Grok This: Forget The Business Books, Go Sci-Fi To Stoke Your Imagination

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/05/grok-this-forget-the-business-books-go-sci-fi-to-stoke-your-imagination/

by blackswan • 17 years ago

42 47 17 years ago

andymoe2• 17 years ago

I would have to add "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin.

shaunxcode• 17 years ago

The Dispossessed (same author/universe) always gets my juices flowing when I start considering developing software for managing vastly complex systems (i.e. society). I especially enjoy how she confronts the issues, blatant and subtle, which would arise from such systems.

clay• 17 years ago

Usually saying "that list was missing X" type stuff is pretty silly, but with a title like that, that list seriously needs some Verner Vinge.

andymoe2• 17 years ago

I agree and I held out as long as possible, but I am weak...

jlees2• 17 years ago

Well, since others are doing it: William Gibson.

juliend2• 17 years ago

which one of his books do you particularly recommend?

diN0bot• 17 years ago

in particular, a deepness in the sky and a fire in the deep are excellent.

donaq• 17 years ago

Yes they were. And since we're dealing with post-singularity stories, I'll add Simon Funk's novella, "After Life".

http://sifter.org/~simon/AfterLife/index.html

swombat3• 17 years ago

There are countless books that could go on this list, but you have to start somewhere. This is a good place to start. The books on this list are all worth reading, though I'm sorry to say that I found that the Foundation Trilogy had aged really badly :-( I'm glad I read it 3 times as a child, because I doubt I'll be reading it again...

I'd add a couple of modern authors to the list. Vernor Vinge has been mentioned. Another interesting one is Charles Stross (I recently came out of reading Accelerando... full of interesting ideas). I found Paulo Di Filippo's short stories generally great too.

Ultimately, you have to make your own list, from your own personal tastes and journeys. This is definitely a good starting point, though (at least as far as Science Fiction is concerned).

biotech• 17 years ago

I'm curious why you think the Foundation Trilogy aged badly? I recently re-read Foundation; it's still one of my favorites. It takes a completely unique perspective on the future of human civilization.

swombat3• 17 years ago

Well, it was my impression. It seemed to me that the language and concepts seemed really old, in a way that furiously contradicted its sci-fi nature... When I read Dickens, for example, I don't get a feeling that its thinking is old-fashioned. Although written centuries ago, the thoughts are still fresh and powerful.

When I last re-read parts of the Foundation series (I didn't get through the whole of it), there were so many things there which seemed... passé. Part of it was the language, and part of it was, I guess, the technology.

I think this is the curse of science fiction. Because it gambles on predicting the future, and predicting the future is so damn hard, it invariably diverges from the real future more and more as time passes. And the more it diverges, the more the science seems pointless and outdated.

I shudder to think how "hard sf" novels like "Red Mars" will read in 30 years, when another bunch of major technological revolutions will have come to pass...

kwamenum86• 17 years ago

Philip K. Dick has some great SciFi works as well. Any of his short story compilations are great reads.

ccarpenterg2• 17 years ago

Recently I've been playing some games on PlayStation and Wii to help myself brainstorming ideas for my ui. It's a source for inspiration especially for visualization.

utku_karatas• 17 years ago

Finally an acceptable excuse for some extensive procrastination! Thank you ;)

ccarpenterg2• 17 years ago

Unfortunately I can't say the same about my nicotine addiction! ;)

mcu4• 17 years ago

I had this thought a few months ago. I decided to read every Nebula / Hugo winner. I would also add, listening to good comedy albums and playing board / video games often.

I worked at a company where the President loved, Loved, LOVED pop business books. He hopped on every trend, told Seth Godin's stories as if they were his own (has a purple cow w\ the company logo, etc), and even tried to create a style of management based on Survivor.

When "seeking" knowledge he looked away from rigorous research and observation to the Amazon top lists.

I've never seen unhappier employees.

amichail2• 17 years ago

Do you really need to read entire sci-fi novels to extract whatever cool ideas they may have? In terms of getting ideas for startups, 99% of a novel is probably irrelevant and it might be better to have a resource that just gives you the 1% that matters.

mcu4• 17 years ago

You, my friend, have completely missed the point.

Any given idea in sci-fi (are they going to make us refer to it as syfy now?) may or may not be particularly useful in and of itself. Most ideas is sci-fi are completely impractical anyway, so why fret about it?

Art / literature / music / what have you are not resources that can be mined. You can't freebase Heinlein (though I like the thought) or take a bump of Ernst.

Follow your interests, experience works as a whole, and don't expect to be changed.

I would argue that the difference between sci-fi and pop business is that few people truly enjoy business books (not to mention the fact that most business books have a shelf-life of 12 minutes.)

They read them because they believe that they will put them on the path to, well, I don't know what. True there's wisdom to be had out there, but, you usually can't buy it for $19.99+S/H, regardless of genre.

You can read "Time Enough For Love" or just the "Notebooks of Lazarus Long."

You can drink wine with your friends or dash your brains out with 190-proof Everclear.

The value is in the experience, not the proof.

1) Live life.

2) Don't be a douche.

3) Stop thinking about money.

4) Be genuinely interested in what you do.

5) Profit.

holygoat• 17 years ago

Context is important.

aaronasterling• 17 years ago

that sounds like that show "the office" gone wrong. i'd hang myself

mcu4• 17 years ago

...which was a favorite among the management...

Eliezer• 17 years ago

Peter F. Hamilton. Marc Stiegler. Vernor Vinge obviously, who is he even kidding?

azharcs• 17 years ago

I really think "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card should have been on that list of Sci-Fi Books.

sofal• 17 years ago

"Ender's Game" is like the Harry Potter of the sci-fi genre. It's good adolescent reading, but I prefer more sophisticated science fiction; like Vernor Vinge, for instance.

jgilliam• 17 years ago

Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" was very influential with me.

http://craphound.com/down/download.php

rms• 17 years ago

Props to Doctorow's Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom.

The other freely available (this one under copyright) great post-singularity work of sci-fi is The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/mopiidx.html

BobbyH• 17 years ago

I love sci-fi, but rather than recommend "sci-fi" books, I would recommend "speculative fiction" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction), which is "a fiction genre speculating about worlds that are unlike the real world in various important ways".

Good sci-fi is speculative fiction, but bad sci-fi is just "a story told in a sci-fi setting".

This is a good way of distinguishing between Dune by Frank Herbert (which speculates about many things, including the kind of universe that exists after a computer AI suppresses the human race and is then overthrown) and Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, which is a crap book that speculates about very little in a sci-fi setting.

If you think about it, starting a company that makes a new product is basically speculating about a world that is unlike our current world because of your product! Also, you should be speculating about how other technologies and products will affect our world, so you can adapt your company before it becomes extinct...

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

here is a reasonable list for someone who actually reads a lot of books. this is a list weighted by voting, critical reception, and awards http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_books...

endtime2• 17 years ago

I've read about half that list, and half of what remains is on my list. But it's a pity Charles Stross's Accelerando isn't on there. You can read it online for free here: http://www.accelerando.org/book/.

jodrellblank• 17 years ago

Don't, though, it will just make you miserable.

(Do, but be prepared for a very dystopian and worryingly likely feeling future)

dejb• 17 years ago

Miserable? It had the opposition effect on me. I found it inspiring. What a fantastic future if we can develop that sort of technology. Of course a novel has to have a few things go wrong to make a compelling story but I don't see them as being inherent in the possibilities being presented.

sho• 17 years ago

I would like to register my strongest possible endorsement of the article's mention of Iain M. Bank's Culture series. Since discovering them a few years ago, I have basically been obsessed with them, to the point of sort-of beginning to believe that the greatest possible mission in life is to work towards bringing about the soonest possible advent of a Culture-type society, any enabling technology, any small step.

trefn• 17 years ago

I am especially fond of near-future scifi. Reading Stross, Stephenson, and Vinge always leaves me with a feeling of wonder - their novels are brimming with technological & sociological insight.

Often a novel is a thought experiment. If you read Vernor Vinge's _Rainbows End_, you will find a plausible and well thought out speculation on wearable computing. This is the kind of thinking we have to do in a startup - we take the current state of things and extrapolate.

c00p3r• 17 years ago

Anime (as an art) is a delicious food for imagination.

And in general, an art of faraway countries, even movies and translated books is a very big deal.

sketerpot• 17 years ago

I'd like to recommend "Startide Rising" and "The Uplift War", by David Brin. Aside from being very enjoyable books, they're a big source of new ideas -- these books singlehandedly made me appreciate the goals of the Internet Archive.

Also, I've never understood the popularity of "Stranger in a Strange Land". I've always been a big Heinlein fan, but Stranger in a Strange Land always struck me as a book that was important and shocking and ground-breaking once upon a time.

DannoHung2• 17 years ago

The only problem is that after you read enough of them, you're spoiled on ideas. Oh, a culture where money is irrelevant and people can have backups of their brain and do completely stupid things without risk? How trite.

I am, literally, at the point where I don't even get a rise out of any book unless it's humorous. And Douglas Adams is dead.

njharman2• 17 years ago

Does anyone else hate Stranger in a Strange Land, and Robert Heinlein in general?

I find that whole era/style of sci-fi silly, dated, and Heinlein in particular to be a chauvinist pig. These writers, many of them (wannabe)scientists, believed in and wrote about scientist super men. Lone men(always men) of bulky IQ and suave manners. Who save the world/universe/multiverse/timeline/whatever and get a girl as reward in the end.

Basically whatever would appeal(read sell books) to pubescent teenage nerds and adults who never grew out of that phase.

Grok This: Forget The Business Books, Go Sci-Fi To Stoke Your Imagination

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