A Good Summer Read? 1485
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."
Fantasy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
How about... (Score:3, Insightful)
Robert Anton Wilson (Score:4, Insightful)
Dune (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Read something that will FUCK with your head (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Naked Lunch
Re:Ender's Game (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Fantasy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who wants to spend the time reading 7, or however many there are now, 1000+ page books whose plot is plainly drawn out as long as possible for seemingly no other reason that to extend the series? I don't, but I suppose this is a good way to kill time during the summer.
Cryptonomicon (Score:2, Insightful)
not scifi... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How about... (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn right. Read Down and out in Paris and London [amazon.com] by George Orwell [k-1.com]. One of the best books I've read in a long time.
Cire
good read (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing beats a nice assortment of Elizabethan plays.
Some must-read modern classics for geeks (Score:3, Insightful)
Then there's that little sci fi novel by George Orwell called 1984 -- which is important for geeks who want to be informed citizens
Vinge of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fantasy? (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as Forgotten Realms is concerned, I think RA Salvatore is the only really good writer. I haven't read all of FR, so maybe I was just unlucky, but everything else I read was crap
Death Gate cycle, by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, is damn good fantasy (especially the 4 first books). The Dragonlance trilogies are good, too, and so is Rose Of The Prophet apparently, although I haven't read that.
Ì saw someone recommend Connelly - I must concur, although that's no summer read. If you buy all the Connellies this week, you'll have finished reading them before summer starts. They're page turners - heck, I read Blood Work in one sitting. I started reading before going to bed - didn't sleep all night :)
Don't be a categorisist-- read! (Score:2, Insightful)
-spmd
Re:Ender's Game (Score:3, Insightful)
Enjoy the Ender series
Re:How about... (Score:2, Insightful)
The Culture books by Iain Banks - I would start with Player of Games or Use of Weapons
The Bear Went over the Mountain - Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan
Cartoon History of the Universe series Volumes 1-3
Re:Ender's Game (Score:3, Insightful)
For some reason, Card is amazing in his firsts - EG and ES. But I feel he squeezes the story out too tightly in sequels, and then just stomps the crap out of the rinds for complete trilogies. However, like these previous posters, as highly as I would recommend the Hobbit in fantasy, Ender's Game is a book that will stick with you for ages. I read it at around 15 years old by recommendation of a teacher (who wasn't a fan of SciFi until EG) and I devoured it in a few days. Great plot, terrific characters (that warrant extensions), and fluid writing. I don't know how Card fares in fantasy but he's more than worthy of his Nebula and Hugo awards.
Re:Just one? (Score:3, Insightful)
Cryptonomicron is historical fiction focusing around the age of Alan Turing (WorldWarII) and really centers around encryption. This is a read-several-times-and-still-see-something-neat book. Also, shortly after this book came out, SeaLand [sealandgov.com], the country, started making news again. No accident I think as this book kind of gave a "business plan" to the island.
Diamond Age is another read-several-times book that focuses around where nano-tech can go. It remembers that not all technologies are controlled. Stephenson also amplifies where electronic paper/organic LEDs can go - finally we have an author telling us something beneficial from technology instead of always calling new technology evil.
Re:Gullivers Travels (Score:4, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. Gulliver's Travels raises many fascinating philosophical questions, in the form of a historical satire. (Jonathan Swift intended the book as a complex satire on 18th century morals and thought.) Ah, if only Swift were alive today, imagine what he would write on things like:
- the university system in the US
- the crazy US government and its Total Information Awareness, War on Drugs/Terror/Whatever, Iraqi Freedom(TM), etc. - all the outsourcing of tech jobs.
- Kind-hearted Micro$oft and the RIAA. Amazon's nice, well-deserved patents.
The possibilities for Gullver Travels Version 2003 are endless!
Re:Fantasy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, my suggestions.
Fantasy:
George RR Martin - A song of fire and ice [iblist.org] (series)
Stephen Donaldson - The chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever [iblist.org] (two series, one listed)
Tad Wiliams - Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn [iblist.org] (series)
Stephen Erikson - A tale of the Malazan book of the fallen [iblist.org] (series)
Science fiction:
Stephen Donaldson - The Gap series [iblist.org]
Peter F Hamilton - Night's Dawn Trilogy [iblist.org]
Greg Egan - Diaspora [iblist.org]
And all the classic; Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, etc.
A word of warning. Both series by Stephen Donaldson contain main characters whose actions at times might seem offensive/disturbing to many.
I hope this is fair use: (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I don't know about geeks or hacking but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How about... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok. How about books that have some philosophical meat on which to chew. Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged spring to mind. (Parenthetically, while I wouldn't say I'm an "objectivist", I just read Atlas Shrugged for the first time. I was recently perusing the hof when I saw this interview [slashdot.org] with Ralph Nader. Read his answer to question 3. Nader is a deeply immoral man.)
Back to the question. You could just try a different genre than scifi/techno-thriller. How about crime noir (Raymond Chandler's books) or some serious historical writing (try reading Shelby Foote's series on the Civil War).
I realise that this may not be exactly what you are looking for, but geek encompasses a lot more than specifically technical or fantasy/sci-fi writing. Part of being a geek is the ability to immerse deeply in and think critically about the task at hand. Philosophy, history, culture, ethics, theology... Good literature that grapples with deep questions is always worth exploring.
Re:Ender's Game (Score:3, Insightful)
I never got a chance yet to read "Speaker for the Dead", the first sequel to Ender's Game. However, it has gotten all of the critical praise that Ender's Game did. It too won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. In fact, Orson Scott Card claimed that he wrote Ender's Game as merely a prelude to "Speaker for the Dead" and never imagined it would do so well.
Brian Ellenberger
No, he is not dead (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
"House of Leaves"... (Score:2, Insightful)
My favorite reads (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ender's Game (Score:3, Insightful)
but did you understand it?
Interestingly (alarmingly?) I find its irrevocably coloured my moral awareness.
Now i don't thinki thats a bad thing, but i wouldn't from where I stand would I?
Re:This isn't in your requested genre... (Score:1, Insightful)
Short Story Recommendations?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I hope this is fair use: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hyperion (Score:3, Insightful)
You can read the series on several levels, too. I read the first two books as a sort of attempt at finishing the plot of Keats' poem Hyperion in an alternate setting. The first book, like the unfinished manuscript indtroduces a lot while finishing little, and I think you can map entities and groups in the books into the world of the poem, reaching meaningful conclusions about where Simmons would have liked the poem to go.
Still, after the first book, the second is kind of a dissapointment. The whole rest of the series feels like it exists only to tie up the loose ends left by the first book, and develop and explore the universe. These are not bad aims, there's plenty left to develop and enjoy, but they fail to live up to the first, let alone manage to outdo it. That said, I still read and enjoyed each of them very much.
Re:Fantasy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oooh! Harry Harrison's Hammer and Cross series was fun, too.
Re:art of deception (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, Kevin Mitnick's "The Art of Deception" is THE most important book available concerning Information Security - period. It has its flaws, sure - it often seems endlessly repetitive (First you Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, then you Tell 'em, then you Tell 'em what you told 'em...). But that's due to the fundamental problem Mitnick faces: How do you get people to understand something that's blindingly obvious to yourself? To call the book "Passwords for dummies" misses the point. The point that Mitnick's dealing with is the fact that the World (the Real World) doesn't see a password as a key to a lock, the Real World sees a password as yet another On/Off switch (and a "needlessly complicated" one, at that).
And that "Hey, it's only an On/Off pushbutton, what's the big deal" attitude is THE biggest problem in the Information Security world. A thing that Kevin documents - beautifully, and fascinatingly. His proposed solutions don't "satisfy" (I expect he needs to give more thought to the question of "How do we keep them out?"), but boy - _nobody_ documents the fundamental Security problem so well!
Worth a read, if you're interested in Security.
Ishmael by Dan Quinn (Score:1, Insightful)
There is no better preparation for corporate life than going there, knowing what it's all about that fscked our culture up so badly (and I'm on about the global taker culture, not our "precious" east vs. west subdivisions and so on).
Enjoy & good luck with your new job!
Uwe
Re:Dune (what about Miles Teg?) (Score:3, Insightful)
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
What?? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one suggested Hitchikers guide to the galaxy (a trilogy iun 5 parts) yet!!??
Re:Note on Ayn Rand (Score:2, Insightful)
This is counter to my life experience, I would not be half who I am if were nobody to have cared about me. I can see how Rand, having lived through the Bolshevik revolution, thought differently. Her fault lies in incorrectly associating the ostensible goals and the methods of Russian communism. The methods are deplorable, obviously -- but the goals, which she attacks with equal if not greater vehemence, are merely to secure a better standard of living for all humans.
This is the focus of her literary assaults. It is denial of our interdependence; a rejection of human kindness.
Re:For the love of God, don't start the Wheel of T (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gullivers Travels (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't answer an important question, though: Why didn't Swift choose the bulldozer tactics of Michael Moore in his days, if Moores bulldozer style is easier to write?
Swift chose what you call the intrinsically more difficult genre of metaphorical fiction, just not because he wanted to do so, but because he had to: In Swifts England there were no first amendment or equivalent, and the idea of free speech weren't very evolved.
Therefore, as a critic of a regime or a system, you had to choose more subtle ways of expressing them than the bulldozer tacticts of a Michael Moore. This wasn't a English problem per se, this was a problem troughout Europe.
The bonus, of course, were the great books of Swift and others. But if the people of those days could choose, I think they'd appreciate it if the system allowed the more bullish styles of a Michael Moore.
Still, "Gulliver's travels" is a joy to read!
Re:Note on Ayn Rand (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering Ayn Rand herself wrote them, is it really possible that they could demonstrate a dogmatic obession? Isn't that sort of intrinsic?