I bought this book to last me a few days traveling in Laos. Instead I finished it in my hotel room that night. It's so clearly imagined, you can see everything happening. There is no need for a movie, though it's probably inevitable that there will be one. Garland masterfully exposes the strangeness of small things: a scratched and disconnected telephone is good for a few pages, a blocked peephole in a hotel door a few more. And every character is a believable human being with a fascinating past, from the bit players right up to the gang boss. It might have helped that I read it in a hotel almost as spooky as the one in which the book begins. Even more a page turner than The Beach, Garland's first novel, and also more fulfilling intellectually..

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

Joe Haldeman

Joe Haldeman

Gwynne Dyer

The book was written at the end of the Cold War. I'd love a chapter on the current situation. We have only one dominant nation -- that's happened many times -- but it's in an age when total war is understood to be unwinnable, which has never happened before.

Pierre Berton

Bernard Lewis

Pierre Berton

If ever a Canadian history book could be properly described as searing, this is the one. It gives a new perspective on our notion of ourselves as a compassionate, caring nation. Berton argues those values were born in the depression. There was a time when they did not exist, and it was awful.

Farley Mowat

Also, considering the scale of destruction that went on in those times, it's easy to think that people in those days had some more flippant attitude towards death. Letters from the parents, particularly from the mother, reveal overwhelming fear and foreboding. If anything, it was greater then, since we have somehow come to expect our wars to be free of death, at least on our side. 

John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton

Visit the book's site

Dean Ing

Eric Berne, MD

William Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

It's too bad that everybody already knows the surprise ending of this book before they read it, probably from as far back as watching Bugs Bunny cartoons in their childhood. The book does not give away the secret until the end and then it all becomes clear, a Victorian Sixth Sense. But even when you know how it's going to end, it's still pretty cool. It is a product of its time in vocabulary and grammar, yet it's only 90 pages long, and for a Victorian story with the ending blown, it's still quite a page turner. Open letter to authors: somebody should write a story about an anti-Hyde.

Eric Idle

There are these two stand-up comedians, and they have this robot, and the robot watches them and tries to understand why people laugh, what the purpose of it is. The book's not quite as funny as it thinks it is, but the characters are interesting, and there are a few insights into what good laughter is to the human race. The final revelation about comedy is anticlimactic and the surrounding interplanetary subterfuge plot is kind of garbled. The physics are total fantasy -- for example, a space dome cracks, and implodes, from the pressure of outer space. Or a ship flies through the asteroid belt with a one in five chance of hitting an asteroid. Actually your chances would be a fraction of a percent of even seeing an asteroid. But you don't go to a Monty Python founder for hard science. Worth reading, anyway, and it taught me my favourite joke.

Dave Barry

Low expectations, exceeded swimmingly. Of course it's all escapist and funny, and written in a style not too far removed from Barry's newspaper columns and humour books. I wasn't sure how this style would translate into a novel, but it turns out to work pretty damn well. I laughed out loud all the way through it. Never mind about the plot, it's your standard zany caper type of thing, but the execution is masterful. You hate all the people you're supposed to hate, root for the ones you're supposed to root for, turn pages like shuffling cards and finish the book laughing in a matter of hours. It also has a damning indictment of ridiculous airport security that is so funny and so perfect that I am gritting my teeth in an effort not to give it away right now.

Arthur C. Clarke

The orbital tower is an old idea in SF, but I think this may be its first appearance. I read a newspaper article just a few months ago by some guy who says he could build one of these with current technology for about 50 billion US -- a 36,000 km rope anchored to a big rock out a bit past geosynchronous orbit. With it you could get to space without rockets, you just climb. That's the concept, and this book has characters and a background to back it up -- for example, the locale needed for the tower's construction is loosely based on the history of Sri Lanka, and I now want to visit Sri Lanka because of the monuments and stories I might find there.

Isaac Asimov

My comments for this book, about a runaway interstellar colony on a crash course with Earth, could also hold true for Nightfall, one of Asimov's most famous works and the only other book of his I clearly remember reading. Both books have a neat central idea about humans living in an interesting place. But I want good characters and a plausible plot, too, and on this they let me down. Everybody talks with the same expansive vocabulary and with the same rational, measured style of winning arguments, just like you'd imagine Asimov himself talking. You can't help picturing all the characters with horn-rimmed glasses and big bushy sideburns, be they scientists, religious zealots, beautiful women, or small children.

Robin Cook

Cook is a prolific, bestselling writer and this is the first of his books I've read. I was hoping I'd have a new resource to mine for a while, but what a stinker. If I hadn't been captive on a bus I never would have finished it. The characters are thin, the plot is just Heinlein's puppet masters with a bit of virusy stuff thrown in. This is piss-poor science fiction that barely qualifies for the word -- the only lip service to any kind of scientific rationale for anything comes from the token egg-headed experts, who don't even get to finish their theories before the computer whiz-kid or the off-duty detective says something like, "Well, that's pretty heavy stuff for me. How do we kill it?" Also, look forward to some cliche torture - flat as a pancake, I know this city like the back of my hand, etc. Cook, you're getting paid to think up this stuff?

That guy who wrote The Hot Zone

The Hot Zone, a study of the life and times of contagious viruses, is among the scariest non-fiction books out there. The Cobra Event is about similar subject matter, but in fiction, with the virus in the hands of a deranged killer. It loses a lot of impact in the process, becoming a bit more of a standard escapist thriller kind of book, but there is still enough science in there to make a person think while he's reading.

Robert Sawyer

Robert Sawyer

Charles Pellegrino

Same author as "Dust," one of my all-time SF favourites. This one is about humanity's first interstellar trip, and first contact with aliens. The interactions between the humans and aliens revolve around the idea that any civilization capable of interstellar travel at relativistic speeds is also capable of destroying all life on any planet it chooses, and that there is no possible defense from such an attack. Like Dust, this book relies on technology that is at least on the drawing board somewhere, if not in actual existence. Again there is a chapter at the end saying which parts are real and which aren't, they're like Pellegrino's equivalent of Jackie Chan's outtakes in the credits, and again you will be surprised at which parts are real or at least plausible. The characters and plot in this story don't quite stack up to the brilliance of the ideas, but they're still good enough so to avoid distracting you from a long list of incredible concepts.

JRR Tolkein

James Powlick

An icebreaker studying whales in the Arctic ocean stumbles into a zone of lethal radioactivity, and sets sail to discover and destroy the source before the irradiated water destroys the Eastern seaboard, or perhaps sets off a new ice age. Cool story, great setting, some interesting science here and there. Excellent portrayal of an Inuit hunter on the ice pack, clinging to the old ways as his culture disappears around him.

Caleb Carr

Hal Moore

I was hoping for more from this book, the introduction was so personal. Hal Moore was a Lieutenant Colonel in the 1965 battle of Ia Drang, a horrible fight that began the Vietnam War in earnest. I expected this first-person perspective to help it rise above war histories like Pierre Berton's and Jack Granetstien's accounts of the battle of Vimy Ridge. Those are both terrifying, excellent books, but neither of them managed to make their subjects very personal, to go much beyond a whole lot of strangers getting killed. Unfortunately, other than the introduction and the "What became of so and so" notes at the end, this book becomes exactly that. Worth reading because it does give you a window into what combat must be like, though it fails to create a lot of interest in the players in that combat. The only war histories I've read that escape this feeling to any degree are The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Enemy at the Gates, I'd reach for either of those before this one, or those two Vimy books if you're Canadian. There was another one about the two battles of Ypres that was terrific, but I forget the title and the author's name, just that it was a pretty dorky name.

Bruce Sterling

I don't dig cyberpunk. Give me rocket ships and aliens over computer geeks any day. And I'm tired of novels plausibly predicting the end of the world. It's giving me the blues. That said, not a bad book. These desert rats predict an "F6", a stable, world-destroying, massive tornado akin to Jupiter's Red Spot. They use various clever military-surplus technology to chase smaller funnels and predict where and when the big one will hit. The main character is especially interesting, because he's so unexceptional -- not very smart, not very attractive, not even really energetic or curious. Actually he'd be a drag in real life but as the main character in a novel, it's kind of fun to see him get swept up in all this and not really care.

Brendan DuBois

Alternate histories get no respect, maybe because they're such an obvious concept to write a book about. But execution is everything, and in this, Resurrection Day is a fine piece of work. The book is set ten years after the Cuban Missile Crisis became a war between Russia and the US. Russia is radioactive slag, the US is crippled, starving, under the heel of a military dictatorship, and dependant on foreign aid from a revitalized British Empire. In this setting, a rebellious Boston newspaper reporter investigating a routine murder uncovers secrets about the missile crisis that could destroy the government, and also finds clues about some kind of dastardly English plot involving massive troop movements and special forces deployments in Canada. It's all actually made plausible, and the notion of Canada and England invading and destroying the US (again) is pretty fun to read. Comparisons to Fatherland are inevitable. For all the reasons I liked Fatherland, I like this book too, and this book also has better characterizations and a more interesting plot.

John O'Farrell

The narrator is a regular guy with an unimpressive job and two normal kids, he procrastinates and does jobs half-assedly and tells half-truths, just like a regular human being. He keeps a bachelor pad, complete with weird room-mates, a secret from his wife, and it's his pressure relief valve for domestic pressures, he feels it makes him a good father. This is kind of light-comedy reading, you can almost feel yourself casting the likes of Sandra Bullock and Matt Perry into it as you go. But it's not entirely candy. Between the chuckles it also has some insights about my worst fears and greatest hopes regarding marriage and parenthood. This is one of the few books I've ever literally picked up, read through, and finished on the spot without a break, and it wasn't because I didn't have anything else to do.

Iain Banks

This is the only book I've ever seen that carries critic's reviews on the opening pages urging people NOT to read it. Disgusting, repugnant, gut-wrenching, blood-soaked Gothic horror, they say -- but exceptionally well-written. It's actually not half as bloody as a real horror novel. There's nothing supernatural going on, and the violence, though disturbing, is not gratuitous. It's an interesting book because it's told first-person from the perspective of a totally warped boy, bent on murders and cruelty to animals. His motivations, though, are specific and consistent, though superstitious, and when you put the book down after you finish, you may realize only then that you were right in step with him the whole time. I liked it, and was surprised to find that I liked it. A memorable book, one way or the other.

Iain M. Banks

This is the same guy who wrote The Wasp Factory, he just adds the M. for science fiction titles. You'd never know it, the books are as different as two books can be. This is set 20,000 years in the future. Humanity has become part of a multi-race, interplanetary civilization called the Culture, in which sentient ships nearly a hundred kilometers long make all the decisions and do all the work. The crews are just there for the ride. Large parts of the story are told as dialogue between ships' computers. It's not exactly hard SF, because the ships' capabilities are unexplained and basically limitless, rather than having stark limitations that define the plot, a la most Niven stories. But it is an interesting universe. The plot is a bit of an afterthought, something has to happen or you couldn't have a book, but it's worth the read just to see what life in the Culture is like.

Lance Armstrong

Armstrong was a world-champion road bike guy, and then in 1996 he got cancer of the testicle, spreading to his lungs and brain. He wasted away to nothing, almost died -- then recovered, won the Tour de France, and wrote this book. Then he won it again and published the book with another chapter. Since then, he won it again, so maybe its due for another chapter. He's got a right to be a bit full of himself at times. I was worried he would sink into a bunch of blather about how he was strong and never gave up, and that's why he's alive today. Fortunately, he stopped at the part about being strong and not giving up, in the full realization that drugs and doctors beat cancer, not patients. It's exactly that arrangement, an angry, self-reliant man in a helpless situation, that makes Armstrong into a new man and makes the book worth reading.

James Lovell

Lost Moon (later titled Apollo 13 after the success of the movie) is about the mission where they had to turn back and improvise ways to get enough battery power, oxygen, etc. I would have preferred a little more immediacy and immersion. I can't believe the three astronauts were really so detached and cool the whole time. But the book is a lesson in how improbable the whole moon program was. It's really amazing that they got there at all, let alone seven times, plus however many flights the Russians made. Frustrating that no one has been back -- think about this, if you're younger than 30, nobody has been to the moon in your lifetime, you are as far removed from that accomplishment as was a person living in 1939. Especially frustrating read in conjunction with Paul Baxter's "Titan," which I'm getting to.

Paul Baxter

This is the second Baxter book I read, and once again, the Earth takes a pasting. I picked up another one in the shop the other day to see if he could refrain from destroying the world again, and he couldn't. Anyway, it's a great book. In the near future, space travel becomes frivolous and irrelevant in the eyes of most people. A band of rebels rally the remnants of a crumbling space program for a one-way, last-ditch mission to colonize Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. They use the entire shuttle fleet, unused habitation modules from the International Space Station, and even old Saturn 5 boosters, lunar landers and command modules from the Apollo project. Other than their Titan suits and a few kitchen widgets here and there, they don't use anything that hasn't been invented yet -- much of it, in fact, invented and then mothballed. A depressing but thought-provoking book. It makes you wonder about how much we aren't accomplishing that we could.

Carl Sagan

Pierre Burton

M. Scott Peck

Alex Garland

Tom Clancy

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

William Craig

John Steinbeck

Carl Sagan

some fool

Barbara Underwood (?)

Stephen King

John Krakauer

John Krakauer

Sebastian Unger

Haruki Murakami

Charles Pellegrino

Larry Niven, Steven Barnes, Jerry Pournelle

Arthur C. Clarke and one other guy

Robert Mason Lee

Rudy Weibe

Jack Granatstien

Will Ferguson

Larry Niven

Joe Haldeman

Michael D. Lemonick

Paul Davies

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan

Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond

Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan

The Dark Night Returns

Frank Miller

Measuring Intelligence

Stephen Jay Gould

Kurt Vonnegut

Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

John Steinbeck

Stephen King

Robert Harris

Michael Chricton

Chris Bohjalian

Simon Winchester