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

Yes, I have read "Zen and the Art...". I quite enjoyed it; the author? goes on a quest with his teenage son, on an older motorcycle, and ... well, you'd just have to read it. Hard to explain, sort of a philsophical monologue...? Good, though.

SC

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, which is unusual mostly because I know quite a few people who started reading it. None of them finished. Me, I got through about a quarter of it before I put it away one evening and forgot to pick it up again next day...

Y.

Clifford Pickover writes some unusual books. 'Surfing Through Hyperspace' and 'Time: A Traveller's Guide', for example, follow a most unusual format. The books attempt to give you lessons on hyperspace and time travel respectively. The first part of each chapter continues a sci-fi story written in the second person, so that you find that _you_, the reader, are actually giving the lessons. The second part of each chapter explains 'the science behind the science-fiction'.

Fascinating intertextuality too. 'Calculus and Pizza', for example, combines a book about calculus with pizza. I haven't read it yet but I'd be interested to know how it is possible to put two seemingly unconnected subjects in the same book.

I recommend the Neoreality series too. 'Liquid Earth' is set far in the future where everyone is obsessed with gibbons, but the main concept is that reality gets weirder and weirder as the story progresses.

See http://www.pickover.com.

I read a couple of Pickover's books - very amusing!

I read both Zen & the art... and the follow-up (about 20 years later), Lila, by Robert Pirsig. Both are tough going, but they do present a philosophical journey and are worth the effort (IMHO)...although I'm not rushing to re-read them!

And that Banks fella, eh?...why can't he write in a straight line? Another example is Walking On Glass, which is set on Earth, and elsewhere, with three interwoven stories. Also, The Bridge, which follows three different strands for one person.

RF

I love Iain Banks... Walking on Glass is fab

Must try and get hold of a copy of Zen &....

Oh, he can right in a straight line. But even then he's a bit odd. Take Excession for example. The plot is pretty much linear, but he freely admits that it was inspired by playing Civilization. But you'd have to know that in order to spot how.


Geggs