The Book Thread

[halfeye]

So, the "What are you reading thread" or whatever it was called seems to have vanished. I can't even find it searching and it doesn't show up in the last two months, apparently, so I assume it's in thread necro territory. So, let's start a new one.

Good idea but why confine it to books? I'm currently reading about six hours (+ or - 4 hours, depending on how much updates that day) a day of webserials, and pretty much nothing else.

In my current quest of reading sci fi novels that have won awards, but that I haven't read yet, I got The Space Merchants. Now, I haven't finished it, I'm about two thirds through, but I need to talk about it.

So, what is this book. It's satire, and a pretty biting one. It's also Cyberpunk. Which is astounding, because it was written in 1952, which is at least 20 years before other proto-Cyberpunk works, and 30 years before anyone coined that name for the genre. Now, being written in the 50s, it doesn't feature cyberspace, or computers. Not a single one. But every other element is there.

There are two books I feel should be recommended on the basis of your liking this (which I don't remember reading and will read now), "Star smashers of the galaxy rangers", by Harry Harrison and "the Rediscovery of Man" by Cordwainer Smith (there are possibly homophobic aspects to the latter, but he has computers even though he was writing in the 1940s and '50s).