy classics.
- Fred Saberhagen - his Dracula books are way cool (haven't read his novelization of the movie though---get _The Dracula Tape_ instead), as well as _The Frankenstein Papers_. and for the sci-fi tie in, ``Berserker''
- Jack Vance's _Dying Earth_ is a classic, and his Lyonesse trilogy should be
- Manly Wade Wellman wrote a lot of good stuff, but there're few things as wholly American and mystical, and moving as his stories about Silver John---the short story collection _John the Balladeer_ is a good beginning.
- Robert Heinlein 'nuff said
- Lord Dunsany - _The Charwoman's Shadow_ is haunting, and interesting to contrast with _The Return of the King_. I'm fortunate to have a Modern Library edition of _The Book of Wonder_ from ~1908 or so which is a frequent companion when camping.
- R. A. MacAvoy's books are quite good, and here _Tea with the Black Dragon_ even works in a couple of people who work w/ computers---way cool, though a bit dated.
Lastly, Terri Windling at Ace Books created ``The Fairy Tale Series'' which are re-tellings of classic fairy tales by contemporary authors, all of which are quite good, especially the haunting _Briar Rose_ by Jane Yolen which I think everyone should read.
William
(whose resume's objective line reads, ``To make beautiful books''
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The Dragonlance Chronicles are great too, written by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman (if I recall correctly). A wonderful series, it got me started on fantasy.
I agree that Jordan's "Wheel Of Time" is the ultimate though.
I now you said that you've read all the hacker-bios, but you may want to consider the biography of Richard Feynmann - "Surly you're joking, Mr. Feynmann". He somewhat predates most hackers (and computers for that matter!), and is most famous for being the person to demonstrate the flaw which caused the Challanger to explode. Definitely an intersting read on many levels.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
He originated Cyberpunk. Way ahead of the curve.
Shockwave Rider
Stand on Zanzibar
The Sheep Look Up
Jagged Orbit
Also Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling.
=brian
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.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Oh, and seeing we've had the Ayn Rand enthusiasts, you could try some other flavours of political philosophy. Machiavelli's The Prince, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Marx's Communist Manifesto are all reasonably accessible and are certainly worth a read.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks
The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
The Gold Bug Variations, Richard Powers
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
The Scar, China Mieville
Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
Darwin's Blade, Dan Simmons
Enchantment, Orson Scott Card
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
He, She, and It, Marge Piercy
Lo's Diary, Pia Pera
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder
books in my library rated 'excellent' or 'great'
I started reading Jordan's series in middle school, and I loved it. In fact, I would still love it if either a), it had ended 2000 pages ago, or b), the most recent books were as good as the first few.
The series is good up until the 5th or 6th book, at which point it stalls and dies a long, slow, painful death. I recently bought the 10th book out of the same vague sense of obligation that sent me to the theater for Star Wars: Episode II, and I wouldn't want anyone else to be sucked into that vortex.
On the other hand, if you want a good fantasy series, take a look at George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" (starts with _A Game of Thrones_). Another multivolume, incomplete series, but he promises only 6 books, so maybe it'll work out. I also just recently read Neil Gaiman's _Neverwhere_, a dark-comedy urban fantasy (how's that for a sub-sub-genere?), which is excellent.
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire
Have you tried looking at The Jargon File's bibliography?
Not really SciFi per se, but how about some Stephen King for a change. I love the way he describes settings. It creates a very vivid picture in your mind and you can lose yourself in the story for quite a few hours. Some of his books that I would really recommend are the Dark Tower books:
Soon to be re-released:
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three
The Dark Tower: The Waste Lands
The Dark Tower: Wizard & Glass
Not yet released:
The Dark Tower: Wolves of the Calla (November 2003)
The Dark Tower: Song of Susannah (Summer 2004)
The Dark Tower: The Dark Tower (November 2004)
James Alan Gardner - Trapped
Ken MacLeod - Cosmonaut Keep
L.E. Modesitt Jr. - Gravity Dreams
Vernor Vinge - Fire Upon the Deep & Deepness in the Sky
And some music, for the sake of something different:
Opeth - Damnation (great acoustic album with tons of Mellotron)
Soilwork - Natural Born Chaos
Gordian Knot - Emergent
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
The Terminal Experiment, by Robert J. Sawyer.
It's about what happens to society when someone discovers proof of the human soul... and a whodunit involving virtual personas created as a method of simulating possible afterlifes.
Heck, nearly any of his works would do.
This useless space for sale, inquire at front desk.
But, as someone else mentioned, the later books in the series have gotten very tedious. I'm sorry, but endlessly resurrecting the bad guys after the hero kills them off (trust me, it's not much of a spoiler) gets old after a while. And in the most recent book, which I made the mistake of buying in hardback, nothing happens. Well, one significant thing does, but it's on the very last #$#$% page. The rest of it is total filler that doesn't even advance any of the infinitude of subplots, much less the main plot.
Laura
You asked about a "scifi-geek-hacker book".
;-)
You may like my book, Dancing Barefoot. There's a really long story all about Star Trek (scifi) and me (geek) and Vegas (hackers, I suppose, if you count Bringing Down the House, which is a GREAT summer -- or anytime, really -- read.)
But I won't pimp the link for BDTH, because I'm only shamelessly promoting myself.
If you haven't already read them, find something by Cory Doctorow (he's made his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom freely available if you don't want to buy it, but it's worth it) or Charles Stross. Another good author more hyperpunk than cyberpunk is Eric Nylund; his two novels Signal to Noise and A Signal Shattered are great. I find picking up an anthology like The Year's Best Science Fiction helps me find authors whose work might interest me; that's how I found Charles Stross's work, at any rate. There are plenty of others out there, go digging around and you'll find tons of pointers on the Web for what to read.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Roger Zelazny - "Lord of Light". I've seen others mention the Amber series, which I found tedious and self-indulgent on par with Hubbard, but "Lord of Light" was a great book, mixing the Hindu gods with science fiction. "Roadmarks" is pretty interesting too.
David Brin - the "Uplift" series, starting with "Sundiver". Great stuff.
Gregory Benford - great hard science fiction. Timescape is my favorite - you'll never think about time travel quite the same after reading this... I need to read more of his work!
Guy Gavriel Kay - Very good Tolkien inspired fantasy. He's the writer who helped finish the Simarilion (sp?). His style and quality are on par with Tolkien, but he doesn't steal any of the Tolkien mythology, instead he created his own.
Brian W. Aldiss - a very prolific science fiction author, and winner of many awards, but a lot of people have never heard of him. There's a book (based on a short story) called either "Hothouse" or "The Long Afternoon of the Earth" depending on where it was printed. Also, for a very tongue-in-cheek book, try "The 80 Minute Hour - A Space Opera". OK, maybe it's just wierd. But it was fun to read.
You mention you've read "Neuromancer" by Gibson. Have you read "Count Zero Override"? Just about all of the big Gibson fans I know consider this to be his best work, and I agree.
"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....
Portnoy's Complaint, by Philip Roth. Excellent off-the-wall psychoanalysis of growing up Jewish in New York City. It's really wild in some places, and laugh out loud funny most of the time.
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's not light reading, but it's fascinating. A study of family relationships, life in tsarist Russia in the 1870s, religion, politics, everything.
Doctor Faustus, by Thomas Mann. It's dense German prose, even after the translation to English. But I'm a musician, and this book is all about music, art, the history of Germany, and Hitler's rise to power, all wound up in the biography of a composer who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for musical success. It's one of the five best books I've ever read.
My big summer read for this year is Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. It's my wife's favorite novel and she identifies strongly with the lead female character. Since I've never read it, I figure it's about time I got to know something that she enjoyed so much.
I've also spent time reading the latest Dune novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, a few Star Wars novels, all the Harry Potter books, and I'm currently reading a history of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I think that as long as you spend your summer reading and keeping your mind in shape, it doesn't matter what you read. Just enjoy yourself.
Lousy minor setbacks! This world sucks! -- Homer Simpson
I'll let the text speak for itself:
I would highly recommend this story by Shamus Young. Its online, free, relatively short, but its a nonstop futuristic hacking and zombie killing romp from start to finish. Did I mention it was heavily based off of System Shock 2? ;0)
by Steven Levy. The mother of all hacker books. Hacking used to mean 'clever means of improving electronic and computer systems'. At what point did it get perverted to mean unauthorized access to computer systems? Sigh.
The books begins at MIT in the late 50s, with hacking at the model railroad club, and ends at MIT in the 80s with the Richard Stallman about the freedom to hack software. I found the beginning and the end of the book much more interesting than the stories in the middle set in Stanford and the Valley.
I would not start with the Valis trilogy (the three books mentioned above which are essentially the same story) if introducing someone ot PKD. Start with the good fiction and then work your way down to his more personal, experimental, and tougher to read books.
Try:
A Scanner Darkly: Still relevant (if not more so in today's surveillance culture) criticism of the war on drugs, exploration of drug culture, and paranoia/conspiracy. Great character work. *if you can only read one PKD story do this one or Man in the High Castle.
Bladerunner (that's the title they sell it under now, I know): Okay, you've seen the movie, but the book has very little to do with the movie except with setting, a little plot, and character names. Excellent PKD exploration on human vs non-human and moral ambiguity.
Ubik: excellent work of sci-fi. Touches heavily upon PKD's "kipple" theme.
The Man in the High Castle: one of the first, if not the first "elsewhere" story. Superb in many ways.
Eye in the Sky: Ubik-like mindbender.
Solar Lottery: No one ever recommends this because its so unlike PKD (first published novel I believe) but its a great short read and you can pick up on some future themes PKD explores later on.
Lawrence Person's Recommended Reading List
Novels
Rats & Gargoyles - Mary Gentle
The Werewolves of London - Brian Stableford
The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein
Dune - Frank Herbert
1984 - George Orwell
The Chronicles of Amber (Original Five) - Roger Zelazny
Neuromancer - William Gibson
The Long Walk - Stephen King
The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice
Salem's Lot - Stephen King
Phases of Gravity - Dan Simmons
The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
The Book of the Long Sun - Gene Wolfe
Blood Music - Greg Bear
Eon - Greg Bear
IT - Stephen King
The Glass Hammer - K.W. Jeter
Moving Mars - Greg Bear
Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein
Bridge of Birds, The Story of the Stone, Eight Skilled Gentlemen - Barry Hughart
The Time Ships - Stephen Baxter
Weaveworld - Clive Barker
Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
The Hereafter Gang - Neal Barrett Jr.
Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner
Permutation City - Greg Egan
The Light at the End - John Skipp & Craig Spector
Crucifax Autumn - Ray Garton
A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
The Sheep Look Up - John Brunner
The Child Garden - Geoff Ryman
Carrion Comfort - Dan Simmons
The Bridge - Iain Banks
Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
Evolution's Shore (a.k.a. Chaga) - Ian McDonald
The Stone Canal - Ken MacLeod
A Deepness in the Sky - Vernor Vinge
Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling
Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
Terminal Cafe (a.k.a. Necroville) - Ian McDonald
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
The Night Watch - Sean Stewart
Nifft the Lean - Michael Shea
Summer of Night - Dan Simmons
Fevre Dream - George R. R. Martin
The Magic Wagon - Joe R. Lansdale
Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
Perfume - Patrick Süskind
The Difference Engine - William Gibson & Bruce Sterling
Synners - Pat Cadigan
The Xenogenesis Trilogy - Octavia Butler
Lord of the Hollow Dark - Russell Kirk
The Anubis Gates - Tim Powers
Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
Last Call - Tim Powers
Door Number Three - Patrick O'Leary
The Paratawa Trilogy - Christopher Hinz
Declare - Tim Powers
Metropolitan, City on Fire - Walter Jon Williams
The Paper Grail - James P. Blaylock
The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
Firelord - Parke Godwin
The Shaft - David J. Schow
Empire of the East - Fred Saberhagen
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
How about a book for short stories? Some of us don't have that much time ...
Here are some just off the top of my head
Stranger in a Strange Land
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (book Bladerunner was based off of) by Philip K. Dick
Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
Brave New World by Aldus Huxley
1984 by George Orwell
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
All of those except for possibly Beggars in Spain should be required reading for any sci-fi/geek book lover.
If you're willing to look beyond the geek areas my highest recommended book would be On The Road by Jack Keroac. I've read it 5 times and I'm sure I'll read it at least as many more.
but I'd still recommend "The Dark Tower" series by Stephen King. I'm just finishing "Wizard and Glass" (book 4), and I'm already looking forward to the 5th book which comes out in November. Definitely not a "tech" series but very good nonetheless. The Dark Tower theme and some characters also pops up in other books by King, so it makes for an interesting read.
the blood has stopped pumping, and he's left to decay
the me that you know is now made up of wires
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.
-monique
1) Bill Gates: Portrait of Evil
2) New Guide to learning Hindi
3) Linus Torvalds: Savior of the Multiverse
4) How Things Work In Soviet Russia
5) Why employers are evil, and why I still insist of working for them
6) The Theory of How to Date Women
7) Physical Exercise: Tips On How To Avoid It
8) How To Get Used To Bathing
9) Hottest IT Jobs/Trends In India
10) The Essential Goat.sx Reference
11) Creating Beowulf Clusters From Anything
Must iterate in compliment to the Jack Womack. I started with Random Acts of Senseless Violence and was blown away by the slow gradual language virus development; it was as if Burroughs' word virus ideas were put into beautiful action. Elvissey, about an alternate time slippage in the 50s whereas agents from the future discover "Elvis Presley," who is actually his infantly dead twin brother. Written terribly well.
/vurt/ual world of gaming and archetypal interference. Complicated and well-encoded. Also highly recommend Nymphomation, and Pixel Juice. The Cobralingus is great for anyone interested in systems processes on language.
And then there is Jeff Noon, another Brit. His world and writing has become quite good, though often he is round on the edges, but the language angles are always challenging and inventive. Vurt will soon be made into a movie, and it's about wonderful trip drugs encoded on feathers, allowing a
And then the usual suspect Philip K. Dick. A Scanner Darkly, Valis, The Man in the High Castle, and Confessions of a Crap Artist are tremendous, as are most of his 60s-70s work.
Robert Anton Wilson tends to run well with a lot of geeks. The Illuminatus presents a wonderful summerful of reading, as well as following up with Scrodinger's Cat. Will make the mind melt for a good amount of time. His other books like Quantum Psychology, Prometheus Rising, and Reality Is What You Can Get Away With are also great reads.
And then there is my favorite author, who makes summertime and anytime worth considering and thinking about, Richard Brautigan. Take a nice summer day to read In Watermelon Sugar and watch a new reality unfold before your brain and come out with a unspecific new way of thinking about things, in a way perhaps beyond what one commonly percieves as thinking.
Great summertime music to listen to include the illustrious, instrumental Tortoise's TNT. Always sweetens the days and compliments and reading and writing and general life living.
d. Taylor Singletary
reality technician.
d. Taylor Singletary,
reality technician techra.el
i must say, even though some of the scenarios are interesting, the book reads a bit too much like a dale carnegie self-help book. there is no narrative whatsoever, just details of fictionalized phone calls. most importantly, the chapters are all structured identically. he details the scenario, then analyzes the con, then says how to prevent it. i think it is a good read for trusting americans, i.e. people who really do trust their neighbors. but, having come from the ussr, none of this is new. i always say NO to phone surveys and always go out of my way to be suspicious. i must admit that i have gotten caught doing things with my computer that could have been avoided, but that was mostly cause i was just curious what the obviously-a-trojan-or-a-virus download was. about the only thing i can away with was: large corporations are bad. i work in a small company and 95% of the things he describes could never happen because everybody knows everybody. most of his hacks presume there exists a person whose voice you might have never heard before or you do not know personally. otherwise, nothing terribly surprising...
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
I realize that there is the ability to use internal phones or hack caller id systems, but most of the phone based attacks played out in the book can be avoided with callerid, which is pretty ubiquitous these days. Its not fullproof by any means, but while reading a lot of the scenarios, I kept thinking caller id...
By Neil Gaiman. I have only read 60 pages so far, but it seems to be damned good.
Well, looks like the market's cornered on the Dunes, Enders, Stephensons, Hyperions and Hitchhikers (must-reads, but also entries into *very* long series that will dominate your reading until you're done with them).
/. 101 summer reading, and they're all really fast reads.
;-) I actually forced myself to read it in small chunks instead of in one sitting because I enjoyed it so much and didn't want it to end.
Anything early and non-biographical by Vonnegut is a good choice. He's written about 12 autobiographies at last count, and paying to get the same stories about his life over and over again gets a bit tedious. That said, Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle just can't be beat.
In our current socio-political situation, there's quite a few books that are more than a little relevant: 1984, Brave New World, Catch-22...
So the books above plus Ringworld give you
An idea: why not branch out a bit? it pays to have some knowledge of other cultures and non-tech related things. Get a little more well-rounded!
James Clavell's Asian Saga is amazing (they were derided as mass-market page turners back in the day -- maybe correct, but the man can tell a great story). They work better if you read them in chronological order by when the story is set (ie, start with Shogun, then Tai-Pan) instead of the order they were released in. They're hella page turners, and I'd have to say that 4 of the 6 in the series were amazing... passing on Whirlwind and Gaijin wouldn't hurt you much -- if you can even find Whirlwind -- it's been out of print a long time. Added bonus: you'll be able to speak a bit of pidgin Japanese by the end of the first two.
Considered brushing up on some Shakespeare? Most people loathe it because they're introduced in a rather hostile environment in school. Check out Macbeth or Othello. Awesome insight into human nature.
My fiancee introduced me to Paul Auster's books. Breathtaking writing.
Driving Mr. Albert (Michael Paternini) is a travelogue detailing a cross-country trip with Einstein's brain in his trunk. Amazing stuff that goes in the truth is stranger than fiction file.
My personal favorite book that I've read in a year or so, I gave to my fiancee as a gift -- Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress. It's set during the chinese cultural revolution and is a modern-day fable. Simple, sweet, and a hell of a punch line at the end
If none of these float your boat, get your hands on a banned book list.
I'm not saying that everything on it is worth reading - but words put together in such a fashion that they can create public outcry deserve a look, at least while our first amendment is still in effect.
If you liked snowcrash and you like maths and computers you have to read Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson). It even has some dodgy perl script in it although corrections have been posted at Neal's web site.
Otherwise there a whole CD or more worth of free sci fi, so you can get a taste of what authors you like here
http://www.baen.com/library/
I really like Lois McMaster Bujold - her "Vorkorsican" novels start with "Cordelia's Honor" which is really two novels published together ("Shards of Honor" and "Barrayar"). Epic like Starwars with much more attention to detail (are you ever annoyed when a novel fails to complete an idea, and leaves some character hanging, or contradicts its universe rules in every new release?).
And I like David Weber - "On basilisk Station" and I just finished CS Friedman "The alien shore" which I liked. Most of these involve space travel. "The alien shore" involved spaceships and social structures and computer gadgets.
David Weber was very military, as is Lois McMaster Bujold, and I don't like strict hierachies but I like these books. I like Elizabeth Moon's "Hunting Party", about Heris Serrano, again in a very hierachical society. I guess I like the breaking the rules bit that most of these use to create the drama.
David Brin - "Earth" is an epic plot weaver, the ultimate internet, combined with some interesting physics, maths and enviromental outcomes. I needed 6 bookmarks to read that one.
I hated Robert Jordan Wheel of time series because he never finishes, there are dangling ideas everywhere and it looks like every book just spawns more threads without completion. Very frustrating. I also disliked CJ Cherryh "The Chronicles of Morgaine" because it was a little bit Arthurian legend (I am sick to death of Arthur), but if you want to know where the "Stargates" come from, then it is interesting.
"A deepness in the sky" by Vernor Vinge is another great epic. It is sort of a prequel to A fire upon the deep (1993), and covers 1000's of years of time, space travel, aliens and humans, traders and religious fundamentalist dictatorships. And interestingly explores the consequences of dependence on computer systems and human augmentation with biotech.
I also like Julian May, Golden Torc series; Anne Macaffery, Mercedes Lackey (although they're a little girly-princess). Terry Goodkind is good but a little too much s&m for me. And for good detective crime fighting, I like Dick Francis, so far as I know he wrote only one computer related story "Twice Shy" and it is quite historical now ie it used cassette tapes to load the programs.
For cultural completeness, if you haven't already read these, you must read Tolkein ("Hobbit", "Lord of the Rings" etc), and Douglas Adams "Hitchikers guide to the galaxy" series.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Oooh! Oooh! Yeah! how did I forget Gaiman?
Everything that's come out of Neil Gaiman's pen is freakin' awesome. I haven't read all of Sandman, but his novels are really imaginative and evocative. I loved his children's book, Coraline.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Iain M Banks is probably not counted as hard-scifi author but his books are thought-provoking and entertaining as hell (I even recommend you to take a look at his non-scifi books, published under the name Iain Banks, some real gems there too). Try The Player of the Games, Use of Weapons or State of the Art which is a excellent collection of short stories. Cheers, Tero
I can't believe nobody mentioned Zelazny (at least in the 5mods), which is all I read on this sites' comments.. heh
The guy didn't win multiple nebula and hugo awards for nothing. He has some of the most original and interesting ideas that I've read and my god can the guy suck you in quickly.
So for his sci-fi stuff read "The isle of the dead", "To die in Italbar", "Damnation alley" -- also a movie made in the 70's. His Amber series is pretty famous and extremely excellent in my opinion, it's kind of a blend of sci-fi & fantasy, a bit heavier on the fantasy.
Anyway, if you like Gibson you'll love Zelazny.
-- "Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit." -Henry B. Adams
Also, reading it now is an opportunity to be nostalgic about that Internet Boom Thing that was so many quarters ago....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"A Fire Upon the Deep" is one of my favorite books but there's a reason it shared the Hugo Award with Connie Willis' "Doomsday Book". You might want to check out her writings too.
I can tell you the meaning of life,
but you have to promise not to laugh.
While sci-fi, fantasy, tech books, etc... are fun to read, it's important to read about other things as well. You may spark interest in things that might never have crossed your path, or gain insight into your life and the world you live in. there's alot to gain from a book - more than what's on the page. The following books cover a breadth of subjects: music, art, philosophy, the mind, mathematics, society, history - not as individual topics, but instead linked together in ways that aren't very obvious. That alone would make you think some more, and the more fuel you have for that, the better off you'll be.
</lecture>
Gödel, Escher, Bach (Douglas R. Hofstadtler)
Take multi-level music (bach), recursive art (escher), and incomplete systems (gödel), string it together along the lines of reasoning, logic, computer science, and a good story and you'll eventually end up talking about Artificial Intelligence. Not a 'light' read, but challenging and satisfying in all it covers.
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon)
I just like this book a lot. There's quite a few different themes running independantly, touching every now and then, eventually converging. The most top-level theme is the search for an officer who is distantly related (in every sense of the word) to the German V2 rocket bomb. it's funny and has a lot going on in it. Pynchon's writing takes a bit to get used to, but it's worth the effort.
The Mind Within the Net (Manfriend Spitzer)
An intro to neural networks and how they are used to test theories on the biological functions of the brain.
Synaptic Self (Joseph LeDoux)
This book begins with the brain's biochem/electric functions. As it progresses, you'll find it parallels Spitzer's book from a biological perspective - alot of the technical aspects presented by Spitzer (i.e. modules, networks, systems) are realized in terms of physical biology.
The Metaphysical Club (Louis Menand)
Basically a history of the most prominent ideals in our society. It's interesting reading, and, considering most of the players date to the Civil War, surprisingly relevant in today's society.
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
This is a fun book to read, good story. There's also quite a bit going on, but i've only read it once so i can't really give a revealing opinion of it.
I don't agree with "dry and uninteresting", but Miles Teg getting his in book 5 (Heretics of Dune, I believe) is one of my all-time favorite sections in any book. As well, the book is as much about the fact that the development of the humans centers upon *awareness* is in itself worth the wordage, IMO.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
We're 106 leagues from Ankh-Morpork....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I've become a big fan of David Brin fairly recently. For a standalone book, I'd recommend "Earth" which has some pretty interesting insights into ecology, privacy and the impact of technology on human culture.
;)
If you're willing to risk getting sucked into a big series, then I'd start out the "Uplift" series of books with "Sundiver". It also works well on its own, but you'll probably be compelled to read the rest if you like it.
Someone whose speculations head off in entirely different realms is my personal favorite: Philip K. Dick. A lot of his stuff kind of requires that you have a basic understanding of how his writing operates but some that are accessable to a first-timer, assuming you are one, include "Time Out of Joint", "Ubik", and "A Scanner Darkly". Set and written in the 50's, 60's, and 70's respectively, each provides a good insight into his style as it evolved. An added bonus of TOOJ is that it is the book that exposes "The Truman Show" as the blatant second-rate rip-off that it is, not that I'm holding a grudge over it.
I don't recommend "Valis" for a beginner as it really requires too much background knowledge of Dick's life to make a lot of sense out of it. But if you're willing to be confused, it's a book that can be plumbed over and over again for insight.
Yup, definitely grittier. My basic summary of it is "lots of swords, not much sorcery", and in the (third?) book he credits so-and-so "who made me put in the dragons" which are involved with most of the sorcery side (and really end up more as an excuse to have a couple of characters who hang around locations and cultures that are different from most of the book, which is good for balance and variety.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's a new one, and it's not exactly SF -- but it's not exactly not SF either -- but Lucky Wander Boy by D.B. Weiss really did it for me. It's about a guy's quest for this surreal, rare, and possibly supernatural videogame called Lucky Wander Boy. Funnier than hell, and well worth checking out.
No one suggested Hitchikers guide to the galaxy (a trilogy iun 5 parts) yet!!??
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
I liked Pattern Recognition, and found out a week ago that William Gibson has a web site; there's a (good) blog and a discussion list. http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/index.asp
"Oh, the tragedy of math gone wrong. I can't even talk about it." -Wil Wheaton http://www.wilwheaton.net
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:
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.
Less "hard" SF to consider - The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester, Nova by Samuel R. Delany. Maybe even Peter F. Hamilton (start with The Reality Dysfunction), if you liked Stephenson.
It may not, in your opinion, be as good as his other books, but it is the only one of his I've read, so far.
I am looking forward to reading his other books.
Things I liked about it
1) Intelligent. Not scared of hard things
2) Funny sense of humour. eg the breakfast cereal thing
3) Way out there storyline, combined with nitty gritty details (similar to Miss Schmilla's Feeling for Snow)
4) nerdiness. The nerd-as-protagonist (if not hero) appeals to my inner nerd.
Still 'non degustebum' and all that...
I'm surprised no-one's mentioned this yet, but there's an excellent node at Everything2 with books liable to give you a mind-job:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=10161It's got Iain Banks, Henlein, Stephen King, and loads of good authors.
MikeJ
Mikesroom.org
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter will blow your mind.
by john kennedy otoole.
this is the funniest book i ever read. otoole wrote it, didn't publish it, then commited suicide. his mom found it and brought it to a publisher, and it won a pulitzer.
Damn! I wish it was saturday!
This is my take on Jordan as well. The WoT got stale. I put it down in the middle of book 7 and haven't picked it up since. Every now and again I feel the urge to pickup where I left off but then I slap myself not wanting to commit to a series that looks as if it will go on for most of the rest of my life and never actually get anywhere. Describing it as a vortex that is difficult to escape is accuarate in my view
To Do: 1. Take over world 2. Pick up Milk and Bread on the way home
Excellent sci-fi. You will enjoy it.
Godel Escher Bach, The Mind's I, Fluid Concepts and Creating Analogies, or if you are adventurous and don't mind getting headaches from thinking about things, Metamagical Themas.
All his books from Amazon , but I would go to best book buys to find the best prices on them.
My wife has read Le Ton Beau De Marot, and she loved it. She has her masters in French Linguistics, and found this book in the bookstore at the same time that I found Metamagical Themas. We were kind of surprised when we went to check out and found that we had found books by the same author in different sections of the bookstore. Hofstadter is a very smart and interesting guy, and writes some awesome stuff. I think that GEB is a must read.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My favourite was his "Shopping List 4th April 1980"
I recommend "Tales of Pirx The Pilot" - at least I think that's the title.
If you liked Gibson, then you would love:
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
Fnord.
I'd suggest Moneyball by Michael Lewis, a book that follows Oakland A's GM Billy Beane through the 2002 season.
Yes, I know, the idea of reading a book about sports is probably not appealing to most slashdotters. But this one may be different. Essentially the book describes how Beane and his staff of math geeks and computer nerds have been able to succeed on a low budget by employing some radical ideas about player talent evaluation.
If you've ever wanted to see a real-life case study of the smart kids beating the jocks at their own game, this is it.
If you're interested in hacking, I think you might find some books on math interesting. There has been a slew of books lately that have done an excellent job of making seemingly inaccessible math issues very comprehensible to the layman. To put it in context, I have philosophy and law degrees and the last math class I took was half a year of calculus in high school a long time ago. Nonetheless, I found the following fascinating:
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh - Singh does a great job of tracing codes and codebreaking through history without getting too heavy on the math. Great for historical context.
Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem, also by Singh - I never knew mathematicians had such personality. Great story of centuries of failed efforts and finally personal triumph.
History of Pi by Petr Beckman - Beckman is a bit zealous and manages to make his politics come through even in this book that does nothing more than explain how different cultures first realized the relationship between the diameter of a circle and its circumference and then how they figured out how to calculate it. Very interesting for its blend of math, history and cultural relativism.
I won't even think about mentioning my favorites, since I guess all alternative to Gibson and Stephenson have been mentioned 3 times allready.
:-)
I recommend two rock solid classics that are considered the best in putting people to thinking (and finding answers). Aka:
The best in philosophy:
Arthur Schopenhauer;
The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims
This is, iirc, Schopenhauers last book and is generally considered one of the references in philosophy in general. Basically an extract of modern & classic philosophy since the ancient greek. Actually a must-read for every literate grown-up. Beware Schopenhauers pessimism though, that's the catch with his stuff. Very educative read though.
Rudolf Steiner;
The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception
This one is generally rewarded as the best 'unknown' work of philosophy of our cultural epoch. Steiner is a monist, just like Schopenhauer, but he unweeds Schopenhauers general pessimism and takes on all the dualists generalisims that are used nowadays to prove that humans have no free will (and stuff like that) and does a very good job at correcting Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Kant and a whole league of all the rest of know philosophers.
I personally consider this a *very* important read for anyone who likes to ponder the life and times of the human race and the human individual. So I think you could say everybody should read it.
BTW: Afaik one could say that the currently very popular Ken Wilbur is something like a 'makeshift Rudolf Steiner'. Allthough I have to admit that I haven't gotten around to reading a lot from him....
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca