Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a science fiction and fantasy novelist and editor. I’m also a corporate lawyer and mergers and acquisitions consultant. I have a passion for trade, in history, games, literature, and even real life. I fear that we have far too much art glorifying killers and bullies, and I think the future will be built, as the past has been, by people who are willing to explore, meet other cultures, get to know them, and work to find deals that will benefit everyone involved.


I wrote

Abbott in Darkness

By D.J. Butler,

Book cover of Abbott in Darkness

What is my book about?

Abbott in Darkness is Lost in Space as a corporate crime story. John Abbott and his young family are forty…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Van Rijn Method

D.J. Butler Why did I love this book?

This omnibus collects eleven short stories about space merchant Nicholas Van Rijn. Van Rijn (no coincidence that he’s Dutch) is literate, clever, eccentric in speech, archaic in dress, and occasionally valiant in battle – but he’d much rather trade than fight, and although he describes trade as “swindling each other,” he characteristically strikes deals that benefit all parties.

Van Rijn’s trade-in spices (he is CEO of the Solar Spice and Liquors Company) is a callout to the history of the Dutch East India Company. The great early modern companies (and specifically, the British East India Company) are one of the inspirations in my book: they founded some fortunes and give to startling adventure stories, but the contradictions inherent in their nature also led to corruption and oppression.

By Poul Anderson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Van Rijn Method as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

Follow the exploits of Nicholas Van Rijn, one of Science Fiction's most popular characters, as told by Science Fiction's Grand Master, Poul Anderson, in Volume 1 in the Complete Technic Civilization Series.


Book cover of Quicksilver

D.J. Butler Why did I love this book?

Depending on whether you read the series in omnibus form or not, Quicksilver is the first either of three or the first of ten books by Neal Stephenson, comprising the Baroque Cycle. This is a rip-roarin’, swashbuckling adventure that also manages to be cerebral and hilarious. In the biggest picture, the cycle is the story of the transition of Europe into modernity. In its specific plot threads, the narrative embraces the dispute between Newton and Leibniz over the invention of calculus, alchemy, King Solomon’s gold, the career of John Churchill, the Royal Society, and its advances in natural philosophy, and the invention of modern finance. Though it’s set in the seventeenth century, the series is attitudinally science fiction, examining big societal questions through scientific and technical lenses. Above all, it’s fun.

By Neal Stephenson,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Quicksilver as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Quicksilver is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, pursuing knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe, in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.

It is a chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of "Half-Cocked Jack" Shaftoe -- London street urchin turned swashbuckling adventurer and legendary King of the Vagabonds -- risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox.

And it is the tale of Eliza, rescued by Jack…


Book cover of Foundation

D.J. Butler Why did I love this book?

If you only know Foundation from its recent television incarnation, you might think it’s principally about cloned emperors and a young woman with psychic powers. But Asimov’s actual book, consisting of stories written when he was quite young, is about the attempt to found a kind of ark where a remnant of galactic civilization can outlast an imminent dark age. His heroes aren’t warriors, but include academics, politicians, and, in two of the five stories (“The Traders” and “The Merchant Princes”), merchants. These are buccaneering traders on the edge of civilization, who sometimes resort to blackmail, but they mostly use their wits, their keen powers of observation, and their ability to negotiate to outmaneuver their enemies and advance Hari Seldon’s plan to save civilization.

By Isaac Asimov,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked Foundation as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The first novel in Isaac Asimov’s classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series

THE EPIC SAGA THAT INSPIRED THE APPLE TV+ SERIES FOUNDATION, NOW STREAMING • Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
 
For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future—to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire—both scientists and scholars—and brings…


Book cover of Dune

D.J. Butler Why did I love this book?

Dune is Frank Herbert’s deconstruction of the idea of the heroic leader. It’s not principally a story about merchants or trade. On the other hand, the action of the book is all driven by the fact that all parties in the book want control of the spice melange, because it allows space travel, because it develops psychic powers, or because it gives wealth. The war of which Dune tells the beginning, and in which Paul Atreides will become a terrible, bloody messiah, is the result of the failure to trade, so by means of a sort of photographic-negative narrative, it tells us why trade matters so much. The sweep of the story is grand, the scope ambitious, and the ideas are perennially important. 

By Frank Herbert,

Why should I read it?

61 authors picked Dune as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.

Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.

Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.

When the Emperor transfers stewardship of…


Book cover of The Pride of Chanur

D.J. Butler Why did I love this book?

In The Pride of Chanur, a human prisoner escapes from the alien kif, who are interrogating him and who have killed his shipmates. The human stows away aboard a hani merchant vessel (the hani are non-human sentients; think large humanoid cats); when discovered, he talked the ship’s captain into making him part of the (otherwise female and hani) crew. The kif attempt to bully the hani into giving up their human crewmate, but they refuse and retreat, until the kif are overextended and have to return home. This is a psychologically rich and entertaining novel that is about spaceships, but whose action is all subterfuge, negotiation, and diplomacy, rather than shooting.

By C. J. Cherryh,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Pride of Chanur as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Excellent Book


Explore my book 😀

Abbott in Darkness

By D.J. Butler,

Book cover of Abbott in Darkness

What is my book about?

Abbott in Darkness is Lost in Space as a corporate crime story. John Abbott and his young family are forty light-years from earth starting his dream job working as an accountant for the famous Sarovar Company. Company employees are allowed to trade for their own accounts and make their fortunes. This is good, because John and his family are in debt and need the money. On the other hand, the resulting temptations sometimes lead Company traders astray.

John is assigned to investigate embezzling on Sarovar Alpha, but quickly discovers that behind the thefts lie smuggling, gun-running, and murder… and now the criminals have him in their sights. With no way back to Earth and nowhere else to go, John Abbott is all in.

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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Mimi Zieman Author Of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives. 

Mimi's book list on women exploring the world and self

What is my book about?

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.


By Mimi Zieman,

Why should I read it?

22 authors picked Tap Dancing on Everest as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…


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