I find most traditionally published work is similar, or at best live within a narrow boundary. Independently published work is vastly more original but raw. I picked this up on a whim and absolutely loved it.
It deals with a unique blend of themes that I have never seen before and sets them in a believable world. Catholicism, artificial intelligence, the treatment of Uyghurs, and demonic possession being tackled by a first-time author in a self-published work is an impressive feat, and more so that he was able to bring it together in such a compelling way.
My book selections were very limited growing up – mostly mystery and thriller books borrowed from the collections of other people’s parents with a spattering of Isaac Asimov and Orson Scott Card when I could find them.
I read a quote from Neuromancer in an email signature on a BBS in the early 1990s which led to me picking up a copy at a used bookstore. I was blown away by the completely new genre and came back to it several times through my 20s. I filed it away mentally as YA fiction before finding it this year during a move and re-reading it. Loved it as much as the first time 20 plus years ago.
The book that defined the cyberpunk movement, inspiring everything from The Matrix to Cyberpunk 2077.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
William Gibson revolutionised science fiction in his 1984 debut Neuromancer. The writer who gave us the matrix and coined the term 'cyberspace' produced a first novel that won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, and lit the fuse on the Cyberpunk movement.
More than three decades later, Gibson's text is as stylish as ever, his noir narrative still glitters like chrome in the shadows and his depictions of…
Popular social science books, at least the ones I have the chops to attempt, are either bromides that abrogate personal responsibility or childishly scandalous. Zipping back too far takes you to phrenology and social Darwinism.
This is a unique attempt to explain social ills based on animalistic compulsions that draws on other work in history, psychology, zoology, and sociology. It’s as eclectic and cross-disciplinary as the author, who hopped from music publishing to public relations to writing.
The Lucifer Principle is a revolutionary work that explores the intricate relationships among genetics, human behavior, and culture to put forth the thesis that “evil” is a by-product of nature’s strategies for creation and that it is woven into our most basic biological fabric.
In a sweeping narrative that moves lucidly among sophisticated scientific disciplines and covers the entire span of the earth’s, as well as mankind’s, history, Howard Bloom challenges some of our most popular scientific assumptions. Drawing on evidence from studies of the most primitive organisms to those on ants, apes, and humankind, the author makes a persuasive…
In Minding the Machines: Building and Leading Data Science and Analytics Teams, AI and analytics strategy expert Jeremy Adamson delivers an accessible and insightful roadmap to structuring and leading a successful analytics team. The book explores the tasks, strategies, methods, and frameworks necessary for an organization beginning their first foray into the analytics space or one that is rebooting its team for the umpteenth time in search of success.
