Books
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awesome, thanks guys. For many years I only read non fiction with a few exceptions, about 5 years ago I picked up a some nerd fiction and I was hooked. i will be checking into the authors and titles gents!
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"Nerd fiction," y'all cracking me up. Does that mean fantasy, sci-fi, both?
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I don't really do scifi, but I'm Into magic-n-shit yo
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Well Imma talk about sci-fi any damn way, because I used to only read fantasy as far as the "nerd genre" goes myself.
There's a sci-fi subgenre that Snowy and I enjoy called "cyberpunk." Just replace "magic" with "neural implants" and "dragons" with "artificial intelligences."
It's dystopian and usually doesn't involve a lot of spacecraft or interstellar travel. More like a Bladerunner kind of a vibe. A near-term future where everyone is dehumanized and institutions are decaying. Corporations taking the place of nation-states. Artificial intelligences roam wild and have their own mysterious agendas.
As a starting point, I cannot recommend William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy, starting with Neuromancer, enough. This pioneered the genre, and the term "cyberspace." It's incredible in how it balances action and literary brilliance so well. This is the writer that Buzz Rickson's did their "William Gibson" line after, he's got a great eye for fashion. And unlike many "nerd fiction" writers he is literary, not JUST an imagineer/storyteller.
A more satirical take can be found in Neal Stephenson's brilliant Snow Crash. The protagonist is named… Hiro Protagonist.
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…and then there is magical realism. If you want to try this kind of magic, Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Salman Rushdie can take you there.
Not sure if it's in print anymore, but there was a brilliant Arthurian tale (four books IIRC) by an author A. A. Attanasio. It was fucking amazing. Basically, gods, angels, and demons were portrayed as beings of electromagnetic energy, and they reflected what was happening with cultures on the ground. So, as the Celts become overcome by either Vikings (the Norse gods living in their "tree" of the auroro borealis") or by Christians and their "nailed God" the intrigue above mirrored the activities below. What an imaginative tale.
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M, I know all about cyberpunk. My cousin that I grew up with was all about it and I believe he even was into the cyberpunk RPG, which is something I could never wrap mg head around. Truthfully, it's probably because my older sister and him were OBSESSED with RPG and it drive me nuts listening to it all the time. I'm sure they felt the sane way about me and and the hardcore scene kids I bummed around with back In my youth. I could understand music though, I could not understand 20 sided die and obsessing over make believe at an age that most would consider adulthood. I'm sure it's cool, I just have a bit of a sour taste in my mouth from my history of being surrounded by it. Now that 15 years have passed snd I have very little contact with either of them things my perspective may be less tainted from outside influences. I'm willing to give it a try. More than the nature of the content what captures me is an authors ability to write well in all aspects with out falling into cliches and becoming predictable.
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I think there were a couple of cyberpunk RPGs. In fact, one of the gaming companies was raided by the FBI during Operation: Sundevil (Steve Jackson Games) because those fucking idiot feds couldn't tell the difference between cyberpunk and hacking (or, to put it another way, extremely farfetched fiction and real life).
Which raises another awesome book that is available for free. Bruce Sterling (a cyberpunk writer) wrote a now-public domain nonfiction account of Operation Sundevil and a little on this history of phreaking and hacking. It reads like a Crichton suspense novel or something but it's nonfiction. The Hacker Crackdown. Even a nontechnical person can easily enjoy it, it's more about digital freedom, interesting history/crime/legal drama, the birth of the EFF, etc., than it is about the technology. As a future attorney, you'd find it fascinating I think, because it's all about freedom in the digital age. HIGHLY recommended.
And another Crichton-esque nonfiction/suspense account of something that my description of Hacker Crackdown brings to mind is The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, all about scary virusus like Marburg and Ebola and how we thought we were close to an Ebola outbreak in Reston, VA years ago–they made a movie based on this one.
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Shadowrun was a cyber-punk RPG heavily based on Gibson's work…
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There's a sci-fi subgenre that Snowy and I enjoy called "cyberpunk." Just replace "magic" with "neural implants" and "dragons" with "artificial intelligences."
This is the writer that Buzz Rickson's did their "William Gibson" line after, he's got a great eye for fashion. And unlike many "nerd fiction" writers he is literary, not JUST an imagineer/storyteller.
A more satirical take can be found in Neal Stephenson's brilliant Snow Crash. The protagonist is named… Hiro Protagonist.
OH YES, thank you for getting this down/out :). 200% backed. The Buzz Rickson clothing line of Gibson's came out as a result of the book Pattern Recognition, A less high tech, but still totally awesome book.
I recently finished Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, an amazing blend of current day and WW2, with 3 main characters who's stories intersect throughout space and time.
If you want a lil magic as a by line for an amazing world/culture, The Magician series can't be beat (27 books all in all). Very little magical woo woo stuff, a lot of philosophy and ways of the world.
Gibson = #1
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Cryptonomicon is incredible. I love how in so many of his books he tells generational stories across time concurrently. I also love how he blended in historical people like Alan Turing.
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Very interesting stuff, I'm getting schooled in this thread
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Stephenson's books are hard for me to properly describe. Picking up many authors, including Gibson (and I LOVE HIS BOOKS/ideas/concepts), the books are just books, read in a weekend or a few weeks. Stephenson's they're so different and difficult to relate to from the offset sometimes that you really have to suspend some disbelief and become part of the book. At that point the colour of the world opens up, and the themes, "such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science" - wikipedia take on a new light. I learn enjoyable about our world through his books. Anathem is probably one of the most difficult fiction books I've ever read, but I still recall how I felt when I finished it, now 5 years later.
Stephenson's a bad ass in general as well. His love of sword fighting lead to him trying (it's still in progress) to make an entirely new way of making sword fighting games. The video is pretty fun over @ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang?ref=live.
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And he has a playing card crypto system designed by another hero, Bruce Schneier, and implemented in Perl by himself in the book. Awesome.
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I loved reading that. The syntax used throughout the book was legit, which had me gooey to begin with, to get to the end and have a full walk through of the encryption schema by Bruce himself. Whilst it lost me as I was trying to mentally track, it was really really cool!
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Whilst I was shopping tonight it hit me that I'd not mentioned The Mars trilogy. Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. A really nice series that works through tera-forming of our closest planet and what it could look like and again, societal implications of a many-worlds society.
Ender's Game is a fun read, which I also forgot, on the space tip.
MCL, You'd appreciate the Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker. One of the most mind blowing series/books I've read. Gibson did the intro (which is how I found it). May have recco'd the book in here before. I found out a few months ago I sometimes hung out with the guy's son whilst I was living in San Francisco, too smaller world sometimes :).
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Been meaning to read Rucker. I think he's a computer scientist iirc
I read a book that was a little pulpy in the genre and kind of ripping off Gibson's style: Running Black, P Todoroff.
Another geek book, though more realistic and less cyberpunk, is Sysinternals' Mark Russinovich's Zero Day. Cyberterrorism. Nice read.
Finally, Counting from Zero, by an Aussie writer, was another entertaining geek read.
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I just finished reading the Mistborn trilogy from Brandon Sanderson, which I enjoyed. I've also recently read some others mentioned in this thread like the two Patrick Rothfuss books (DYING for the third book to come out, although if it takes much longer I'm going to have to re-read the first two), Anathem by Neal Stevenson, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. All good books. I just started Imajica again, it's been years since I read that one. I'm a big fan of King's Dark Tower series as well. I guess I'm a big nerd-fiction fan (I hadn't heard that term before), so if anyone has any more recommendations…