---

Books worth reading once are worth reading twice; and what is most important of all, the masterpieces of literature are worth reading a thousand times.

- John Morley

The way I originally heard the saying was “A book not worth reading twice is not worth reading once”. I don’t think the books on this list are worth a thousand reads, but they are probably worth a second one. I tried to explore them in relation to today’s technology: how influenced they are by it, and the influence the technology presented should have on today’s technology.

Lord of Light / Roger Zelazny

This novel is a mash up of oriental religion and science fiction. The ruling class of a planet controls advanced technology, enabling not only god like powers, but also enabling “reincarnation” into a new body. A conflict arises in the book between the gods (actually, the first colonists of the planet) if they should continue withholding the technology from the public or share it. All the technology in the book is presented under a religious wrapping, such as TelePresence video conferences (“apparitions”) with gods in special prayer chambers. It is now back in print and highly recommended.

(Wikipedia, Amazon)

A Fire upon the Deep / Vernor Vinge

In this book, the galaxy is divided into “zones of thought” that differ by intellectual power possible in them (organic or machine oriented), also limiting the ability to travel in them (bigger machines needed to produce poorer results). In the “deep”, simple machinery is all that is possible. The further out you go, speeds and complexity of thought increase until in the outer layers of the galaxy where only (the “transcendent”), god-like intelligences exist. In this way, Vinge works around the problem of what computers can and cannot do: it depends on where the computer is (for a more complete explanation, as well as other books by Vinge dealing with the zones of thought, see Wikipedia link below).

One such god-like intelligence awakens and tries to take over the universe, and our team of heroes sets out to find the only thing that could destroy it, which happens to be on an inhabited planet in an area where advanced technology does not work. The inhabitants of the planet are actually split entities: each such entity is made up of 3 to 6 individual biological bodies, whose thought process is integrated through special sounds emitted by each body in the group. Several times in the book the composition of an entity changes, and the personality of the entity changes as a result. The idea of thought communication is very central to the story, and includes issues of cross-entity interference and remote transmission on radio waves.

Another interesting element in the book relates to machine translation: the heroes are regularly updated by newsgroups from around the galaxy, and as they venture into the depth, the quality of the translation decreases, as does the communication speed. This is a “hard” science fiction story and an epic fantasy story in one.

(Wikipedia, Amazon)

Snow Crash / Neal Stephenson

The hero, called Hiro, sets out to save the world from a virus that is transferred both physically and digitally, by exposure to the virus in the “Metaverse” (where is appears to be white noise, or “snow”). Hiro, “Last of the freelance hackers and greatest swordfighter in the world”, sets out to destroy the virus, while different corporations (including a branch of the Christian Church and the Cosa Nostra Pizza Corp., i.e. the Mafia) struggle for control. The book is lined with social and political satire, black humor and references to history, linguistics, computer science and religion. Most notable is the description of the Metaverse, the 3D world that the internet became, and is fast becoming in our real world.

In addition, the book debates the possibility of programming minds (and infecting them with viruses), and discusses culture and religion as programs (or viruses, or immunity systems) running on our biological hardware. This, of course, gives a completely new meaning to communications protocols.

(Wikipedia, Amazon)

Altered Carbon / Richard K. Morgan

This novel is an extension of the old Samurai cinema and Film Noir into science fiction. The psychologically scarred warrior Takeshi Kovacs is hired by a rich man to find out why he (the rich man) killed himself. If the last sentence sounded strange, it’s because I neglected to mention that people are regularly backed up to a “cortical stack” and can be “re-sleeved” into a new body. The plot thickens with every page, including femme fatales, double crosses, hidden pasts, ulterior motives, sexual tension and tough-guy humor.

Central to the plot is a faster-than-light transportation method used in the book: the backed up memories and personality of the traveler is transmitted to the destination, where it is sleeved into a local host. The original body waits, frozen, until the traveler comes back: his memories are transmitted back, and copied to his original body. Since such travelers are usually rich and influential, it is very rewarding to hack into these transmissions and find some idea or piece of knowledge worth selling. Creepy thought, eh?

(Wikipedia, Amazon)

1984 / George Orwell

Is 1984 still science fiction? The technology in it certainly is not: a video camera in every television set, and a system to monitor them all. The science fiction here is more of a political science: the ability of a ruling group to prevent all opposition by extreme censorship and a state of perpetual war. Does the ability to censor all information sources still exist? Is there a way to monitor an entire population? We leave a trace wherever we go, online or offline, and even today, even in democratic nations, private correspondences are being monitored for suspected words and phrases. Is the amount of information too great to scan efficiently? Probably. Are methods of encryption readily available? Yes, but they are also breakable. Can a nation implement the political structure defined in 1984? Sadly, yes. This is why it is even more important to read it again. Cameras in every street in London, Google Street View, just consider what they could do in the wrong hands.

Maybe designers of media protocols, taking care of security and authentication, should also take care of the freedom of communication: untraceable, distributed, concealed. Maybe just as a safety measure in case 1984 comes to be.

(Wikipedia, Amazon)

You should know my taste by now – do you have any recommendations to my reading list? What are your favorites?