Cory Doctorow

Now that I have read 3 books by Doctorow, and listened to one audiobook, I am riding the bandwagon of fans. Neil Gaiman's opinion led me to Doctorow (OK, someone I work with told me to read Doctorow, and someone else told me Gaiman thought Doctorow was great) and I'm very glad.

Read Little Brother, Eastern Standard Tribe, and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Find a copy of Wastelands Stories of the Apocalypse or just click on the title of Doctorow's story, "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth," depending on how you prefer to "take" your stories. I listened to the podcast of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and was thrilled with it. Go! Now!

Yes, Doctorow's stories are dystopic; they're not happy, but Little Brother has a good attitude of fighting authority and damn it, I'm on the bandwagon and you should be sitting next to me here!

Old Man's War Tie-in

OK, I'm showing my nerd shirt now, but one of the lines I really liked in John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" was when a character would say (and he said this several times), "I'd explain it to you, but you don't have the math." "The Black Hole War," by Leonard Susskind, will help you understand the math. Susskind's book is about Quantum Mechanics and Black Holes while Scalzi's books are science fiction, but Susskind made me think that I actually understood how things worked. So if you've finished Scalzi's series about John Watson, and think you want to understand the math, try "The Black Hole War."

Then, when you're finished with "The Black Hole War," try ""The Day We Found the Universe." And don't come crying back to me when you realize you've LEARNED something.

But Mommy, I Don't LIKE Science Fiction/Fantasy!

I've never really been a Science Fiction fan. I've read some Heinlein, I've read some Asimov, but I never really got into the genre. Then I found "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse" by Robert Rankin, and I was hooked. Jack goes to "The City" to search for adventure. After surviving a carnivorous farmer who traps and kills orphan boys, Jack is taken up by Eddie Bear, a stuffed teddy bear private detective. "The City" is Toy City, inhabited almost exclusively by toys. Someone is killing off the old toys (Humpty Dumpty, for starters). If you need to recommend science fiction to someone who really doesn't want to read it, try offering them The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies.