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).

Discover a New Planet

Raz (Erasmus), the protagonist in the novel Anathem by Neal Stephenson is a mathematician and monk (a "fraa" or "avout") in a monastery on the planet Arbre. Thousands of years prior to the opening of the story, Apert's society was on the verge of collapse, and the avout fled into monasteries in order to protect the cultural and intellectual legacy of their planet.

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...

One of my favorites makes a top 100 list

Over the summer, NPR listeners voted on more than 5,000 science fiction and fantasy titles.  The nerds... ahem... I mean the experts over at NPR then narrowed the list down to the top 100 picks.  The result is an eclectic mixture of classic and modern titles.  Some of the titles I expected to see.  If it had been missing obvious cult favorites like Lord of the Rings, Dune, or Star Wars, I would have had to dismiss it as an inferior list. Many of my old favorites were there, but imagine my delight when one of my new favorites made the cut.  Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher is relatively new and Butcher's other series The Dresden Files seemed to be the more well known. 

Hunger Games 3

Scholastic recently announced the title of the final book in the wildly popular Hunger Games trilogy, which will be Mockingjay. If you're a fan of dystopian sci-fi and you haven't read this provocative series, you're missing out. In the novels, a mockingjay is a genetic mutant, originally created to spy for the government but now a symbol of the burgeoning rebellion. Speaking for myself, I can't wait!

Mockingjay releases August 24th, but PCPL has already ordered it, so you can put yourself on the list today! While you're waiting, here are some other whiz-bang dystopic novels to assuage your appetite for futures gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix (children's)
For the crime of being born a third child in a world where people are only allowed two, Luke must stay hidden. If discovered, he will die. But when Luke learns about other third children, he realizes there's a whole world beyond the walls of his house. This is the first novel in the Shadow Children series.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (teen)
Like most teenagers, Tally can't wait until her sixteenth birthday. That's when she'll get the surgery that all teenagers in her world get, the one that turns them pretty and sets them off on a whirlwind adventure of parties and fun. But the question she hasn't asked herself is, what will she give up in return for becoming pretty?

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
This nonfiction book asks the intriguing question, what if we all disappeared today, but left the rest of the earth intact? What would happen as our nuclear power plants fail, as our subways flood, and as plants and wildlife take our cities back? It's not exactly a dystopia, but it is marvelously thought-provoking.

Are you a dystopia fan? Share your favorite examples of the genre in the comments!