Blue Ant Trilogy

Isaac Asimov is one of the classics, of course. I'm particularly fond of the robot novels (all four of the Elijah Baley ones especially) and the entire Foundation series. Of course, you also can't miss the robot short stories. Oh, and The End of Eternity! At some point I found Charles Stross' Accelerando, which is freely available online (along with a bunch of other short stories), and found everything I've read (which is most of it at this point, I think) enjoyably fast-paced. In particular the Laundry series (of which I've bought every iteration as soon as they came out over the past few years) -- though arguably these maybe cross-over from SF into fantasy a bit -- and the Halting State trilogy.…

More than a year ago, I picked up William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition." I wasn't sure what I thought of it, at first, but it became increasingly interesting and I finished it. This year, I picked up the third novel in the series that "Pattern Recognition" started. It's a different world than that of "Neuromancer" et al., but I've come to find Gibson's portrayal of and thinking about it quite interesting. This year, I also helped someone out for a while who is considerably into fashions of some sorts (make up, running shoes and attire, other stuff more by just doing it than by talking about it). I'm finding Gibson's latest trilogy giving me new eyes on all this. And, in today's world of "image", it's not just and interesting but a valuable perspective. Treatise. Extrapolation... Not the most in your face of sci fi titles, but subtly compelling, for me. Perhaps partially sub-consciously. Just like the world he's describing.

Walter Jon Williams' The Green Leopard Plague, which is also part of an anthology of the same name. The anthology includes several other stories that build up the world that GLP takes place in. Some interesting ideas about identity and consciousness in a society with extremely advanced bioengineering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Leopard_Plague Umberto Eco's Prague Cemetery which expands greatly on a tiny section of Foucault's Pendulum. Eco's writing is extremely dense. Similar to Neal Stephenson, but with more of a literary flavor than a technogeek flavor. A nice way to balance out your reading if you find you are a bit too focused on modern technology. I finally read Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy. Early Internet and web culture was so deeply infused with RAW's ideas that the trilogy felt like one long déjà vu session. Lots of fun. RAW + Eco are a great antidote to taking conspiracy theories seriously, while having a ton of fun at the same time.…