Discussing our future with the deer in the back yard

Tomorrow I fly to California to discuss the all-important issue of how to chart a constructive future for information technology, even as we know we are at a crossroads right now which could determine the fate of humans forever. Not so easy to see a positive way forward under such tricky conditions... but we will see how the 5 new slides go (and the brief review of paradigms for AI and human organization).

At Quaker meeting this morning, as I meditated on this... only one person spoke, at the very end, about the flowers finally coming out and real spring emerging... and I quietly remembered
a recent conversation with the deer in our backyard who really wanted to eat all the beautiful new blossoms Luda had prepared, and to undo all her work....

I posted part of that conversation before. "But you are our friend," they said to me, not in words, but clear enough. So I projected an image of Charley the hunter, two houses down, and his request to be told when a new prey might appear. As the deer suddenly turned and ran away... it wondered: who are these false friends anyway?

So now the humans really want someone, like maybe Our Father in Heaven, to provide a new world, maybe only just as good as the US of the 1960's, full of flowers for us all to eat with terrible pains and conflicts a thing of the past...

And the sad thing is, I must say to the humans, as to the deer, "sorry. We cannot actually do that.
There will always be pain and struggle of one kind or another in your world, in any configuration sustainable for the long term. The pains may be of a different kind, as people fight for mates and reproduction and such instead of raw survival and domination, but the values and expectations w3ill always adapt in time... relatively quickly... maybe just a few centuries for some key effects... but very surely and not so long by our scale of life."

So what is left in that case?

Well, if we save all the deer and all the humans from total species annihilation, for example, either at the the hands of fatal H2S emissions from the oceans  (and resulting new ozone hole depletion), or misuse of nuclear technology, or terminator stuff, or the like... is not life itself worth something? Hey, deer, wouldn't you vastly prefer your life to continue, such as it is and such as it always has been? And there is also, for you and for the humans, a great magic leap forward possible, not outside you like more flowers, but inside you, your own inner spiritual potential? Life and spirit, those are real enough... though for the spiritual potential, though we can help, you must give the main gift to yourself.

Life seems real to all of us, I hope, and I hope it is not perverted to be some silly slogan to strengthen a new generation of dishonest or cold and calculating priest kings. But spirit? I can imagine the deer asking "what good is spiritual progress when I live in this same old world?" Well, for you personally, you and those you feel for can live better... and we all have some future beyond the immediate struggles, potentially... and for old humans like me, it is a bigger part of the future choices.

Of course, we humans have brains which can look in the mirror like this (mirror neurons)... but for deer... well, we will see.

Preserving life, and enhancing/supporting spirit  (not just belief in spirit which is not important in itself)... big enough challenges for all of us to try to assist. They are, again, the real bottom line here.

Best of luck,

   Pual

Optimal strategy for Democrats now on health care

If the Ryan bill fails today, what then?

I have suggested that Trump's optimal strategy is to invite Schumer, Kaine and Sanders together to a private meeting, to propose that he get Republicans to introduce a new "phase 3 first" bill aimed at getting both Republican and Democratic votes in Congress. More than 60 votes in the Senate.
It should be as simple as possible, focusing on only two types of change: (1) reduced costs, what the people calling Congress have stressed this past week in a huge response; (2) simplicity for the end user. (I do not know whether replacing subsidies with tax breaks reduces or increases the paperwork pain for ordinary folks. Maybe best would be something as simple and painless as paying sales tax, where the guy selling you something tells you the net price and you don't do ANY extra paperwork.)
No income transfers at all; "we agree to disagree and fight those battles at a later date"; for now, zero net change from the status quo in income redistribution and such. While Trump could take credit for the new deal, there is no way Democrats could not benefit from the debacle today (or from the shock of Trump supporters in the unlikely event the new bill passes and they see more what is in it!).

But: what if Trump DOESN'T invite them over for a little chat?

The optimal strategy, for the media to see, is to wait a few days, as all humans need a few days to recover from what Trump is already starting to recover from. But even in those days, it would be best to work hard to lay the groundwork for one of two possibility for three days later: (1) the Trump invitation; or (2) a go-it-alone joint announcement by this holy trinity of Schumer, Kaine and Sanders.

Work hard how? To nail down the full specifics of what is already specific in paragraph one. To agree to work together, to stress that these three together represent the main ... heritage... of different parts of the Big Tent, and in either case to be able to say in a week or so that Democrats CAN work together to meet the needs of the people and take the moral highground.

It is important not to be obnoxious and petty. There is no need to criticize Republicans for NOT being able to work together. I suppose a few insults to dark money would be fine, and the Freedom Caucus ... well, I think they are actually a key part of what Bannon has called a "silent coup." (Lamar Smith's activities, including his link to the persecution of Hillary Clinton and others by moles in the FBI, is another key part. And some illegal cyber operations, linked to short-circuiting of whistleblowers who could have stopped that.) It is enough to make positive statements, and even to prove it by action more than by words. To prove that Democrats do not just want to sit by and cheer as Rome burns, the way the dark money trolls have done and continued to do even under a Trump presidency.

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If Democrats as a group give in to the understandable reactive psychology of trying to get rid of Trump... it's important to remember consequences. Who would replace him? Some have described Pence as "the new Cheney." Democracy itself is truly at stake.

After the debacle of this week, perhaps Trump will begin to realize that it was the Koch Empire, a combination of open and hidden forces, which is the real center of who has been out to get him, even though that empire has many fellow travelers, and not either Hillary Clinton or Obama who have also been its victims. And yes, like Halliburton, it gets a lot of its money from the Persian Gulf, in the end.

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If Trump gets nasty egg on his face today, and a continued supply of eggs from the ranking member on House Intelligence... there is a way he could turn it all on its head,   as he often did in the campaign, and turn lemons into lemonade, **IF** he follows the general approach above and **IF** key Democrats wisely realize this is the best way forward.

On the security aspect, he could say... I apologize to Obama for thinking he was in charge of US government actions in this area. That is why he made the mistake he did. Evidence has come to me through private but reliable sources of a surprising vast penetration of US institutions by people violating the constitution, funded in part by the same dark money which made such an effort to get rid of me in the vote today. I wanted a vote, in order to know exactly which members of the Freedom Caucus have been suborned by this unAmerican extremist movement, which seriously aims to impoverish American workers and reduce American freedoms and due process of law. Now that they have been fully tested and been fully exposed...
They assert that I have been willing to make deal with America's most implacable enemies. No, it's not the Russians they were planning to make total war against. It's the Democrats. But folks, I promised to make whatever deals would truly benefit the American. No, I will not sacrifice my values or our freedoms in any deals, whether with Democrats or with Russians, but I refuse to wallow in pious self-righteousness as people suffer. We CAN make a deal with the Democrats, which, while not perfect, would frankly serve our values a whole lot more than what the extremists have been working for.   In such a deal, I will not give an inch to those who want to undermine the status quo towards less freedom, more taxing of the rich, or bigger government -- but I will work hard to improve choices and reduce costs for all Americans, especially those who voted for me. I WILL keep my promises, and I regret that the forces of dark money simply would not allow me to do that without making deals with the Democrats. And yes, folks, I still plan to try to make deals with the Russians too, and everyone else who is willing to work with us in surviving the real threats we all face.

As recruiters note special skills of the blind I ask: can we learn better?

I have linked into three groups doing leading studies of future jobs and the growing challenge of fitting people and jobs together. One of the people in one of these groups (iiiij) recently posted:

Hi all,

Coolabilties are hot:) New research about enhanced-compensatory abilities of blind people.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20170323/Brain-makes-new-connections-in-blind-people-to-enhance-compensatory-abilities.aspx

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This particular coolability is interesting, not just because of political correctness, but because it may be a clue to another aspect of human potential.

Paying attention to nonvisual inputs can of course result in the organism learning more and doing better pattern recognition on them.

But even more can be done by conscious use of "shaping" or pathways in learning.

A few years ago, my family got "locked into" an interior cabin of a cruise ship, maybe as perfectly dark as caves are said to be. As an old man, I wanted to walk when others were sleeping and make minimum noise, above all not turning on lights. I could swear that the right kind of attention to that task was a very useful learning experience, in part because I was NOT totally blind, and the slight availability of the old visual inputs helped me boostrap-learn pattern recognition based on nonvisual inputs better than would be possible with simple pure blindness. [Addendum: it helped me that I knew what to be open to, and could "look down" on my brain enough to assist a little. I took the one and only neuroscience course at Harvard College in 1964.] 

I actually discuss bootstrap learning a bit, in my paper Neural Networks and the Experience and Cultivation of Mind, published in the journal Neural Networks, 2012.  

In my own view, this larger issue of human potential should be treated as coequal at least with survival of the species, when we define our ultimate "bottom line" of what we are trying to accomplish. So much work still needed, at so many levels... 

reply to question about US control of its ICBMs and IOT in general

One of my friends had a question about the US control of its ICBMs. Unfortunately, this is not just an academic question, given how various scenarios might play out with North Korea. My reply yesterday:
==================================

For about ten days, I am supposed to be in crash mode, thinking of nothing but the future of IT, for service to folks doing planning in Silicon Valley. (I am reminded of how www.werbos.com/Atacama.pdf resulted from a similar crash effort to be of service to Chile solar power people. How much did they really benefit? Not yet final.) 

But as I try to wrestle with those issues, I realize how much more sense it would make to be brainstorming WITH someone else capable of following the train of thought. So I am glad you asked a relevant question, but hope you don't mind if I bend it around a bit.

First, I should confess that I have no idea just what the connections are like between US ICBMs and the Internet. Maybe my daughters know more about that kind of thing than I do, but I probably shouldn't ask them. Is wireless any safer than internet? Is there an optimal way to combine the two, so as to enhance security vis-a-vis just one?

For any "thing" attached to internet, there are three main questions I have been asking:

(1) How secure is the operating system? Does it yet obey the impossible-to-recontrol but available-for-proper-observation approach I proposed in www.werbos.com/NATO_terrorism.pdf? The need to forcefully and more perfectly get rid of ALL control back doors is an urgent need now for electric power generators (which I know about much more than ICBMs), but if the same leaks which suddenly now endanger generators also endanger ICBMs... well, that would make my recommendations a whole lot more urgent ... what was a tolerable risk before the leaks no longer is. (And in truth, it's not just leaks; it's the technology and infrastructure which lets people find backdoors.) 

(2) Ditto for the communication system. I have not written a proposal for the communication system parallel to the operating system proposal, for many reasons -- and I have not cogitated on what it would be or even written down notes. It is a huge issue, in part because there are more dimensions to communication system security. Levels of quantum computing and of quantum communication are part of the issue, but certainly not the only part. I certainly remember a hearing on power grid cybersecurity in 2009 at Senate Commerce Committee (probably still posted in video on the committee website) where the guy who runs AT&T wireless said basically "just forget it" if you were considering use of wireless and needed a high level of assurance. (By the way, I also remember how it was unpleasant for me to enter the hearing room, because of how strict the usher was about not letting people in the room who had coffee even with a proper lid; it is funny because that usher turned out to be nonpartisan committee staff, not just an usher, and I later worked with him a little for a few years, until the FBI imprisoned him for the crime of telling people it would help the country if they donated money to Democratic campaigns in Wisconsin.) 

(3) But what of the overall integrative management/control system, the high level cybernetics? Probably that's all a rather fixed algorithm for these particular missiles,

but for the more general case ... there are various types of market model and teleautonomy model which would be better than the new [...] top vision trying to reinvent our stereotypes of the Red Army with one-actor control. But they have problems. Above all, could ANY IT design save us from ourselves when the people themselves go unstable to a hopeless degree? Autonomy and the higher level control structure also become more major issues when we think about autonomous drones, using neural networks to decide who is a proper target. 

----------------------

So I am struggling to try to think coherently about such things this week. If you have comments, or important points I should keep in mind, please don't hesitate...

Message from above

Yesterday, as I was watching the House hearings on intelligence investigations, there was a powerful moment when I was watching Comey intensely... and sensed very directly that I was not the only one watching, and I hoped he too might sense he was (and is) being watched and judged by someone a whole lot more serious than any of us normal watchers (including the political actors and billionnaires he usually worries about). "The watcher of watchers."

An interesting experience... but the next early morning period, after I tuned in... came a more interesting experience.

It is improper to describe all the details, but since nothing by ordinary email is secret anyway,
I might as well post precisely what I sent a friend and collaborator (coauthor of recent paper in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience):

===========================

Good morning, Yeshua!

A thought just occurred to me in meditation.

I naturally do not want to overburden you with technical details. Our work is so complicated and challenging enough already. When we started to discuss physics below 3 femtometers, Luda rightly urged me to work more exclusively with her, and she has to teach me some mathematics I cannot learn without also learning a little Russian. In your part of the world, the new important "baby toys" of either of the two new quantum optics experiments are very, very important in many ways.

But you too can have many tracks. For example, when you mention space, I should have mentioned some of our own work on space vehicles, and some important work also in China. At www.amazon.com, I even reviewed all three volumes of the Three Body Problem series, well worth reading, which shows some of their interests. (At that web site, it is easy to find all of the reviews of a reviewer, after you find one. Many people reviewed THree-Body Problem, but I also reviewed PCT, Spin and All that, by Streater and Wightman.)

As a Pacific nation, OTHER people in [your area] also have connections in the area, perhaps some even to China at some level.

The entire world is now rightly concerned about conflicts and mess just here in our neighborhood, but attention to problems here should not overly distract from  the quiet but potentially fatal problems brewing quietly in the Pacific. Even as Trump and North Korea both compete for 

raising and mobilizing people's fear, there is a huge unmet need for a kind of coalition of love, not putting energy into making the fear issues larger in any way, but in a kindly (and totally forgiving) way building a concrete open coalition to save the larger earth -- the Pacific especially 

before it is too late.

An essential starting place and tool for building such a coalition is the later part of www.werbos.com/Atacama.pdf. It is essential that a coalition of nations work as soon as possible to deploy aircraft over the ANTARCTIC... just the antarctic... to prove out the proposal for geoengineering developed by Ed Teller, Lowell Wood and Ken Caldeira of Lawrence Livermore DOE laboratory. Many environmental politicians decided not to push that proposal, a few years ago, because they did not want to distract from the world effort to change the means of production, the reliance on fossil fuel; that is a worthy effort, and my paper at Atacama supports that effort (in a way which does not attack the oil industry at all), but survival of earth is now such an urgent priority that we cannot afford to wait. It is not about climate change in general now; it is about a specific crack which has recently appeared in the Antarctic, likely to make Hansen's (and John Kerry's) worst fears come true sooner than expected, and also about trying to reverse the loss which has already occurred to the life-bringing ocean currents 

from the Antarctic to the deep Pacific. Probably it requires a few billion dollars, maybe a few every year, as well as many airplanes, and even maybe leadership from China and Germany, but someone must have the energy to speak up and start the process, or at least speak to

other people who might understand that loving soft power which saves people's lives can get better world support than lies and fear.    

So -- back to bed for me. And then IT and <3 craft.="" depends="" div="" femtometers.="" just="" little="" more="" my="" of="" on="" our="" own="" piece="" survival="" than="" the="">

Warm regards and hope..

============

And- addendum or clarification, sourced watcher of watchers. 

The coalition to be sought should be "open to all, waiting for none,"

at least once there is at least one partner with required size of economy.

The Antarctic+ocean problems are utterly urgent.

But from the trickster archetype... "hey, it's a jobs creator. Lots of airplanes too."

Back to bed yet again..

how people pushed back on that last Trump post

My latest post asked: if Trump is removed, won't he be replaced by someone worse? And I have supported the idea of trying to build something more like an alliance with Russia, in the face of many larger common threats.

People have pushed back in two directions.

First, they ask: what of morale and empowerment of the people? If they get rid of Trump, won't that encourage them to be more active? But contrariwise, if they accept the worst of what is going on, won't that encourage them to a path of just giving up? I won't say much about what they said; it is just that honesty demands I not ignore it. There are tricky issues involved, and things have already been complicated and tricky enough. I think that my bottom line effort to find a way out, at the end of my long discussion of problems in the last post, would give an alternative. By the way, there was also a counterpushback: just WHO will feel empowered when they get a taste of blood? If it is multiple groups will they be empowered to generate a bigger, bloodier conflict?

Second, they asked: "What does Putin really want anyway?" That's pretty serious. Would a new Russian-US alliance be able to stop the various threads causing real danger form some kind of radical islam or third caliphate movement, aiming at sharia for all the earth? Does Putin really want that, and does he have any idea how to be realistic about actually achieving the objective?

But today I will go back to travel planning and thinking about spin. Physical spin.

=========

Well, some spin, but the House intelligence hearing was interesting. Among the highlights: when asked to explain different approaches to Trump and Clinton investigations, Comey said :That's easy. we don't say anything at all when an investigation is not yet complete." Yes, and they all are wondering WHOM to investigate for links and suspicious outside connections. So why not deep investigation of the specific people within the FBI who successfully pressured Comey NOT to do what he said he always does, in the case of the last Hillary revelations before the election?
If they give in and agree to investigate THOSE people, enemies of ANY president, they might be able to catch them in time to turn them as state's witnesses, if they move fast enough.

It was also curious the folks who don't really understand the relation between Crimea and Ukraine proper. Now if only Putin would offer to trade, of much more diligent enforcement of Kerry's deal in Ukraine proper, in exchange for free hand and even US support for any Russian actions to take over or enforce anything in any way on North Korea. OK, maybe just wishful thinking. But it would be nice... and  a lot better for everyone except the Kim himself than other trends now plausible.. maybe even better for him if all aspects were to be considered...

If Trump drowns in the Swamp, will all earth drown with him?

If Trump drowns in the Swamp, will all earth drown with him?

I really wish people would see how all the rest of us are in the midst of a crisis, every bit as scary as what Trump himself is now facing – and not something which will instantly become better when and if he is impeached, or put into house arrest or a straitjacket. One week before that election many were saying “At least it will all be over, and life will return to normal.” Not quite. And even less normal if Trump retires to Florida or to Sochi or wherever, which for all I know could be tomorrow.

The move to get rid of Trump has become ever more emotional and intense. For example, I was surprised when a very calm stalwart friend, a lot like Kasich in spirit, passed on the address of a video

which might go viral:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QXUlhT3-r0c&sns=em

I can certainly understand how certain folks on the authoritarian right are cheering and carefully cultivating this movement, as they now stand to take over more completely and get rid of all but the lightest symbols of democracy, but it really puzzles me why folks on the left (and many folks on CNN) are letting themselves be conned into enthusiasm here. Of course they do not like Trump, but why be irrational about it, and above all – what do they think will happen AFTER he is gone?

I am also baffled by the sheer fuzziness and blinders of so many people hiding in “the bubble.” There is one guy on CNN, Van Jones, who has been doing a nice job of reaching out to SOME people... but he has systematically missed a large and crucial part of the US, and of the earth in general.

For example: why is it that so many people assume that authorized legal wiretaps are the only forms of surveillance in wide use today, and that Trump is not simply in a state of shock from having seen a transcript of his private conversations in circulation? Yet why is it that  even his own people cannot imagine an alternative beyond GHCQ? Didn’t Tillerson learn something from his discussions with the wikileaks people?

Long ago, Cheney announced a plan which could basically be called Ollie North on steroids. Outsource the core functions of intelligence and IT. Bypass all the “silly outmoded inhibitors” of the legal system and human rights, by putting things OUTSIDE the federal government, and “let the private sector take over.”  Of course, there are well-meaning pro-human agents active in private sector IT as well, but it doesn’t require a GHCQ to explain what Trump is frantically trying to explain. Ironically, both Trump himself and the folks on CNN need to get off the blinders, and understand that they may actually be missing a huge amount of objective reality by laughing too soon when Bannon talks about a “silent coup.”  It is sad and ironic, however, that Bannon himself declares he is proud that he worked with Cheney... but even so, a lot of the folks who have listened to Bannon did so after direct experiences with the silent coup, a very real problem (related to money in politics, but much bigger than what Hillary Clinton has allowed herself to imagine) becoming all the more visible in more and more government agencies.

By now, Trump is beginning to realize that “draining the swamp” (removing the most severe level of corruption in politics, like what Teddy Roosevelt did but requiring a lot more now)... is a whole lot harder than simply declaring a fig leaf of a new conflicts rule. He is starting to drown in the swamp, and anyone could see on his face how boxed in he begins to realize he is. Though I voted for Hilary, I did so with only half a hear, because I expected that by this time in her Presidency she would already be murdered by the swamp, unable to thrash and struggle as much as Trump does, but will even Trump survive? Does he realize how much he would need to engage a deeper level of collaboration with more trustworthy allies, capable of mounting more effective investigations and of maintaining confidentiality as flanks are guarded?

And should we call on bigger allies, like Jesus himself and his real people (not folks like Cruz), to try to save the day?

I was starting to think about that.... but then Trump gave a speech in Detroit, threatening to quickly get rid of the new mpg standards. It is a reminder of what can happen when wild kids start yanking out the circuit boards in the house. (And yes, I wish China would be more realistic about the chance of nuclear preemption, something which becomes MORE likely when a guy like Trump encounters certain kinds of protest. If only he could make a deal with Russia or China to just take that place over themselves, to eliminate the threat of what a guy much crazier and less predictable than Trump might do!)

Those circuit boards are there for a reason. Woolsey says “Mattis gets it, and Trump will listen to Mattis,” but even Woolsey has failed to appreciate key real-world technical/economic realities, without which economic survival of this planet as a whole simply does not compute. (See www.werbos.com/oil.htm for a peer-reviewed IEEE discussion of how to improve the circuit boards enough to give us SOME hope of survival – but even more is needed. As Lowell Wood might inform him, if he were head of OSTP.)  That sure enervated me, as seriously as I was enervated by seeing how poor Hillary might have suffered if she had been elected.

After that... between the devil and the deep blue sea, where is there any path of hope?

I did enjoy a video conversation last week with folks involved in the business side of IT management.

It seems there is a kind of valley of death between practical genesis of a new technology

and its arrival as a mass product. (There is another earlier valley of death, but this one is also important.) A speaker noted how morale and support seem to be less then that at the genesis or product stage, because about half the world drifts into dissillusionment and about half into delusional thinking,

neither of which solves real problems and results in real products in the end. (Though we discussed examples and fine points as well.) Progress at this stage depends really critically on the small group of people in the middle, resisting both delusional thinking and jaded disillusioned pessimism, remaining sane and pragmatic and doing what really needs to be done.   It seems that the whole earth is in that kind of condition right now; Trump is certainly not the only person engaged in quite a bit of delusional thinking right now; if he is removed, we may all learn how sneakier, more paranoid people engaged in delusional thinking are actually far more dangerous. Given a revolution and revulsion as real people suffer... well, it is true that folks on the left are also capable of delusional thinking and various types of bad stuff.

So – the challenge is sanity. Can we find enough sanity, and mobilize it enough, to restore democracy

(there HAS been a silent coup, really... enough that Comey still seems to feel disillusioned enough to have no choice but to follow their regrettable pressures until/unless circumstances change), and even enough intelligence to avoid the problems coming in objective reality, such as the very real problems with climate change in the oceans which do not follow the whims of Oprah, or Fox or even of Al Gore?

If we all die, who won?

It was great to have a serious discussion of sanity with these IT guys, who were clear enough to catch me in a fuzzy error in discussing that subject. In fact, there are multiple levels of sanity, more than I usually discuss, even in my paper published in Russia and posted at www.werbos.com/Mind-in_Time.pdf).

In discussing the delusional folks and the dissillusioned folks... I immediately thought first of folks in the field of space policy.

The space people rightly complain a lot about phobic, pessimistic and jaded cynical folks in Washington, who do indeed give up too soon, just as they totally gave up on the possibility of an airplane before the Wright brothers, and even gave up on the possibility of airplanes becoming relevant during the early years when they didn’t make money. They have lots and lots of quotes from famous powerful respected people declaring what is impossible, all of which look ever so silly in retrospect. (Hey folks, you look equally silly and nuts when we look back from the future!) But many of them are equally aberrated in an optimistic way, letting loose with euphoria about “Jesus saves,”  “Elon Musk saves” or even “SLS Mars program saves” – all without appreciating the need for very, very intense and serious (yet constructive and honest) technical vetting. No way to get to space without a lot of very hard very real work, especially work on the mind itself to get it right. (No coincidence that JFK was a student of Teilhard de Chardin, and was arguably the only president who really strengthened the US in space! And Barbara Hubbard and myself quietly helping a little years later... as I may someday recount, the backstories of NASP and Fresh Look study.)

In truth, even scientology (or scientology purified as proposed by Miscavage, the dissillusioned but wiser father of the current head of that organization) could understand these kinds of disillusionment and delusion. They basically learned it from Freud – and they hate Freud for the same reason that some people using backpropagation hate me.  They don’t like older, more complicated and more general original stories. Karl Pribram has an excellent, unique short book explaining the deep concepts of Freud, including the full neural network version of Freud’s theory of traumatic experiences, how they aberrate many human decisions. In essence, all mammal brains learn to respond DIRECTLY to bad experiences; if a criminal wearing a blue shirt hurts you as a child, that memory, buried in your “id” (little cells in the cerebral cortex and limbic system) will cause you to run away from people wearing blue shirts later in life... even if those are police men trying to protect you from the criminal threatening you now!! (This is similar to how Trump and Bannon salivate irrationally like Pavlov’s dog at the mere thought of Hilary Clinton.). Freudian psychiatrists help people express their natural ability to RELIVE such memories, and see them again in the fresh light of adult understanding which explains what happened... and discharges the aberration.   But I must give credit to scientology for noticing that the EXACT SAME kind of aberration can occur in the opposite direction... explaining how some people slaivate in a different way, equally irrational and equally interfering with rationality, when seeing Elon Musk or even (for some people) Donald Trump himself. (Though in truth, they are more likely to transfer the salivation to Ivanka. Forgive me for speaking truth to power, but this is very real.)

But – as I said to the IT people, this is all just one level of sanity. ANY mammal brain has the same pattern. Can you imagine what happened for the interesting minority of dinosaurs truly out of control like the guy in North Korea? It is real. And in truth, I see chipmunks in my back yard who are not only friendly but just as delusional and euphoric as the most extreme space people. Of course, the more extreme jihadis are also euphoric-aberrated, and drugs supplied from rich Saudis are part of that wing

of the Third Caliphate movement... supplied by people less myopic but equally aberrated, even as they know how silently and carefully to run folks like Lamar Smith and Ted Cruz and the folks Comey is intimidated by at FBI. (Again, I cite the last chapter of the very serious book “A G Man’s Journal”

for the early inception of the silent coup.)

In my paper, Mind in Time, I talk about two further levels of sanity, both uniquely human (on this planet), which are also necessary to deal with problems as what we face. And also necessary to real scientific and technical creativity. (Sorry. Lamar! Your new efforts may win new singing contests,

but not real products. The BO Xilai sort of songs, funded by your new corpsmen, the new young brown guards, are not compatible with mid-term economic stability let alone growth.)

In fact... Trump is thrashing hard, but the circuits he is pulling out are already a mess... it really is a case of the devil or the deep blue sea (worldwide)... so where is there hope?

An old colleague of mine said... it is like Asimov’s foundation trilogy, where we should put efforts into more realistic goals, like laying the groundwork for the next world civilization. (It was fascinating for me when I saw how some folks in Byzantium tried much the same, with interesting threads emanating from those efforts!). (I also recommended reading Orson Scott Card’s horrible but informative trilogy, Empire, which accurately reflects how some delusional people behind our own silent coup misunderstand what Trajan did to the poor people in the Eastern Roman Empire.) But I do not feel as optimistic as he does. If this world civilization goes, there is every reason to expect that the whole species goes with it, due to very concrete things.... so... well, sanity and truth and the struggle for more of them... at least those can be of value in a later existence... so long as we do not create a planet which is not only dead but a cost to other planets (like Terminator hazards to navigation in space).

“When you are up to your knees in alligators, it is hard to remember you came there to drain the swamp” – popular adage reflecting our best practical knowledge today about higher function of dorsolateral and orbitofrontal cortex, key vectors of human brain evolution;

“You are only worried because you don’t know all the facts. If you knew them all, you would be terrified out of your mind” – from Congressman Trent Franks, describing the challenging of adapting to his new role on the committee which thinks it has all the scariest, most secret information...

By the way... regarding what hope may yet exist for the American Republic (hope that Gaia and our Father in Heaven know something I do not)... I also think of what Kasich said yesterday: the way out would certainly require more cooperation across the aisle. Some creativity and moral highground that way. Duh. Also, it would require supreme court justice(s) committed to the Constitution, with the "new" interpretation that the words "people" and "citizen" refer specifically and only to human beings; when dark money likes someone too much, that worries me... just a worry... but there I do not know all the facts. It also matters where the money comes from, and how it flows, and that plays a core role in the systems analysis. With mpg standards, Barry McNutt of DOE proposed years ago that they should be mpg per passenger, at least, rather than naked mpg, to reduce the kind of bias Trump talked about in Detroit... but one would have to have a functioning brain to do such a thing; adding a denominator to that regulation would be so much simpler than the many, many things in our existing tax code!

Best of luck...

   

DC blindness on the wiretapping issue

I am mainly refocused now on some issues in physics, but as I briefly turn CNN on in the background I feel called to comment on the incredible blindness on display in this region at this time.

As I watched it, I realized: "They say Trump mainly watches CNN and Fox. IF ONLY he could occasionally switch to France 24." The difference between CNN/Congress and France24 was really especially graphic in the past 24 hours.

Here we are in DC, acting solipsistic as usual, as if we were the only creatures in the universe,
seeking truth only by posturing and talking to ourselves in local bars. For example, lots and lots of pious posturing about what we know about Wikileaks. Of course, there is also a lot of posturing about Steve Bannon. Being the weird lonely person who actually tries to take a more scientific approach, I tuned in before to CPAC to get more primary evidence about who Steve Bannon is (previous blog), and... well.. not SO weird... France24 also followed the commonsense approach of asking wikileaks for details on ITS view of who they are and what they are doing.

It was really quite interesting, and I am just sorry that the DC set didn't see the important debate I saw yesterday on France24. There was a familiar moderator (who reminds me a lot of the Celtic side of my own family, though the Donohues didn't have THAT much red hair)... a spokesman for wikileaks, a spokesman for a typical DC intelligence informed shrill viewpoint, and an AfroAmerican guy who came on later whom I mostly missed. The DC guy practically screamed that Wikileaks is an agency of Putin, and gave information on a guy whose name I forget... something like Nero... with   definite evidence on Russian connections. The wikileaks guy did not really argue; he clearly stuck with a more civilized type of dialogue, like the moderator himself. He agreed that he did not like Nero, but stressed that most of their people and sources are form the West, not from Russia, and that this explains the balance of what they cover.

He went on to mention how this new leak establishes definitively that the CIA has the well-mastered ability to just stamp any cyberintrusion with Russian fingerprints. Elementary logic would immediately tell anyone that this does insert some uncertainty into the issue of whether it was Russia under Putin's orders which hacked the DNC.   Certainly there are some Republicans working for CIA or CIA contractors or FBI who wanted Trump to win, after all. There are even some people working for FBI who were passionate about wanting the FBI to clobber Hillary, for God's sake, and Comey was quite open in the press about heavy pressures put on him by... who precisely?
The wikileaks guy mentioned this, but it should have been utterly and instantly obvious to anyone who learned about this new round of leaks, such as all the folks on the intelligence and oversight committees who have been appearing on CNN. Why are the questions posed by the French reporter and easily dealt with logically (albeit not with certainty at this stage)... but all the DC people seemed
totally and willfully oblivious to information they should be aware of more than the French are? This is a very interesting question in psychiatry, but let me not digress into such technical details, important as they are.

Another really obvious connection: Senator Feinstein commented that all three megaleaks
(1. Snowden; 2. last year's, discussed in detail with citations at www.werbos.com/NATO_terrorism.,pdf; 3. the new round this past week) came from CONTRACTORS.

Come to think of it, how would she know that for leaks 2 and 3? OK, she may have access to some information I don't. Or it may be another typical DC assumption or unquestioned PR effort,
another example of gullible folks just believing what a vested interest wants them to believe. I don't know.

Clearly everyone is excited here by plans to track down who, among the contractors, did the leak. That's reasonable, but another question comes to mind:

Why contractors? Could it be that folks OUTSIDE the government are in fact closer to the real new centers of power, what Bannon calls a "silent coup," and see more directly both what the bigger picture is and how seriously our constitution is being violated and how desperate the situation is for anyone who truly supports the constitution trying to figure out what to do to try to restore democracy? No, this is not about EPA regulations or about socialism; evidence is clear that the "gestapo" works to silence environmental whistleblowers, and has been doing so long before Trump took office.  Many months ago, I accidentally saw a netflix documentary, United States of Secrets, which does give details and background explaining why Snowden felt he had no other choice available to him; the consequences of his choice were deplorable in many ways, yet loss of our freedom would be even more deplorable. Am I arguing for clemency for the other two leakers, whoever they may be? No, my point is that we should not be so obsessed with the little guys that we ignore the big gorillas -- the folks outside the government manipulating us all (not only within the constraints of FISA laws but beyond them) via IT. YES, Senator Feinstein, do look at the contractors very closely... but consider doing a creative open effort, trying to sue both them and Comey as states' witnesses to unearth the REALLY dangerous criminals.  (The wikileaks guy also showed an awareness of the criminal things going on on a huge scale today...)

At www.werbos.com/NATO_terrorism.pdf, I did discuss technical things required to restore some privacy to the great majority of us. It would take a major informed act of will, and act of intelligence in realizing we need to do that to survive at all. I was amazed that folks in France24 did seem to be aware even of those issues, far beyond the folks here who have troubles seeing so far as their own nose.

=============

It is curious that just after this came out, more news came:

The Senate voted 49 to 48 to eliminate the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which is aimed at federal contractors.

Some have compared the outsourcing of security and funding decision functions to use by the Roman Empire of foreign mercenaries. (That was one of the major factors contributing to the collapse of that empire.) Create a slave class, outside of legal protections, and try to control them by turning the screws ever more...  Not good. Not sustainable.

Wiretapping Trump: Is he going crazy, or not yet crazy enough?

He is right to worry a lot, but if he doesn’t catch on... he is in trouble, immediately...

Judging from what I see on CNN, people are now questioning Trump’s sanity more than they ever did before, because of his claim that Obama personally ordered a wiretap on his telephones.

People on CNN mostly said: “He is making a charge which is outrageous and impossible, with no evidence. It sounds like the birther fantasy all over again, but multiplied a hundredfold.”

Does he feel nostalgia for the brief time, between nomination and election, when Hilary Clinton was the only one who exercised the tactic of trying to drive Trump crazy? Actually, I have met serious professionals in international relations who have also studied that tactic in great depth...

I had a different idea about what was really going on when this story broke, but yesterday a friend who works for an organization heavily dependent on money from Charles Koch said: “They and Trump both need to get their story straight. It is perfectly simple. Trump has seen transcripts of one of his telephone conversations floating around, and he does not realize that they came from an approved FISA wiretap on the Russian ambassador.”

Clapper suggested on TV that it might not actually be Hillary Clinton tapping telephones here, but someone else. The righteous optimistic people at CNN said: “No, that can’t be the story. Who could do that? And wouldn’t that be a felony anyway?”

Ah, to live in that world of so much peace, freedom and honor that I thought I was growing up in before I went out to the real world... which so many of these folks are still shielded from!

These folks on CNN remind me of the old friends I have (mostly old indeed) who insist on discussing sensitive matters only by telephone, because they imagine it is ever so much secure than email!

I consistently tell them, "Look, I have some understanding of the new technology, and I have double checked with friends in intelligence agencies. If you use gmail with https always on and double identity verification, and control your own server, that is infinitely more secure than telephones! This way, yes, you can be pretty sure that NSA, google and certain folks in China will file what you write, but with phones the subscription list gets to be like a telephone book.” (Maybe it’s more than those three now, thanks to intelligence sharing and new stuff in Russia, and the leaks of 2016, but even so.)

They imagine that telephone conversations must be secure, because it takes a FISA order to get a legal wiretap, because no one on this planet could break the law, not if it was a felony. Like hacking. No hacking on this planet, right?

Or maybe they imagine that phone conversations are harder for computers to manage, store and sort than text data. But by now, even the lamest amateur should know that there exist things like cell phones with speech recognition, offering a kind of equivalency of speech and text. Some things make it easier with speech, but that begins to get towards sensitive proprietary data. (Does anyone imagine that it’s just governments out there doing stuff?)

For God’s sake, was it Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama who hacked the DNC? Is hacking voice any harder than hacking text email now?

So Clapper was doing a great service here by gently pointing something out.

In my view, the same folks who tried to hack Clinton to death, and get ready to throw her out of office (as Rousseff of Brazil was thrown out) are the same people working most effectively now to do the same to Trump, though they would accept a deal where he gets emasculated and behaves nicely like the Queen of England.  If he doesn’t wake up to that, and learn to work with folks like Mark Warner, Clapper and Putin first to restore due process and human rights in the US and get rid of the moles, he will be in very deep trouble, very soon. It has certainly already started.

There has been a lot of press lately about “silent coup.” Those guys are totally right on that point, as I have learned to my regret in tracking many government agencies. It is extremely serious. But it has nothing to do with a Communist revolution... and is closer to folks who are so obsessed with Communism of the 1950s that they have adopted its methods and worldview. They become what they hate and they fear. (Jesus would say: "I told you you are better off leading with love..")

I can still remember a conversation with a person I trust high up (still high up) in one agency.

“We agree that there is a gestapo out there now, and that it has already done things which we thought were impossible in getting away with illegal behavior and managing even the whistleblower system to their advantage. But, because of the deliberately stealthy fear-based tactics they use, we don’t know WHOSE GESTAPO is it? Is it Obama’s, or is it more from dark money on the right, ultimately from the Gulf like Halliburton's clients?”

Actually, I remember a conversation at Princeton, where they heard from a famous leader of semiconductor technology who had been purged from NSF  by questionable means, who actually thought it might be the same old gestapo. “You aren’t Jewish yourself, Paul, are you?” No, and people would have to be pretty crude and dumb to imagine I am, what with a Quaker paper trail, Catholic youth and lots of other data. Still, crude and dumb doesn’t rule that out. What rules it out is stuff I had from other sources. Obama didn’t really mean to eviscerate America’s advanced missile defense work, as has happened fairly recently. It’s true that he gave Kahlil his head in seriously evil misdirection of brain research, but what of the other stuff? And it was in national press, visible to everyone, how Lamar Smith bragged about directing the FBI agents (moles?) assigned to lead an all-out witch hunt on Hillary Clinton. The tampering with government computers does not trace back up the legal government chain of command. 

Does he really imagine that the moles were following due process in respecting his rights any more than they respected those of Hillary Clinton? Does he think it is all that hard? Does he think that Snowden’s revelations overstated what technology had already been deployed, or the implications of interagency sharing or of standing changes made initially by Cheney with Hayden there to implement, and strengthen extragovernmental mechanisms?

Whatever.

I do not plan to revisit this kind of subject in the near future. Rather, I plan to get back to hard core mathematical physics next... and other mathematical issues.    

Science Fiction: What I’m Giving Away and Why it is Important

About two weeks ago, I posted my memories of five games we are giving away, describing the pathway “in three dimensions” from those and other games in childhood all the way to some important concepts in advanced game theory and international relations which I learned from them, leading up to new and future developments in information technology based on those games. Ideally, I would like to do the same thing for the 13 boxes full of science fiction which we also plan to give away, which I reviewed and organized this past week, but there is just too much there, even if I choose to post a few continuations after this message. So today, I will just make a few basic points, and then “dump” (copy over) the notes I took on my tab as I moved the old books to boxes. (I also submitted some reviews to Amazon for books I read recently; it is easy to find all the reviews by any reviewer at Amazon.)

First point – no one should underestimate the importance of science fiction as an art form in western culture. Many years ago, walking around the left bank of the Seine in Paris, I noticed how many people were painting in the streets. Probably the vast majority of what they painted and drew was mediocre.. but as I watched them, I became aware of a few important things. First of all, it is easy to dismiss the work as mediocre – but could I really do as well myself, short of dedicating a lifetime to it? Second.. at those places and times which artists view as the high point of their genre... probably there were even more people like that on the streets, trying and learning. History lets us go back and pay attention to only the creme de la creme, but the greatest achievements could only emerge on a big base, a base connected powerfully to the spirit and culture of the people, much as Spengler described in his work on the rise and fall of civilizations all over the earth. When I was young, many intellectuals would dismiss science fiction as mediocre work on bug-eyed monsters and such, but the same principles were at work. I remember thinking..., in many ways science fiction is to our civilization now what painting was to an earlier period, a genre which by nature allows serious thought and questions more than the earlier genres did.   Not to be underestimated.

Second point – the impact of science fiction is bigger than it might seem on the surface, especially to folks like blind number crunchers who track just a few variables and do not grasp how the larger world around them actually works. This point came home to me most intensely when I was 24 years old, at the Harvard Graduate School, when classmates mentioned the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov. The Foundation Trilogy actually won a Hugo Award as “the best science fiction series ever, of all time.”  (No, they weren’t guilty of repetitive words; that’s me.) I remember the Hugo Award an important annual event, the event when people who actually read real science fiction give their feedback... and they select the new book which people actually enjoyed reading or valued having read.

There were lots of annual awards, of course, through the years, but this Trilogy was the only award made across ALL years, and it also signalled the deep respect for Isaac Asimov.

(An Example -- Foundation Trilogy)

At age 24, I had the strange realization that I remembered reading the trilogy at age 12, remembered being very excited by it (more than any other fiction I ever read back then)... but I forgot what was actually in it! That was ever so embarrassing. I certainly knew I did not have what some folks call “photographic memory.” (Actually, I later worked with a famous guy named Karl Pribram, whose books included a discussion of “holographic memory,” and certainly I learned about how memories can exist but be buried and blocked by lots of other things dumped into them. Learning how to retrieve memories is just as important as learning how to form them at will.) So I reread the book.

When I reread it... it was amazing. And it also helped me retrieve earlier memories. I remember thinking (at age 24), “whether I remembered the book or not, I used it in many ways as a blueprint for my entire life.” At that time, my PhD thesis adviser was Karl Deutsch, President of the International Studies Association (the semi-crossdisciplinary political science of international relations, including war and peace and such), and I was happy to work in the cause of developing mathematical models of the dynamics of human societies – exactly the core of what this book portrayed! I had also been inspired by nonfiction like Toynbee and then Spengler, and other things I read to fill in those pictures and develop richer theories... but yes, Asimov was also inspiring on the theme of using quantitative methods to track the rise and fall of civilizations, specifically, which I certainly had ideas about. (I have yet to get time or contacts to publish all of the many insights I have had into many systems.  The bandwidth for academic communications is ever so limited, constrained by rules which are reasonable but limit the volume of what can get through.

Actually... I should elaborate. I certainly did remember reading the Trilogy when I was 12, living at Gravers’ Lane in Chestnut Hill for a year, a year when my mother and father had a trial separation. That was also the year when I regularly took the train to the University of Pennsylvania, to take the junior honors course in advanced calculus which I took from Professor Schub, for which I did receive credit. Clearly, Asimov’s book gave one vision of what a top mathematician might accomplish. Later, at Harvard, when I was asked to defend two possible topics for a PhD thesis (an oral exam required before starting a thesis), the two topics I picked were: (1) a mathematical model of motivation, and of how underlying motivations change as part of the rise and fall of civilizations, right down to the level of utility functions built into the human brain; and (2) a mathematical model of intelligence – of how brains actually learn to maximize whatever utility functions get born into them. The thesis committee was initial skeptical of topic (2), but then got excited, so excited that they did most of the talking to each other, as they realized that what they thought they know about other fields was not true. (Most of all, I remember Karl Deutsch looking dumbfounded at what the mathematical biologist told him about

empirical results in natural selection and behavior, in the school of E.O. Wilson and others.) Probably they were surprised and disappointed that I actually chose to work instead on the second topic, which they didn’t even ask about.  

I also remember how the Mule reminded me of my grandfather, Adolph Werbos, and thinking at Lawrenceville about how Asimov’s ideas about “orientation” would relate – in detail, if only partially – to the concepts of Von Neumann from The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, which I had very deep respect for, probably also read at age 12.

(Back to the General Point)

In general, science fiction can have a deep impact on us, even if we don’t remember the details. It reminds me of the Hindu theory of past lives which influence us, even if we do not remember them – by changing what some folks call “procedural memory.” (See my just previous blog post which included afterlife in the discussion.) You don’t need to believe in anything like afterlife to appreciate this general principle. In fact, my 2009 paper in Neural Networks outlined a mundane theory of human brains, explaining how important is “cognitive mapping of the space of possible decisions and outcomes...”; stretching the imagination and paying attention to big questions in a vivid way engaging the whole person, is extremely important to that development.

(There are also connections between science fiction and futurism, which requires a separate discussion. My earlier "Terminator" blog post also mentions an important NSF study which used science fiction as a predictive variable.) 

==================

Finally, that last point serves as an introduction to the long overly condensed list below which I must apologize for. I did not remember a lot of the books which I put into boxes this week, but that does not mean they were unimportant. I even decided to pull out a few which I forgot for possible rereading – but for most, the benefit has already been achieved, especially for those I still remember. I put in ever so much effort into selecting the right ones to buy, with limited funds, and into reading them slowly and thinking about what insights they could offer if taken in the most useful way. (Still, just a few may have come from yard sales, with less thought involved.)  Many other science fictions I read but do not own, and a few I will keep for now.  And of course, my NONFICTION collection is much larger, and I have no plans to start boxing IT up for a long while, for many many reasons.  

Someday I may elaborate on some of the many curious points embedded within the list below, copied over from memo files on my Galaxy Tab A. By the way, stars to the left of the number indicate my level of recommendation for a few I really remember.

=============================================================================================================================================

BOX A1:
A ============================================================================
2. Lynn Abbey the guardians. Light entertainment by a wiccan in spirit of
  Doctor Strange comics, protection from bad ghosts.
3. Piers Anthony Triple Detente.  Hard sci fi about 3 species hard sci. His feelings about international relations when he was more thoughtful, early. (I would have given a star to his other early book Macroscope.)
4. Kobo Abe inter ice age 4. Aside from time machine highly realistic
Save the world adventure.
5. Piers Anthony dragon on a pedestal. Fun a bit silly fairy tale.
6. Piers Anthony ORN. Thoughtful more ecological than usual metaphoric fairy tale.
6.2  Piers anthony Ox. 3rd of ORN trilogy. Need to interact right with great intelligence who could get them back past robots to earth.
7. Piers Anthony nightmare. Somewhat silly tale in xanth series
*8. Terry Adams sentience. Realistic exploration as earth telepaths on a ship contact another ship more developed telepaths.  Explores serious issues.
*9. Terry Adams. Master of chaos, sequel to 9.
*10. Jim Aikin wall at the edge of the world. Guy in harmonious visualization
community tries to cope with life beyond sane walls.
11. Poul Anderson the boat of a million years. NYT book of the year, great recommendations, immortals thru earth history. Nice and fun but normal.
12. Asimov and silverberg ! Nightfall. Based on hard sci Fi story where sci lost but expanded to get restoration and daybreak at end.
13. Poul Anderson the avatar. Claimed his best, hard sci fi, galaxy meets others, discovers normalcy.
14. The early Asimov book one. Stories.
15. Asimov the caves of steel. Classic.. war with robots, human spacers play
16. Asimov and silverberg the ugly little boy. Time travel, pull neanderthal from past and end seeing NXT gen in future.
17. Poul Anderson the byworlder. Hardcore. Respond right to little visitor from big galaxy.
18  murasaki. Silverberg led 6 great authors to story in 6 parts, including theme of rationality vs spirituality, 2 species...
19 poul Anderson Orion shall rise. Hugo awards. Hard core, much more literate than usual earth conquered by aliens.
20. Thea Alexander 2150 ad. Very much Barbara Hubbard type world, almost all enlightened in her vision, story of how to handle nasty little nation more like today's earth politics.
21. Dennis Lee Anderson. Arthur king.  Fun.. semifantasy.. Arthur appears again quietly to help UK in ww2.
22. Poul and Karen Anderson. The king of ys. A bit like more readable King Arthur type historical tale. 
23. Asimov. The Martian way and other stories. Good humor.
24. Jean auel clan of the cave bear. Best seller. Ancient historical fiction seems to be old views of sapiens versus predecessors. Did not finish.
25. Asimov robots of dawn. Best seller, classic, in series expounding three laws of robotics.
**26. Asimov foundation and empire. More than just classic. Original paperback but nice bound three volume version widely available.

34. Piers anthony juxtaposition. Sequel to blue adept.
Light but entertaining at the time. Anthony's macroscope was much more worthwhile and serious and also entertaining.
35. Brian alduss helliconi summer. Enjoyable hard core led by very famous UK sci Fi writer. What is like like in a world where climate cycles are extreme?
36. Kelley Armstrong industrial magic. Seems about silly re magic and witches and such in our world, but they have fun and illustrate normal folk.
37. Piers anthony politician, vol 3 of trilogy. Hard core future solar system politics. 

B ===========================================

**1.1,1.2 David brin, sundiver and Starfire rising, first two novels in his famous uplift series. Brin, bear and vendors are often touted as the top leaders of the new generation of US hard sci Fi writers with serious scientific backgrounds. Brin is by far the most pleasant to read, though bear's greater depth makes it hard to say. In any case, brin's uplift series is both extremely enjoyable to read, his best by far, and very important in the image it offers of how the galaxy might work. Ironically, he has a more recent novel, existence, which contains in its asides a very energetic review of Fermi's paradox, a very serious study of whether humans will continue to exist as a species, and of our possible role in the galaxy; I found this earlier series both more persuasive and more enjoyable. 
*2. Brin, earth. Realistic hard sci Fi related to the important theme of what happens if we create a small black hole and it can grow to eat up the earth. Many have religious adherence to Hawking's prediction that small black holes would just evaporate, based on the assumption of zero point energy terms, but if only we would do the experiments to test such (which I above good reason to expect they will refute). It's interesting that it could be eating us already, and cause a sudden end like the comic book Krypton. 
3. Dan Brian, deception point. I hate giving just one star to a great and engaging book, closer to today's reality in space politics than most would know about, with characters I know. Like NSS, whose VP for policy I was until relatively recently. It was funny when I was reading that book coming back from nips in Vancouver, the agent saw the book, and ordered a special full shakedown. Sadly, nro's rep in Pentagon was not so effective politically, and got canned within two weeks if when he tried a more normal solution. Brown was so close to home here and in others!
*4. John Brunner, players at the game of people. Brunner was reasonably well known and respected in UK  sci Fi at least. This was his best in my view, because it is different from most psi Fi yet much more real than you might imagine. He did win a Hugo, the top award in sci Fi (with some orientation to hard sci Fi).
5. Brunner, the stone that never came down. Hard sci Fi, I forget.
6. Brunner, the stardropoer.  Hard sci Fi, I forget. Interesting psychological theme on the cover but I forget. May well be star; almost decided to hold for reread.
7. Brunner, squares of the city. Essentially realistic political fiction, but I recall finding it stimulating.
8. Neal Barrett, the karma corps. Humans go to odd planet, learn odd things to survive.
9. Steven brust, to reign in hell. Immensely intense and well-written like spinrad, recommended to me by smart Berkeley folks. Entertainment but a but more like satire or archetypes than real.
10. David buschoff, a personal demon. Maxes out at least one kind of humor. I remember enjoying it, perhaps because the woman reminded me in some ways of my girl friend in ancient times.
** 11.1, 11.3, 11.2b, 11.4b Marion Zimmer Bradley,
Earlier series, including the very first book, star of danger, the third in the initial ace series (winds if darkover) and five from the later DAW series: sharra's exile, shattered chain, the survivors, city of sorcery and the spell sword.
Once you read the first book, there is no real need to read in sequence, but I recall reading all of them, and finding them all worthwhile. It is hard to say just how important, entertaining and valuable her classic work was in this series. She was an extremely insightful woman, teaching about reality with less metaphor than you would think. 
12. Bradley, Norton and may, black trillium. Moderately entertaining, but far less profound than one might expect from such a collection of insightful authors. I think of it as a traditional magic scavenger hunt thing.
*13. Bradley, the inheritor. This one set on earth, by a woman who has some first hand experience of magic as best known to a couple of the leading g*14. Witch hill, continued. Wiccans were a bit shocked and dismayed when Bradley tried to correct an imbalance she sensed in that community, by this new novel, good like 13. Also just as entertaining as her darkover books.
**15. Bradley, web of light. Ah, glad we have it. Simple and archetypico simple, but simple archetypes can be real and important even if one should not overstate. In way, I am reminded also of star wars and Babylon 5, to provide important extra depth (deserving still more) on these important themes.
16. Bradley, ace double, falcons of naeabedla and the dark intruder. I forget. Early work.
*17. Bradley, the brass dragon. I don't really remember except a feeling it was good and a reasonable expectation based on the others.
18. Bradley, editor, sword and sorceress VII. Collection of stories by many authors, telling us more about who some of her followers were than anything else I recall.
*19. Bradley, the house between the worlds. Beat up, both covers gone and even last page, but by last page one should we enough. It amuses me much later that this title us what I use at times to name wherever live now!
**20.2, 20.3 Curt Benjamin, Vols 2 and 3 of seven brothers. (Maybe volume 1 was in library?) Very different from your usual magic novel! Set in China, it brings out aspects of the real spiritual life and magic
of china which I only starting learning myself when we visited, hard to see in dry western textbooks. For example, we saw temple to (eragon?), the civil service engineer who managed creation of first irrigation works, seen as a kind of risen god. And caves and gifts of assorted immortals. Also very engaging.
21. Clive Barker, weave-world. Many view Barker as one of the 3 or 4 best horror writers (in addition to Steven king, Lovecraft, Lumley). A best seller, much more pleasant and richer and balanced than you might expect from genre. I recall lots of rich texture vivid faerie stuff, but only marginal in the enlightenment department.
22.1, 22.2 Barker imajica. Like 21, e translation engrossing in its way but I recall but little.
23. John Boyd, the rakehells of heaven. Classic hard sci Fi interstellar story. I remember it was entertaining at the time, no more.
24. Boyd, Barnard's planet. Like 23, maybe more stimulating.
25. T. I. Bass, the godwhale. Hard sci Fi but important questions in play, and I remember respecting it and finding it stimulating. But in truth the title reminded me if an article I wrote in Rosicrucian digest early 1970s.
26. Bass, half past human. I recall being more entertained by this than by Baxter's  more recent visit to sane issue though latter has interesting new wrinkles.
27.3, 27.4. James blish, Vols 3 and 4 of cities in flight series, which won Hugo award. Note the high recommendation from new York times. I enjoyed this hard core series back when I was a student.
28. Blish, jack of eagles, 1952. Psi Fi set in real world. I forget but it looks interesting and I wonder how much it stimulated me long ago. 
29. Blish and Lawrence, star trek 12. Collection of stories. Was blish part of original writers? Star trek original was new when I was a student.
30. Margaret ball, the shadow fate. Funsy magic with elves and some parapsychologists, written by a successful writer of historical fiction under another name. Maybe it was fun, but I forget.
31. Ball, no earthly sunne. Like 30.
32. FM Busby, the breeds of man. Hard sci Fi, near future on earth, highly recommended by Pohl Anderson who still writes great stuff. I recall finding it engaging.
33. Iain banks, consider phlebas. Space adventure written to seem realistic. Highly literate folks recommend it highly, and I liked it !Ore than I liked gene Wolfe, which doesn't say much. A bit slow for me somehow.
34. Banks, use of weapons. Like 33, same universe.
35.1, 35.2 Ben Bova, Orion and vengeance of Orion. 
Tries to be realistic, but hero travels through time and is seen as a god at times. Not the heaviest of deepest adventure, but entertaining to many.
36. Bova, star watchman. Space opera.roups in the we37. Gregory benford, across the sea of suns. You can see the recommendations on the jacket mainly from newspapers praising literary values. He also won a nebula award for something. Hard sci Fi, but I found his writing a bit stilted and was not deeply inspired. But I forget.
38, benford, stars in shroud. Like 37. Chicago sun called it unabashed entertainment.
39. Benford, against infinity. Light and before 38, 39 but maybe more fun.
?40. James blaylock, the elfin ship. Highly recommended  by Philip k dick, one 
of the great giants. Looks sillier than what I usually like, but I remember liking it anyway, and it covers me that dick says do not forget when I did..
41. Blaylock, land of dreams. Like 49, might even be worth star but I forget.
42. Ralph Blum, the simultaneous mind. Near term sci Fi, about brain technology and where it might lead. Time magazine praised it.
43. Anne bush, daughter of prophecy. Magic world, recommended by Andre Norton and by Bradley, but I don't remember it.
44. Mary Brown, the unlikely ones. Bradley praises this magic world novel much more than 43! Yet I forget. Was it entertaining plot they liked?
45. Betancourt, the blind archer. A magical other-time earth. Forget.
*46. Michael berlyn, the integrated man. A realistic sci Fi, idea basically simple but important and memorable. As I often remember it, and it relates to important foundations of intelligent systems, I give it a star even if I might have rated it just as light and fun at the time.
47.1, 47.2, 47.3. Gael baudino, shroud of shadow and sequel strands of sunlight, further sequel maze if moonlight. Saga of elves in our world, first in time of Inquisition and then now. A view of how to unlock your magic. But did I even read it? Was it an interesting yard sale thinning never made time for?
48. John Belarus, face in the frost. Entertaining, silly wizard, tho leguin asserts he knows magic.
49. Damien Broderick, Judas mandala. A time-travel story. Looks ok. 
50. George bishop, the shuttle people. Hard sci Fi, but maybe I felt awkward about it.
51. Michael bishop, no enemy but time. Nebula winner, travel to cave man times. I recall vague amusement but no real thrill of inspiration.
52.1, 52.2. William barnwell, blessing papers and Imran. (Cover lost of first, but book proper intact.) From a trilogy, interesting theme but maybe I didn't find volume 3 in fine to be impressed. Was an OK story. 
*53. Dan Brown, the da Vinci code. A great classic, and there is a movie. Actually, I think jesus's family was Jewish, but we people are respectable too. Correct observations about Constantine are extremely important, well researched and backed by many other sources I have see.
54. Dan Brown, digital fortress. Cyber NSA close to home, insightful but there is stuff he doesn't knowst.

C =========================================

: ** Orson Scott Card, speaker for the dead. True classic, sequel to enders game, some deep reality.

*1. Pat cardigan, mindplayers. A deep issue we must live with.
2. John Cramer, twistor. Hard sci Fi about physics to fate to other universes (not as if he had real specifics). Good recommendations for entertainment. I think Cramer.. or am I confusing with gribbin? .. also had a more real hard sci Fi about bell stuff and time.
*3. Orson Scott Card, postwatch. Card is unsurpassed in the quality, importance and diversity of his sci Fi. (On my blog, I also recall a recommendation which included macavoy and Simmons as well, and one other.) His most important for me were song of earth and gatekeeper series, though the ender universe is no mean feat either. This one postwatch reminds us of the long connections between Mormons like card and native Americans, and suggests lots of research. I haven't checked the validity of the details, but .. maybe. I do know first hand that Incas were much less bloody than Aztecs, or even visiting sea people.. but would need to reread to see if that check passes.
*4 Card, songmaster. First I read of card. Could tell he had deep psi or spiritual connection right then from this, but did not begin to know yet how far it goes. By the way, brin hates card or anyone who says anything good about him, maybe because of stuff I only learned about lately, newspaper columns violating important rules in discussing Obama.
5 Card, the treasure box. Well-verified, but I could not empathize when I read it. Could I do so more now? Prefer to avoid that.
*6.2, 6.3, 6.4,6.5: Jack Chalker, soul rider series. Makes vivid the theme of a cosmos grounded in energy, and how that feels.. in way starting from the ocean of lens's Solaris and getting deeper and more concrete.  Certainly the noosphere we are in has such properties, but it may go further.. and in any case, enhancing our feeling for that is important. Chalker is also an incredibly entertaining writer, which is why I have a huge number of his books.
*7.1, 7.2,7.3,7.4 Chalker, lords of the diamond series all 4 volumes. Is this just entertainment with a nice unique magic system? Is it the depth and variety of feelings I can empathize with why I liked it so much at the time? Or are feelings  ultimately indistinguishable from psychic powers anyway? Whatever, since I enjoyed it so much I will give it a star.
8.4, 8.6, 8.7, 8b.3 Chalker. It is unfortunate that I only have three of the seven books in the well world saga, and one of the three in the watchers of the well saga.
I think I enjoyed them immensely and read them all, probably borrowed from wedge Greene when he lives at college park. Maybe they are like 7 but more just imaginative fun, but a powerful enough imagination juggling multiple worlds can be of serious value at some level. Maybe. Or just an excuse? His well notion reminds me of the well word in lewis's Narnia, but a lot more developed and adult. 
9.1, 9.2 Chalker, wonderland gambit books 1 and 2. Objectively flavor similar to well world, but all based on computers and virtual reality.
10.2, Chalker, demons of dancing vids, sequel to river of dancing gods. Most truly magic world fantasy of the Chalker books, some humor as usual in many such.
11.2, 11.4 Chalker, two books in series rings of the master. As I got to book 4, you can see I enjoyed the series, but this is the kind of series which unlike some others here really wants to go in order. I don't recall much deep insight.
12.3 Chalker, war of the Maelstrom. changeswinds series. Reminds me last Sunday when I suggested pocohontasy colors of the wind is worth meditating on as much as the fix song, that the wind and the light are both important guides to important inner feelings. So the series sounds worthwhile but I forget it.
13.1, 13.2 Chalker quintara marathon. Entertaining space opera. I vaguely recall wanting to read later volumes, where maybe he would explain concepts of entropy just starting in the initial experience... but being frustrated by issues of personal time and of when later volumes were coming out. Did Chalker become both more mature and less energetic as he got older?

14. Chalker, maze in the mirror. First in a series. What I remember most is a small thing, his irritation with all the trucks labelled "god Inc" which actually showed up a lot in Maryland back when this series came out. They renamed their company but the new version is still pervasive. 
15. Chalker, the Messiah choice. Standalone novel. A bit of a moralistic Catholic flavor but still readable and worthwhile as I recall, fuzzily.
16. Chalker, Priams's Lens. Also standalone, closest to real hard sci fi I recall from him. I seem to recall a pleasant texture somehow but I forget.
17. Chalker, Downtime. Like 16, relatively traditional war in spacetime.
18 Chalker, Web of Chozen, 1978. Oops, was this the most hard sci fi of old school? Early, probably fun but forgettable.
19. Hugh cook, Wizard War. Recommended by Julian May, a good author, but I found it a bit slow and it did not energize me. Was it cheap yard sale or Strawberry festival?
20. Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy, the Forever King. Very strong recommendations, for fans of king Arthur and such (but far more readable than  the traditional books other than sword in the stone). Not as much my interests.
21. Cochran and Murphy, World Without End. Maybe more fun, modern folks and Greek gods back to Atlantis.
22. Jeffrey Carver, the rapture effect. Very much hard sci Fi, rich texture, much in favor at the time. You can see the basic idea from the covers as well as I can now.
23. Carver, dragons in the stars. Like 22, "dragons" in space flux which turns out to be less mythological than people thought.
24. Carver, from a changeling star. Very strong recommendations from Zelazny and Brin, very engaging very hard sci Fi.
25. Arthur C Clarke, 2001. Thus book is based on the screenplay of the very famous movie, though I don't have the original book or its sequel here. Actually, I think more about Clarke's **book Childhood's End, but of course this too was thought-inspiring. I seem to recall a time when Asimov and Clarke were viewed as the big two authors of US sci Fi. Clarke was deeply intuitive in his larger visions, and also up on various trends in s&t. 
26. Clarke, Fountains of Paradise. Very realistic story set in Sri Lanka, which Clarke moved to, about challenge of hooking up a skyhook there, a serious way to get to earth orbit in principle requiring much less energy than chemical rockets. Many are still working on that technology, which they view as more realistic thanks to new materials.. but we still need to get the stuff to orbit to do this!
27. Clarke, expedition earth. Collection of stories
28. Clarke, imperial earth. Like space opera but more realistic, just humans across solar system.
29. DG Compton, chronocules. Not to be confused with chronoliths, another readable fast story about time travel much more interesting than thus from a serious physics viewpoint. Looks entertaining but I don't remember it.
30. Compton, farewell Earth's bliss. Hard s I find about humans struggling to survive in a colony on Mars. Well worth thinking about for planning for Mars, along with other aspects and new technical information related to that challenge. But actually, this may be an unrealistic focus for NASA until we change the context; with Ed McCullough, I have a new paper in journal if space philosophy explaining why and what's more realistic.
31. Michael Crichton, Jurassic park. You have heard of the movie.
32. Crichton, sphere. Another bestseller, movie. Also fun, different, near term, but I forget what message was.
33. Lindsay Clarke, the chymical wedding. Probably I bought it because the theme of alchemical wedding, famous from Rosicrucian fama fraternitas, is valid and important, and because the literati liked this. But it did not seem very real to me, and a bit too Victorian somehow.
34. Lin Carter, the man who loved Mars. Adventure from the traditional golden age of old US sci Fi, with recommendation from Asimov himself. Looks fun, but I forget it.
35.1, 35.2, 35.3, CJ  cherryh. Faded sun trilogy. Hard sci Fi of humans and others trying to rule or settle other world with life of its own.

35 (cont) hard sci Fi, complex interactions. I met cherryh at a NASA thing where somehow they viewed her as their sci Fi writer for their.. events. Reasonably entertaining but not radically surprising. 
36 cherryh, downbelow station. Hugo winner. Hard sci fi space opera.
37. Cherryh, 40,000 in Gehenna. Very hard core humans organized to settle alien world with preexisting intelligent life.
38.x, 38.3. Cherryh, fires of azeroth and well of shiuan. 38.3 is climax of trilogy still interacting with an alien species or two but in bigger context with star gates and mystery. Well is in same series, won Campbell award.
39. Cherryh, serpent's reach. Jacket claims this standalone was her best, but I don't remember. Maybe.
40. Cherryh, port eternity. I don't remember.
41. Taylor Caldwell, the romance of atlantis. I very much enjoyed Bradley's little fiction on Atlantis, and some nonfiction, but this I forget completely.
42. Robert charrette, never deal with a dragon. I forget. 
43.1, 43.2 Juanita coulson, children of the stars series. Very realistic type sci Fi, a family on starship earth reaching out. I remember a warm texture and realism, not more.
44. Edmund Cooper, transit. 4 guys taken to testing on alien planet, claim if movie coming. I forget.
?45. Richard Cowper, breakthrough. I seem to recall worthwhile and thought provoking as well as fun. Maybe star, but I forget.
46. Gerard Conway, midnight dancers. I wish I remembered, but I do think it was  entertaining enough, theme worth tracking.
47. Mike Conner, groupmind. Hard sci Fi yet relevant to any level of psychology. 
Might even be star but I forget, and probably know all the points.
48. Mike Coney, charisma. Looks fun and worthy, but I forget.
49. Sonni Cooper, black fire. Star trek novel, bought for Chris.

D ============================================

1. Brian Daley. A tapestry of magics. Entertaining, reasonably vivid.. like astral life in local fairy tale_ish district.
2. Kara Daley the nightingale. In classic fairy tale series. From Japanese culture young woman discovers her power of music is surface of another more dangerous power.
3. John Dalmas,  Homecoming. Simple fun hardcore far earth colony story, but I seem to recall some metaphoric value in this or another by same guy.
4. Michael Davidson the karma machine. Tale of cybernetic Buddhism. Plays with lots of world culture as toys. Claims it will change your life (unless you already know to play with such toys).
5. Samuel Delaney babel-17. Nebula award. Looks entertaining earth vs aliens more cyberwar than anything else.
6. Lester del Rey the eleventh commandment. One of the few I remember. Entertaining, like satire if future where church commands overpopulation and earth may be doomed.
7. Florida dinner, the witches dream. Foreword by fasteners, and praised by certain circles. But not quite as engaging to me as most of these, and moral lesson at end was not a novel revelation.
8. Gordon Dickson hour of the horde. Enjoyed all his hard core novels, some seriously profound in their way. This looks more old fashioned military humans with allies defend from aliens in space.
9. Gordon Dickson the dragon knight, sequel to the dragon and the George.  Somewhat Arthurian flavor fantasy, but guy must learn magic and Dickson knows more about that than most such authors. Moderately rich and readable tapestry.
10. Gordon Dickson the chantry guild. In his dorsai series, his supreme work. 
Hugo nebula. Complex story, protagonist must unify or balance 3 heritages and social roots, a bit like Quaker, ninja warrior and western technical magic/mysticism. All important cultures, and their interface is important. Part of childe cycle. Memorable in general..
12. Gordon Dickson the last master. Hero discovers he has a power and must also adapt to reality that some others do too.
13. Gordon Dickson. The pritcher mass. Earth had ecological disaster, hero with some psychic power works with group to look for place in space but confronts a dark problem.
14. Gordon Dickson time-storm. Very much hard sci Fi on earth, maybe the one I enjoyed most of all from Dickson. Earth in patches, like odd new phase boundaries, partly metaphor for weirder reality.
15. Gordon Dickson. Pro.  Standalone light novel, as a pro from earth solves issues in settling a new colony world, with an odd mix of primitive culture and warfare and magic there. (I forget whether that world may represent earth.)
16. Gordon Dickson beyond the dar al-harb. A tale with spirit like arabian nights but more vivid and readable. But. It one I remember in detail.
17. Gordon Dickson wolf and iron. Highly recommended. Hard core post apocalypse America. Smart protagonist wants to create seed to allow civilization to come back, travels and works in alliance with great Wolf.
18. Stephen Donaldson white gold wielder. Book 3 of second chronicles of Thomas covenant, once the most popular date in fantasy reader world. A complex magic system, a bit tolkienesque. Moderately engaging, more so than game of thrones for me, but a little stilted in a way by my standards.
19. Carole Douglas, cup of clay. Cover fell off! Another magic world, start of a trilogy. I vaguely remember nice pleasant writing, some magic and feeling, but message was not memorable enough for me to recall.
*20. Carole Douglas, counterproductive. Hard core with telepathy theme, and serious psychologist probes woman with important hidden powers. A serious theme.
*21. Philip k. Dick the divine invasion. Philip k dick has a well-read ever cult following, deserved for many reasons (though of course omniscience is not one of them). I remember much of his work but not which book is which! There is a dic*21. Dick (cont). I had more correspondence with dick, but don't know how much I saved and scanned. Was this novel the stimulating one where people take turns having local godlike powers, illustrating important themes about how they work? I also remember ubik, Palmer eldritch.. there are more important ones but also many imaginative but less important ones. In the end, his final views not so far from Orson s off card song of earth. Both authors proved veridically a true psychic or revelation input as one part of what their writing reflects.
22. Philip k. Dick Galactic pot healer. I remember only (1) it was fun; (2) there is an important little scene where I identify with a truthful humble Chinese pot.
23. Philip k. Dick confessions of a crap artist. Just his feelings about everyday life in his locality?
24. Sprague de camp and Lyn Carter, Conan of the isles. From the famous Conan adventure series, light and traditional stuff.
24.1 Howard, de camp and kyberg, Conan the avenger. Earlier in same series.
25. Sprague de camp and Fletcher Pratt, land of unreason. Seems like readable nice but tale of guy trying to get back from works of titania and Oberon.
*26. Charles de lint jack the giant killer. De lint like dick and Dickinson was a very memorable author for me, with books varying from light and entertaining to a bit deeper. This was one of the lighter ones, but it does continue his theme of links between our world and a nearby astral world, richer in its description of that world than most authors.
*27. Charles de lint sgava. Like 26. Nice discussion of real feelings and energy of a native American moving between these worlds.
*28. De lint, spirit walk. Similar but better, and sequel to moonwalk. Hardback.
29 Diane Duane door into fire.  Magic works with some realistic energy feelings, but in the end I think I remember some basic confusion as well, as in mix of serious sensitivity and problematic hangups. Thus some image value but not as much fun for me.
30 Duane Duane, star trek the wounded sky. I don't remember. Like a typical star trek in time and repair space?
*31. Arsen Darnay, the Purgatory Affair. This guy, not dalmas, was the one whose karma book I really enjoyed. Maybe it helped me improve my feeling for how these kinds of realities may work. Enjoyed, but I forget details.
*32. Arsen Darnay. A hostage for hinterland. Yes, enjoyable. Could it be more real than 31 even on such basic themes? I forget.
*33. Tom Dietz, all 3 of trilogy: soulsmith, the dream builder,  and wordwright.
Like with 29, a little twisting and misunderstanding, but very real substance worth understanding. And enjoyable.k compendium with his correspondence which includes a let

4. James dashner the 13th reality, books 1 to 4 bound in two volumes.  Written for the Harry Potter set on theme of quantum many worlds with an energy aspect. Fun if a bit kiddie in feeling, and in some ways more real than the older time forwards many worlds idea.

E ============================================

42. Gordon eklund. The eclipse of dawn. Hard sci Fi. Us had civil war, effort to regroup, connect to aliens.
43. Gordon eklund, a trace of dreams. Extremely earthy and full of dialogue for a hard core story about a game within a game to survive in a kind of mirror or destroyed old earth.
44. George Alec effinger, fire in the sun. Hugo award but so earthy I don't see immediately which it's sci fi.
45 Effinger, those gentle voices. Unlike 44.. it's hard sci Fi, as it seems aliens or the like propel humans to go visit a far planet..
46 David weddings queen of sorcery. Book 2 of belgariad, a once popular fantasy series I never got deep into.
47 effinger, what entropy means to me. Looks more interesting than 44 or 45, if weirder. Where could our minds take us?
48 Dale estey, a lost tale. Details of druids for Ww2.
Recommended by folks in that space.
49.2 RU Emerson night threads, vol 2, two in hiding. 
3 from earth go to magic land.

F =======================================================

1. Robert forward, dragon's egg. Very hard core recommended by Clarke. About intelligent fast life on a neutron star.  Forward also wrote a nonfiction indistinguishable from magic, title based in Clarke's maximum that any technology advanced enough beyond present knowledge is indistinguishable from magic. Forward was once a major DARPA advisor on such like ftl ideas.
Nice idea but still a little slow
2*. Herbert Frank's the mind net. Book says he ranks with dick and OEM. A fun book elucidating a bit how noospheres feel.
3.maggie furey harp of winds, sequel to aurian. Nice magic world, real feelings, how much guide to real stuff I forget. 
4.3 m a foster morphodite. Book 3 of a trilogy. About mental discipline and powers, discovery during visit to other planet. I recall foster being more insightful than most.

4.2 m a foster transformer, I think we one book of trilogy
4.1 M A Foster , the morphodite. Genetically engineered mental power, more hard core than I thought at first.. important concept.
5 m a foster day of the klesh. Again well written, hard sci Fi world but humans with powers.
6 m a foster waves. Yes I e noted her writing.
7. Raymond feist, faerie tale.  What it says but enjoyable.
8. Raymond feist , daughter of the empire. Same universe as his riftwar. Maybe a bit convoluted but OK.. I forget..
9.2 Raymond feist, magician: master. Better reviewed than 8, I think more fun, but I think only that, despite save the world theme.
9.3 Raymond feist, Silverthorn. Vol 3 of saga.
9.4. Raymond  feist, a darkness at sethanon. Vol 4 of riftwar saga. 
10.1. William forstchen, a darkness upon the ice. I recall somewhat entertaining, fast enough, alternate world not so fantastic, challenge to save their not so advanced world.
10.2, the flame upon the ice, sequel.
10.3 the ice prophet, sequel sequel. Maybe I identified with a protagonist trying to cope with some folks...
11. William forstchen and Greg Morrison, crystal warriors. A US and a Japanese warrior from ww2 get projected together to another realm where learn to cooperate and use energy from crystals in a new war.
12. Franson, the shadow of the ship. Very hard core, learn new physics to get ship in space to come home.
13. Cheryl Franklin, fire crossing. I remember liking her. Rich novel, theme crosses time and oppressive computer networks and use of serious human powers.
14. Cheryl Franklin, the Inquisitor. Galactic space opera, but again human enough to be engaging. Hard sci Fi.
15. Cheryl Franklin, sable shadow and ice. I always find it a good sign when folks can smoothly use both hard ans magic genres. This one emphasizes the mages of Avalon, but also issues about time and destiny and the effort to regain technology.
16. Philip Jose farmer, Lord tyger. Semimagical land suddenly gets visited by folks in helicopters. I forget how everyone adapts. Farmer wrote some great and unique stuff (like to your scattered bodies go), but I forget this one.
17. Philip Jose farmer, dungeon, volume 1. I forget. A world where a lot of different things at different levels coexist.
18. Farmer, the fabulous riverboat. In his Riverwood series, lots of human cultures may be found along the same long river..
19.1 C.s. Friedman, in conquest born. The sheer emotional intensity of Friedman's writing engaged me back then... Hi tech and telepathy
19.2, the madness season. Mental discipline issue continues.
20. CS Friedman, black sun rising. Still intense but maybe it started to become too dark for me...

G ====================================================================

21 William Gibson and Bryce Stirling, the difference engine. Sort of historical (1800s) sci Fi about early computers and a mystic is involved.
22 James Gunn , the mind master. In a future dominated by virtual reality a guy needs to Fi d a successor to keep their objective reality from falling apart.
23 geary gravel. The alchemists. Human explorers learn that natives of a planet they are developing have interesting and important powers.
24 Lisa Goldstein strange devices if the sun and Moon. Endorsed by Neil gaiman and zelazny and the pos24 (cont) like de lint, interaction of our world and near astral but in London time of Elizabeth 1.
25 Noah Gordon shaman. Maybe not really sci Fi, story of a native American shaman mid 1800s.
26 Simon green shadows fall. Faerie and robots coexist in that place, and green us more entertaining than usual here. But I doubt any deep insights, just fun.
27 Joseph green, the mind behind the eye. Fun hard core sci Fi, as earthiest build system to experience life on other planet.
28 Irving Greenfield the face of him.  Seems fast and fun, echoes of strugatsky's hard to be a god. His only to the local folks.
29 David gerrold and Larry Niven the flying sorcerers. Of course Niven us famous as one of the hardest of hard sci Fi, but this was not all that dramatically interesting. Primitive world views blimps as magic.
30. Andrew Greeley the magic cup. Retold legend of holy grail by very respected author. (I often cite his seminal survey research.) But a bit classic for me.
31. Gear and gear, people of the earth. Like clan of the cave bear (a) historical fiction based on then current theories.
32 Daniel galouye the infinite man. About how to try to save the world, as it was in the 1979s, if one discovers one has enormous powers. A serious question, but I forget what their answer was.  Would of course depend on exact details anyway.
33 Colin Greenland take back plenty. Award winner about humans figuring out how to handle an inhabited world they colonize.
34. Richard grant rumors of spring.  I forget. Earth comes back to life after nature had been devastated.
35. Richard grant, through the heart. Heroic small group to restore desolate earth.
36. William Gibson, necromancer. Lots of awards, iconic cyberpunk author.
37. Mary gentle, rats and gargoyles. Magic world with lots of intensity.
38. Mary gentle, Golden witchbreed. Recommended by Ann McCaffrey. Very rich magic world, but I forget whether any insights into how paranormal really feels.
39. Dana gabaldon, outlander. A real classic, famous best-seller.. about time travel, now and old Scotland.  But a bit slow for me, maybe too much a women's    
40. Diana gabaldon, dragonfly in amber. Likewise.
41. Diana gabaldon, voyager. Likewise.
42.2. Greeno, ghattis call, mind talk to cats and fairly real fill-in, but typical such world.t. ..

H ===============================================================

1.  L. Ron Hubbard, battlefield earth 1982. Long hard sci Fi, earth resistance to aliens.  Long but not as long as his invasion series on the same theme. Note praise by van vogt; in many ways, Hubbard was an imitator of van vogt. But after success in swashbuckling sci Fi, Hubbard decided to start Scientology, a whole other story, well worth knowing. The last book I read on Scientology, by miscavage (expose by father of current head of Scientology), is a Kindle nonfiction, but at least two other sci fis I have give important additional insights. No magic or even psi that I remember here. Bestseller?
*2. Hubbard, slaves of sleep 1939.  A shorter, faster story raising serious issues about human thinking.
*3. Hubbard,  fear and typewriter in the sky, 1951. See 2. Stories which helped establish him before Scientology.
4.1, 4.2, 4.3 Hubbard, 1985, first 3 volumes of invader series. Serious recommendations by worthy people, and I remember a few amusing scenes. A bit more real psychology than 1, and maybe time delay was main reason I never bought later volumes. But I also had other sources on Scientology thinking, and didn't give it such a high priority as 10 volumes would demand.
**5. Frank Herbert dune. I hate including a book where not only front cover but first 10 pages are gone. I remember someone giving me a copy of start of Fame of thrones like that, so I had to use library or someone else to get started! But I won't just toss it out now because it is such an important classic, well-read ever to be classic. It is good standalone but is also start of a worthy series, and there is a movie dense enough to do quite a bit of justice to it. It does portray human minds and powers in a valuable way, which I respect even more after more life experience. Though I don't like the hint of psilocybin or whatever; Annie Besant gave a great analysis of such issues, but she is in nonfiction shelves. Alternative futures are quite real and intensity of human feelings tightly linked to flows of the mind. Deep Mideast culture?
*6. Herbert, dune Messiah. First sequel.
7. Herbert, dosadi experiment. Maybe worth a star, in principle, but read 5 and 6 first. I don't remember it, but is it even more reflective of deepest thought trains in middle East?
8. 1, 8.2 James Hogan, inherit the stars and sequel gentle giants of Ganymede. Very hard sci Fi, recommended by Asimov himself.  The guy who took over as l5 rep to US government when I resigned really loved Hogan's writing.. but I found both him and it a bit prosaic somehow. A level of creativity and plausibility suitable for many parts of NASA, very futuristic for them.
9. Hogan, the genesis machine. Like 8. 
10. Hogan, two faces of tomorrow.like 8, theme of rogue ai. 
11. Hogan, code of the life maker. Like 8, but maybe more colorful with bigger Human questions. 
12.2, 12.3 Barbara hambly, walls of air & daylight. Book 2 of the darwath trilogy. I guess I read volume 1 of the trilogy elsewhere. Not nearly so real as Marion Zimmer Bradley, but I this was the author I enjoyed most of such magical worlds. Somehow I could empathize. Vivid feelings?
13.1, 13.2 hambly, silent tower and silicon mage. Lots of fun, like 12. Was the theme of energy what made it feel more real than a lot of the traditional medieval type magic world stuff?
14.1, 14.2 hambly, ladies of madrigyn and witches of wenshar. Looking closely, I see there was a third book also in the series and in 13 too! Also very enjoyable, tho maybe a tad more wiccan and epsilon less real than 12 or 13, but I forget.
15.1 hambly, the rainbow abyss. Very enjoyable. Only looking at cover of 16 do I see I missed a sequel! But it was fine without sequel.
16.1 hambly, the rainbow abyss. Also enjoyable.
17. Fred Hoyle, element 79, 1967. Maybe **, depending on your taste. 
Of all sci fis I have read, hoyle's are the only ones by a really serious scientist. Hard sci Fi, compared to which all the others are just another level of fantasy. He is also very creative, as a true scientist. Yet the only one which made a deep impression which I remember still was

17 continued Hoyle: a for Andromeda is an important classic not here.
Cover says child 215a, my Harvard dorm room back then.
*18 Hoyle, October the first is too late. I am biased perhaps by my deep respect for hoyle's mind and intuition, yet I do not keep this novel on time and reality in my special shelf because I figure I already know those subjects.
19. Hoyle, rockets in Ursa Major. Looks fine and realistic but I forget.
20. Hoyle, fifth planet. Famous and entertaining, but is it ultimately a bit neurotic, 1963, not unlike what Greeley and Macready discuss in their study of deep values (in Goldman's collection on consciousness)? Alchemical divorce?
I forget this one, but remember an old British sci Fi movie on a similar theme, Land's end, a big crane and martians. But I remember a time at Harvard wrestling with such issues.
OOPs: another Hoyle, the incandescent ones..
*21.2 Barry Hubbard, story of the stone. Sequel to award winning bridge of birds, read elsewhere. Deep feeling for colorful Chinese culture. Enjoyed greatly, different from usual culture centric western fantasy, and valuable for culture as well as another view of deep life. But before I knew China better, and read fixing Liu or Curt Benjamin or Gabriel Kay, let alone nonfiction and journey to the west.
22.1, 22.2, 22.3 Harry Harrison, Eden series. Alternate history, hard core story like clan of cave bear but if dinosaurs didn't die. I forget details. Was it barely entertaining enough at a time when I needed entertainment? Yet a rich earthy tapestry many would love.
*23 Hermann Hesse, magister ludi, 1969. Many would complain I only give one star. Book won Nobel prize for literature, and is revered by many philosophers. Not on my special shelf, because I learned all this stuff long ago. Of course, though understanding basics is extremely important, I still learn about lots of more emergent things from other sci Fi.
24. Heinlein, Friday. A bestseller by one of the fathers of US sci Fi, hard core, female hero. Entertaining but I feel no desire to reread or deep memory.
25. Jack haldeman, fall of winter. Solid hard core sci Fi of humans coping with a world they plan to terraform.
Forget, probably fun, idea of planetary intelligence is important theme in many good sci fis. 
26. Tony hillerman, the blessing way. Best seller , murder mystery set in US West assuming native American magic mysticism as he understands it. Seems  fast and engaging, for most, but not for me.
27.2, 27.3 Lyndon hardy, secret of the sixth magic & riddle. Sequels to 5 magics. Enjoyable, as in a line between hambly and Sanderson, a system of magic somewhat interesting and story I enjoyed. I forget how Real the ideas were or weren't, but in any case all within what I know already.
28. Tom Holt, who's afraid if Beowulf? Entertaining and imaginative as they say, not impossibly silly but...
29. Mark helprin, winter's tale. Best seller. Might really deserve star if only I remembered. A sweeping saga with real spirit, even best regular spirit of East coast US? 
I do remember good feelings as I read it...
30. Henneberg, the green gods, translated  by cherryh.
Hard core eco sci Fi. Greenhouse effects makes earth a real greenhouse, feudal type humans struggle to remain part of life. Entertaining and different. 
31. Holdstock, lavondyss. Zelazny calls it a vision quest through time and archetype; reviewed as deeply entertaining. In truth the world of archetypes is real and important in its way. Winner of awards.
32. Haiblum, interworks. Zelazny calls it hard-boiled and zany, amusing and satisfying. Real enough for hard core folks, but enough human minds to feel relevant somehow. Yes, fun.
33.2 Karen haber, mutant star, sequel to mutant season. 
I recall enjoying both. Theme of mutants with serious mind powers worthwhile. 
34. Edmond Hamilton, star kings.  Somewhat hard core, year 200,000 space opera.
35. Edward Hughes, the long mynd. Psi Fi, richer texture than some in that genre, tho powers a bit heavy. Forget, though I do not forget the underlying challenges.
*36. Herbert, dune machine crusade

35. COntinued, ace double. First golden age of US sci Fi. Leinster well-known hard sci Fi author. Space and IT themes.
36. HM Hoover, the lost star. Mature girl teenager part of visiting other world uncovers secrets of that world. Entertaining and human, hard sci Fi.
37. Daniel hood, fanullah. Magic world, slightly Arabic feeling. Forget.

J ===============================================================

38.2 Robert Jordan the great hunt. Book 2 of wheel of Time, magic works, famous series in its time, not as slow as some, though I lost engagement after many many books.
38.8 the path of daggers, same series, hardback
38.9. winter's heart, book 9, same series, hardback.
39. John James mention my name in Atlantis. Jake's was best-selling author of historical novels, but I forget this one.
*40. DF Jones Colossus and the crab. Very very hard core realistic and light readable. The colossus TV movie
Dealt seriously with ai issue I. Ways that hit home, and then so did the book sequel, valid inspiration, even if conclusion may be warped and wrong.
41. Diana Wynne Jones charmed life. Young witch learns to cope with big powers. I forget whether any real sense of how they really work.

K =======================================

1. Gini Koch, touched by an alien. Very light and amusing, folks with some psi powers doing important silly fun stuff. How could I read be silly almost chick flick thing? Well, when a person named Koch writes about an alien in the family, and you know the family.. the ideas are interesting enough. I also read one or two others in this series.
2.1 Katherine Kurtz, the adept. Nice solid traditional story of magical or occult Scotsmen, good solid Scottish rite freemason. Maybelline Doctor strange in a way but more grounded and more realistic threats to cope with. She is also author of best-selling deryni fantasy series which I never got as deep into.
2.2 same series, book 2, lodge of the lynx.
2.3, same series, the Templar treasure
2.4 same series, dagger magic. By the way, voyage to Arcturus by Lindsay is ** except for new edition second preface, deeper Scottish rite.
2.5 same series, death of an adept.
3. David Kyle, the dragon lensman. New book in classic series by e.e. "doc" Smith which was memorable and fun, though I read it long long ago. Series was interesting space opera, more real feeling than most, serious themes. This was entertaining, not so much novel deep stuff. Time, DNA, lens focusing energy.
4. Henry kuttner, startling worlds. 3 novellas, very strong endorsement by marion Zimmer Bradley, her genre, but I forget.
5.1 Patricia kennealy, keltiad series. Keltic worlds in space, with tech and magic as in treasures of Arthur and such. Not being really into fantasy I think I just slowed down and stopped.
5.2 second book in same series.
6. Gerard Klein, starmasters gambit. Hard core space opera, made author famous in France. 
7. Gerard Klein, more in time's eye. Also entertaining space opera.
8. Damon knight, the other foot. Hard core from classic golden age of fast read and creative notions. Guy wakes up to find himself in an alien sort of body.
9. Damon knight, a for anything. Like 8, different idea: replicator can duplicate anything. Then what?
10. Dean Koontz midnight.  Famous and popular horror writer, reasonably rich story and magic system, but worldview unrealistically dark.
11. Michael Kerr, night runner. Psi versus spy adventure, inspired by actual dia stuff of the time. 
12. Nancy kress, an alien light. Very thoughtful, pleasant writer taking on various intellectual issues which futurists and even policy folks get serious about.  In this one, aliens try to figure out humans. I have read several others and enjoyed. 
13. Ellen kushner Thomas the rhymer. Won a fantasy award, happy magic world.
14. John Kessel, good news from outer space. Ny daily news called it best sci Fi of the year.  Other endorsements. Very earthy and realistic but I forget.
15. Colin kapp, the chaos weapon. Hard core, speculative chaos and probability physics, but felt more fun, less earthy, yet more real in flavor to me than 14.
16 Kaye and Godwin, winter mind. They won a fantasy award, but this was more hard core realistic. Set in future collapsed US, trying to restore tech but also telepathic powers. 
17. Kube-mcdowell, all 3 Vols of trigon disunity trilogy. Deeply respected hard core realistic space opera mainly human, historical depth.

L ==============================================================

18. Barry Longyear, sea of glass. Extremely realistic. Will ai help or hurt as earth tries to survive very serious real challenges not fiction at all? Stimulating to serious futurist.
19. Jean lorrah, star trek next gen, metamorphosis. Usual nice star trek connection, and data is still trying to become a real boy. But I forget.
20. HP Lovecraft, at the mountains of madness. Silly stories by most famous of horror writers, just for diversion.
*21. Tim lukeman, Rajan. One of a few very special novels explaining in pleasant form about important tricky ideas from East Asian culture. A bit like Zen or Shinto. 
22. Brian Lumley, the clock of dreams. A major inheritor of Lovecraft. More fun and coherent despite dark aspects of the genre. Not as genre bound as most books in it.
23. Mercedes lackey, magic's price. Front cover off.
Attempted follower of Ma23 ((cont) lackey... Not as real in magic as Bradley. But she tries and some folks swear by her. 
24 Morgan Llywellyn druids. Hugely recommended, historical novel but with seriously researched magic aspect. Has enough meat, but why did I not get into it? Too well formally researched?
25 David lake, wildings of Weston. Hard core as humans visit alien world and entertaining biology aspects. Good stuff.
26 Arthur Landis, home to Avalon. Lots of fun, hard core but colorful story in space opera genre but really life in a curious human settlement planet. 
27 majliss Larson, star trek pawns and symbols. Did I get this cheap for Chris many years ago? Mind power game with Klingon empire says book but I don't remember reading it.
28. Madeleine l'engle many waters. Later volume in acclaimed young-adult
friendly time trilogy. 
*29. Ra Lafferty, past master. Sadly, I forget which of his novels really stunned me in a Positive way, vividly explaining how adepts in 4 major western traditions really work and interact with government. He knows something. But in any case, 2 of the 4 I have from him might be candidates and this is one.
Emphatically not the boring rerun kind of sci Fi, stimulating and fun at least. Note the serious testimonies. And yes, serious humor too.
*30 Lafferty, apocalypses. Like 29, next best candidate of the ones I have.
31. Lafferty, annals of klepsis. Mix of 29/30 type stuff and about half normal planet with magic and romance stuff.
32. Lafferty, strange doings. Stories, good place for novel quick scenarios.
33. Jean lorrah, Vulcan academy murders. A solid looking star trek novel I probably bought for Chris, never read.
*34. Stanislaw LEM, the invincible.  I don't remember details of plot of this one but LEM I certainly remember well, both for his outstanding classic Solaris (movies made) and his deep insights permeating all his work. A higher level of reality than those silly astral witches. 
35. Fritz Leiber, the sinful ones. Nice story from age of popular entertainment hard core sci Fi, by one of those golden age US authors.
36. Fritz Leiber, the silver eggheads. Golden age humor with real plot. A classic of its genre.
37.1 Megan Lindholm, the reindeer people. Time of cave bear but a lot richer more human, and maybe real feeling of spirit ala shamanism. Maybe there is spirit value in reading this even for those of us who have read deep anthropology but I forget. 
37.2 sequel, wolf's brother. Maybe scandanavians like her do offer value added here.
38. Anne logston, green daughter. More like happy fairy tale, as in humans and faerie interacting.
39. Syd logsdon, a fond farewell to dying. Mainly hard core.. in future dystopic but advanced earth, guy wants to download himself to clone but his beautiful
Hindu partner knows it would be awful for his soul's future and....
40. Tabitha Lee, day by night. Surprisingly realistic for a sort of Bradley follower in story in medievalish other planet.  Mystery as if esoteric.

-- Lee, tamastara. Maybe her best depicting an Indian feeling of magic, mythological side but that is one important part of that culture.

41. Lee, the birthgrave.  High praise in preface by Marion Zimmer Bradley. S!Ightly grim but engaging.
42. Lee, the silver metal lover.  As hard core as it gets. 
43. Ursala leguin, the beginning place. Young adult friendly happy learn magic. 
44. Ursala leguin, city of illusions. Lots of adult awards. Hard core but in a reached medievalish earth after some alien invasion with flavor esoterica might like a bit.
45. Leguin, the dispossessed. Probably what gave her most adult awards, serious epic.  Hero is physicist trying to reconcile 2 human planets, who also had or have alien contact. Maybe a little politically correct.
46, leguin, tehanu. Last book if her most famous earthzea cycle, magic world aimed at adults. Some basic magic ideas but a tad light.
*47. Marc Laidlaw, neon lotus. Very entertaining travel to tibet sci Fi only insofar as it includes their kind of magic. Looks seriously informative about a real current of Tibetan Buddhism.  But there may be other currents important there too, as I saw first hand. 
48. Keith laundry, worlds of the imperium. Hard core, lots of fun, focus on .. see. Contrion Zimmer Bradley's magic genre b

New 1, laumer, Continued. Alternate earth as I now believe, after looking deeper at empirical basis of many worlds. But alternates can shrivel too.
2. Keith laumer, the long twilight. Hard sci Fi. Fight over rogue power plant on earth.
3. Laumer, the galaxy builder. Hard sci fi fun adventure but series began with the time bender.
4. Laumer, the other side of time. More or less hard sci Fi, but travel to weird time/place.

M ================================================

*5. Ann Maxwell, time shadow. Hard core, but lots of serious psi. She is incredibly intense, which makes it more real than most similar sounding stuff. And engaging. 
*6. Maxwell, name of a shadow. A little less hard core but still interstellar and intense, relatively real.
*7 Maxwell, dancer's illusion. Yes, illusion is also a real issue in real and intense realms.
*8 Maxwell, a dead God dancing. Less real? Well archetypes also abound in the galaxy even if often overrated.
10 rusty Miller, Jedi master's quiz book. How did that get here? But those movies, and Babylon 5, are also important classics of course.
*11. R a macavoy, Raphael. Sadly I only see this last volume of this important damiano trilogy. To be honest, I first heard of the book during astral travel (details on my blog) before it was even published, but it was highly recommended. It gives an inner spiritual real picture of the greatest real spiritual energies in the hard core authentic Catholic part of our noosphere. Serious spiritual value even so.
12  Maxwell, change. Very hard core, with PSi a core part of it.
14. McCaffrey, Alchemy and academe. Richer and more fun than 13, with humor, but also more satire or fairy tale combined.

-- to McCaffrey: freedom's choice. Bestseller,
Sequel but probably OK. Fighting for freedom on another world. Ah, first, freedoms landing too.

15 McCaffrey crystal singer.  It's usual story as magic folk travel with earth spaceships.
16.2 McCaffrey, dragons infer, just vol 2 of trilogy, set in semimagical world of learn in space.
17. McCaffrey, dolphins of pern. More hard core but very psychic .
18. McCaffrey and Nye, the death of sleep. More hard sci Fi but even in a space fleet psychological issues arise.
19. McCaffrey, dinosaur planet survivors. Hard sci Fi, as per title.
20. Ra macavoy, the third eagle. Nice story of guy with mission in space in colorful galaxy, no special deep lessons I recall.
*21. George MacDonald, phantastes. Major classic of modern Irish literature, with preface by c.c.lewis. yes, just faerie in a way, but intense and sensitive in a way which deepens link to such reality.
22. Dan Morgan, the several minds.   Challenges as folks develop psi.
23. Morgan, inside. Hard sci Find set on Mars in struggle for human survival.
24.  Morgan, high destiny. Hardish sci Fi set in other world.
25.2, 25.3 Morgan seed of stars, neutral stars. Hard core space opera of humans going to stars.
26.1 and 26.2, Richard Monaco, runes and broken stone. Historic fantasy ala druid and Roman magic set in that period.
*27. Sandra miesel, dreamrider. Hard core but deeply human psi, intro by Dickinson. Complements laberge Stanford research.
28. Walter Miller, canticle for Leibowitz. Golden age classic sold about a million
Hard core about seeing NXT Civilization.
29. Mckillip, moon flash. Nice pocohontasy heroine learns...
30, 31,32  Moorcock time dweller, land leviathan, war hound. Classic thoughtful fantasy.
33 mcgarry sundogs. Will humans conquer them or?
34.2 Shirley Murphy, wolf bell. Magic world, child must learn to use his power to tune to wolf.
35. Douglas Mason, horizon alpha. 
*MARTIN ed wild cards, stories

N =====================================================

1. Andre (Alice) Norton. Crossroads of time. 1956. An ace classic, hard sci Fi, alternate worlds stuff. Very well written, original at the time.
2. Norton and Susan Schwartz, imperial lady: a fantasy of han China. Probably well written but I forget. On a quick scan, seems embedded in real culture but nothing magic beyond that.
3. Norton and Mercedes lackey, elvenblood 1995. Sequel to elvenblood. Both leaders in magical fantasy writing, but I forget.
4. Norton, perilous dreams. Dreams become reality. Probably the best of her I have, both in entertainment and insight.
Add: Larry Niven see continuation

Add: Larry Niven and Jerry pournelle, the gripping hand, sequel to more in God's eye which I think I read from library. Clancy says: "worth waiting 18 years for." Heinlein called more: " possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read." Hard core sci Fi I remember, relevant to thinking about how nations and species work, but can be taken in part as a fable of US versus smart Indian and. Chinese. Obviously enjoyable.

O ==============================================

50. Andrew offutt and Lyon, web of spider, vol 3 of war of wizards. Magic world.
51. Orgill, 6th winter. Hard core climate change.
52. Kathleen O'Neal, powers of light trilogy. Major space opera , climax redemption of light.

P ===============================================================

1. Jerry pournelle, the mercenary. Pournelle on his own was more of a hawk type, and I met him in space lobby efforts.  Book says it is forerunner to more, and Anderson says thought provoking. I forget.
2.1, 2.2 David Palmer, emergence and threshold.  Guy discovers he has had powers growing, and the must use them to survive when he goes to a challenging other planet.  Nice recs, seems reasonable, but I forget.
3.2, 3.3 Frederick pohl, the two sequels to gateway 1980. Many many awards,
Imaginative hard sci Fi. Much is decode remnants of ancient race beeches. I remember pohl had interesting insights into how politics can work, and stars, but I forget which book. 
4. Pohl, jem. Hard sci Fi, new planet discovered but earth politics also in play.
5. Pohl and jack Williamson, walk around a star. Humans minor played in galaxy races, but human linguist could change it all if he decodes...
6. Pohl and Williamson, starchild trilogy. Human solar empire must adapt to what alien starchild does demanding change. Is it a star? Maybe. Looks like it might be but I forget. Entertaining anyway. HOLD.
7. Pohl and W, undersea city. Hard sci Fi.
8. Terry Pratchett, strata. Relatively hard sci Fi, as they land on flat planet parody of niven's famous ringworld. Lots of odd local districts. Humor, a favorite author of joe.
9. Alexei panshin, rite of passage. Nice recommendations for young woman "coming of age in lived-in world." I forget but maybe entertaining. Emphasis on The Trial reminds me that all sustainable societies have filters and selectors inevitably.
10. Panshin, star well. Hard sci Fi, works with odd creatures to be figured out.
11. Tom Purdom, barons of behavior. So realistic, especially now, is it sci Fi? Sanity versus abusive political computers, too much like today  though 1972.
12. Diana paxson, white Raven. Magic world in spirit of Marion Zimmer Bradley, this one heavy romance aspect. Paxson was closest to fulfilling Bradley's program and insights, and Bradley recommends this. We had nice talk with paxson in Kalamazoo, including her and Bradley's links to Dionne fortune and such. Close to star. The
13. Paxson, brisingamen. Front cover off. See 12. 
14. Paxson, wild crystal.  In her westria series. 
15. Paxson and martine-barnes, sword of fire and shadow. Really serious Celtic magical story.
16. Charles Platt, the silicon man. Very hard core more or less realistic story about folks developing tech to download brain to computer.
*17. Petaja, saga of lost Earths. Adapts Kalevala to sci Fi and modern ideas, a culture worth including in one's education.
18. Rosamunde pilcher the end of summer. Looks like romance not sci Fi.
Best seller and Scottish but know little more.

R ===================================================================

5. Alastair Reynolds, revelation space, 2000. Critically acclaimed, 600p first book in big hard sci Fi space opera. Baxter:"it may really be like this out there."
6. Sean Russell, the initiate brother. Medievalist Japan fantasy, mystic monks but did I even finish it? Is the rich texture more politics than Buddhism?
7. Russell, world without end, book one of moonrise and magic rise. Magic world, but absent real magic I think I quit reading.
8. Melanie Rawn, dragon prince, vol 1 of series. Highly recommended by McCaffrey, and I was entertained enough to finish, but I don't recall any deep insights and it was slow enough I did not go further.
9. Marta Randall 1976 a city in the north. Hard sci Fi, entertaining and fast enough, humans unlock puzzles of a less developed alien civilization they visit.
10. Robert Reed, beyond the veil of stars. Hard sci Fi, like tech finding portals to other planets. Probably entertaining, creative linkages, but I don't remember.
11. Jennifer Robinson, sword dancer. Bradley gives very strong endorsement, which I can relate to. In a way, more intense human emotions than magic as such, but coherent and driving and entertaining.
12. Tony rothman, the world is round. Very hard core about humans making sense of a strange formerly hi tech old planet with odd natives. I do remember enjoying it but not the details. Strong recommendation by silverberg. Forget details.
13. Mack Reynolds, tomorrow might be different. Extremely clever and fun, alternate history on nice theme worth thinking about but no need to reread.
14. Reynolds, the lagrangists. Murder at l5. So realistic, is it even sci-fi?
15.1, 15.2, 15.4, 15.5. Joel Rosenberg, guardians of the flame., Vols 1, 2, 4, t Fairly popular magic world,  looks OK, but I got it cheap relatively recently and never felt it was important enough to finish.
16. Irene Radford, guardian of the freedom. Book 5 in a (separable) series, Merlin's descendants, well-reviewed fiction if esoteric side of American revolution. Hardback. Almost a star -- well researched and good story, more knowledge of UK magic traditions than most of these, but nothing sticks in my memory and I have other sources on these things.
17. Kim Stanley Robinson KSR, the years of rice and salt.  Almost star. By far his most entertaining, a panorama of history from one serious mainstream type Buddhist viewpoint. KSR gets good reviews and I enjoyed when he came to visit various of us at NSF to do his homework on more hard core books. Usually too calm and reasonable for me.
18. KSR, the wild shore. Good recommendations, hard core story of post catastrophe US.
19. Keith Robert's, the inner wheel. Fun energetic tale
of folks using psi in near future to try to stop war.
Did it stimulate my imagination about options? I forget that aspect, and am already stimulated enough by now.
20.2, 20.3 Mickey Reichert, the last of the renshai, books 2 and 3.  Magic world, war of realms with magic. More enjoyable than most in that genre.
*21. Joanna Russ, picnic on paradise 1968. Gets a star on sheer fun and great recommendations, and the way it plays on themes of enduring importance as we seriously juggle different views of reality. I remember that theme if not the book.
22.1, 22.2. Marta Randall, journey and sequel dangerous games. Hard sci fi, embedded in space traveling federation, very human ambitious adventure.

S =======================================================

S has such great stuff! But not all.

: *** Dan Simmons, Hyperion and the rise of Endymion. Simmons and card are by far the most inspired, and psychically aware, and important writers out there today. The Hyperion series (tho I only see vol 1 and 4, and followons also very important) is one of Simmons' two very best, the other being a very short novel or novella, muse of fire.

1.1 Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver. 900 p first volume of historical fiction, bestseller much acclaimed and researched, highly recommended by woman I respect in space movement. First volume covers enough already from Newton to Leibnitz. Learned a couple of amusing things about Newton and MIT, most notably his needle in eye experiment, yet my other sources tell me this is an unrealistically black and white and grey account, and I stopped reading somewhere midway.
*2.Stableford, the realms of Tartarus. Maybe stableford was the very best of hard eco sci Fi, and this his best. Hard realism, but a rich understanding of how ecological and environmental forces can give rise to important diversity. I will forever remember the " little people" of this story of future earth. Also extremely engaging and rich.
*3.4, 3.5, 3.6 Stableford, daedelus series, city of the sun and .. Like 2 but with the greater diversity seen by a starship daedelus visiting many planets. The deep richness in this series,and firm biology foundation, makes it relevant to
Many future oaths we humans might follow. And yet each book is fun and relatively self-contained.
4. Stableford, the walking shadow. I forget, but looks good. Probes further into possible far future with rift in space-time.
5. Stableford, the fenris device. Hard sci Fi. I forget. Probably fun.
6. Stableford, swan song. Probably fun, pilot gets brain augmentation.
7. Stableford, optiman. Fits into 3, really.
8. Stableford, castaways of tanagar. Hard sci Fi but I forget, looks engaging.
*9. Olaf Stapleton, last men in London. May well deserve two stars, except I learned one can get his whole collection for 99 cents now on Kindle due to copyright expiration. First and last men is his most amazing classic, from the age of Hg wells. Evidence of true precognition, but as in a dream some elements mixed with others. Ironically in a scan I see further evidence I did know of before, but since I have Kindle I won't keep this one.
*10 Robert silverberg, son of man. Many would say two stars for all of silverberg, and thus might well deserve two stars as well, except that I forget it. I would certainly give two stars to his books The Stochastic Man and Face Upon the Waters, extremely important classics. This one is probably one of several I really enjoyed long ago, many read as I stood between shelves in a bookstore when I was a poor student, imaginative revisiting of important core pieces of human spirit with depth and energy and fun. Silverberg has real inspiration at times, and is also well-reviewed in sci Fi.
*11. Silverberg, man in the maze. But I forget it.
?12. Silverberg, project pendulum. If an intelligent clairovoyant writes of the destiny of humanity, how important could it be? I forget, but on a quick scan the key idea seems to be something I already know from another angle, more in context.
13.2, 13.3 silverberg, books 2 and 3 of Lord Valentine series. I found the series a bit slow and boring for me, perhaps because I don't engage so much with more medieval worlds, even though book 1 had a character doing some things I could relate to some. 
14. Silverberg, Tom obedlam. New York times has very high praise, and i do see true inspiration and some things I can relate to. But is the galaxy truly so boring and irrelevant in the end?
OOPS: also silverberg, star of gypsies, hot sky at midnight, and Lord of darkness like heart of darkness.
&Shadrach in furnace.
15. William shatner, avenger. Star trek book probably bought for Chris.
16. Joan slonczewski. Hard core eco sci Fi. Somewhat memorable and very pleasant texture, an ocean world.
17. Bob Shaw, two-timers, 1968. I would really like to give a star to Shaw burning think it was another book by him which I read in Ann arbor in 1969 which helped me think about how telepathy works and about field and energy aspects. This popular story about time looks fun and reviews well but I forget it.
*18. Shaw, tomorrow lies in ambush. 1973, so I don't think I read it in 1969, but it has some of the same content and a fun story. 19. Shaw, shadow of heaven. Hard sci Fi. I forget.
20. Shaw, orbitsville, 1975. Hard sci from soon after O'Neill, l5, hcse. Vaguely remember entertaining enough in that world but not special to us.
21. Shaw, the ragged astronauts. Very realistic as advanced humans in medievalish world, spirit of Connecticut Yankee by twain. Credible folks call it Shaw's best, but I suppose I get less inspired by this theme.
**22. Arkady and boris strugatsky, time-wanderers. Actually, Monday begins on Saturday was their best, what I remember most vividly, but maybe it is on my privileged shelf. These may be very much Russia's best sci Fi writers, though quality of translation varies and that can be a problem. I also deeply enjoyed their hard to be a god, very worthwhile as well as fun, but the movie was much less fun, partly because of translation issues and partly translator philosophy issues. I don't even remember this one but I can see it reflects their deep insights.
22. Strugatsky, snail on the slope. Don't remember so clearly but I think it was jumbled a little in translation. Can you read through that?
23. Strugatsky, final circle of paradise. Entertaining enough. Was it put off by things which once seemed unrealistic which have since become more realistic? I forget.
**24. Info Swann, star fire. Despite having been in Scientology a bit, ingo Swann   was as well-verified a psychic as we have ever had, tested over and over in very tough double blind tests by US intelligence agencies. This novel shows it. It was very uncanny for me to read it at a time when certain things were localized to where I was, which folks were not supposed to have any inkling of. Did learn something from it, and from nonfiction sources by and about him. 
25. Mary Stewart, the hollow hills. King arthur buffs would give two stars. Very famous ultrabestseller bringing the merlin Arthur myths to life in classic Celtic myth style. But is sword in the stone deeper in its portrayal of magic? Front cover missing.
26, Stewart, last enchantment. Another bestseller in same series.
**27.2, 27.3 Dennis Schmitt, Kenshin and satori, sequels to wayfarer. Mainly on another planet, some earth, all human, though I actually forgot the space part. A very deep journey through the powerful core of Zen Buddhism, serious mental disciplines, interactions, immersions. And very entertaining as well. 
*28 william shatner and michael Tobias, believe.
Really historical novel based on real debate for and against psychic phenomena.
29. Salvatore, homeland. Forgotten realms videogame book, but author is serious and addresses real human issues albeit in elfland. 
30. Pamela Sargent, Venus of shadows. Very hard core settling Venus but very human story of generations of family doing that settlement, how life feels in such a situation. I remember being engaged enough tho not deeply inspired, tech worth considering for spacers.
31.2,31.3 somtow sucharitkul, Vols 2 and 3 of inquestor trilogy. Campbell award. Human space opera of Japanese culture flavor. Sequels to starship and haiku. 
Forget.
32. Sucharitkul, aquiliad. A kind of alternate history otherwise hard core romp, Romans get to old North America via time warp, a few UFOs, etc.
33.2. Stasheff, warlock unlocked. Amusing, Joe's favorite author.
*34. Mary station, legend of Biel. Am tempted to keep and reread but life is short. I remember being very impressed back in 1975, and discussing with someone else very intelligent and more sensitive than I am by far who agreed. The theme of mind and communication is important, but I forget details and specific insights.
35. Pamela Sargent, the Golden Space. May well deserve a star, especially considering the recommendations and the readability of her writing. But I forget! Important themes, but anything new? Already assimilated into my worldview?
**36.2, 36.3, 36.4 E E "Doc" Smith, skylark series Vols 3 to 4, 1963. Actually, it was Smith's other series, the lensman series, which entertained me and inspired me a lot many readers ago; this is a stand-in, as I don't have the other books now.

36 (cont). I remember time when I was a grad student and buddy threw away my books and other important things, not even asking. Lensman was on surface just usual space opera fun, but raised interesting images and questions which stuck with me.
37 Smith, galaxy primes. Psi in galaxy.might be great but I forget.
38. Elizabeth Scarborough, the godmother. Seems like a magic healer woman in Seattle. McCaffrey says she is a joy to read, but I forget how deep or not.
39. Scarborough, healers war. Nebula award winner, set in Vietnam but a lot like 38. 
40. Fred saberhagen, the golden people. Probably the best of his that I have, 
Possibly one star but I forget. Front cover lost but book OK. About contact between psychic and mundane people, mental engagement.
41. Saberhagen, water of thought. Like 40, an important metaphoric theme, maybe a bit more unique and mature than 40 anyway.
42.1, 42.2 saberhagen berserker and brother assassin. Very real themes -- risk of terminator computers (the berserkers), time travel and humans try to use all they have to survive.
43. Saberhagen, empire of the east. Fantasy epic, strong recommendations, but so far as I recall still just a fantasy epic.
44. Cordwainer Smith, the instrumentality of mankind. 14 stories forming a future history, nice intro by Pohl. I forget.
45. Melissa Scott, silence in solitude. Won Campbell award, fantasy. Female mage works to control and use her own powers and a starship to try to save Earth.
46. Shiel, the purple cloud. Very strong recommendations by HGWells, New York times, a literary classic. Life after a purple cloud kills everyone else.
47. Charles Sheffield, Erasmus magister. Knew him when he was a scion of space movement. Erasmus was a respected historic mystic, and even today an Erasmus society exists.. but magic here feels a bit mundane and silly to me.
*48. Norman spinrad, the mind game. Not just very best, but if you want an antidote to witches and scientologists, this guy is a very intense and brilliant cynic, incisive writer, who would entertain trump. Iron dream was probably  his best (not in my books), in a way arguing Hitler was good. Always good to see an alternate view, but not to overdo it.
49. Spinrad, songs from the stars. Zelazny calls it brilliant. Maybe. Might deserve star or two but I forget and I suspect themes I already know.
50. Spinrad, a world between. Human space opera. Probably good, but I forget.
51. Thomas Swann, minikins of yam. I think I remember being entertained enough by this quick fantasy based on enhanced ancient Egypt, not a culture I have dug into as deeply as some others. Only after reading card's gatekeeper series did I fully understand Egyptian book of dead for example.
52. Stephenson, wall of years. Hard core time travel, reasonably engaging as best I recall but no details.
53. John Shirley, transmission, 1979. Endorsed by our precog silverberg, about a guy who steals a thought transmission device to break through a great wall some lunatic has built around an ever more decadent US.
54. Clifford Simak, the visitors, 1979. A classic sci Fi writer, and hard sci Fi novel a bit like ET.
55. Simak cosmic engineers, 1950. The cosmic engineers recruit a few humans to fight in Grand struggle to save the universe. Already celebrated author then.
56. Simak, way station, 1975. Hard sci Fi about human who was actually liaison to galaxy.
57. Tim Sullivan, destiny's end. Guy gets into cosmic struggle to save universe from dying. (Google says from China.)
58. Jeff Sutton, the mind locked man. Hard sci Fi. I forget totally.
59. Hilbert schenck, rose for Armageddon. Eco sci Fi as world is collapsing due to sustainabiluty problems. A human and a modeling group struggle to save us all in fine. I forget but certainly know the theme!
60.'Thomas Scotia, artery of fire. Hard core sci Fi about struggle to understand and control a new energy source. I forget details but certainly am up on what humans know of these issues. Could you imagine useful new ideas after this? But I try other things.
61. Cliff stoll,   cuckoo's egg, 1989. Clancy says true, about cyberwar.

T ==================================================================

1. Sheri tepper, grass. Tepper may be most famous hard core feminist ecominded sci Fi writer, with recommendations one might expect from places like New York times review. Earth woman visits alien planet where she learns things about ecology and balance needed back on earth. Pleasant reading as I recall.
2. Tepper, gate to women's country. Hard sci Fi but strongly recommended by Bradley for depth of analysis of human relations, as successor lands to decayed US interact. (Google said rescheduled not decayed!)
3. Tepper, raising the stones. Like 1, visit alien planet but get deeper into it and its gods.
4. Tepper, like 3 but deeper, analyzing how life and society could be sustainable etc.
5.2, 5.3. Tolkien, Lord of the rings, books 2 and 3.
6. Wr Thompson, star trek, debtors planet. Next gen. 
Probably bought for Chris.
7. Harry turtledove, case of the toxic spell dump. 
Have 4 turtledove books but read more from library which has a huge amount. Well known for alternate history, and his way of describing people reminds me of family who lived through world war 2. This one is more magic than usual for him, but he still writes more like history takes than mysticism.
8.1, 8.2, 8.3 turtledove worldwar,  in the balance, and upsetting the balance and second contact.  His forte. 
Aliens invade but earth response was realistic Ww2 kind of stuff.
9. James tiptree, brightness falls from the air. Hugo Award guy, 16 folks visit change of another world, important back to earth. Forget.
10. Judith tarr, Lord of the two lands. Historical fiction Egypt, Alexander the great. Bradley endorses as historical fantasy but it looks like just wellknown culture, fantasy only insofar as how much filled in. 
11. EC rubber, kalin. Nice quick story as his hero meets girl who can see future but faces challenges.
12. George turner, beloved son. Hard core as 20th century guy comes back  from space, earth forgot.
13. Turner, brain child. Clarke calls it "brilliant, mind stretcher." Geniuses.. from experiment.. confront perversions and dangers in world. Sounds real enough.

V =================================================

14.  Elisabeth vonarburg, reluctant voyagers. Realistic texture of groping for reality when thrust into astral kind of shifting world. Might be star, but I forget.
15. Paula voksky, white tribunal. More like typical fantasy magic world, intricate, moderately fun as I recall.
16. Joan vinge, snow queen.  Vinge and her husband are solid classic writers, and I am surprised I see only one of their books here. (Are his on my priorities special shelf?) 
Thus won the Hugo award.  Hard sci Fi, but very human, queen of that world has a unique ecology and some human strangers to cope with.
*17. Van vogt, the universe maker, 1953. Many view van vogt as equal to or better than Asimov from golden age of sci Fi. Just a little less realistic, but is our cosmos all that realistic anyway? Who knows which is more real! He is mostly more fun than Asimov's . Some of his best I read in libraries. Minds and aliens for example..
18. Van vogt, supermind. See 17. 
19. Van Gogh, anarchistic colossus. See 17.
20. Van Gogh, darkness on diamondia. See 17.
21. Van vogt, slan. One I enjoyed a lot, superior beings trying to figure out how to live on earth.
22. Van vogt, Renaissance. 
23.2, 23.3 Sydney van scyoc, bluesong+ . Sequels to her darkchild. Nice magic world, woman grows, Bradley recommends.

W ====================================================

24 .1, 24.2 David wingrove, Chung kuo  like 1 and 2. Panoramic future history where new China empire rules earth. Elaborate, involved, literate. Post says
superb. OK.
25. Gene Wolfe, shadow of the torturer. Wolfe won world fantasy award, and had very large erudite following. But never did much for me.
26. Wolfe, soldier of the mist.  Greek setting, Post recommendation, maybe requires more neurosis to like.
27.2a, 27.2b, 27.3, 27.4. Wolfe, book of the new sun.
How is the sequel not volume 2? Whatever, it was highly recommended and I got it all cheap, but never felt engaged.
28. Weis and Hickman, into the labyrinth, part of the death gate cycle. I think I enjoyed that cycle a lot, I a29. Weis and Hickman WH, the band of chaos. Like 28, part of cycle I enjoyed.
30.1, 30.3, WH, rise of the prophet books 1 and 3. I forget.
31.1, WH, forging the darksword. I forget. 
32. Colin Wilson, space vampires. Wilson has studied real psychic magic stuff much more than most authors, and wrote an important nonfiction, the strange be just of John Lindsay (author of voyage to Arcturus, in my special section). But that's not this. This is a bit light, and a bit confusing that way. But he writes well. In my scans, I have letters from him. If only we could find the original Arcturus before Methuen cuts...
33. Ian Wallace, rape of the sun. Wallace like Wolfe was favored most by literature, but was OK for me despite that. This is hard sci Fi humans vs aliens.
34. Wallace, death Star voyage. Like 33, more realistic. Had a friend st cyr. 
35. Wallace, sign of mute Medusa. Hard sci Fi.
*36. Wallace, the embedding. Fun, highly praised mind games, tho I forget.
37. RC Wilson, memory wire. Maybe star but I forget. Did I understand as well at the time? Certainly entertaining and rich. Recommendation from Card is serious.
38.2, 38.3, 38.4,38.5, 38.7 Paul Williams, books in pelbar cycle. I think it's OK to miss the first, not such a tight series. Hard sci Fi about rebuilding after US goes to hell and becomes primitive. A serious issue. I vaguely remember enjoying it, as the number of purchases suggests.
39. Manly Wellman, old gods waken. The spirit of West Virginia. Interesting how some folks actually can live and choose to live, and to exercise powers hidden in us which allow many choices.
40. Don wismer,  warrior planet. Struggle in human galaxy between competing guilds of folks with mental powers.
41. Patricia wrede, searching for dragons. Sequel to dealing with dragons. Kirkus review called it a refreshing romp, sounds right.
42. Evangeline Walton, the sword is forged. Bradley praises this epic novel capturing Greek mythological view of the Amazon women. Curious how the face on the cover really looks like a real Greek, so it has a flavor of Greek authenticity.  But the real Amazon women were Scythians, and it was another experience to visit that area and see the interplays and differences.
43. Lawrence watt-evans, with a single spell. Mildly amusing and literature fantasy magic world.
44. Howard Weinstein, covenant of the crown. Original Star trek novel, purchased for Chris.
45. Tad Williams, dragonbone chair, first of a series. 1988, 700 p. , First of a series. Intricately developed foresty world, magic and elves present. Engaging enough but heavy enough I did not continue series.
*46. Kate Wilhelm, city of Cain. Hugo winner, entertaining and fast enough. Theme of how to survive in our tricky US when psi shows you more than is comfortable. Reminds me of nonfiction story Luda showed me re new NIH protocols for research in psilocybin. Remember liking author long ago.
47. James White, star surgeon. Hard core sci Fi, similar in spirit to star trek world.
48.:Michael and Teri Williams, the dark queen. From a series bringing dragonlance computer games to life. 
To me, like just watching someone play the game.m not sure why,...

__**Connie Willis, to say nothing of the dog.
Willis gas written what may be the deepest as well as the most researched novels on time travel ever. This is one of several based on travelers from Oxford, assuming the Oxford standard model of time travel. This one draws on deep research on the target time, England at time of black death. Rich and complex stories and real people. Her later black mouth and all clear novels ask questions about that model of time travel, but are on my privileged shelves. Willis has many other unusually deep and insightful novels well worth the time, I think a Titanic novel passages, also privileged.

Y =============================================

1. Yermakov epiphany. Hard core . Enjoyable. Theme immortality and visit to planet of shades, how to communicate and assimilate their abilities.
2. Yermakov jehad. Sequel, and struggle against half machine half man who wants to wipe out the planet.
3. Robert young., Starfinder. Light adventure, but I really liked the metaphor at the time, resonating with my emerging understanding of how it really is in the galaxy, and even a few words from my old piece in Rosicrucian digest.

Z ===================================

**1.8,1b.1 Roger zelazny, the amber series, and dawn of amber.
The amber series of zelazny is a well-known classical series. I remember reading the series borrowed as hardbound in college park, about when the music crimson King was popular on wgtb (?) Georgetown student radii, a similar flavor. At the time it seemed just extreme entertainment, yet the theme of Plato's cave has re-emerged in our quantum work, as in the paper by Luda and me in qip 2015. No, kings have not, but it is real enough in some key respects to be worth experiencing yea even for same of reality.
2. Zelazny, the last defender of Camelot. Collection of his stories.
*3.David zindell, neverness. Hard sci Fi, paying attention to issues in tech as we know it which most such sci Fi neglects. I remember being very impressed,
And the strong support from Orson Scott Card is significant too. I forget my judgment about his final solution, however.
4. Zindell, the wild. Might be star, I forget. Looks interesting, and high recommendation from silverberg not to be ignored.
5. George zebrowski,  the Omega point. I wish I remembered. Is it worth a star? I think I remember liking it, and he echoes some questions of first rank real importance, but does it yield insight or just humor? I don't recall.
6. Zebrowski, moadic universe. Just like 5.

KEPT FOR ME TO REREAD OR GIVE TO CHRIS ==============================

**1. Attanasio radix 
  Literate, strong endorsement, struggle for quasiapotheosis, experience based so why do I forget it? Maybe I forgot but assimilated like foundation trilogy?
I might hold on as interactions might had memory and teach something maybe.
11. Gordon Dickson. Young bleys. Sequel to the final encyclopedia. In childe cycle. Reminds me of Chris now

11.1 other. Sequel to young bleys. And yes was extremely entertaining
*9 Richard Matteson stirring of .... HOLD His novel what dreams may come (better than the classic movie based on it) is one of the must read books on experience of mind and serious views of the same. This one I remember less but it contains important real insight. Waking the full power of the mind is not fully understood but is in my view coequal with species survival as a top imperative.
*13 Anne McCaffrey, HOLD Pegasus. Probably the most important of the many novels of this fun but light popular author. Types of psi talent are important to that part of life and I remember this helping me a little when I was first sorting out basics.

** Orson Scott Card, Empire series. Very near term sci fi, psychically inspired, but example of how a sensitive person can hear from bad folks. Real bad folks really there really doing bad things.

Modesitt’s books all still here.

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One minute after I posted this, I received an email from a friend on an op-ed attacking DC people for making policy more and more "based on science fiction, not reality." I agree about the reality problem in DC, but not with the attack on science fiction.

Santayana famously said "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Is it possible that those who never read science fiction (or read only one favorite book like Atlas Shrugged or Genesis) are doomed to become bug-eyed monsters? Not everyone, but DC today suggests that it does work that way sometimes...