Stephen's Fun Stuff

Science Fiction

Soft science fiction is also enjoyable. This kind of writing usually uses a futuristic setting or what-if premise to make a point about the present. Isaac Asimov and most other science fiction falls into this category.

Although CyberPunk is not really separate from the above, it deserves its own mention here. Many people view CyberPunk as being about computers and networks and funky music. Actually, what almost all CyberPunk is about is a world in the not-so-distant future when multi-national corporations run the world more than governments do. Society degrades and becomes more materialistic. Technology advances so that it is cheap, and people begin experimenting with human-computer connections for purposes of computing and many other reasons.

Larry Niven

My favorite author is Larry Niven. I've liked or loved almost everything he has written. His works have a tendency to completely study a topic. If you're just getting started, I recommend the novel Ringworld and the anthologies of short stories N-Space and Playgrounds of the Mind.

When Larry Niven teams up with Jerry Pournelle, good sci-fi comes out which manages to have strong characterization as well! They do an excellent job with Footfall in showing what an alien invasion might really be like, and in Lucifer's Hammer they explore how mankind would probably deal with a comet striking the earth. Inferno is an excellent reworking of Dante's story and Oath of Fealty is also very good.

Masters of Sci-Fi

I can't forget the 'old masters' category of writers. Isaac Asimov cannot be discounted. If you manage to read the three Foundation books without being hooked, then you're probably not a sci-fi reader. His robot novels (starting with Caves of Steel) are really good mystery stories in disguise.

Arthur C Clarke is an excellent storyteller. 2001: A Space Odyssey is good and 2010 is really good as well. His short stories (such as in The Nine Billion Names of God are like Twilight Zone stories. They're realistic enough to make your skin crawl. And Childhood's End is a book you'll never forget. It still gives me the chills.

Some people like Ray Bradbury but his writing mostly comes across as space fantasy and with a few exceptions does not impress me a lot.

1980's Writers

I have a number of younger writers that I've taken to. These writers came to their careers during the early 1980's. Greg Bear does really hard sci-fi. He plays with theoretical physics a lot. His stories tend to have poor endings, but they are full of excellent material. I really recommend Moving Mars as being his most accessible. It's nearly popular fiction, but it still has his edge and completes the story well. I also recommend Blood Music and The Hammer of God. All of his other works are good too!

Simon Hawke writes the Time Wars series of books. These are really pretty fluffy western-like writings but are fun and full of ideas and play with history. Try reading Ivanhoe Gambit. He also does some good Arthurian legend material in The Wizard of 4th Street. A CyberPunk story slipped out of him with Psychodrome that is very good.

Steve Perry is a master of using only a few words to say a lot. His book The Man Who Never Missed is a must read. If you enjoy martial arts, continue reading with The 97th Step and the other books in the Matador series.

William Gibson is probably known to all you net hackers out there. He wrote Neuromancer and brought the entire CyberPunk movement to life with his imagery. Neuromancer is very plot (rather than character) heavy, but it gives a good image of a future where corporations and money run the world. Count Zero is more character oriented and shows Gibson's poetic nature. His writing gets more and more abstract and full of prosaic imagry as time goes on.

Neal Stephenson is another great new author. Snow Crash is a 100% must-read for computer buffs. It shakes up the ideas behind cyberspace and throws some fun twists on the near future. Diamond Age is also an excellent work. It focuses on character development, and has some truely interesting ideas!

Epic Fantasy

I can't ignore J.R.R. Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings because it defined epic fantasy as we know it today. Tolkien does get a bit long-winded for many readers, though.

Raymond Feist wrote an excellent series called the Riftwar Saga the first books are Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master. As with many epic writers, the writing improves as they write more books. He also co-wrote Daughter of the Empire with Janny Wurts. This book is very well written and will appeal to a broad audience.

Terry Goodkind burst onto the scene with Wizard's First Rule. Since then he has followed this book with several sequels. Goodkind is a master of epic fantasy. He keeps you hooked and reading through an amazing number of pages, even though the story focusses on just a few characters. His writing is tight, and his use of prophecy is excellent.

Terry Brooks wrote the Shannara series. Sword of Shannara is pretty dry and plot heavy, but it is good. I usually recommend that people read Elfstones of Shannara first because it has a better flow. The other Shannara books are also good.

Anne McCaffrey is probably responsible for a lot of this generation's fantasy readers. Her Pern novels really seem to capture people. Her writing is good and a world with dragons is something kids love. Reading her Dragonriders of Pern trilogy is a must. The other Pern books are also very good. I never took to any of her non-Pern books.

Although TSR is not everyone's favorite company, the Dragonlance novels are all good quality works. I really recommend Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragonlance trilogy (starting with Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Although the middle is a bit slow, the reading is worth it. If you like the characters, you will like virtually every other Dragonlance book put out. Amazing how TSR finds so much quality and put out such a quantity of books.

Other Good Books

Steven Brust is another excellent writer. To Reign in Hell is a great retelling of Milton's Paradise Lost and The Sun, the Moon and the Stars is actually a piece of fine literature along the lines of Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (another must read). Brust is best known, however for his Vlad Taltos fantasy novels. Try out Jhereg and Yendi.

Tim Powers is a recent find of mine. His books delve into myth and mystery and try to define them out. The result is amazing! The books grab you and make you want to read. The writing is a bit unpolished, but he really works your mind over. My favorite is On Stranger Tides (a pirate novel).

Don't miss H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy. It's impossible not to love it.

Roger Zelazney's Amber novels are also quite thought provoking but the plot can be difficult to follow.

And finally, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is a must read for all intelligent beings.

Lego blocks are something I became addicted to when I was just a child. The infinite possibilities that can be put together with simple blocks was something that has always appealed to me.

Over the years, Lego blocks have become more sophisticated (and more expensive!). In 1979, they introduced the lego person with movable arms and legs along with new space pieces. In 1981, they introduced the first castle sets, and lego sets started being composed of fewer blocks and more and more large custom pieces. In many ways, this was sad, but it did mean that Lego was making more variety in their sets, and hitting more genres with them as well.

I now have over 300 lego sets spread across the years since 1977. I buy new sets each year to get a sampling of the new pieces, lego people and designs.

Here's a lego design that I made up a few years ago. It's a transformer cassette tape that is actually the right size to fit in a tape player.

Lego Bird (PDF) (PS)

I got into collecting comic books in 1985 and have been at it ever since. I got on at the beginning of the 'independent publisher' or 'black-and-white' craze. For the next three years, small press comics were wildly speculated on. Some people made a lot of money and others lost it when then market for those books dried up during the recession years at the end of the 1980's (which is when baseball cards came back into fashion).

I have a love for the independent press and of quality black-and-white books over mass-produced color ones. Marvel and DC have a lot of history and a lot of great heroes, but many of the books seem so flat and rehashed. The small press had a lot of bombs, but it also had some of the best work around.

My personal favorite is Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai. This book is amazing!

My other favorite independent comic book is Thieves and Kings by Mark Oakley.

I enjoy reading quality humor. Sergio Aragones' Groo is an excellent book for mindless, yet strangely engrossing humor. He pokes fun of everything he possibly can.

The only mainstream books I read consistently are Superman, Captain America, Green Latern, and Iron Man. But I pick them up and drop them as the writing quality varies.

Some other favorites of years-gone-by are the Blue Beetle and Booster Gold comics. They did a good job of showing super heroes trying to make ends meet and have a life as well. A lot of good character development. These two series each lasted only 24 or 25 issues before the characters were moved off into group comics (like Justice League) and were mashed up to be like all the other heroes. Oh well.