After writing this, it turns out I'm all about "deep ideas". Not really an order here, read what piques your interest and lmk what you like
This guy was everywhere. To me, it's really a story of the beginning of Silicon Valley as we know it. The Dead, Ken Kesey, Alen Ginsberg, early LSD experiments, Doug Englebart and his "Mother of All Demos" modern environmentalism / conservationism, Brian Eno, Steve Jobs. like what?
Very inspiring for me to read lately because he was never a great student or a great engineer, but was always curious and connecting with people.
a dying empire of space-faring necromancers where each planent has a different specialty and necromancers have knights as sworn protectors. very kooky book with medieval setting but very modern tone. not the best plot but sick as hell
not great plot and characters but very very cool ideas and a very cool ending. there’s an alien species in the book that cannot count, but can intuit quantities up to 40, but nothing more than that
this book is dense, and I’m still chewing on some of it. humans in last-ditch effort to save the planet from impending alien attack send a ship out to meet their arrival in the solar system. but also they send a vampire that was brought back to life Jurassic Park Style. they’re monsters but have far superior intellect and pattern recognition compared to humans. there’s a description of the vampires computer dashboards and they’re not charts just various faces of human suffering. WTF!
just read this. I think you’d dig some of science of reacting to climate. also the stick fighting on the Pakistan/China/India border.
Basically a 700 page wikipedia article. Best part imho is the reign of Aegon the Conqueror’s grandson, Jaehaerys the Conciliator. all about building the kingdom and how to pay for the King’s Road and dragon pit.
I love this one most for how the various planetary cultures are discussed. V cool ideas here too?
It’s a YA book, but very cool theme. Humans defeat aging, but society agrees that death still happen to keep population in check. So the only government is basically the group of people (Scythes) in charge of killing their yearly quota of people.
This one is chewy/dense but arguably the best world builder of all time. Crazy cool ideas and characters
Pulpy beach read of a London copper in this era who solves magical mysteries. not very deep but moves at a clip and I love the history of London/folklore bits in there
not as “deep”, but great story telling and great characters. there’s a well-loved TV show that I’ve only watched some of. def a great roadtrip series as it’ll keep you awake
A professor from an Anarcho-syndicalist moon mining colony is invited to to capitalist home planet to share his space-time discoveries. love the descriptions of how the moon colony functions and the shared history with the home planet and how their culture has separated over the 100 years
I read em all, and there's great parts in there for sure! But idk soooo long! Read at your own peril!