Just cause it's fun rather then it being relevant to PersonalTelco .... Everygeek has their favorite Sci/Fi books and authors. Free free to chat about whatever seems interesting., especially if they are predicting community wireless

Bruce Sterling

One of the early gods of cyberpunk. He earlier work (pre-early ninties) was cutting edge, political, relevant etc. IMHO he's lost his edge a bit these days and is mostly going over old ideas in more details without a whole lot new to say. His also has lots of short stories which are really good. Favorites are The Bicycle Repair Man and the one about the cat thing in Japan. What the hell was that one called ... -- AdamShand

• Involution Ocean - Great, but a first book not overly profound, mostly just fun.

• The Artificial Kid - The first half is great, the second half spirals down into bizarness.

• Schismatrix - My all time favoite Sci/Fi boook.

• The Hacker Crackdown - A non-fiction book about the hacker crackdown by the feds in the 80's. Documentary style and no longer as relevant, at the time it was a hugely important book.

• The Difference Engine - An amazingly cool idea (what if the Victorians had developed an information age basic on the Babbage engine). Unfortunately it's mostly written by William Gibson and suffers accordingly

• Islands in the Net - Good but a little more wordy and less intense then past books. A great view into a world controlled by corporations (but not the normal dark cyberpunk view).

• Heavy Weather - His last really good book. Has precursors to his [http://www.viridiandesign.org/ Viridian] thinking.

Neal Stephenson

The current cyberpunk god. Writes great, but typically long, books that are also pretty technical and accurate. Often his books desperatly need an editor to whack out a couple hundred pages but are good enough that they survived that flaw.

• The Big U - A first book and it shows. It's been out of print for a long time because Neal hated it and it was worth hundreded of dolloars on Ebay. It was recently re-released (he decided that it was worse that people were paying obscene prices for it then to make more copies of it) so you can find it in book stores cheap. For those of us that had a copy off Ebay this really sucks.

• Zodiac - Great, fun and fast paced. It bills itself as an ecological thriller, despite that it's a fun read.

• Snow Crash - The book that put him on the map. Great ideas, great story, well worth reading.

• The Diamond Age - Amazing ideas and thoughts about culture and nano-technology. However I thought it wasn't as well written and gets a little lost towards the end.

• Cryptonomicon -- Long, overly long, in fact really needed about 300 pages removed from it, but still good. Basically it's like a geek soap opera, so if you're into geek stuff (especially WWII and crypto) it's pretty damn cool.

William Gibson

Acknowledged as one of (if not "the") originators of cyberpunk. Personally I think he has kickass ideas which are ruing by his absolutely dry and boring writing style. But that's just me -- AdamShand

• Neuromancer- I know I should read it, but I can just never stomach it. I've never made it more then half way through.

[CategoryPhilosophy]