Discussing/recommending Sci/Fi or Horror Books

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Linus

Wililam Gibson's stuff, particularly the Sprawl Trilogy, has definitely got interest for me. I'll check into the other ones as well. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle?

The Difference Engine is another on my lists as well. Like Angie, I'm interested in Terry Pratchett but don't know where to start and hate starting mid-way through a series.

Here's my Wrinkle in Time story because it was the first time I thought about being a writer. I'm blind in one of my eyes and have never had good vision in it. At one point, I had to have a sty removed from my good eye and I was most of the way through A Wrinkle in Time. When my mom brought me home after the surgery, I was trying to read the book with my bad eye (I could still focus it enough at that time to be able to make out words) because I just wanted to finish it. I was also beat, pretty much daily, by my mother who could be upset if she called for me and I was not moving *immediately* after I heard my name. So there I am, lying on the couch, barely able to make out the words and with all of that I was so transported away that I did not hear my mother's voice until she was literally, right on top of me with her hand swinging. That night I realized that in books there was *magic* and that writers were magicians of the first rank. Anything that could take me out of my suburban home and make me tune out the one sound in my life that I was hyper-aware of because to not be was to invite immediate and certain pain, was a magic I wanted to learn how to do.

As to Pratchett, the beautiful thing is that each book really stands on its own. It's not as if you *have* to read them in the order I gave to Medusa but you see the evolution of Sam Vimes from drunken commander of the Night Watch to the second most powerful man in the city of Ankh-Morpork over the course of the City Watch books. But you can jump in at any point and you will immediately know what is going on.

Cheers
Aj