100 books like How to Create a Mind

I see this book as the greatest alien-related story of all time.

Carl Sagan’s humanity and philosophy make it so much more than a tale of alien contact. This is a human story about how alien contact would affect us and the world around us, from the personal to the political and on all levels from micro to macro.

The breadth of the story’s scope opened my mind in countless ways.

For me speculative fiction is about twisting one aspect of the real world, and then playing with the consequences. I love the way that Philip K Dick does this.

Some of his ideas seem absurd, but as a reader you quickly buy into them. This is not a traditional crime novel in any sense, but is about a bounty hunter tracking down escaped androids. As he confronts questions about his own humanity, it raises ethical issues for the reader as to what it is to be human.

Like all Dick’s works it is clever, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

When I say Slaughterhouse-Five is funny, people eye me like I’m a monster. But it is. The New York Times even has my back on this.

Is the novel also gut-wrenchingly tragic and horrifying? Of course. It’s one of the most potent stories ever written, and I’m not sure I’ve encountered anything whose biting satire eviscerates the absurdity of war (and of existence) so well.

Vonnegut balances humor and grief on the head of a pin: “Billy turned on the Magic Fingers, and he was jiggled as he wept.” 

This book was just fun. (And informative!) As my editor, Lisa Poisso, put it (paraphrased), “I’ve never seen an author manage to build so much narrative tension around something so simple as, ‘And now I have to push this button.’”

So yes, Weir continues to be awesome at making hard sci-fi fun and thrilling. What really stuck with me most, though, was the relationship the main character, Ryland Grace, forms with his unexpected interstellar buddy, the Eridian he dubs Rocky. The care and thought Weir puts into every aspect of their interactions… Those were the moments that got me. Never have I ever had so much fun watching a character think about how to solve problems. And who couldn’t use a bit more laughter and problem-solving in their life?

This book took everything I’ve ever loved about sci-fi franchises like Star Wars, The Expanse, and The Hunger Games and somehow managed to jam it all together and turn it all up to eleven. (This one goes to eleven!)

At present, I have three more books left to read in this series (next up for me is Iron Gold), and that thought is just so darn exciting I could dance. (I won’t because I’m currently walking on an under-the-desk treadmill… But I could.)

For me, this book and the books that follow are a collective masterclass in worldbuilding, dramatic tension, and the fine art of using sci-fi to dissect how societies rise, fall, and function in between. The main character, Darrow, is basically a force of nature you can’t help but root for. And if you’re into audiobooks, Tim Gerard Reynolds’ narration of this series might well be my… show more.

Telving’s book is ahead of its time in exploring the deep questions of what our humanity is, with perspectives on our future life with AI and intelligent robots. I was particularly intrigued by the ways that the author explores how we evaluate our own consciousness, how we tend to anthropomorphize animals and objects, and the tricky ethical questions around how to legislate a life with robots. Telving deals with one subject that had been far off my radar in the form of the difference between the hard and easy problem of consciousness. It’s a very philosophical question, but in today’s world, where our values, beliefs, and interactions are in mutation, this understanding of consciousness is ever more pertinent.

For too long emotions have been systematically suppressed at work.

In today’s highly competitive workplace where culture and leadership matters, embracing emotions is a competitive advantage for leaders and companies alike.

Maria’s book demonstrates why businesses should cultivate empathy and shares the winning traits of empathetic leaders who foster greater productivity and loyalty.

With business conditions and prospects looking so difficult, we will need to be ever more strategic in the use of our resources. In this light, Michael Ventura’s practical approach to inserting empathy into leadership and how businesses should function with a higher degree of empathy is a tremendous read. Ventura uses a host of case studies based on the work he’s done with his company, Sub Rosa. As such, the material is real life and the book is packed with a host of great and practical exercises. While it’s all about empathy in business, the book is also a good reminder of how empathy can be useful in our private lives, our intimate relationships and in society in general. 

I have always been fascinated by feedback loops, so even though the positive feedbacks discussed in this book have a very negative impact on society, they stir my technical curiosity.

More importantly, Ward highlights a very real problem with AI technology and its deployment: the potential for automated recommendations and other nudges to move us, as a population, toward conformity and predictability. 

Ward actually writes about 3 nested loops: 1) our evolved human tendencies, 2) the exploitation of those tendencies by human-based enterprises, such as capitalism and marketing, and 3) exploitation of those same tendencies by AI tools.

Many years ago a young neuroscientist asked to visit me; he had just come to the U.S. from Brazil and was seeking advice on a lab he could join to train in the function of nerve cells in the cerebral cortex. He soon became spectacularly successful, showing that the brain forms different perceptions and controls different movements by overlapping distributions of cortical neurons that constitute an internal reality of the external world.

Building on this knowledge, Nicolellis has led the way in constructing brain-machine interfaces to enable a patient, for example, to learn to walk after suffering a stroke. In doing so, he has come to realize that everything humans experience in our lives is due to the reality constructed by the brain to represent the reality of the external world. As he expresses it, brain reality is the true creator of everything. Some may find this new view disturbing,… show more.