Embrace your inner geek

So I inadvertently started a little bit of a comment thread about books the other day. Strangely none of the titles were anything I had read. I have to admit to a "what are you people talking about" moment. In any case, it got me thinking. I figured it would be a good time for me to pick ten titles from my shelves to highlight. Since the earlier discussion was in the sci-fi/fantasy world I will talk about that - which is fine because with the exception of Robert Parker and Tom Clancy sci-fi is just about all I read.

Ten really good books, alpha by author:

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
So right off I am cheating. This is five books, six if you count "The Salmon of Doubt" which I wouldn't. Even without counting it, I would recommend every title Adams wrote. I discovered Hitchiker's as a TV show on WTTW in Chicago and then pounded every single volume. As with a couple of the multi-volume choices here I'm not picking the best of the series. I am very partial to the "bistromathmatic drive" from one of the later books, and Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged and I may be related, at least there's a similarity of personality (better than Marvin the Android I guess). If you haven't read these, run, don't walk to the bookstore.

Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
This one was a total fluke. I tend to read everything a particular author has written and then switch to another author. I picked up "Ender's Game" when I had run out of whatever I was reading at the time. Amazing book, and once again this is actually seven books. The Ender books run out of gas as the original novels carry on, but Card pick up the zip again when he came back to them to write the Shadow series. I've had a couple of opportunities to read multiple stories of the same plot from different points of view. I think its a real cool literary technique and the Shadow books take advantage of it thoroughly. Card is another author where I would recommend virtually everything he's written, the Alvin Maker series and the Homecoming series are also both excellent - and less scifi than fantasy really. the homecoming books may be a retelling of the book of Mormon. I wouldn't know, never having read the book of Mormon. Card is also cool because he is a theatre guy. He started selling fiction to fund his theatre. Sometimes I think he speaks the same professional language I do.

Fountains of Paradise
Authur Clarke
Clarke is a giant. One of three I think: Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov. I'm sure that there are giants behind them, Lester Del Rey all the way back through HG Wells and Jules Verne. I'll admit to not having looked into it. This is yet another recommendation for everything in the canon. OK, they're all like that, well, all but one. Can you guess which one it will be? "Fountains of Paradise" is a great story, a story about a technical director really. Its got a nice bracketing short story around the full novel. Clarke does that in a bunch of stories, this one, 2001, Childhood's End; a small story to set the context that really has very little to do with the novel and yet still fits perfectly. This story centers around an engineering marvel, an elevator into geosynchronous orbit. The bracket is about another engineering marvel, one from antiquity that required thousands of people to truck buckets of water up a mountain to make a fountain work. Just all kinds of good stuff. Also check out the other Clarke books, and absolutely seek out the short stories.

Pattern Recognition
William Gibson
Oh My God! I haven't been surprised by a book in a long time. I'd sort of started reading Gibson because I thought I should, what with "The Matrix" and all it seemed like reading "Neuromancer" was appropriate. After that its just standard David behavior, got to plow through the rest. Anyway, I think Gibson is getting better. "Pattern Recognition" is the latest effort. It's near future science fiction, which is a favorite of mine. He also leaves the standard context of the world as he'd set it up in most of the previous books and writes in a world you and I live in. There's a little sideline in this story dealing with 9/11. The technology that is usually just out of reach in Gibson books is contemporary this time and a lot of fun. I actually wonder if there are "cool hunters" like the main character, or if there are usenet groups following movies being released one frame at a time as graffiti. All the details are just so special. This book is awesome.

Mawdryn Undead
Peter Grimwade
So far I haven't really been all that geeky. This will fix that. Again this is three books, not one. The series starts with "Mawdryn Undead" and then continues with "Terminus" and concludes in "Enlightenment." The last two are written by John Lydecker and Barbara Clegg respectively. Right, the geek part: these are Doctor Who novelizations, a three episode sequence from the first season with Peter Davidson as The Doctor. I got into Doctor Who in high school. I use to stay up late sunday night and watch with the sound turned down trying to not have my parents notice that I was still up at 12:20am on a school night. I must have seen "Logopolis," the last Tom Baker episode, four or five times before channel 11 got the next season. When the books for the next season showed up in bookstores before the shows ran on TV I jumped at the opportunity to find out what was going to happen. I actually read these out of sequence because I didn't know what was going on. I read "Enlightenment" first. To this day I think it was probably one of the best Doctor Who stories ever written. It deals with a sailing race, with special ships fitted to run in space but are crewed by appropriate crews stolen from Earth history and piloted by beings described as "Eternals." Its a real good story. The TV production of it was ok, but I am glad I read it first. The same goes for "Terminus" which is also a fantastic story that reads better than it filmed. "Mawdryn" is the weakest of the three, but together they are very cool.

Starship Troopers
Robert Heinlein
The second of the three giants in the list. It was real hard to decide which of his books to cite. I got into reading Heinlein because of the cover of the book "Friday."

Teenage boy, jumpsuit, boobies, enough said. Heinlien was also just right to be reading around the end of high school and into college as it is all founded in free love and progressiveness. "Starship Troopers" is a wonderfully detailed scifi story and in some ways a real tribute to military service - another frequent Heinlein theme. I re-read this book right around the time I was finishing undergrad and was trying to figure what to do with my life and darned if I didn't nearly join up. I was so excited when I saw they were making a movie, and so bummed when I finally saw it. The movie is ok, but it misses most of the detail that makes the story special. In a million years Heinlein would never have made that unit "Rico's Roughnecks" at the end, pure movie sap. That and they totally bailed on the technology. In many ways "Aliens" is more "Starship Troopers" than "Starship Troopers" was. Anyway, good good book. One of many great books, and again, check out the short stories as well.

Dune
Frank Herbert
I started "Dune" at least six times before I actually got far enough into it to keep reading. I guess the seventh time is the charm as I think that time I stayed up all night and read the thing through in one sitting. Great story, tight mythology, very detailed, just very good stuff. This is the one author I can't speak to the whole of their work. I never got beyond "Dune" although the next three are sitting on my shelf waiting. Someday I guess I'll have to get to them. Again, by the way, neither the movie or the mini-series does this story justice. There's just too much first person thinking in the text to translate to the screen. As a book though, this one has few rivals.

Beggars in Spain
Nancy Kress
At some time along the way I joined the Science Fiction Book Club. Every year I would buy that years "The Year's Best Science Fiction" and look for new authors. That's how I discovered Nancy Kress. She really writes stories that are very fresh from a scifi perspective, where many plots are either intensionally or inadvertantly derivative. "Beggars in Spain" is a story about genetic engineering. Designer children, genemod for intelligence, looks, and so that they would never have to sleep - a CMU drama dream. The book deals mostly with the social consequences of creating an elite class. Very good book, and the two follow ups are just as good or better. The "Probability" series is also very good. I can't wait for her next effort.

Is it possible I am getting tired of writing this? You are almost certainly tired of reading.

Bellwether
Connie Willis
Buy this book. Period. I mean it. Go, now:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553562967/qid=1100669724/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-2760452-4546401?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Connie Willis is another author I found through the anthology. I've read everything she's written and loved every single book. This one is about a research park in Boulder, CO and some of the scientists there. Mostly just about the campus culture. Again there are great details, the main character goes to the library and checks out classics and then just returns them because the library retires books if people don't check them out and all anybody reads these days is pulp novels. There's this statistical researcher who is doing a project to analyze the aspects of prize winning research so that the lab can decide what project to fund that will have the best chance of winning a prize. Its wonderfully cynical. This is one of the few books I have ever bought for another person. Go get it now. You'll like it.

Also, if I may be permitted a sort of American Top 40 long distance dedication before finishing up, Connie Willis has another book called "Remake" which is just perfect. Its about a guy who works for a movie studio removing morally offensive content from old movies, like they have him go through and remove all the cigarettes and smoke. Then when the times change he goes and puts it back. Its a fun book, especially if you like movies. It's short and a real fast read and well worth it. Check it out.

Heir to the Empire
Timothy Zahn
The one that started this very long entry. Again, three books, this plus "Dark Force Rising" and "The Last Command." Zahn makes a great contribution to the Star Wars universe with this trilogy. All those names I rattled off in the earlier post: Mara, Talon Carrde, Thrawn... They're all from these books. If you grew up with Star Wars like I did, these will be irresistible. Good stuff Maynard.

That I think is quite enough for one post. I'll wait until some other time to do movies and TV shows.