Clan Jones presents ...
David's Recommended Reading
(listed by author)
Science Fiction
Robert L. Forward
- Dragon's Egg
- Roche World
- Flight of the Dragonfly
- Marooned on Eden
- Starquake
Jerry Pournelle & Larry Niven
- The Integral Trees
- Lucifer's Hammer
Best rendition of what would happen if a comet did hit the earth.
- Neutron Star
- Ringworld
- The Ringworld Engineers
- The Smoke Ring
- The Legacy of Heorot
Frank Herbert
- The Dune trilogy
Complex, intricately constructed world/universe, filled with complex people enmeshed in intricately plotted storylines. Oh, and did I remember to say these are intricate stories? Frank Herbert's masterpieces. (Ignore everything else in the Dune "series" - they're simply embarassing disappointments after the original trilogy.)
- The Green Brain
How insects prevented humanity from wiping them out and destroying the ecology.
Alan E. Nourse, M.D.
- The Mercy Men
Classic medical science fiction
- The Universe Between
My personal favorite of all his stories.
- Raiders from the Rings
An excellent space adventure book about the wrongness of alienation, fear and prejudice.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Harry Harrison
- Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
Parody of space opera
- A Transatlantic Tunnel
- Tunnel Through The Deeps
Alfred Bester
- The Demolished Man
Excellent combination of science fiction, mystery, and psychological novel.
- The Stars My Destination
Dan Simmons
- Hyperion
- Fall of Hyperion
These two are really a single book. Not kid's reading, either!
Christopher Hinz
- Liege-Killer
A series set in a near-future after war and ecological collapse has rendered Earth nearly uninhabitable. Humanity survives in space habitats orbiting the Earth. Then someone finds and revives one of the Paratwa - genetically-engineered assasins who helped trigger the war that destroyed Earth. This is the best book in the series.
- Ash Ock : the Paratwa saga, book 2
- The Paratwa
James Blish
- Cities in Flight (two volumes)
Poul Anderson
- Tau Zero
Classic science fiction where the plot is absolutely dependent on science - particularly, the theory of relativity.
- The Berserker series
David Brin
- Sundiver
- The Uplift War
"Uplift" is David Brin's concept of one intelligent species genetically engineering a non-intelligent species into intelligence. In the series, non-Solarian aliens have been doing this for millions of years, and believe that ALL intelligent species were uplifted by some other species. (Once a species has been uplifted, it is required to serve its uplifter for a certain period of time to "repay" them for the effort.) Then the non-Solarians meet humanity, which has no knowledge of having ever been uplifted! To make it worse, humanity has uplifted Chimpanzees and Dolphins into full intelligence.
Norman Spinrad
- The Solarians
A fascinating view of a humanity which cast away technology in the interest of developing the human mind.
Math Puzzles
Martin Gardner
- Mathematical Recreations
- 2nd Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions
- Aha! Aha! Insight
- Aha! Gotcha!
Science
- The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance
General book about what science doesn't know! And this is real stuff, not the bogus pseudo-science crap that comes out in TV shows like X-Files and Psi Factor.
Tell me about books you've read and liked.
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Last updated at 0222 hours on 1999.11.09.