Best mystery & suspense books according to redditors
We found 10,006 Reddit comments discussing the best mystery & suspense books. We ranked the 1,773 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 10,006 Reddit comments discussing the best mystery & suspense books. We ranked the 1,773 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Step 1: Purge the TV show from your memory.
Step 2: Pick up Storm Front and enjoy!
The real foundation of the problems we are facing is bad campaign finance law and the corruption that results from it. Before we get to elect anybody they are first selected in what you could call a "shadow election" of money. Those with enough cash and connections to run a campaign are those who get to make a (serious) run for office. We can't elect people who will work in good faith because we only get to choose from the pool of people who were pre-selected by money. That is why we always end up picking between the giant douche on the left and the turd sandwich on the right. The giant douche and turd sandwich were pre-picked by and are beholden to moneyed interests which leaves us with the situation we have now. If campaign finance law is changed to something more sensible like a small dollar system then we will get real people in elections who want to work for us instead of the money-picked jerks we have now.
Please read Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig and visit /r/rootstrikers
Thank you. For anyone not convinced, I suggest this video and this book.
If you are already on board and looking for ways to help, here's one: http://mayday.us
I enjoyed "Time Enough for Love"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long
Also:
"Elantris" and "Warbreaker" by Brandon Sanderson
Oh! Also check out "The Mummy or Ramses the Damned" by Anne Rice!
Lessig has done a TED talk on campaign finance and also written a stellar book on the subject. He knows his shit.
Hitler wanted to control Europe and establish the 1,000 Year Reich, which was his idea of a modern version of the Roman Empire. Before the US began to help England and Russia with Lend/Lease and other programs, he didn't give a lot of thought to North America or Asia.
Specifically, Hitler wanted to create a homeland for his idea of the Aryan people, which would include western Europe, eastern Europe and a significant slice of the western Soviet Union. Much of the new, eastern lands were to exist almost entirely to provide raw materials and slave labor for the citizens of greater Germany. The existing populations of the newly conquered lands deemed to be not Aryan enough were either to be eliminated, or moved to the new lands and forcibly settled so they could be exploited.
As someone has already suggested, you can read about Generalplan Ost (General Plan East) to see the broad outlines of what he had in mind. Hitler also had plans to redesign Berlin to be the new capital, and do things like build the Führermuseum in Linz, his hometown.
If you want an entertaining alternate history novel about what might have happened had Hitler won, Fatherland, by Robert Harris gives a good idea of what might have been.
I can almost guarantee that you will enjoy the Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher. The protagonist is a wizard who works with Chicago PD on magic related and other supernatural cases. There are some strong female characters, a sort of Scooby gang eventually, lots of vampire intrigue, and while the sense of humor isn't exactly the same, I find it to be in the same neighborhood, just a little geekier. Here is a link to the first book in the series.
It was brutal. I wasn't that good. But there were many people who were superb. It was such a pleasure watching them perform.
Here are some sci-fi recommendations (you may have read them already, but I thought I'd offer anyway):
Serious Scifi:
Anathem the "multiverse" (multiple realities) and how all that works
Seveneves feminism meets eugenics—watch out!
The Culture series by Iain Banks, esp Book 2, the Player of Games Banks is dead, but wrote some of the best intellectual scifi ever
Brilliant, Visionary:
Accelerando brilliant and hilarious; and it's not a long book
Snowcrash classic
Neuromancer another classic
Tawdry yet Lyrical (in a good way):
Dhalgren beautiful, poetic, urban, stream of consciousness, and more sex than you can believe
Underrated Classics:
Voyage to Arcturus ignore the reviews and the bad cover of this edition (or buy a diff edition); this is the ONE book that every true scifi and fantasy fan should read before they die
Stress Pattern, by Neal Barrett, Jr. I can't find this on Amazon, but it is a book you should track down. It is possibly the WORST science fiction book ever written, and that is why you must read it. It's a half-assed attempt at a ripoff of Dune without any of the elegance or vision that Herbert had, about a giant worm that eats people on some distant planet. A random sample: "A few days later when I went to the edge of the grove to ride the Bhano I found him dead. I asked Rhamik what could have happened and he told me that life begins, Andrew, and life ends. Well, so it does."
The only two I haven't seen listed already are:
> i will have to check out Neuromancer as it seems interesting.
the movie, Johnny Mnemonic, is also based off Neuromancer, but it's not super great at presenting the themes the book develops.
Snow Crash has a lot of Gibson/Neuromancer elements, but also includes some interesting concepts about language and religion.
here's Amazon links for both of them. $20 well spent IMO.
https://www.amazon.com/Neuromancer-William-Gibson/dp/0441569595
https://www.amazon.com/Snow-Crash-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0553380958
Iain M Banks' has a book titled The Algebraist, there are aliens in it called Dwellers; each individual dweller lives for millions of years and the species has been around for 10 billion. Dwellers are...not what you'd expect from beings that old.
You should read Lessig's "Republic, Lost" if you haven't already. He talks about Congress's dependence corruption (as opposed to quid pro quo corruption) and shows how publicly-financed campaigns could fix our broken political system.
no. If you are concerned about the issue, read Larry Lessig's book, Republic Lost. There are proposals in how to change things without subverting the will of the people.
Daemon and its sequel Freedom, by Daniel Suarez
Suarez is one of us.
General
Neuromancer By William Gibson
Neuromancer spawned the Cyberpunk genre and is responsible for much of cyber culture today, despite being written before the internet entered the public consciousness. Interesting characters, poetic descriptions, and a drug-addled noir atmosphere.
>Goodreads blurb: The Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus- hallucination, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace . . .
>Case had been the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employers crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
>Hotwired to the leading edges of art and technology, Neuromancer ranks with 1984 and Brave New World as one of the century's most potent visions of the future. (less)
Sure!
Cryptonomicon
Snow Crash
The Electric Church
Neuromancer
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
That should get you started. :)
In all honesty, the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are pretty tough to get into, since they are practically the ur-examples of fantasy, written back when a lot of commercial fiction methodology was still being developed.
When i read a book, I worry first and foremost if I'm entertained, if I am, I'll give it my recommendation, regardless of the flaws. These are the ones I think you'd find best for jumping in with.
YA/Middle Grade Books
Fantasy
Discworld by Terry Pratchet (I'd recommend not starting at the beginning.)
Sci-Fi
Urban Fantasy
Thrillers/Suspense
I first saw it in neuromancer. If you haven't read neuromancer yet... You really should. Also count zero and mona Lisa overdrive; these 3 books form the Sprawl trilogy and were hugely influential in the formation of the cyberpunk genre.
You might even get a kick out of The Hunger Games or Divergent... And of course 1984 :)
Sounds like you might enjoy Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. I think Snow Crash is meant to be in the same universe - it's hilarious but not as dense. You might also like his Cryptonomicon, though it's not technically Sci Fi.
Tad Willams' Otherland Series is Epic Sci Fi with a huge amount of detail. Might be right up your alley.
Dune, Neuromancer and The Enderverse if you haven't already read those.
I doubt this is it, but I'll plug Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein.
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Enough-Love-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0441810764/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371002335&sr=8-1&keywords=time+enough+for+love
Hopefully it might help you or someone else get pointed in the right direction.
This is true. That said, one can always introduce the magic into the mundane - a passing reference to a spell in the opening paragrah or page and you're good.
Or read the first two pages of the first book of Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series for another, more direct approach:
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0451457811
I wouldn't call it paranoia. The media is totally sensationalizing what he says. But nothing he has said has been wrong. Nukes are insanely dangerous, but a nuke doesn't think.
I think the first nuclear tests were even extremely risky, if I recall correctly, during a documentary I was watching it was said that they weren't exactly sure what would happen... they had a good idea but it was simply an idea. (idea == theory)
Elon Musk wants to dump money into making sure our first AI is developed to be benevolent rather than self serving, I say why not? There's actually a good sci-fi book that touches on this subject: Post-Human (Amazon).
[Post-Human Spoiler](/s "Essentially, China rushes an AI to win the world war but in the process of rushing the AI essentially takes over and begins to attempt to wipe out the planet. The government is finally able to send a suicide team with a tactical nuke to take it out, at which point strong AI is banned. Meanwhile a team secretly works on a strong AI but with the intent of having it be a protector of humanity from both other strong AIs but also from itself and their environment. Long story short, it ends up doing all of that.")
Additional notes...
Basic Background
Recommended Viewing Order
Start with the first film. It's the foundation for everything else.
Next, I'd watch the two Stand Alone Complex series
You can watch the second movie or the four Arise episodes in any order.
Primer Information About the Wider GitS world (Mild Spoilers)
The below is written in a block so as to make provide optical camouflage against accidentally catching spoilers if you don't want to read them.
The goal of this section is to help ease you into understanding the politics and organization of the GitS world.
The GitS world is set in Japan, but there are also international players. Japan has gone to war against other (made up) nations (sorta like Kazakstan), and we meet some of the ex-soldiers. Cybernetic technology is now well integrated into society, but was most extensively developed, weaponized and used by the military. At the most basic level, almost everyone now has brain implants. These implants are the foundation of most of the philosophical discussion in the GitS world. They're also the foundation for most of the crime, communication and investigation. Some people only have those basic neural implants, while others are entirely or almost entirely cybernetic. Much of the philosophical discussion, then, is about the line between the physical body and the soul (ghost), about what makes us individual and unique.
Americans are not the good guys (in many respects, the series extrapolates on how WWII influenced and continues to influence Japan's development and national identity). The Japanese government is divided into self-contained groups: ministries and sections. We follow Section 9. On the surface these groups all work together, but there's really a lot of backstabbing and secret warfare between the groups.
I think that's enough to get you started.
tl;dr: Definitely watch - one of my favorite creations of everything of all time. Enjoy!
I'm almost always juggling reading material. At the moment I am reading Neuromancer by William Gibson, and Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Just finished reading Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet by John G Turner, which I highly recommend.
This is well documented. Lessig has written about it in a very accessible way.
While I agree that the buzzword commercials should go, campaign financing really is the root of these problems. Congress has developed a dependency on campaign financing that directly competes with their originally intended sole dependency on "The People". You should really check out Lawrence Lessig's book "Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It", which he talks about here.
Republic, Lost by Lawrence Lessig is a pretty good place to start.
http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433
Lessig's premise is basically that the big problem isn't corruption in the traditional sense. If you picture it as politicians being handed paper bags full of cash under the table in exchange for voting a certain way on a certain bill, that sort of thing really isn't all that widespread. The big problem is the completely legal economy of favors and undue influence that exists, which prevents both liberals and conservatives from making any progress on many of their policy objectives.
Liars and Outliers by Bruce Schneier is another book that has a lot to say about corruption, but he approaches the problem from the perspective of examining the various systems that society puts in place to compel good behavior from its members, and how those systems fail.
http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Outliers-Enabling-Society-Thrive/dp/1118143302
> But at least have enough class not to advertise that you did it.
Hey, Jim. Long time fan of the Dresden books; I usually use them as a case example of showing people what it's like for an author to improve over time, because I think it's very clear to the reader how consistently you get better as a writer from book to book (although you rely on the word 'literally' far too often for my taste). I understand your point of view on people sharing your books for free, but I cannot support your attitude that there is anything remotely shameful about it, any more than there is shame in lending or giving a book to a friend - it is simply a fact that a digital book can be given away without the giver no longer having it, which shouldn't have any impact on the morality in question.
Some of your pirates truly can't afford your books, and you should not consider them a loss of sales in any way. Many, like thefran has strongly implied he is, struggle with inadequate service - information in the digital age is always in competition with free, and sellers who do not realize this make poor decisions that cause piracy. theFran has straight-up admitted that he had to buy a bootleg because, for no good reason, he could not buy your product when it released, as it was delayed in his country. In the internet age, that is straight-up inexcusable. This is your publisher's fault, not yours, but you should understand that he was out to enjoy your work, not hurt you, and as a group, the people involved in selling him the book dropped the ball collectively.
If you're serious about wanting to sell more books to internet denizens, 1) make absolutely sure digital copies of your book release no later than the physical book does, 2) in every format used by a digital reader, 3) on widely accessible markets, 4) for a reasonable price (this means less than the physical copy; 5 dollars is about right). This shit, where the digital copy costs MORE than the paper copy, is just going to lose you sales. http://www.amazon.com/Storm-Front-Book-Dresden-Files/dp/0451457811
I realise you're the author, but you're big enough to tell your publishers to stop being idiots. Get on the phone with them and start making yourself more money and your internet readers happier.
I'm currently reading Year Zero by Rob Reid.
It deals with the fact that, due to how twisted our copyright laws are, and how ridiculous the damages are supposed be when copyright infringement occurs, that the alien civilizations who've been listening in and loving our music are now faced with being copyright pirates to the tune of all possible wealth in the universe.
That seemed pertinent to the subject at hand. Also, the book is pretty funny, in a Douglas Adams kind of way.
Neuromancer https://www.amazon.com/dp/0441569595/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_ixV8AbZ5SWX6N
> What if my children or a younger friend will be immortal? In a thousand years they will have forgotten the 40 years they spent with me.
If that's really what you believe, may I suggest reading Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love. ( Amazon )
Are you looking for straight comedy or just things with comedic elements? Do you have any specific genre preferences?
For example, Steven Brust's Jhereg series has a very snarky protagonist, but it's not a comedy.
Same would be true for the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, if you like urban fantasy.
A Wizard of Earthsea
Dresden files
If you like fantasy, check in with the folks over at r/fantasy. That being said, Patrick Rothfuss' Name of the Wind is phenomenal epic fantasy with beautifully crafted storytelling. If you want fast paced urban fantasy, check out Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, which is about a magic wielding private detective with an irreverent sense of humor.
Was it book 10 that took place over one or two days? That was bloody awful although it did spawn the funniest Amazon book review I ever read.. I'm re-reading the series and will be missing that one out.
Edited to add book review: http://www.amazon.com/Crossroads-Twilight-Wheel-Time-Book/dp/0812571339
The Wheel of Time Book 10 of the series.
Loved the first 6 in the series, but Robert Jordan started mailing them in after that. I feel invested in the characters and just want to see this one through. It's taken 2 months so far with something like 6-7 other books read every time I bog down.
>These people aren't an electoral threat to me.
I think this is the most important problem of this generation. Elected officials spend most of their time fund raising and the extreme majority of the time, the candidate who raises more wins (something like 98% of the time I read in this book but I don't remember exactly). The government doesn't care about about 20-something unemployed people and no candidates will so long as they have to raise money. Low voter turnout is evidence of rationality more than stupidity or apathy.
This is the point of "we are the 99%". It is the <1% whose interests that are reflected by government. This is likely because they have money to fund political campaigns.
I've always respected Larry Lessig's work -- he fought copyright until a few years ago, when he switched to fighting corruption in government.
He just wrote a book called "Republic, Lost" about it. One of the things he proposes is public funding of elections, where each voter gets an amount of money they can allocate among the candidates they support.
http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt
Start reading The Dresden Files
Book 16 isn't due out until 2015, so you may be able to catch up in time.
This is very much a "just trust me". Book 1 isn't the best of the series, but everyone has to start somewhere. Very quickly it becomes an addiction.
Click Here for the amazon link. You can buy it in almost any format.
For Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic, there's a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name.
Fellow fan of series here! Let me see...
Young Adult
Percy Jackson series is fun (and finished, too, I think).
Artemis Fowl series isn't quite as good as Percy Jackson IMHO, but it's got a following.
Fantasy
Harry Dresden series This is one of my favorites. Harry is Chicago's only professional wizard. There are a ton of these books and they are still going strong.
Game of Thrones These are great...but unfinished. If you watch the show, reading the books does help you get even more out of the story, I think.
Wheel of Time Another good series. There is a LOT of this series and it's finished. (Thank you, Brandon Sanderson!)
Mistborn Speaking of Brandon Sanderson... This one is very good. I highly recommend reading the Mistborn books before trying the Stormlight Archive, but only because as good as Mistborn is, Stormlight Archive is even better.
Stormlight Archive Amazing. Man, these are good. The series isn't finished, but the two books that are available are some of my favorites ever.
Kingkiller Chronicles I loved the first book. I could not freakin' believe I enjoyed the second one even more. The third one is still pending.
Temeraire Dragons in Napoleonic times. Super cool premise! This one is not finished (I don't think, anyway).
Gentlemen Bastards Con men in a fantasy realm. It's pretty light on the fantasy elements. Very light, I'd say. I'd also say that it has some of the very best swearing that I've ever come across. :D
Scifi
Old Man's War I'm almost finished this one--it's amazing!
Horror/Thriller
Passage Trilogy I've heard these described as vampire books...maybe zombie books... It's apocalyptic for sure. Great books!
Mysteries
Amelia Peabody Egyptology + murder mysteries. Super fun, but trust me...go with the audiobooks for these. They are best when they are performed.
Stephanie Plum Total popcorn reads. If that's your thing, shut off your brain and just enjoy.
Walt Longmire These get particularly good as it goes along. The main character is a sheriff in modern day Wyoming. (Side note: The TV show is also great--just don't expect them to stick to the books.)
Graphic Novels (Everything recommended can be gotten in a "book" format instead of only in comic form, in case that matters. I've gotten most of these from my local library.)
Locke & Key Eerie as crap. Love the art! This one is on-going.
Y: The Last Man All the men on the planet drop dead in a day...except for Yorrick. REALLY good. This is the series that got me reading graphic novels. Plus, it's finished!
Walking Dead I am not a zombie fan...but I like these. They're not done, but I've read up through volume 22 and am still enjoying them.
Other
OutlanderI have no idea how to categorize these or even give a description that does them justice. I refused to pick it up for AGES because it sounded like a bodice-ripper romance and that's not my bag. But these are good!
I hope there's something in there that'll do for you. Have fun and read on!
Edit: Apparently, I need to practice formatting. :/
Edit 2: I forgot to add the Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentlemen Bastards #1).
David Brin wrote a great novel that explores this somewhat called Kiln People. It's a fun and pretty easy read, and directly deals with those questions! It's a murder mystery involving temporary human avatars made from a kind of recyclable slurry that people upload consciousness to.
I love some of the Amazon comments about Crossroads of Twilight. They're hilarious!
You remind me of the villain in The Algebraist...his name escapes me.
Literary Fathers of VR
1950: Ray Bradbury's 'The Veldt'.
1981: Vernor Vinge's 'True Names'.
1984: William Gibson's 'Neuromancer'.
http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-TM-Daemon-Book-2-ebook/dp/B002VUFKDY
as well as the original Daemon (http://www.amazon.com/Daemon-Daniel-Suarez-ebook/dp/B003QP4NPE/) Both are great reads.
Found it.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005X0K520/
The book has already been written: Avogadro Corp: The Singularity is Closer Than It Appears
It's actually a series. It's an interesting approach to how the singularity could occur, and they actually aren't "trying" to create an AI, it happens by a fortunate accident. And the second book in the series is called "The AI Apocalypse", where a battle begins between two completely different AI architectures.
Related sci-fi novel Avogadro Corp.
The premise is "What if Google invents the world's first AI, and it's a paperclip maximizer of language?"
The post-human series is one of my all time favorite tanshuman series. It's got some good character development, A.I., most may consider it leaning towards fantasy in some aspects. I always just remember the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00H0D5NTI/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1488172906&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=post+human+omnibus&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=51nKxcjtmcL&amp;ref=plSrch
Player of Games is a good book, and it's early enough in the Culture series that Banks hadn't yet realized he made the Minds too powerful and doesn't need the human characters to actually do anything. But it is not military science fiction and I don't think it's similar to The Forever War.
If you're looking for more military sci-fi I can recommend Forging Zero, All You Need is Kill, David Weber's Honor Harrington series, Orphanage...and many more I'm sure. Armor is great and I'm sure you've heard of Starship Troopers.
A note on David Weber, I find his overuse of italics a constant irritation when reading his books. It really helps to get digital copies and run them through calibre to eliminate all the italics first.
Try out The Legend of Zero Series. I'm reading it now and it gives off some Red Rising vibes. Here's the Amazon book summary:
First Contact didn't go as expected. Now they own us.
Earth has been conquered by a massive galactic empire, and its war machine needs soldiers. In a cruel twist of fate, fourteen-year-old Joe Dobbs accidentally ends up on a ship carrying Earth's children to an alien training planet. To make it out alive, he must survive an apathetic bureaucracy that sees humans as little more than spare rations. Meat with guns. Or, if they're really unlucky, servants.
The oldest of the children drafted from humanity’s devastated planet, Joe unwittingly becomes the centerpiece in a millennia-long alien struggle for independence. Once his training begins, one of the elusive and prophetic Trith gives Joe a spine chilling prophecy that the universe has been anticipating for millions of years: Joe will be the one to finally shatter the vast alien government known as Congress. And the Trith cannot lie.…
But first Joe has to make it through boot camp.
For lovers of sci-fi thrillers, alien invasion stories, space opera, and sprawling first contact science fiction, this is an unforgettable post-apocalyptic epic about perseverance and survival in a harsh new world where humanity is just another item on the menu...
Now i just realized i read 18 books this month... what the hell.
Greetings! Acquiring editor and freelance editor here. Thought I'd give you some info on what I know to be the TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING ROUTE.
Agents are the way to go for traditional publishing. Get a good query letter, a nice synopsis, and a polished manuscript. If you have a good hook and a clean manuscript, then you're in the green.
Check out your favorite authors (the ones that have similar work to your own) and find their agents. See about their agencies as possible places to send queries.
If you're looking for editors (which you should only do once you've done a good deal of revising yourself), a great place to try is your favorite authors again! Check out their publishers and find out if they use in-house or freelance editors. See if you can get in contact with them. Of course, this is going to cost some cash money as this level of editor runs $30-60/hour, if not more.
On the opposite end, college students can make for adequate proofreaders for much less money. However, they won't be the best help when it comes to actual revisions.
When it comes down to it, you need a professional for professional work. There are some editors here on the writing subreddits with varying degrees of skill and expertise. I've done work for fellow redditors at relatively low prices (relatively is the key phrase, as even a 50% discount is putting you at $15/hour) with some good success. If you want more info, send me a PM and I can give you the lowdown on hiring a freelance editor (preferably a local editor so you can go shake their hand).
Even self publications need good editors, though. I spoke briefly with the author of Avagadro Corp. who spoke to the difference in the sales of his first two self-published novels. His first went through low quality editors and he got a lot of flak for it. The second time through, he paid a pro and got great results! William Hertling: He's even got a book on how to maximize the chance of your self publication to hit critical mass.
Avogadro corp series: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006ACIMQQ
AI isn't omnipotent, but close, and a very good description on how the AI comes to be.
An episode set in the backdrop of a NYC Blackout would be really cool. Like a parody of the real NYC blackout of 1977. Maybe it's the dark army's real motive for working with Elliot on "Stage 2". Elliot even says something in beginning of s2e9 like "we never questioned the dark army's motives"). It is totally plausible, even likely, that the Dark Army is sponsored by the State (China), maybe they want to have the first strike in a true Cyber War with the US. First they break down society by aiding the crash of the financial system and encouraging dissent. Next cut the power, civilization starts to unfold, next bring the telecom systems down, invade, WWIII! Ok I'll put my tin foil hat back on.
edit - this is also a part of the plot of a book I read recently called Cyber Storm
amazon.ca link for any other cannucks http://www.amazon.ca/Post-Human-Books-1-4-David-Simpson-ebook/dp/B00H0D5NTI/
What are your top five must-own books?
Mine, in no real order are:
(I'll put in links when I get home)
edit: with amazon links
I have several good recommendations for this one. First I will give you two fiction books you MUST read if this subject is a real interest of yours.
Islands In The Net by: Bruce Sterling
https://www.amazon.com/Islands-Net-Bruce-Sterling-ebook/dp/B00PDDKVXK/
Neuromancer by William Gibson
https://www.amazon.com/Neuromancer-William-Gibson/dp/0441569595
For non-fiction the one book that really did it for me was again by Mr. Sterling it's called The Hacker Crackdown and it is so amazing!!
https://www.amazon.com/Hacker-Crackdown-Disorder-Electronic-Frontier/dp/055356370X
Good luck. PM for more recommendations if you need them. This is a genre I am very interested in myself and have read extensively.
For sheer 'play in the virtual world' stuff, you MUST read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. You'll blaze through that, so follow it up with Stephenson's The Diamond Age
Good YA dystopic future stuff:
The Windup Girl
Station Eleven
Finally, get into Neuromancer, by William Gibson. It's a fantastic--some would say genre-defining--cyberpunk novel.
Then go devour everything Stephenson and Gibson put out there. That should get you through at least the first half of the summer. Happy reading!
Good fiction excites the mind and teaches new concepts. Most future minded scientists are science fiction fans for that reason.
Snow Crash is just a fun ride. Pulp fiction, not more complex or involved than that. Enders Game is the same.
Try the fanfiction I recommended, or Understand (pdf) by Ted Chiang, or The Last Question by Asimov, or Baby Eating Aliens by Yudkowsky. All of these are free, by the way, and relatively short.
Each have important lessons embedded in good stories, philosphical quandries that we are rapidly approaching, like what will it mean to be human when we are no longer entirely biological?
Also, if you want just a reeeeeaallly good scifi book, I don't think you can go past Neuromancer by Gibson. Less thought provoking but seriously well written.
Believe it or not there are quite a few good sci-fi books exploring these ideas already. Here is an incomplete list you may want to check out:
Do you read cyberpunk? Looking at art is great but I find reading to be the biggest inspiration because how I imagine the world is unique and original to me. Likewise, how you imagin the world will be unique and original too and completely different from how I see it. Check out books like Neuromancer, the book that started cyberpunk.
[edit] One of my favorite quotes from the book
> His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.
Paints a different kind of picture than you can get from images.
Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Other works of fiction that contain the concept of a metaverse;
Books
Anime and Manga
Film
----
I know I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the genre, because if there's one thing humans are good at, it's writing fucktons on what we like.
So feel free to comment additions to this list, or opinions on what I've currently included. I have by no means read/watched all of these, so having someone with actual experience with each of these weigh in would be nice.
My nomination might be quite a difficult read but it is short in comparison and may leave us invigorated.
Neuromancer by William Gibson [SCIFI,NS]
> * The Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus- hallucination, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace . . .
Case had been the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
Hope you like it.
Heinlein's Time Enough for Love is like this. Lazarus Long starts out in full depression and even has a [Spoiler:](#s "button he is told will kill him but really just erases his memories for the past few hours") and uses it, several times. He abducted, OD's on drugs, gets shot, gets sent to the wrong [Spoiler:](#s "time by several years and his child self is an asshole to him"). He has to deal with several deaths including the deaths of people he loves.
It is Scifi and it is heinlein so it can be weird, he also did A Stranger in Strange Land and Starship Troopers. The main character is functionally immortal and has lost the will to live, and there is a bunch of non-conventional sex. If you can get past or enjoy ;) that then you will likely enjoy Time Enough for Love.
I share your frustration, but what you propose is 1) not going to happen and 2) not going to solve the long-term problems. Take the time to read Lawrence Lessig's [Republic Lost] (http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress--/dp/0446576433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1323053002&amp;sr=8-1). It has a very sophisticated understanding of the problem, and difficult but real potential solutions.
Lawrence Lessig has done some excellent work on describing how exactly we got here and how, perhaps, we might get out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g
BTW, his book "Republic Lost" is amazing!
When you design a multiplayer game, you're trying to design incentives and rules to channel players' competitive energy and aggression into an experience that's fun and fair for everyone. That's true of a community-based site as well.
Back in the 90s me and my friend and CounterPAC cofounder, Zack Booth Simpson, were working on a game called Netstorm. At that time John McCain and Russ Feingold were just starting their campaign finance reform effort. We got to thinking - it's great that they're doing that, but there's a paradox in the government trying to regulate itself. The guys with money are always going to react faster than the legislators and regulators.
That made us wonder whether you could have a private organization that would be on the "good guy" side. We had various ideas, but no time or money to make it happen.
Now I do have the money, and I stepped back from Kongregate to make the time.
> Also as a British reader - where can I find more info on PACs and the American political system?
I love this essay Lessig wrote last month: https://medium.com/@lessig/whats-so-bad-about-a-superpac-c7cbcf617b58.
His book is great too: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446576433/
The Devil and Daniel Webster is short. Though if you're interested in recommendations for books that are longer that you may like check out these:
The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut's Windlass
On Basilisk Station
The Hobbit
The Dresden Files 1, 2, 3. (The first two books of the series are the weakest, the quality jumps tremendously in Book 3 and each one is better then the last after that.)
The Lost Fleet
I came here to say the same thing. Start with The Atrocity Archives and then The Jennifer Morgue. Also, the Dresden Files have always felt X-Files-ish to me. Start with Storm Front.
http://www.amazon.com/Gardens-Moon-Malazan-Book-Fallen/dp/0765348780
http://www.amazon.com/Hitchhikers-Guide-Galaxy-Douglas-Adams/dp/0345391802/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376093747&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=hitchhikers+guide+to+the+galaxy
http://www.amazon.com/Mistborn-Final-Empire-Book-No/dp/0765350386/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376093807&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=mistborn
http://www.amazon.com/Storm-Front-Book-Dresden-Files/dp/0451457811/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376093895&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=storm+front+jim+butcher
Dresden Files by Jim Butcher is your thing if you like a character who would die for the principles. It's hard to explain it without spoilers, but several times he choose principles over the easy way out.
Start with Storm Front.
Howdy.
I am /u/vrlkd (Strava), been around a while but my posting frequency fluctuates between being overly active and AWOL. I am more consistent with my Slack participation. I'm based in London and can regularly be found at my local parkrun.
So, it was a fun book, but I found more than a few aspects of it to be a bit unbelievable and aggravating.
-----
[Spoiler](/s "The nominal concept of the setting is that everybody alive has a high capacity digital storage device embedded in the base of their skull/neck that keeps track of everything they do/say/learn/experience. As such humans are basically software... you can put any consciousness in any body. Bodies can be grown, or confiscated, or traded. Any event that kills a person but doesn't destroy the storage device doesn't kill the person permanently... he/she just downloads into a new body... possibly one that was a clone of the old body, or possibly an upgrade or downgrade depending upon finances. In fact, there is no need to even go back into a body as one can run one's consciousness entirely inside a virtual environment... and at a much faster rate than a human brain would support. This is not a concept in the background... the story revolves around this idea. ")
[Spoiler](/s "If you find that to be a believable idea, then you'll love the book. I don't. I think that too much of how we think is intrinsic to the mechanism of how our brains work. You couldn't put a genius mind into the body of mentally disabled person... you'd end up with a mentally disabled person with vague memories of being a genius. Personally, I don't think it could work even in less extreme cases than that: I strongly suspect that information and meaning as it is experienced in a human is encoded symbolically into neurons in a way that is utterly different and incompatible with the way similar or even identical information is encoded into the neurons of any other human... that is the way any individual thinks is essentially encrypted relative to the way any other individual thinks... and that this is a property that is physically encoded in the shape and genetics of individual neurons in the brain such that it could never be separated from the brain. (This is consistent with what we know about how brains work from fMRI studies... when you look at a picture, or do a task such as multiplication, the same general regions of the brain light up for you as anyone else, but the pattern of activation isn't exactly the same... ever). ")
[Spoiler](/s "But lets say we choose to ignore the fact that the premise is more than a little incompatible with what we know of neurobiology. The premise is also self contradictory in ways that are annoyingly implausible but convenient for the plot. Without getting into spoilers, Altered Carbon takes place in a society that has the ability to copy and digitize the consciousness of a human, create functional independent AIs, run simulations of humans so realistic that the simulations don't know that they are simulations or that the environment that they are in is simulated, move such software-human-identities between bodies, and yet still treats human consciousness as a black box! You want to extract a particular fact from a stored mind? You have to actually boot that mind up into a body or software simulated environment, and ASK IT with language! I mean, if the author wants to explore the consequences of human identity as software that's great, but GO ALL THE WAY! Extracting information from a stored consciousness, given all the other things this civilization can do, should be child's play... as simple as typing in search terms in a search engine... the fact that the consciousness is not running should only make it easier. ")
[Spoiler](/s "All in all, a fun light reading, but not as intriguing as it could have been. In many ways, Kiln People by Brin explored much the same subject matter, and did so in a more intellectually rigorous manner. Oddly, the fact that the mind-copying technology is much less believable in Brin's book (and analogue rather than digital in nature) makes the over all story much more believable because it lets the story focus more upon the metaphysical, social, and moral implications.")
Fatherland by Richard Harris.
SS GB by Len Deighton
Farthing by Jo Walton. First in a trilogy.
Resistance by Owen Shears.
Alternate history is a favourite topic of mine. :)
Fiction Books
Cryptonomicon - Very few books make up a cypher system based on playing cards, have a story that spans WW2 through the present day and in large part revolve around creating an alternate digital currency, a data haven and startup life.
Neuromancer - this is the book that created cyberpunk and that inspired all those bad movie ideas about hacking in 3D systems. That being said, it marked a real turning point in SciFi. Without this book "cyber" security specialists would probably be called something else.
Snow Crash - This is much more breezy than the other two but still has very recognizable hacking/security elements to it and is just fun.
Non Fiction
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman - This isn't a book about technology so much as deduction and figuring things out (while being hilariously entertaining).
I included all these here in large part because they are what inspired me to get into development and sysadmin work and I bet that I'm about 20 years older than you if you're just getting into the field - so there's a decent chance that your coworkers are into them too.
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway.
Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Stars in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delany.
So then we can have what's in the book Freedom: http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-TM-Daniel-Suarez-ebook/dp/B002VUFKDY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1417827999&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=freedom
BV Larson's Star Force series is pretty decent.
Love this series highly recommend it up until the third book but the fourth book... His other series on silver wings fits the bill as well though.
A few other great reads though that are fairly similar listed in the order of my preference.
Also sorry about high jacking this started writing this as a response then ended up recommending a bunch of other books .
Here's the link
The Nightside series (12 books) by Simon R Green was pretty good. While not being specifically YA, I don't remember it having overly objectionable content.
How about some good books?:
Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey - First in the series.
Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green - First in the series.
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett - Hilarious
There are a lot of dystopian future books that really aren't that similar to The Hunger Games or Divergent. Did you want books about people competing in cruel games in a dystopian future, or is it just the dystopian aspect you want to explore?
Either way, there's a huge field to choose from. Neuromancer. The Electric Church. The Running Man. Just to name a few.
After loads of reading on the bus to work every day, here follows my reading list for military aviation:
Modern
Vietnam
WWII
Overall/Other
Bonus non-military aviation
I highly second the recommendations of Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and Diamond Age. I would also recommend:
Careful, if they become sentient they could start subtley creating their own sleeper agents. The Book
I'm going to chip in Stephenson's Snow Crash should be on the list, as well as Gibson's Neuromancer.
I've recently read two books that I absolutely fell in love with:
1.) Stories of Your Life and Others: http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Others-Chiang/dp/1931520720/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1413578672&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=stories+of+your+life+and+others
2.) Neuromancer (A classic that I've just gotten into): http://www.amazon.com/Neuromancer-William-Gibson/dp/0441569595/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1413578739&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=neuromancer
Neuromancer https://www.amazon.com/dp/0441569595/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_bQNQBbPVB7VPK
That’s the copy I have.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0553380958?pc_redir=1404734999&amp;robot_redir=1
Snow crash
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0441569595/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1404785560&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=SY200_QL40
Neuromancer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307887448/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1404785598&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=SY200_QL40
Ready Player One
I'm reading Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein right now. It takes place in the year 4272 in an interplanetary human civilization with "the Senior", who's been alive since the 1940's (and who's genes aided research into 'rejuvenation clinics' for the wealthy and connected), giving his life stories and wisdom to the leader of a planet who wants to leave and colonize a new world. It's a fascinating read, and gets into some decent scientific detail too. Heinlein also wrote Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers.
Time Enough For Love!
i didn't know it was my job to take seriously people who can't understand the complexities of campaign finance and democratic government. if you want to read an enlightening book, i would suggest this: http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress--/dp/0446576433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1334193301&amp;sr=8-1
Lately, Bruce Bartlett's The Benefit and the Burden and Lawrence Lessig's Republic Lost. Mostly issue politics and future of country type of stuff. That said, I have a bachelor's in poli sci and went to grad school for political theory (ad then went to law school), so my choice materials may be a bit different than most. But you should still read both of those (especially Republic Lost).
Most of this is copypasta from another reply on this thread, since it seemed silly to just rephrase all the things. Please note the last paragraph if none of these seem fun. I read a lot, mostly exclusively SF/F (both adult and YA), and boy do I have opinions on it. And if you're not a reader starting with YA is a thought. There's a lot of fun, intelligent YA out there now as publishers realize teens don't actually want to be treated like they're stupid.
For a low commitment (i.e. not part of a series), humorous start there's Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. I like a lot of Gaiman's work, which ranges from the strange and humorous (see: GO) to the strange and creepy (Anasazi Boys), but what I'd recommend from him depends on what you're looking for.
In the funny but harder scifi range I'd rec the beloved classic Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. This is seriously one of the wittiest books I've ever read besides being an action-packed scifi romp.
If you're interested in urban fantasy I have all the recs. Everything from Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series Book 1: Storm Front, for the grown-up wizard, to Seanan McGuire's October Daye series Book 1: Rosemary and Rue, if you're more into fae.
For the dark and more sexual (seriously, there is sex in these books) I highly recommend the Fever Series by Karen Moning, Book 1: Darkfever.
If you like SF/F books (like Discworld, Animorphs, etc.) let me know what subgenres (e.g. hard scifi, urban fantasy, urban scifi, fantasy romance, young adult _____ ) you think you might like and I guarantee you I have a recommendation or two. I read a lot.
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher is one of my favorite series. It's less scifi and a bit more on the fantasy genre, but still really good. It's much less high fantasy than the Game of Thrones series and set in Chicago in today's time. Plus the main guy gets to ride a zombie t-rex.
Tell us a little bit more about yourself. What entertainment genres do you like? Are there any subjects you want to learn more about?
Here's a few good books I've read recently:
I've read the preview of this book and it looks pretty good, especially since I love well done urban fantasy story's. You'd probably really enjoy the Dresden Series... about a badass wizard detective living in Chicago.
Here's a link to the first book if you want to check it out:
http://www.amazon.com/Storm-Front-Dresden-Files-Book/dp/0451457811
Ya know, I'll order a paperback edition of a Madness of Angels from amazon right now if you promise to take a look at the Dresden Series. Deal?
I'm really surprised that nobody has mentioned this one yet, but you should check out the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. Storm Front is the first book in the series. Don't quit after only reading the first one! The series gets better as you go!
Also, I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 and loved it :)
EDIT: If you read a lot, I would really recommend using PaperBack Swap! (gotta be honest, this is a referral link through me!) They have a ton of great books available for around $3.45 per book (with shipping) at the most, and that's if you actually purchase credits.
I will second The Lies of Locke Lamora (part of the Gentleman Bastard series) as an excellent choice.
If you like Percy Jackson because it is fantasy mixed with the real world (i.e. urban fantasy genre) you might like The Dresden Files or the Iron Druid Chronicles
You might also look at branching into historical fiction, maybe? There are a lot of books using real historical military campaigns as backgrounds that are very entertaining - if that is of any interest to you, start with The Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.
What sort of fantasy do you think you would like? High fantasy, modern day real world fantasy, steam punk, romance, adventure, coming of age?
If you are looking at staying with a Young Adult fantasy theme, I would suggest Cassandra Clare's series, [The Mortal Instruments] (https://www.amazon.com/Bones-Mortal-Instruments-Cassandra-Clare/dp/1481455923/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1478740289&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=the+mortal+instruments) and it's prequel series, [The Infernal Devices] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1481456024/ref=pd_sim_14_6?ie=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=1481456024&amp;pd_rd_r=H6XGB69FAEC3097ZA851&amp;pd_rd_w=lLXM8&amp;pd_rd_wg=MOvOs&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=H6XGB69FAEC3097ZA851) . The prequel series is actually my favorite of the two. It is steam punk fantasy while the other is not. I also would recommend [The Dresden Files] (https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Front-Dresden-Files-Butcher/dp/0451457811/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1478740351&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=dresden+files), by Jim Butcher even though they are not Young Adult. They contain every type of fantasy creature and setting you could imagine. It's a series about a private detective in modern day Chicago who also happens to be a wizard.
If you want to delve into a zombie genre, I have enjoyed [The Forest of Hands and Teeth] (https://www.amazon.com/Forest-Hands-Teeth-Carrie-Ryan/dp/0385736827/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1478740244&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=forest+of+hands+and+teeth) series by Carrie Ryan as well as [The Enemy] (https://www.amazon.com/Enemy-new-cover-Novel/dp/1484721462/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1478740190&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+enemy+charlie+higson) series by Charlie Higson.
Crossbow, bolts, and the first book of the Dresden Files.
Ok, you like a lot of the authors I do so Imma try and throw a couple out there.
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi Set in future Thailand where global warming has run rampant, the oceans have risen, and gene companies produce food seed continuously to keep ahead of genetic plagues that destroy anything edible. It's some solid hard scifi and if you like Gibson and Dick it should do ya well.
Red Thunder by John Varley Set in the near future the Chinese are clearly going to win the spacerace to Mars and a small group decides to build a ship to beat em. This is the first in a three part series (which I just learned had a third part lookin up that link) and I enjoyed it.
As for fantasy...
The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher In the world of The Dresden Files, magic is real, along with ghouls, vampires, demons, spirits, faeries, werewolves, zombies and other mythical monsters. Harry Dresden works to protect the general public, who are ignorant of magic and the dark forces conspiring against them. This makes it difficult for Harry to get by as a working wizard and private eye. The Chicago PD's Special Investigation unit, when led by Karrin Murphy, regularly employs Dresden as a consultant to help solve cases of a supernatural nature. I love this series, whenever a new book comes out (and hes up to 14 not counting a few short story collections and such) I read it almost nonstop.
I think you would love the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss. The thirds and final book is yet to be released but they are an absoolutely wonderful read :D
First Book
Second Book
If you guys are fans of jewelry there is a site that sells cosmere related items. For example, me and my best friend got the adolin and dalinar shardblade necklaces because we relate to those two characters. There are also mistborn rings you can inscribe with your own message/word, and some other cool pieces. Other gifts Ive gotten and loved included other fantasy books I hadn’t read yet. I’ve heard great things about the king killer chronicle and intend to give those a try. I’m certain others on this thread can give great recommendations as well. I also received some money for the cosmere tattoo I had wanted for about a year, which was a wonderful surprise from my sister. Whatever his favorite metal, order, rune, or element from a Sanderson book, I’m sure there’s a way to give him a personal and meaningful token of that thing. Another book that isn’t related to sanderson but are philosophical pieces are “American philosophy: a love story” and “hiking with Nietzsche” both authored by John Kaag, whom was a college professor of mine. Both books are wonderful stories about love from a philosophical viewpoint, sharing the undertones of many Sanderson books. Both are great reads that taught me a lot if your husband enjoys philosophy/the deeper meanings to sandersons books. If you’re interested in other recommendations, feel free to pm me. Good luck!
Link to jewlery site: https://badalijewelry.com/collections/brandon-sanderson
Kingkiller chronicle: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0575081406/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=
John Kaag books:
American philosophy: https://www.amazon.com/American-Philosophy-Story-John-Kaag/dp/0374154481/ref=nodl_
Hiking with Nietzsche: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1250234689/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=
The name of the wind - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Name-Wind-Kingkiller-Chronicle/dp/0575081406
Wool - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wool-Trilogy-1-Hugh-Howey/dp/0099580489/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1375528696&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=wool+hugh+howey
OK I tried to do a spoiler alert with formatting but I am not with it enough to do so at this hour.
So - try out Kiln People for size.
www.amazon.com/Kiln-People-Books-David-Brin/dp/0765342618/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=kiln+people&qid=1572919327&s=books&sr=1-1
Qotd: What kind of clone? Like in Kiln People? if it was like that, I'd say, do my photo editing that I'm behind on, another to do all the flyer hanging I need to get done (and travel for), and a 3rd to tackle my to-do lists. My original self will stay here and pet cats.
&#x200B;
The next book is certainly an improvement, but it doesn't really make up for having grain weevils as the main villain of book 10 (The reviews on Amazon are a great read).
Iain Banks wrote a nice fat novel where the galaxy's primary religion had the same idea.
Nobody has mentioned Iain M. Banks yet, so how about
The Algebraist
Excession
Against a Dark Background
Another military sci-fi novel with several unique twists would be Vernor Vinge's:
A Fire Upon the Deep
Hard to beat Ender's Game, though. Old Man's War is really good; Armor is good but kinda depressing.
I can think of lots more, reply if you'd like more suggestions :-)
I've seen this before but it's still a fun read if you're familiar with Banks' Culture books. "Use of Weapons" and "Excession" are good places to start in the Culture universe.
Banks has a new book out, not in the Culture universe, that's quite good as well: The Algebraist.
Not with this particular jacket style. On Amazon you get covers with just white, black and red color published by Thomas & Mercer. I really prefer the Penguin publisher series from 2002.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1612185436/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_ug0vyb0EX2QGF
Here's Casino Royale in the copy that's my favorite. The rest are in a similar style. Just great all around.
http://www.amazon.com/Casino-Royale-James-Bond-007/dp/1612185436/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1426793244&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=james+bond+book
Oh man. I've been waiting for a thread like this to pop up. I loved Neuromancer to no end, along with House of Leaves. Containment was good shit too, very interesting read, but relies on easy plot fixes. It doesn't ruin the story, in my opinion.
You also can't go wrong with anything by Kurt Vonnegut and Phillip K. Dick.
There's this thread on similar books to the count of monte cristo and here are the current suggestions ordered by page length:
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester - 236 pages
Neuromancer - 271 pages
Ender’s Game - 5 books with the first (the linked one) around 250 pages
River God - 676 pages
Shogun & Tai Pan - 1000+ and 700+ pages each
I'm debating the first 2 really. Not sure if you happened to have read them and would have a recommendation.
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Vintage-International-Cormac-McCarthy-ebook/dp/B000OI0G1Q/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=&amp;qid=
http://www.amazon.com/1984-George-Orwell-ebook/dp/B003JTHWKU/ref=sr_1_1_ha_twi_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419607743&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=1984
http://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Aldous-Huxley-ebook/dp/B00JTYQJ3K/ref=sr_1_1_ha_twi_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419607785&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=brave+new+world
http://www.amazon.com/Altered-Carbon-Takeshi-Kovacs-Novels-ebook/dp/B000FBFMZ2/ref=sr_1_1_twi_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419607819&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=altered+carbon
http://www.amazon.com/Neuromancer-William-Gibson-ebook/dp/B000O76ON6/ref=sr_1_1_ha_twi_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419607849&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=neuromancer
http://www.amazon.com/Fahrenheit-451-Novel-Ray-Bradbury-ebook/dp/B0064CPN7I/ref=sr_1_1_ha_twi_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419607872&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=farenheight+451
http://www.amazon.com/Cats-Cradle-Kurt-Vonnegut-ebook/dp/B003XRELGQ/ref=sr_1_1_twi_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419607936&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=cat%27s+cradle
http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Five-Kurt-Vonnegut-ebook/dp/B003XVYLDU/ref=sr_1_3_twi_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419607936&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=cat%27s+cradle
Rendezvous with Rama the whole series is pretty good.
2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke Collection: The Odyssey) that series as well
Neuromancer
Homeland: The Legend of Drizzt, Book I: Bk. 1
the dark elf trilogy is pretty good
for amazingly deep and rich backdrop you can't beat the Dune (40th Anniversary Edition) (Dune Chronicles, Book 1) at least the first three.. others that were wrote by his son and other authors are ok but dont live up to the originals imho
pretty much all of Robert Heinlein's stuff stranger in a strange land, starship troopers (nothing at all like the movie), Glory Road, Have Spacesuit will travel.
Wha?
That's how I read them both...
i liked the idea of the haptic suit in Freedom. I use my phone for everything but having different tones for various events isn't the best way to be alerted. Imagine, your left butt check twitches, there's a thai restaurant near by with a 5 star rating, your right forearm throbs, your cousin has posted another asinine political facebook rant that you can safely ignore, middle of your back itches, there's an open wifi sport nearby...
It made me think of the sustainability of the global food industry, especially here in the USA. I recently re-read the book Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez, and it raised some interesting concepts about so-called thousand mile supply chains. Excellent read.
EDIT: You're right - she does look PISSED. Plus the German stack of food seems to be way more orderly than anyone else's.
Hmmm...could it be Swarm! book 1 of the Starforce series?
I've enjoyed both of those authors, so I guess I'll recommend some books I've liked.
In no particular order (links to the first book in the series, on amazon):
The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell
Spinward Fringe by Randolph Lalonde
Star Force by B.V. Larson
Honor Harrington series by David Weber
Valor series by Tanya Huff
Some great books already on this list, I'll add in a few that I would also recommend, or that I see come up a lot:
Have fun dude!
Yeah, Im fully into ebooks, but the cost really is BS. I think there is some drama between publishers and amazon that always inflates the prices. Some self published authors have really cheap Ebooks (I loved this book and its sequels and they're only $3-$5 each). So there is a chance the prices may go down at some point if something changes between amazon and publishers.
I actually got into Ebooks while pirating them, so cost wasn't an issue, after awhile i got so used to the convenience of having it on my phone I couldn't go back to print. Then i had a little more spending money and decided buying them was even more convenient.
I felt Billy Burke was billy burke, he's always the same character, be he 'revolutionary' on revolution or serial killer extraordinary on The Closer / Major Crimes. It's always the same.
The girl who was the lead was weak, her brother was worse. The woman from Lost never impressed me. Actually my favorite actor/character on the movie was the guy who went 'rogue' and was the partner of billy burke.
TV shows end on cliff hangers because they expect to be renewed. Unless they know in advance it's the last season expect a cliff hanger or at least 'unpleasant' ending.
See "we learn from our parents" that's a purely human thing - that's not how AI would learn per se - they would learn from data, their evolution would be quick but it would also be very not human.
I got the authors name wrong (my fault) - it's William Hertling - the Singularity Series first book here is a more interesting take on how AI would evolve.
You don't 'understand' human emotion - you have it or you don't - you can fake it - but you can't really have it - at best you have a three laws situation - because if you don't - you're going to get ai with sociopathic like tendencies.
You are born with emotion, you come out crying, you learn emotion through life events that AI would never experience, human beings can barely program a learning process, you then expect them to work emotions and morals into it? It's not likely, not in real life, to program human emotion you have to understand not only what it is but where it comes from and how it evolves, and humanity is nowhere close to that...the speed with which AI is evolving is PURELY learning- nothing else - the only 'emotion' these AIs will have is if they choose to.
Now that I think about it, the hertling series and the sawyer series about AIs are interesting with two similar 'endings' (in the gross outcome of what happens to humanity but for entirely different reasons) but very disparate AIs.
Check out The Posthuman Omnibus by David Simpson.
http://www.amazon.com/Post-Human-Books-1-4-David-Simpson-ebook/dp/B00H0D5NTI/
Cyberstorm by Matthew Mather
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https://www.amazon.com/CyberStorm-Matthew-Mather-ebook/dp/B00BT4QRHG
I'm certain this is the Post Human series - https://www.amazon.com/Post-Human-Omnibus-1-4-Book-ebook/dp/B00H0D5NTI
[Post Human series] ( http://www.amazon.com/Post-Human-Books-1-4-David-Simpson-ebook/dp/B00H0D5NTI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419915451&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=post-human+series)
Best action sci-fi I've ever read. Lots of twists and turns. If anyone knows similar books please tell me so I can read them.
This is the best book I have read about humans being taken by an alien empire. This focuses on one group of people, and mostly one man, but it is an amazing work. Forging Zero - http://amzn.com/B00BTKA42Y
If you are looking for totally new authors, try Sara King and her Legend of Zero series. Two books out now, more to follow.
Starts with [Forging Zero] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BTKA42Y/)
Military scifi, yes, but with lots of character focus.
Actually this is one of my favs too http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H0D5NTI?keywords=posthuman&amp;qid=1452216671&amp;ref_=sr_1_1&amp;sr=8-1
There's a series of books that I found on kindle that's literally called Post Human.
Book one is good.
A plot point from book two onward is kind of odd. [Spoiler](/s "Divorce seems to be not a thing? and everyone's medical status is always being broadcast to their spouse so if you see someone attractive who is not your spouse then they instantly know. And since everyone is effectively immortal this comes up a lot, which is why divorce not being an option seems kind of stupid." )
Anyway, it's a minor plot point and just really odd which is why I mentioned it.
As to the tech, it's maybe magic? I'm not sure but it's definitely on the softer side of sci-fi.
Still worth a read if you have kindle unlimited.
You might like this. It's somewhere in the middle between soft and hard sci-fi in my relative opinion, but I found it a good read.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Post-Human-Omnibus-1-4-David-Simpson-ebook/dp/B00H0D5NTI - books 1-4
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inhuman-Book-Post-Human-David-Simpson-ebook/dp/B00HYLX4R4 - book 5
These are all great books too
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forever-War-3-Book/dp/B00W6RJ6SC - Joe Haldeman's Forever War
https://www.amazon.co.uk/All-Sins-Remembered-GOLLANCZ-S-F-ebook/dp/B005HRTA4I Joe Haldeman's All My Sins Remembered
Granted not exactly to your spec, as it's 1980's sci-fi and thus based around now, HOWEVER very good story.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00J3EU5RC - Greg Bear's Eon books
I suggest you read Cyberstorm. I devoured it during a snowstorm last winter and wallowed in delicious panic with every page.
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.
Ebook
Haha, I actually read a great book that was self published! CyberStorm http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BT4QRHG
Here's a non-referral link for ethics' sake
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BT4QRHG/
For what it's worth, as I was setting up my son's Kindle app I ran across a series of books I read a while ago that is good for his age that I thought I'd share with anyone else interested: The Legend of Zero series. It's about a kid (somewhere 9-12, I believe) is abducted by alien invaders and conscripted into their multi-species army. Not dystopian, obviously, but good sci-fi.
Check out David Simpson's Post-Human Series
Peter Watts - Blindsight - kinda a harder form of sci fi, great detail about some hard sci fi style like post-scarcity methods, genetic and psychological tweaking, and wow the aliens in this one are really alien Book is available online for free because the author is just that cool.
M. J. Locke - Up Against It - Easier, a young adult sort of sci fi. Ice as a valuable commodity, hackable nanobug poop, and a great AI narrative. Also, one of the main characters has a very very Ripley feel about her, I think you'll like that.
David Simpson - The Post-human series - Just get the whole thing, the books are speedreaders for me. Kinda pulpy, but follows the whole of humanity's awakening to the multiverse and trans-human technology. Does and amazing job of ethics in the age of moddable bodies and backup brains. I'm not spoiling anything for you, but this might be the easiest read of this list. Was free for a while on amazon, now it's only $3
P.J. Haarsma - Virus on Orbis 1 - if you like that young adult feel this and the entire Softwire series should hold you over nicely. Clone babies on a interstellar seed ship, and one of them has a rare superpower, though he doesn't know it. Another AI-centric story, but more abstract with the imagery.
Also, my favorite short story - Alfred Bester- The Stars My Destination - humans have always been able to teleport, but what secrets does Gully Foyle, a proven deadbrain burnout, hold that could revolutionize the discovery again? A pretty great retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo. should be public domain by now...
The Post Human Series by David Simpson might fit the bill https://www.amazon.com/Post-Human-Omnibus-1-4-David-Simpson-ebook/dp/B00H0D5NTI
See: Avagadro Corp.
I just finished reading the first book in The Singularity series. Not the greatest book ever, but it's something you might not have heard of which is definitely worthy of attention. It has the added benefit of being fairly short and fast paced.
I have a four book series about the emergence of artificial intelligence that Wired called "chilling and compelling." It starts with Avogadro Corp: http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Closer-Appears-ebook/dp/B006ACIMQQ/
The series spans forty years, and is ideal for people interested in the singularity, the progress of technology and its impact on people and civilization, and is especially well liked by software developers and others in tech, since the protagonists of most of the novels are programmers.
I read a book a while back called Avogadro Corp, which is about
Googlea fictionalized tech company creating a project that inadvertently becomes self-aware. For what it's worth, I think it's very close to what you're looking for.After checking this link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY7u0_UxC0w
it seems as if Mr Musk have been reading
http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Closer-Appears-ebook/dp/B006ACIMQQ
They're light reading and not hard scifi, but the WWW trilogy https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002361NDM/ and Avogadro Corp https://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Closer-Appears-ebook/dp/B006ACIMQQ are both entertaining and in that niche.
If you haven't read it yet try out
http://www.amazon.com/CyberStorm-English-Edition-Matthew-Mather-ebook/dp/B00BT4QRHG/
By the same author. I haven't read Darknet yet but CyberStorm was great.
My friend suggested this to me! Looks exciting!
Thanks for the contest!
I would use the kindle fire for watching movies and reading pdf for work/school. And the book I'd choose is this one
I'm no expert on sci-fi, but 'Year Zero' was pretty good. It felt like an american angle on a hitchhiker type story. It's more funny than profound, at least when compared to hitchhikers. Most of it takes place on Earth, and the alien world has to be kept from being viewed by humans because it's beauty would overwhelm and possibly kill them. So it's hardly described at all.
The audiobook is read by John Hodgman, and he does a great job with all the voices. I had no idea he did voices.
There's a novel out that reflects this issue, just heard about it on NPR.
Basically in the novel humans suck at everything compared to aliens except for our musical abilities and they love our music so much that they sometimes die of happiness when listening to it. According to our copyright laws, the universe owes us more than three times the amount of money that exists in the entire universe so some aliens are out to destroy earth to get out of the debts.
TL;DR book related to this issue, here
Year Zero by Rob Reid. It's essentially a book about record labels finding out that aliens have been listening to [and illegally downloading] all of earth's music for decades. When they find out about this, the Alien's realize that they owe Earth an unfathomable amount of money and it would be impossible to ever pay it all. So two aliens hire a lawyer, Nick Carter to handle the case. They hope he can strike a licensing agreement, and the fate of Earth rests in his hands.
I actually haven't finished the book, but it is a really easy read and has a lot of funny pop culture references, as well as fairly legally accurate. The plot is just outrageous, which makes it that much better in my opinion. The idea of it all I think would just make for a great adventure, and would have some great CGI. Would be even better if they got the real Nick Carter to play Nick Carter.
This book has a really funny premise.
That is madness! I've not really perused /r/books that much but that is horrendous even if they are bound legally as 3rd party retailers.
The obvious comparison for me as a musician is digital download vs CD. CD cost more to produce/deliver etc and so is more expensive to cover those costs. I actually can't believe such a scam is going on in the 21st century!
EDIT: Regarding your edit it's this from the Reddit sidebar ads.
Yeah, if it was free to play I'd push a lot harder for people to try it, but I can understand not wanting to plop down thirty bucks for a game you're not sure you'd want.
However, I really love modern day/supernatural settings. Some of my favorite book series are The Nightside books by Simon R. Green, The Hollows series by Kim Harrison (especially so because I actually live near Cincinnati, which is where the books take place), The Hellboy graphic novel series, and so on.
So yeah, a game with a modern day setting where I get to spend hours fighting zombies, insane cultists, bloodthirsty vampires, and elder gods? Sign me up! :D
I just realized there is a series you will ADORE. The Nightside series by Simon R. Green! 12 books out so far and #13 due next year.
Simone R Green's series about the NightSide http://www.amazon.com/Something-Nightside-Book-1/dp/0441010652
Private Investigator in a "second London" filled with supernatural things.
This specific one
It doesn't mention the carnivorous house, but it's definitely part of the plot in book 1.
I choose Neuromancer.
I have never read it but I have been told I need to. Also, Neuromancer is the first novel to win the Sci-Fi triple crown (Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick award). It came out in 1984 and coined the term "cyberspace" for online computer networks. Other terms such as ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics) were also coined or given significance through this novel. Also the term "Matrix" when referring to a computer network was used here (Suck on that Matrix trilogy).
Great! My address is 126 Albert Street, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3T1. The edition I'm sending is http://www.amazon.com/dp/0441569595, and is in like-new condition.
I want that cover. All I have is this one. So lame.
https://www.amazon.com/Neuromancer-William-Gibson/dp/0441569595
&nbsp;
Check out r/cyberpunk
&nbsp;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon_(TV_series)
&nbsp;
Neuromancer is coined as the novel that started it all in terms of what is known as cyberpunk today. Altered Carbon is a new show on netflix coming tomorrow and Blade Runner as far as I am concerned is the best sci fi movie ever made. r/cyberpunk is a good place to start your journey but feel free to message me and talk about cyberpunk stuff anytime you want.
So far as you know.
Slant by Greg Bear
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
Here is the mobile version of your link
That was so much fun!
And by the way. You are looking STUNNING today. Like, I can't look away! So... so... beautiful...
(also, I think I would like this from my wishlist)
No. The Lazarus Long story was great, but consider the downside.
>> Real men jog home from their vasectomies! (I took a bus.)
> I've read this from you about 10 times now and I still giggle.
I do tend to repeat myself. Sorry about that. I'm glad you're still enjoying that one.
> Really? I looked this up and I got spouses. Are you sure?
Mouse -> mice. Spouse -> spice.
I am sure it's a joke. And, it's not original on my part. It's from Heinlein.
> Btw, there is a (suspected) finch family nesting in my mom's clothespin bag. When I saw them I thought of you. Noisy little things. Chirping their fool heads off, hopping around the deck, flying all over the place. They are entertaining. I don't know if there are babies yet, but I've seen the adults bringing bugs into the clothespin bag. No tweeting yet, though.
Cool! I hope you get to see the chicks. With birds that small, they grow up fast. You're most likely to see them when they're about the same size as the adults but more drab and fluttering their wings, chirping, and begging for food. Watch for a bit and you'll see the parents feeding them.
If you get to see them younger and featherless in the nest, that's really lucky. I usually don't.
> If I get a pic I'll send it to you.
Cool. Then maybe I can identify them for you.
P.S. The full quote, though I'd like more context but not enough to dig out the book, is:
> Among such people the plural of spouse is spice.
> --Lazurus Long, Time Enough For Love, pg 339
One of Heinlein's rules of life in his most massive opus, Time Enough For Love, was "Everyone lies about sex. Period."
Two really big topics I have started to get very interested in, a lot in part due to reddit actually.
[The Healing of America by T.R Reid] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Healing-America-Global-Cheaper/dp/0143118218)
[Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig] (http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=&amp;qid=)
You've got the top post on reddit at the moment and you mention Dr. Lessig, give a shout out to his book!
You should all read it!
Wake up Reddit! Don't let the American Anti-Corruption Act die...
The American Anti-Corruption Act (AACA) was published in Nov 2012. It reached 300,000 citizen co-sponsors by January 2013 but since then has slowed to a crawl. As of writing this there are only about 400,000 signatures. If this sluggish pace continues, support for the AACA will be too weak to pressure congress into making it law.
What's most disappointing is that the internet communities the AACA was most depending on for its success have practically ignored it. There's hardly been any attention generated for the AACA on Reddit over these past 6 months, yet I'm constantly reading comments from Redditors complaining about the excessive influence of money in American democracy and expressing frustration at not knowing how to solve the problem. Meanwhile, well-known activists Lawrence Lessig and Trevor Potter have collaborated to publish a comprehensive solution (the AACA) and a plan for making it law, and Reddit barely notices. I know Reddit can do better because of the strong opposition it showed to SOPA.
So what gives Reddit? Let's wake up already and get the AACA the exposure it needs.
Link to become a citizen co-sponsor of the American Anti-Corruption Act and learn more about it (becoming a citizen co-sponsor just means adding your name to the petition):
http://anticorruptionact.org
Other informative links:
American Anti-Corruption Act: full text and details
American Anti-Corruption Act: analysis of how well individual act provisions will hold up in the Supreme Court (summary: most should be fine)
Lawrence Lessig AMA
Lawrence Lessig TED Talk
Lawrence Lessig Book: Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It
Trevor Potter AMA
OpenSecrets.org: tracks the political money trail
OpenCongress.org: tracks the political money trail, the life cycle of congressional bills, and representative's voting records
EDIT: It appears the link to the video might be down right now. It's basically just a clever commercial highlighting how our senators are practically whoring themselves for political money.
http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1
How do you feel about this book? http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433
Lessig just released a book about how money corrupts politics, including his ideas about how we can change that. It's on my reading list for winter break for sure, and it sounds exactly like what you're looking for. Check it out here: http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433
And if you want a preview, check out this awesome talk Lessig gave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc
The problem goes beyond "influencing those gullible voters with TV ads!". It affects whose issues get discussed in the legislature, who has direct access to discussing issues with elected officials, and what elected officials consider before taking a position on an issue.
Try this: you're a back-bencher in the majority party from a rural district. You support conservation and protecting the environment for future generations. Your election is coming up later this year, and you have a viable opponent.
A bill comes before the legislature that would legalize a risky & unproven (note: not taking a side on fracking here, just establishing that a controversy exists) method of extracting energy from the ground, and your district happens to contain lots of that potential energy.
You have usually opposed bills like this in the past- once making a speech that made national news. That particular bill failed on a close vote.
A company or industry PAC makes it known that it will spend up to $1m US attacking any candidate that opposes the above-mentioned bill. This is a credible threat from a wealthy, well-connected group. They also make it known privately that they will endorse and heavily fund your opponent should you be outspoken in your opposition
Knowing all of this, how do you vote? Even better, do you do another speech that makes national news? would you still be as outspoken as you were in the past?
edit- Much of this example is shamelessly lifted from Prof. Lawrence Lessig's excellent Republic Lost. Read it and decide for yourself!
Have you read Lawrence Lessig's thoughts on how money corrupts congress?
If so, do you agree that this sort of lobbying and corruption is a problem?
If so, is there anything that you can do, and what is it?
(Entire book here, and a Google talk about it here)
Saying there's no hope is just an excuse for apathy imo. It just takes the right creative solution and the public will to support it. I don't know nearly enough to argue Citizen's United, but I have heard some good ideas that don't conflict with the court ruling. If you have the time/inclination I strongly recommend Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig. He also has some great Youtube videos.
Edited Spelling
Republic Lost - Lawrence Lessig
Gut reaction: Off with their heads.
Sensible reaction: What can we do, as a reasonable, rational group of concerned citizens, to end this problem?
I'm in the middle of reading Lessig's Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It in the hopes of finding a sensible answer.
Here's what I'm talking about...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m1EYX10ERN0GN1/ref=ent_fb_link
Here's a good place to start:
http://vimeo.com/rootstrikers/anti-corruption-pledge
The American Anti-Corruption Act (AACA) was published in Nov 2012. It reached 300,000 citizen co-sponsors by January 2013 but since then has slowed to a crawl. As of writing this there are only 365,906 signatures. If this sluggish pace continues, support for the AACA will be too weak to pressure congress into making it law.
What's most disappointing is that the internet communities the AACA was most depending on for its success have practically ignored it. There's hardly been any attention generated for the AACA on Reddit over these past 6 months, yet I'm constantly reading comments from Redditors complaining about the excessive influence of money in American democracy and expressing frustration for not knowing how to solve the problem. Meanwhile, well-known activists Lawrence Lessig and Trevor Potter have collaborated to publish a comprehensive solution (the AACA) and a plan for making it law, and Reddit barely notices. It's this type of apathetic laziness that has been the greatest impediment to fixing politics in America, and I know Reddit can do better because of how active we were in opposing SOPA.
So what gives Reddit? Let's wake up already and get the AACA the exposure it needs.
Link to become a citizen co-sponsor of the American Anti-Corruption Act and learn more about it (becoming a citizen co-sponsor just means adding your name to the petition):
http://anticorruptionact.org
Other informative links:
American Anti-Corruption Act: full text and details
American Anti-Corruption Act: analysis of how well individual act provisions will hold up in the Supreme Court (summary: most should be fine)
Lawrence Lessig AMA
Lawrence Lessig TED Talk
Lawrence Lessig Book: Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It
Trevor Potter AMA
OpenSecrets.org: tracks the political money trail
OpenCongress.org: tracks the political money trail, the life cycle of congressional bills, and representative's voting records
I have trouble listening to the Dresden books. It's just so breathy that it annoys me.
You can hear a sample here: Amazon
The numerous audible inhales and exhales just grate on me.
It is. Plus the author has a great sense of humor and lets it color his writing. I've turned quite a few people on to the series with no complaints. To be fair, all of those people did enjoy books of a similar nature. Good luck and let me know what you think if you read them. The first book is Storm Front. They're pretty expensive right now on Kindle so I linked the paperback edition for you. My local library always has the books available, so I'd check there as well - free is a great price as well :).
Full disclosure: I've talked about these books before. It's hard not to talk about them again, because I love reading books!
The dated but still fun modern-fantasy SERRAted Edge series written by Mercedes Lackey and others starts with Born to Run. They tackle some serious issues and have serious moments, but they're generally a nice light read.
Dana Stabenow's Alaskan murder mystery Kate Shugak series starts off with A Cold Day For Murder -- and it's free if you have a Kindle/other e-reader. The main character Kate and her half-wolf Mutt have a lot of suspenseful, yet occasionally hilarious, moments. There's even a bit of romance thrown in here and there.
David Weber writes a space-opera series that's on its ... twentieth? novel. It all started off with On Basilisk Station and The Honor of the Queen -- both of which are free as well through the Kindle store! (HotQ is probably my favorite in the entire series.) This series is less humor and a little more cerebral (especially once you get to 'recent events' and end up re-reading the entire series to spot the plot setups...) but honestly, how can you argue with a main character whose primary companion is a six-limbed, arboreal, prehensile-tailed, thumb-wielding, telepathic cat?
Maggie Furey wrote a magic-fantasy quadrilogy that I discovered years ago when I read Aurian. It's actually been long enough since I've read it that I don't remember tons of the details, but it's currently very high on my to-read (again) list.
Naomi Novik writes an alternate history Napoleonic-era Britain (with dragons!) that starts with His Majesty's Dragon. I highly recommend the first three. It's sort of sea-and-sky-opera with some lighthearted fun thrown in.
A new addition to my recommended list is the modern-fantasy Dresden Files, written by Jim Butcher and starting with Storm Front. Private investigation meets spellslinging, with sometimes unpredictable and often hilarious results.
Any relation to The Dresden Files ?
The Dresden Files Book 1
The Iron Druid Chronicles Book 1
I have lots more, just ask for a genre.
Ok, sorry it took so long, but maybe try Spice and Wolf light novels, Konosuba, Death March to a Parallel World, and No game no life.
If the manga light novels aren't your style, then perhaps The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, or The Passage by Justin Cronin.
You should definitely check out Dresden Files. Please dont base it on the horrible TV series they made the books are fantastic.
http://www.amazon.com/Storm-Front-Dresden-Files-Book/dp/0451457811/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1291817709&amp;sr=8-1
also the audio books are great, read by James Marsters.
Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series. The first book is called Storm Front.
There are more books in this series than I can remember so it'd keep her busy for the forseeable future.
I really loved Ender's Game, but I know its not everyone's cup of tea. You should read The Dresden Files. It is a really good mix of fantasy/magic and detective/action types.
If you are looking for an action-packed easy-read then try out the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Almost ideal for reading when not quite up to 100% in recovery.
I'm not overly keen on either, the version I own is by far my favourite.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Name-Wind-Kingkiller-Chronicle/dp/0575081406
not sure about those, but I bought the UK covers and they look amazing on my shelf
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Name-Wind-Kingkiller-Chronicle/dp/0575081406
There were a lot of words, but nothing happened. Book 10 is almost universally panned by critics and series fans alike. 1,600 one-star reviews on Amazon (and the top one is hilarious).
If the first book were written like book 10, the series never would have found a publisher.
The one I've heard recommended the most is "Fatherland" by Richard Harris.
There's another book based on the same premise called Fatherland
This is an interesting read.
A quick note of a book - although I'm giving away a ton of plot here - is Fatherland by Robert Harris. Even knowing doesn't stop the chilling effect of this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Fatherland-Novel-Robert-Harris/dp/0812977211/ref=la_B000APBPA4_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1425472562&amp;sr=1-2
EDIT: Downvotes about a book regarding the holocaust?
I love the Culture books by Banks, but I think The Algebraist is the best sf he's written to date. And to my mind, no dull parts anywhere, middle or otherwise. (Okay, to put a very fine point on it, I did think the "villain" was little more than a cartoon but the rest of the book is just about perfect).
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
I have all of the 007 Fleming novels but this.. the reason is cause this novel is no where to be found in my country.. My search for this book went for 5+ years and none of the book stores ever got it..they keep telling me "Wait, we will probably get it eventually as we have the other books" but I have no idea what's the reasoning behind it,but they never got it..so yeah. I know it sounds weird but oh well.. :)
edit: To make this thing even worse for me, I mod /r/JamesBond and there are people who post "What's your fave novel" and always people call Casino Royale as the best..
Why are links so hard? Neuromancer @ Amazon
Neuromancer? link
Here is the desktop version of your link
https://www.amazon.com/Neuromancer-Science-Fiction-William-Gibson-ebook/dp/B000O76ON6/
The function of money itself is a variable.
What is money? I've heard it as "An agreement within a community to establish a system for the distribution of resources."
Everything about how it works: inflation, interest, scale, who issues it. . . is all arbitrary.
Markets, as they currently function, are set up to drive unsustainable recurring growth. . . and they've shaped global human behavior toward a kind of destructiveness, greed and unchecked ambition that is SINGLE HANDEDLY the source of, I will go so far as to say "most" of the human suffering in the world. But those that benefit from them the most are almost Pavlovianly conditioned to have a hard time seeing this. This is a big problem.
If YOU would like to open your eyes, here's some resources:
Barnard Lietaer was a world class economist (who was one of the architects of the Euro. . .which he warned was going to cause and run into a lot of the same problems as it has, but it had POLITICAL requirements that HAD to be met that had those problems baked in) who focused his work on helping communities reimagine the idea of what currency even is. When you realize it doesn't have to work the way it does, the whole way that markets even work starts to look. . . well downright evil and unnecessary. . . sorry Libertarians.
This book and it's sequel are interesting techno-thriller sci-fi. But the second book imagines a system by which a market economy could be managed by democratized opensource AI to produce MUCH better social outcomes. This kind of a system is MUCH more in reach than people reflexively think. It also takes a look at how one MIGHT use gamification to help people rethink their preconceived notions of how economies MUST work.
And also. . .this is dope!
Have you read Freedom (TM)?
It's a sequel to Daemon, but paints a vision of the world close to yours.
Daemon and it's sequel Freedom by Daniel Suarez would probably be a good recommendation if you like those two books you mentioned in the title.
This sounds very similar to the plot on Daniel Suarez's book Kill Decision: Link
Which I HIGHLY recommend.
Along with his other books Daemon and Freedom.
They are AMAZING on audible...
If you have an e-reader, Amazon has some pretty amazing Indie books available for cheap. A Galaxy Unknown is the first in a series following a young female naval officer as she generally kicks ass. Star Force has a group of very near future humans trapped in a war between two groups of machines. Spirit of Empire isn't quite as believable as the others, but it's one of the most gripping space operas I've ever read. Lastly, Theirs is Not to Reason Why is about what happens when you cross a a Drill Sargent with an Oracle and pack it into a female's body. Then send said body out to destroy anything in the way of saving the universe. If you need any more recommendations, I actually have a list saved on my computer. Private message me and I can email it to you.
I really enjoyed these books and have read a lot of similar self published works. A series that is very similar is B.V. Larson's Star Force series.
http://www.amazon.com/Swarm-Star-Force-Series-ebook/dp/B004H8FVEQ/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1
I am a glutton for any type of military scifi and will read through a lot of the self published authors, and some of these authors sell a surprising amount of books. Thomas Deprima is one of these authors as eggrock has pointed out, his series is one of the better selling ones. Although its not selling like it did about a year ago. I do disagree with him on his beliefs that he wrote all his good reviews. There are a lot of people who like his style of writing.
Going back to whether I've read any of his other works, I have not. Although I have debated buying Accelerated, Strontium 90, and Invasion Alaska on a few occasions. I've just never worked up the desire to read them. So I guess we're in the same boat. You can always go to his amazon page and read the reviews.
I recommend 2 series by BV Larson:
First Swarm Book 1 of "Star Force"
Second Steel World Book 1 of the "Undying Mercenaries"
Also The Synchronicity War by Dietmar Wehr
Now for a shameless plug for my favorite Sci-fi book: We Are Legion book 1 of "Bobiverse" There is some ship to ship fighting. But its more Sci-fi comedy.
There's a novel called Year Zero with a roughly similar plotline
Excluding the Hitchhiker, I would recommend: "Year Zero: A Novel by Rob Reid"
Year 0 is on sale right now for 0.99 if you are in the US.
year zero
Loving the new job?
Wer die Idee mag: Year Zero, a Novel
I really enjoyed Avogadro Corp (first in a series). It's a compelling and plausible story about an emergent AI, and it takes place in the not-too-distant future.
(disclaimer: I know the author, but I met him after reading the book, and I enjoyed the book before I knew him)
Sorry, we're just too far apart for my responses to be worth my time. You're not looking at the negative effects enough, and seem to be very pro-Government. You're also not providing your case for why we should allow lobbying, thus I'm not learning anything new from this discussion. Rather than respond to your points, as this will likely go back and forth for quite a while, I'd rather list a few books/articles that are anti-lobbying for your consideration. Perhaps you could offer some pro-lobbying books/articles, just in case my position is wrong (which I sincerely don't think it is). Here's the anti-lobbying links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States
http://www.amazon.com/Prophets-War-Lockheed-Military-Industrial-Complex/dp/1568586973
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lobbying_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_lobbying_in_the_United_States
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/a-pocket-guide-to-lobbying-in-the-united-states/
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/03/627471/private-prisons-spend-45-million-on-lobbying-rake-in-51-billion-for-immigrant-detention-alone/
http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php
http://business.time.com/2011/05/26/did-lobbying-cause-the-financial-crisis/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/us/politics/05loans.html?pagewanted=all
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443589304577637773840176082.html?google_editors_picks=true
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100723/09055310339.shtml
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8854-the-top-five-special-interest-groups-lobbying-to-keep-marijuana-illegal
http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2013/pro-cispa-backers-spend-over-100-times-more-lobbying-opponents/
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/12/13/30-major-u-s-companies-spent-more-on-lobbying-than-taxes/
http://www.npr.org/2009/02/18/100706260/so-damn-much-money-the-influence-of-lobbyists
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/our-corrupt-politics-its-not-all-money/?pagination=false
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446576433?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thneyoreofbo-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0446576433
Edit: I'd be surprised if you found any pro-lobbying articles/books that weren't written by politicians, bureaucrats, pundits, or lobbyists.
Don't know why someone downvoted you...
Kiln People is a fantastic book. Great sci-fi with an interesting premise.
http://amzn.com/0812977211 That's a link to the book, in case anyone else was intrigued.
Not the 100th like you want but Amazon has a more recent binding of the books in paperback
Cyber Storm: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BT4QRHG/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
Reading it now, very scary.
7 bucks.
I have two books for you to read:
Influence: Science and Practice
Republic Lost
They both lay out very good reasons for why downplaying the potential sway that dinners, parties, or other favors have on your behavior is not a good idea.
No need for links you can see it directly in the products you buy. Some sellers are marked as prime/free shipping, others are regular price + shipping. Just observe and compare. Which ones are marked up higher?
It's not all the time, but it's often, and I see it most often with books. One example is here. Prime with "free shipping"? 10 bucks. Non-prime, $3 plus $4 shipping.