great, thanks!

I know it's a bit late BUT:
Ray Bradbury: "Fahrenheit 451"
OR
"Top Science Fiction" where the best Sci-Fi authors pick their best short stories. I highly recommend "Labyrinths" by Ursula K. Le Guin.

good call!

by the way, farenheit 451 was made into a wonderful wonderful movie by francois truffaut, in england, featuring the german guy from jules et jim and the lovely julie christie. a perfect movie.

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also, i discovered today thanks to this thread that cyberpunk author tom maddox has all of his work put online, including a short story from the mirrorshades anthology, a novel, and 2 screenplays for the x-files, here.

Yes! I just have to watch that movie, although I've read that book so many times I have a picture of it right in my head just by myself.
Thanks for the link and hope you enjoy!

"Nine Billion Names of God", that's an awesome story, it is somewhere in my father's massive sci-fi collection.
Another one: "Way Station" by Clifford D. Simak. This is a novel.

i mentioned the highly original jack vance in a previous post; this here is a good primer website:

http://www.jackvance.com/

it includes links to his archive:

http://www.integralarchive.org/

where you can find first chapters of many of his books.

http://www.integralarchive.org/samp-chap.htm

If you like Star Wars, then check out Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the Empire Trilogy." It starts off right where Jedi left off.....it's actually pretty fun to read.

how many star wars books start off at the end of return of the jedi? i've read the truce at bakura and that starts there too

Jack Womack - "Ambient"

a wonderful book

Arthur C. Clarke - 2001: A Space Odyssey, (& not as much...) Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama
Frank Herbert - Dune (& not as much)...Dune Messiah & the rest of the Dune books
Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - Hunters of Dune and others written after Herbert's Death...this first one was okay...

star wars (selected works copied & pasted from wiki's list at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_books)

Han Solo at Stars' End by Brian Daley
one of the good early ones

Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina edited by Kevin J. Anderson
one of the good later ones

The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers
this was a good one

The Thrawn Trilogy
feat. Luke, Mara Jade, Admiral Thrawn

• Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn (9 ABY)
• Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn (9 ABY)
• The Last Command by Timothy Zahn

X-Wing/Rogue Squadron series
feat. Corran Horn
Rogue Squadron by Michael A. Stackpole (1996)
Wedge's Gamble by Michael A. Stackpole (1996)
The Krytos Trap by Michael A. Stackpole (1996)
The Bacta War by Michael A. Stackpole

I <3 Timothy Zahn

good call.

You must spread some FORCE around before giving it to atari 2600 again.

feat. Luke, Mara Jade, Han & Leia and their twins, Admiral Thrawn

These books ("Thrawn Trilogy" by Zahn) should be episodes 7 (maybe throw in some Truce at bukura elements too), 8 and 9 if Lucas ever decides to make them. Maybe one of his adopted children or something will make them one day...

after Lucas dubbed the original Star Wars "A New Hope" and made it Episode IV, he remarked that ep I would be mostly C-3PO and R2-D2 and that the last Episode IX would be the end adventures of C-3PO and R2-D2...
In the end, there were some "Droids" comics and cartoons.
Somewhere along the line (probably due to the sagely advice from Joseph Campbell before Empire) he decided to make Vader Luke's father, Anakin.

I think I've read about 50 of those Star Wars books....I'm such a geek...but damn if they aren't good.

On the subject of geekdom, the same geek that got me into playing X-Wing vs. T.I.E. Fighter got me into reading the books. I never bought the Zahn books. Most of the others you see that I listed I bought after reading those ones first.

I just go to the used book store. They are EXTRA-LIGHT reading so I burn through them really fast.

most of those Star Wars books are really well written though (With Zahn, Anderson and Stackpole really being the best).

the earlier stuff by Alan Dean Foster is pretty good too, although because it was written before Empire Strikes Back and RoJ, it kind of goes against canon, and that bothered my OCD_anal side.

this book holds the most sentimentality for me, since I read it back when I was 8:

Well, that's the first one I ever read too (after the movie's book). It was the first Star Wars book besides the movie's book. I cannot really remember, but I think it isn't any good. I was in grade school at the time and I got it from one of those scholastic monthlies the teacher would hand out and then you'd take it home for your parents to buy you books out of it.

Greg Bear also wrote a star wars book called ROGUE PLANET

I found it again (at a used book store) and was so happy I almost peed myself. Foster is a good writer, but I think that because he was forced to make stuff up (other than relying on Lucas), it feels out of place. these days Lucas has to sign off on EVERYTHING.

Foster wrote lots of movie-to-novel stories....including The Last Starfighter and Krull.

his picture on Wiki makes him look like he's gone Taliban. :p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Dean_Foster

I used to LOVE this book too:

Once you've read the Thrawn Trilogy, well Zahn also wrote the Hand of Thrawn Duology, ("Specter of the Past" and "Vision of the Future") which deals heavily in politics (the first one) and human relationships (the second) Zahn-style.
After that you have the New Jedi Order Series, by various authors, but I'd just recommend "Vector Prime" by R.A. Salvatore, and "Traitor" by Matthew Stover.
Just for traveling light on summer evenings.

so yesterday i got a bunch of books from the library or was it wednesday?

anyway i started reading "gobalhead" by bruce sterling. i just read 1 short story, "our neural chernobyl", and it was great, because he pulls a borges-- i mean instead of telling a long long story he simply reviews an imaginary book where that story is told.

brilliant, and of course it's been done in science fiction since the days of the "encyclopaedia galactica", but it's a really nice short story.

i am not fond of star trek or star wars books & stuff like that though.