The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

And yes: Tolkien, Dune, Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Asimov/Foundation, McCaffrey/Pern, Janny Wurts, Raymond E Feist, and more recently Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, and Melissa McPhail (who sadly passed away, with the Pattern of Shadow and Light incomplete).

Elizabeth Hand's Winterlong, probably 3-4 times. Most of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet I've read multiple times. I've read Brautigan's Dreaming of Babylon a bunch of times too. All of William Gibson. Miyazaki's Nausicaä of The Valley of Wind, in various languages. Stephen Cosgrove's Muffin Muncher, I couldn't say how many times I must have read that (It appears they've now changed the title to Muffin Dragon). I've read The Soul of a New Machine a couple of times too. The Hitchhiker's and Dirk Gently's trilogies a few times. Stefano Benni's Baol probably half a dozen times. And Acts of The Apostles by John FX Sundman a bunch too. Oh, and a few of Martin Gardner's books. And Smullyan's To Mock a Mockingbird. And most probably also many others. Most of my books are now in boxes or have been gifted away, though.

Read: American Gods, Consider Phlebas, Neuromancer, The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dune 1, Nineteen Eighty-Four listened to Foundation and I definitely recommend all. But for me Consider Phlebas is the best. Currently on 4th book in series, but cant get through it. Nineteen Eighty-Four doesnt feel geek novel, just political. Also great. I keep reading outputs from LLMs all day and don't have energy to focus on Eng written books in the evening.

I’ve been reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy lately. It’s a brilliant read—pure fuel for my sci-fi-loving brain.

Hichhikers guide to the galaxy is a must for everyone no matter what :) also Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon both by Neal Stephenson

One of the previous posts mentioned that it changes for them frequently, and I'm pretty much the same way. But for right now: Fiction: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Non-Fiction: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Surrounded by Idiots Meditations

Gave my nephew the Hitchhiker's Guide and Surely You're Joking this past xmas.

Many of Philip K. Dick books and short stories, but Ubik and A Maze of Death are my favorites. William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive) Douglas N. Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Frank Herbert's Dune books Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human Robert A. Heinlein - Citizen of the Galaxy Robert Charles Wilson's Spin trilogy Frederik Pohl's Heechee books

Rendezvous with Rama. Arthur C Clarke Consider Phlebas. Iain M Banks Dune. Frank Herbert Kiteworld. Keith Roberts The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams

For light comedies: The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells) Hitchhiker's Guide series (Douglas Adams)

Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where Arthur Dent spends an unreasonable amount of time trying to get an AI to understand what tea is and how to make it, and once he finally gets it to understand, it hangs the system up completely.

The conversation around eddies in the space-time continuum is the single funniest thing I've ever read. I haven't read those books for years but I still chuckle every time I am reminded of it for any reason. Douglas Adams was a true master of his craft.

If I was forced to only pick one, or at least one set of books it would be: The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. There are many better books I've read, but I grew up with these, and would want access to copies at all times in my life. Now... I'm off to make a Perfectly Normal Beast sandwich and ponder why Eddie is in the space time continuum.

The following have all had a significant effect on my worldview. You can find more information at [1]. - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany - Thinking, Fast and Slow - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Crime and Punishment - The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York - Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies - The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity - Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead - Franny and Zooey - Master of the Senate - Atlas Shrugged - Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed - Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics - The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't - Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans - Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World - Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones - Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow…

I rather like the Max Landis Dirk Gently series, albeit as its own thing: a drastic reimagining only loosely inspired by the source material, similar to The Shining. The 2 1/2 Dirk Gently books are Adams' finest in my opinion. HHGTTG is fun, but it doesn't hold together as a cohesive narrative in the same way. It's such a shame that we'll never know how the third book would have resolved.

The Campus Trilogy (Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work), by David Lodge. DO IT!: Scenarios of the Revolution, by Jerry Rubin. The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking A Spy Through The Maze Of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. Logicomix, by Apóstolos K. Doxiàdis and Christos Papadimitriou. Other books that I strongly recommend can be found here (some of them are in French): https://pablo.rauzy.name/miscellaneous.html#books Update: Pirates de tous les pays, by Marcus Rediker is a translation of Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age which you can thus read in English :). It really is an awesome read! After I finished it I immidiately ordered 5 more copies to give them to friends.

William Gibson. The Bridge trilogy and the Sprawl trilogy, at a minimum. They still feel like maps to the future even now. You have to work at it, the map is not the territory after all, but the realisations about the impact of technology, progress, and the choices we make when we let society work a certain way have been profound, for me at least. Also The Peripheral, and Gibson’s essay in Wired about undersea cables, and... yeah. Having read Gibson feels like a superpower. As others have said: - The Hitch Hiker’s Guide - Stepehnson’s Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, Seveneves, Anathem (aside: totally surprised how much love there is for Anathem, I remember it not being received very kindly at the time by people around me, though I liked it.) - The Culture series (special shout out to The Player of Games.)

So hitchhikers guide I can certainly agree with, but the rest of the series is pretty inconsistent. Restaurant was pretty terrible in my opinion, but then Life is almost as good as the original. I'd say the quality of the series is downhill from there. The follow up books didn't introduce many interesting situations or ideas that weren't already presented and so it just felt like it was dragging on.

'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' can't stop recommending it. I am currently reading the 3rd book 'Life, the Universe and Everything'

Strange not to found it here yet: Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy What's better than to have a good laugh, even if already read it, is always a nice book. And if you finish it fast, you have the rest of the series ahead.

Hitchhiker's matches nicely what you look for

I'm fond of "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge, and its kind of prequel "A Deepness in the Sky", they both contain some great ideas and I love the fact they have some very alien aliens! Oh and if you haven't read any Douglas Adams "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is fantastic

Douglas Adams "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy". I think I've read it 4 times the last 7 years, which may not be that often, but it definitely has a special place in my heart.

One of the best! 42.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I learned to be less Arthur and more Ford about my approach to living my life in general, and dealing with Fenchurch winking out of existence in particular.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Foundation series. Snow Crash. 2001: A space odyssey. Why? All are so much fun to read over and over again.

Definitely the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy. I only read the rest of the series years later, but Douglas Adams' humour had a (very) lasting impression on me, and inspired me to write (and communicate, to this day) using a similar kind of humor and lateral thinking - because if you're not having _some_ fun, then you're not really accomplishing anything...

Douglas Adams's "The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy", a sci-fi comedy adventure fiction. It's the book where this appears: Answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. The novel is adapted from a radio drama show, so reading it feels like someone is telling and describing you a story verbally.

Sounds childish, but because a lot of people seem to be losing wonder and imagination: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)

The C Programming Language, Kernighan and Ritchie, for its simple elegance. The Elements of Style, Strunk & White. On clear writing. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series), Douglas Adams. So you don't take yourself too seriously.

Big science fiction fan 1. Revelation Space 2. Hyperion 3. The Postman 4. The Day of the Triffids 5. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postman [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)

Below list are some of my favorite books overall that I didn't see mentioned. ---Non-software related How to win friends and influence people -Dale Carnegie (The definitive guide to helping you work better with people, truly great book, should be required reading) Blink- Malcolm Gladwell Godel Escher, Bach - (Recursion, but not from a software perspective. Its a glorious book that will change the way you think about recursion.) Hitch Hiker's guide to the galaxy, - Douglas Adams (Glorious book that is a fun read, when you need a break pick this up and laugh hard) Foundation Series - Assimov (Great stories from one of the best sci-fi writers ever) -------------------Software related Code Complete Concrete Mathematics The Art of Computer Programming The Design of the Unix Operating System Introduction to Algorithms -Cormen Design Patterns Elements of Resusable OO Design -Gang of Four

I wonder why no one mentioned "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy" (Douglas Adams) yet. I died laughing twice while reading it.

"Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" As someone who simply cant sit down and read a book this was the first book I have ever read and reread. First comedic release, is littered everywhere in the book. Recurring jokes for those who pay attention to detail are little nuggets of gold. There are social commentaries that ring true today. Lastly all the characters are believably absurd.

Slaughterhouse 5, Snowcrash, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" - Lewis Carroll "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There" - Lewis Carroll "Dracula" - Bram Stoker "Frankenstein" - Mary Shelly "On Education" - Bertrand Russell "The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy" - Douglas Adams "Animal Farm" - George Orwell "1984" - George Orwell "Lord of The Flies" - William Golding "Brave New World" - Aldous Huxley "Gulliver's Travels" - Jonathan Swift "The Selfish Gene" - Richard Dawkins

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy first, and Nightfall (both the short story and the later novelization) second.

Of course this isn't a science fiction book, it's all real ;-) But mine would definitely be THHGTTG (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

I just re-read the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Always makes me laugh and is a great read.

I was "forced" to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in school, and it's still my favorite, forced or not. One of the best parts about that school.

Just wanted to chime in that Dune & Foundation are excellent (and my personal favorite) sci-fi series. I really enjoyed Ringworld by Larry Niven as well.And of course, the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy in 5 parts :)

Read Hitchhikers Guide. Again. Priceless. "The Timetraveller's Wife" will make you think.

Want to blow your mind? Fiction Keep an open mind, and a sense of wonder when you read these for max effect! Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy. I was hooked at "The big yellow ships hung in the air just the way bricks don't." Dune - what does scarcity do to a society? Isaac Asimov - Robot series. Foundation series. All of his short stories, esp. The Last Question, Nightfall. A.C. Clarke - 2001 - series, Childhood's End, The Fountains of Paradise The Little Prince, The Count of Monte Cristo, Catch-22, Siddhartha, Ender's Game, Sundiver, Wodehouse.

My favorite book as a kid was Lord of the Rings, so I'll recommend that. Also H2G2.

Before anything, read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Then try the Salmon of Doubt by him. Salmon of Doubt is a must, but it's made more accessible by reading Adams' fictional works first.

Non-fiction: Coders at Work by Peter Siebel and Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston - I loved reading about the founder's stories and first-hand perspectives of notable programmers. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton - really interesting perspective on "work" and various types of careers and people that find happiness in them/work itself. Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner - even if you don't agree with their arguments or think that the authors are all fluff, I think that their writing style is exceptionally clear and easy to understand. The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - some really interesting ideas and analysis, although the book could have been 1/2 as short Fiction: Anathem by Neal Stephenson - starts out slow but after the first 200 pages it became a really great story that I couldn't put down. Life of Pi by Yann Martel - loved the main story of the book, the controversial ending didn't bother me too much because I don't feel like it takes away from the story at all. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson - cheap fun and suspenseful…

Just to name two out of the many i love: Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy and The adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

2001: A Space Odyssey - What hacker read that and then didn't want to create HAL? HHGTTG: Insipired me to keep the relative unimportance of most things in perspective

I'm definitely bookmarking this thread. Maybe one day, I'll have read all of them mentioned here. But seriously, how has no one mentioned Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?! It's a great book with a surprising amount of actual theoretical science (you know, stuff that could technically work). Douglas Adams writes the way I think. I wish I could do that :(

"Lord of the Rings" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", because seriously... you need to read something fun every once in a while.

Fiction: - The Time Machine (still holds up very well, and seems strangely eerie and prescient in places)... (H. G. Wells) - Dune (Frank Herbert) - The Hobbit (and LotR) (Tolkien) - Neuromancer (William Gibson) - Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties (I picked up Idoru first, so I haven't yet read Virtual Light) (also Gibson) - The Difference Engine (Gibson, Sterling) - Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) - Cryptonomicon (" ") - Circuit of Heaven, End of Days (Dennis Danvers) - All of the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories and novels. (Fritz Leiber) - The Earthsea trilogy (Ursula K. LeGuin) - 'salem's Lot (Stephen King) - Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein) - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain) - the Coldfire trilogy (C. S. Friedman) - various Cory Doctorow short stories - Kamikaze L'Amour (Richard Kadrey) - Lightpaths (Howard V. Hendrix) - A Canticle For Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr.) - Moonwar, Venus (Ben Bova) - the Stainless Steel Rat series (Harry Harrison) - Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) - Ringworld (Larry Niven) - Cthon (Piers Anthony) -- Trippiness level approaching Philip Jose Farmer ;-) - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams)…

- Brave New World - Night - Hitchhiker's Guide series - Dark Tower series (Mostly just the first 4, though) - Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Just about any George Carlin or Patrick F. McManus books - Wheel of Time Series - Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

The Bible, Wild at Heart, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Songs for Martha <-- I have an autographed copy, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Rainbow Six (and most other Clancy books)

got to love Hitchhikers, I also enjoyed Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by adams too.

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It is arguably the most useful book I've ever read, albeit with the most embarassing title. As inklesspen mentioned, Elements of Style is a must. Code Complete and the Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. Timeless coding wisdom. For a laugh, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, or Hitchhiker's Guide. Body Language, Julius Fast. Kitschy but fascinating insights into body language. Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene. Brian is a fluke of nature--a physicist who can explain things realy well! Anything by Phillip K. Dick. Sci-fi stories that make you think.