h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

by Samuel Delany. A post-apocalytic romp through a ruined city that pre-dates Gibson and his cyberpunks. A nice gritty edge with lots of well delineated characters and interesting gadgets. Delany makes it real enough that I couldn't put it down for a whole night and wanted to start it again as soon as I could.

And almost everything by Vonnegut, Spider Robinson, and especially Oliver W. Sacks. His *Anthropologist on Mars* is an amazing collection of *odd* psychological problems and how they are dealt with. You may remember the film *Awakenings* which was based on another of his books.

Sounds interesting. I will check it out.

What do you think of William Gibson? I read his latest "Pattern Recognition". Some of the ideas were nice, although I though not new-new. But put together well, and actually worked to a story, rather than the story being just made up of ideas.

If you know what I mean.

Sorry, not feeling very coherant at the moment......

Just off to work so I will have to be brief.

I very much like Gibson (he lives across town) but I agree, his earlier stories seem to be more story and character driven. Pattern Recognition is not his best, at least that's what I think for what it is worth.

I'm a terrible *homer* when it comes to authors I realise, since Spider Robinson lives here as well and Sacks visits all the time.