[ale]

hello

i'm currently participating in a reading group about the "information age".

we will have a break for the summer and we decided, to look for a novel, we will discussing after the "holidays".

the idea was to look for a sf book with some good social/cultural content.

we all thought (and mostly have read) of1984 (from 1949), fahrenheit 451 (1954) and brave new world (1932). well, we would like something which has been written in the last ten years!

do you have a recommendation for us?

thank you && have a nice evening!
alessandro

[Pellinore]

Nancy Kress' Probability Trilogy (Probability Moon, Probability Sun, and Probability Space) features a very unique culture which shares the same outlook on everything (not a shared consciousness). It has some very unique social/cultural ideas- particularly about intercultural interactions. It does however border on hard SF in that it contains some fairly unique scientific conjecture. If that doesn't deter you, that could fit the bill fairly nicely (Probability Moon was published in 2000).

[bio]

Books of Neal Stephenson : Snow Crash, Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and other autors like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling. One of newest novels worth of reading in this theme is also Rainbows End of Vernor Vinge.

[ale]

ok!

thanks for your suggestions!

i will look at those book and -- i hope -- propose one of them to the group!

have a nice day
a.l.e

[Hobbit]

One more, ale: how about Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End? Published 2006, Hugo Award winner...

Chapter 1 & 2 HERE. (http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780812536362#Excerpt)

Mark / Hobbit

[Raule]

Karl Schroeder's Lady of Mazes would be a good one for this. It explores how AI/technology will transform human culture (and he actually creates quite a few different societies to compare in this one).

[phil_geo]

Here's a quote from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash that I always liked. The social commentary is pretty palpable.

"All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be" (p. 293). - Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

[Fung Koo]

Atwood's Oryx and Crake would tie in perfectly with the books you've already discussed. It's a dystopia as well, and it is directly related to all three novels mentioned in terms of scientific and thematic content. It is directly relevant to contemporary social concerns, with more than a few quite direct social comments. It has similar biblical imagery. The book is structurally and thematically concerned with the flow of information....

I'm pretty sure it's the exact book you're looking for. :D

[psikeyhackr]

I've read Snow Crash and Neuromancer. Interestingly Neuromancer was written on a typewriter and Gibson admitted he didn't know anything about computers at the time.

One I would suggest is on-line but it might be hard to find in paper.

http://vx.netlux.org/lib/mtr00.html

Another I found interesting is

http://www.webscription.net/p-439-the-two-faces-of-tomorrow.aspx

So you can contemplate the effect of technology on society while you download the books using the technology that is affecting society.

psik

[ale]

voilą,

it's summer and we have choosed a book...

we went for "down and out in the magic kingdom" from cory doctorow.

i have to admit, that his decision to put his book under a creative commons license played a role in our choice.


i've started reading the first pages and my feeling are a bit mixed... well i hope it will get better!

thank you for your help and have a nice summer!
alessandro