Great Geek Reads

Looking for some fiction that's not just literate, but also 1337? Try these! 

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is the great American video game novel. Its plot is basically a cheesy video game plot: will the main character dodge obstacles, evade the nefarious supervillain, escape dungeons, and save (well, okay, meet) the princess? But then its setting is a meta-commentary on video games: the world plays a giant virtual reality game. That's where the schools, jobs, and fun are now, leaving a bleak wasteland of "meatspace" behind. Hidden within this game are Easter eggs and challenges (some of which involve meticulous recreations of classic video games themselves) that the hero has to find and solve. And yes, the audiobook is totally read by Wil Wheaton.

You by Austin Grossman and Codex by Lev Grossman are by pop-culture savvy twin brothers who perfectly capture the rarely-delivered promise of infinite possibility in gaming culture. You draws on years of real-world video game design experience, while Codex boasts the Da Vinci Code-esque appeal of delving into a secret world's mysterious ancient texts.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan takes Codex and raises it one: what if Google got its hands on one of those ancient mysteries? Throw in some great bookstore-employee anecdotes, references to geek arcana from ancient Apple hardware to Ruby data visualization to typography, and you've got a perfect e-Read.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow (also available as a free download on the author's website) takes you on a hilarious and mind-bending adventure in a post-capitalist Disneyworld, where reputation is everything.

Redshirts by John Scalzi is fun for Trekk[er|ie]s who always wondered about the inner lives of the semi-interchangeable, frequently disposable "Redshirts." It will also appeal to the better-socialized (I kid, I kid!) who can gloss over the in-jokes for a lightweight sci-fi caper.

And let's throw one more bonus mention to Andy Weir's addictive debut The Martian, which Elizabeth reviewed recently. It's basically Island of the Blue Dolphins meets Gravity. Does it have geek cred, you wonder? Let's just say that an ASCII chart is of pivotal plot importance, and leave it at that.

Are any of your favorites missing? Nerd rants welcome in the comments!

Happy reading,
Jenny

While You Wait for Cloud Atlas

I fell in love with Cloud Atlas when I saw the new movie adaptation. So of course, being a Ravenous Reader, I greedily devoured the book it was based on, by David Mitchell. I'll admit, I had some trouble getting into it on my first try, but this time around, it had the best of both worlds, with all the cleverness of literary fiction, and all the fun of genre fiction. While you're waiting for your hold to come in, you might want to check out some similar books and movies, or peruse the list of recommended background reading to catch its literary allusions.

When I walked out of the theater, I thought: "This is the movie of A Swiftly Tilting Planet I've always wanted!" That classic by Madeleine L'Engle, part of the series that begins with A Wrinkle in Time, also spans millennia, showing through telepathy and, yeah, okay, a magic unicorn, that people's actions and obsessions have repercussions that echo across centuries in surprising ways. Although it's written for a younger audience, many adults (including myself!) still count this series among their favorites. Like Cloud Atlas, it has a lot of layers that rereading can reveal.

Read on for more:

Take an Epic Journey with The Passage

Meet Zero, whose previous name, Patient Zero, has long been forgotten. Before he had that name, he was a scientist called Tim Fanning who went on an expedition to Bolivia and came home with a virus that changed everything. When you pick up this huge book that spans places all over the world, and enough time to follow generations of characters, you get to find out what happens after a top-secret military project tried to use Zero's illness as a weapon, and also what happens to the people he meets and infects along the way  -- their everyday, horrifying, and heroic stories will surprise you.

Now that the second volume of Justin Cronin's trilogy is out, this is the perfect time to pick up The Passage and catch up. (The new one's called The Twelve.) If you're a fan of epic-length genre fiction that straddles horror and sci-fi, like Stephen King's The Stand, or Robert McCammon's Swan Song, you'll love Cronin's blend of action, world-building, and his carefully-thought-out take on vampires (don't worry, it's nothing like Twilight).

Ender's Game

Have you ever gone back and read something you loved as a younger person, only to find that your memory of it was much better than the real thing? Well, I recently reread one of my all-time favorite books out of sheer curiosity, and I thought it was just as great as the first time I read it, back in the mid-80s. I actually might like it more now!

That book is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It is a science fiction novel that appeals to both teens and adults and it is awesome. The book is about a very young boy named Andrew Wiggin ("Ender") who is taken from his family and sent off to a school out in space.

Bend Your Mind

Are you a fan of movies like Inception or Memento, with shocking revelations and plot twists that make you go whoa, what's going on? (In a good way!) Well, then, I have some books you'll love to be confused by!

The Mirage is the new novel by Matt Ruff, author of the hilarious plot rollercoaster Bad Monkeys. It opens with a Homeland Security agent investigating terrorist attacks by religious fundamentalists from an impoverished third-world country. The twist: this agent works for the United Arab States, the dominant world power, and the terrorists come from the backwards, Balkanized region of...America. So that's how this book starts, and it'll just keep twisting your brain into knots as you get further into the story! Read on for more head-exploding books and authors...

A Scarlet Letter for Today

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan is a sci-fi re-imagining of The Scarlet Letter. In this not-so-distant future, abortion is outlawed in the state of Texas, where Hannah Payne, a naive young dressmaker, grew up. When she has an affair with a flashy televangelist named Aidan Dale, her crime is not bearing an illegitimate child...it is aborting it. Convicted felons have their jail time televised and skin dyed bright red before their release. This is the point at which we meet Hannah, a modern Texan Hester Prynne.

My favorites of 2011

For past three months, I've been reading science fiction and fantasy books for teens. A lot of them. Wizards, dystopias, magic, quests - they're coming out my ears, I tell you. These are my top four.

Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick - When a powerful electromagnetic pulse kills off two-thirds of the human race and knocks the rest back to the Stone Age, it's every man, woman, and child for himself. 17-year-old Alex was already living on borrowed time, what with the brain tumor and all, so she thought she knew about living life one day at a time. Along with Afghanistan vet Tom and eight-year-old Ellie, she discovers that it's a little more difficult when you have to fight wild animals and teen cannibal zombies for the privilege.

A Pair of Time-Travel Novels

Generally, I like to read things with straightforward plots, clear and understandable. But then there are days that I just want my brain to be twisted into a pretzel, and that's when I pick up books like Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis, which won the prestigious Hugo Award earlier this year.


Set in . . . well, it's hard to say when this is set, because that's the plot, you see. In 2060, humanity has perfected the art of time travel. At Oxford, historians don't just read old diaries and peruse photographs, they go back in time to observe history as it happens. They do their best not to affect events, but they're secure in the knowledge that history is self-correcting and nothing they do can alter its course. Not really, anyway.