Recommended Reading
Ultimately, the best speakers are the ones who have put 10,000 hours into listening. - Author: James Altucher
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Outstanding minds have come before us. People who have absorbed the world, synthesized it for us, and give us insight that would require a lifetime. Some of them even write it down for us to consume. We should know our place in the scope and depth of literary history, but knowing where to start is not easy. There are more books written each day than a human can possibly read in a lifetime. We need to trust to others to help us sift through the books which will inspire us, make us better, and those which would be, for us at least, a waste of time.
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I have always loved science fiction and fantasy. This is a list of some of my favorites, with reasons, and links.
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Favorite Science Fiction
The history of science is the creation of many things read and conceived of first in science fiction accounts. Explore new ways to understand the world around us, and how we can take civilization to new places.
Check back for more ideas and future favorites as we all read our way into the future!
Orson Scott Card will feature often in this list. Homecoming is the answer to one of the greatest questions. Can mankind grown into something more than we are today?
I can not say enough good things about C.S. Friedman. She is one of the top ten most gifted writers alive in science fiction and fantasy.
Science fiction at its best. Posing ideas for a new world, and new social orders based on a simple question, "What if we had not been the ascendant species, of Earth?"
Long before it was a movie, this book change my childhood. This is a study in how to generate tension through phycological manipulation, and deep insight into very smart people. Book 1 is truly just the beginning.
What if you never aged, but everyone around you did? What if you had been born to prehistory, destined to watch mankind around you grow?
Favorite Fantasy
Though the line between fantasy and science fiction can blur, there is something I deeply enjoy about the archetypal mythological structure of fantasy stories. We all have our own dragons and demons to fight. Sometimes its nice to see them materialize on the page.
While the greats are obvious with the likes of Jim Butcher, Peter V Brett, Patrick Rothfuss and Tolkien, we will reserve our recommendations for more obscure names!
Pulp Fantasy at its best. Some of the dozens of entries are better than others, but well worth it for the shear romp through history.
Sometimes called by the name of his sentient blade, Elric Stormbringer, the tales of the Albino Emperor of a dying empire are a gritty, but good, old school read.
Written by the artist who has illustrated every corner of the many mythologies of Christian hell, this book poses the question, "What if a demon truly sought to repent?"