It wasn't a book, it was a cartoonstrip of Francois Bourgeron, six beautifull drawn
artworks called "The Children Of The Wind"
He received a price for it, as being the best drawn artbook of the year 1998.
It was a very strange reckognizing "The Ebony
Fortress" as being a real slave forth.
In this book I found the map for the boat I tried to build in Quake.
But reading books, Poe made me feel as falling in my own imagination, as for 2001 and 1984.
There is a kind of reminesance with the work of
Cortazar's "Rayuelah" and the episodical thing in Computergames.He made lots of ScienceFiction what seems as so, but in his own land Argentinia maybe wasn't so fiction. 

Sorry, can't help it. When arives
"The Totally Manual for Quake1 Making" 

UOW [especially] and AGADB are the books i connected with the characters the most, out of his SF stuff. They seem the most "emotional" and "human", to me.

UOW is a masterpiece, its one of those science-fiction works that "transcends its genre" [sounds like marketing blurb on the back cover!], to simply stand as a superb book in any terms. 

UOW - bored me.

Dan Simmons - Hyperion series promised much and only delivered tedious over-poetic bollocks.

Altered Carbon - I looked at many times but ultra-trendy cyber-sf is all style and no substance.

Clive Barker - was great esp. Weaveworld....but just got too arty and plain GAY.

David Eddings - is good basic lite fantasy for kids and teenagers but it definitely lacks bite. Unfortunately his books all repeat pretty much the same theme and characters. 

although im yet to read his stuff... i didnt know he was gay until he appeared on real time with bill maher.

i havent read any douglas adams yet (although i did by hitchikers guide, its planned summer reading) but i have read Starship Titanic, a book he cowrote with... gah, i forget his name, he was in monty python, but it was hilarious and very enjoyable. 

That was the feller, I believe. Though why he insisted on writing it in the nude escapes me. 

I decided to read it when I heard about the success of the movie. The LOTR trilogy is a great story, a real masterpiece of fantasy genre. Maybe it's a bit like a tale but it's all the way great stuff IMO.
Haven't read other Tolkien's books yet but I think I'll do it.

And after reading the book this movie seemed too shortened and less athmospheric to me.

Does anyone else like Tolkien's books and can recommend me something else to read in a such style? 

Crap i have 18 david eddings books... both belgarath series (5 books each), then the two side-books told from the wizard's perspectives (Belgarath and Polgara), then both parts of the Diamond Throne series (3 books each). I read all of them and enjoyed them back in my middle school days, but I doubt I'd get much out of them now.

A few years ago I was majorly into Isaac Asimov... the Foundation series of books is great, still amazing after 50 years. Read the original trilogy first, then get the newer additions (Prelude to Foundation, Foward the Foundation, Foundation's Edge, & Foundation and Earth). I think Forward the foundation was the last one wrote, but one of the best.

There's also Asimov's robot-themed short stories, of which there are several collections. Interesting and thought-provoking, but they don't have the same epic scale.

Neil Stephenson is great too, definitely some of the best cyberpunk since Gibson. Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon: I recommend them all (and apparently he has a new book coming out at some point too).

Oh and Robert Heinlein... I read Starship Troopers a few years back, another classic; don't be turned off if you've only seen the movie, the book is nothing like it. I have Stranger in a Strange Land too... so many good books, so little time. ;)

Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game. Great book. Seems most people read this when they were younger but I never got around to it until just this year. I'm not sure if I wanna read the sequels though, seems it might spoil it a bit.

And of course there is JRR Tolkien... I enjoy the more esoteric material (Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc) as much as his main 4 books. Though I think I'm gonna have to re-read the trilogy sometime soon, the movies just haven't sat well with me. Tolkien's writing is just way too intricate and personal to me for any movie adaptation to be sufficient. Sure, they did a great job... but why must every great piece of literature be transcribed into digestable movie form? Why not just... read the real thing, for fuck's sake.

Sorry... rant over.

Lastly, my to-read list... James Clavell - Shogun, and then some anarchist philosophy if I can find the time... Hakim Bey or Noam Chomsky or somebody like that. 

the sequels are okay, but don't approach the first book's goodness. 

The Crow
It's in print again.
Get it. 

did you ever read the cross over novel between Asimov's Robot and Foundation sagas? 

Just read some Philip Dick for the first time. Very nice! It's true oldskool sci-fi indeed. 

Possibly... I've only read the first book of the Robot trilogy proper, which i don't think made that connection. Though I do recall some robots in Prelude to Foundation.... or is there another book you speak of? 

When I'm king, everyone will be made to read PKD. If you're at all into sci-fi, grab any of his middle-period books (1962 - 1974), or one of the last two volumes of short stories.

There isn't a single one of those books that I haven't enjoyed, and most are among the best I've ever read. 'Faith of our Fathers' is definitely the best (and scariest) short story I've seen. Go on. http://amazon.com . Shoo.

Finished lately:

* Ursula K Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness

Interesting Dune-y examination-of-an-alien-culture type book. Slow and serious, but strong writing and very thought-provoking (if you don't mind thinking about hermaphrodites, anyway).

* Albert Camus - The Outsider

Most of it goes over my head, but still a good read. Would probably be called 'intense'. Read it on the beach. 

Read it on the beach.

Yeah, that would be like reading Tolkien in the woods. Or Poe in a graveyard. 

u are teh rok

i'm gonna seek for more PKD books fo sure after i just finished reading some of his stuff. this author deserves closer attention indeed.

when you're king i hope to be your main minister ;) 

for world domination 

I'm trying, I'm trying! 

Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
Strange novell about an astronaut, who's wife has died, when he went into space.
The planet Solaris has a strange, psygological influence on its "costumors"
Then the astronaut starts to hallucinate that his wife is still alive on the ship.
Have read it some decinea ago, but remembered it again, when I was loneley for a time.

Now they are making a movie from it, and in some time, just as LOR, will become famous.
(Am I wrong, when I thought that Tolkien was asked to give his LOR as plan for Quake1? The "sigil" sure looks as its elfen writing." 

Now, remember I suffer from this wierd allergy to anything heavily hyped. I avoid it, even if it's good (as Borsato could attest, concerning Fight Club.)

Anyway, I actually liked Stephen King's From a Buick 8 more than Whitley "Aliens Like Me Too Much" Strieber's The Forbidden Zone. For one thing, the Object is never explained; you see what it looks like, you know where the Object is, you're shown what the Object does, but never why. Not even to the industry standard outsider (Ned.) 

Michael Moorcock is his only begotten son. 

just that they made a hollywood version recently 

Gene Wolfe, The Death of Doctor Island, and Other Stories
Samual Delany, Nova
Hermann Hesse, Demian
L. Neil Smith, The Probabilaty Broach
Richard Farina, Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
Thomas Disch, Camp Concentration,
Jorge Borges and Theodore Sturgeon for their short stories

Above derived from just looking around my study at the books that were memorable reads. I have read a lot of fantasy, but other than Zelazny, not much of it has sticken me as being memorable. Serious lit wise, I pick up Don Dillilo, Thomas Pynchon and J G Ballard works to read on occasion; though they have their moments their fiction is wildly uneven. That is the most basic problem with non-commercial literary works in general, no sense of pacing.

I should also add Joseph Conrad's Nostromo to my list of favorites. 

Gene Wolfe, The Death of Doctor Island, and Other Stories
Samual Delany, Nova
Hermann Hesse, Demian
L. Neil Smith, The Probabilaty Broach
Richard Farina, Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
Thomas Disch, Camp Concentration,
Jorge Borges and Theodore Sturgeon for their short stories

Above derived from just looking around my study at the books that were memorable reads. I have read a lot of fantasy, but other than Zelazny, not much of it has sticken me as being memorable. Serious lit wise, I pick up Don Dillilo, Thomas Pynchon and J G Ballard works to read on occasion; though they have their moments their fiction is wildly uneven. That is the most basic problem with non-commercial literary works in general, no sense of pacing.

I should also add Joseph Conrad's Nostromo to my list of favorites. 

Electric Jesus Corpse by Carlton Mellick III and The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte and Dochists, by unknown. :(