Human Contact Summer Reading List

I’ve read a good number of books leading up to the creation of Human Contact. They’re all about the challenges of interacting between cultures. If you like these books, you’ll probably like the game!

  • The Telling, by Ursula K. LeGuin
  • The Left Hand of Darkness, ibid.
  • The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks
  • Use of Weapons, ibid.
  • Foundation, Isaac Asimov
  • Foundation and Empire, ibid.
  • Second Foundation, ibid.

But you probably (if irate emails and forum posts are any indication) think that I’m grossly negligent because I haven’t read your favorite book.  This is your big chance! I’ve started keeping an Amazon wish list of the books that I obviously ought to have read, according to Shock: enthusiasts.

Put your money where your mouth is! Recommend me some books, I’ll put them on the list, and if you really care, you’ll spend a couple of dollars to send it to me. I’ll at least start reading them. If they suck, I won’t finish them! If it winds up influencing the book, I’ll enthusiastically thank you in the credits to Human Contact when it’s a real thing. Please buy me cheap, used versions, as long as they’re legible, unless you’re really keen to spend money or you feel the cover illustration is really beautiful or something.  I think there’s even a way to just send one as a gift, without it being on a list, though I’m not sure. If you have to search, I’m the Joshua Newman in Florence, MA.

If you didn’t send it to me, don’t complain that I haven’t read it. If you sent it to me and I didn’t read it, you can complain.

Sound like a good deal?

0 thoughts on “Human Contact Summer Reading List”

  1. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE by Charles Johnson…awesome, fast read…definite culture clash with philosophy thrown in.

    Take care,
    PF
    ruthlessdiastemagames.wordpress.com
    Don’t confuse it with any other work with a similar name…CHARLES JOHNSON.

  2. Well…

    These books are fun and good. But they are SF/fantasy… which is good. How about “Going Solo” by Roald Dahl. Tales of colonialisim in German/British East Africa

    Or reading up on the last voyage of Ferdinand Magellan. Dude was killed by a Yo-Yo.

  3. What I am curious about is how much Le Guin you have already read. Quite a bit I assume. I would claim that her most important contribution is her Ekumen short stories, rather than her novels in the same universe. There are some excellent collections of her short stories.

    “The Birthday of the World” is one of those.

    If you haven’t read that one I really recommend you to do.

    Also, I am right now reading Shock for the first time.

  4. I’m with Sven – “The Birthday of The World” is perfect Human Contact material. Some really strong shorts in there.

    Robert Reed’s ‘Marrow’ is also worth considering.

  5. If you put the Birthday of the world on the list I can probably have a copy shipped to you. US is a damn cheap country (as long as you don’t have to ship to Europe or pay for healthcare, I guess).

    I see that you have some Heinlein there. If you haven’t read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, you might like to add that one too. Just because it’s awsome.

  6. Cuckoo’s Egg by C. J. Cherryh

    or her The Faded Sun Trilogy

    or her Foreigner Series

    or pretty much anything she writes as it inevitably involved culture clash in some form. But Cuckoo’s Egg is a nice, contained story.

  7. Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy and Cherryh’s Atevi series are the ones I’d have to demand you read. I can’t seem to figure out how to add them to the wishlist. I’d send them to you, but I’d like to know whether or not you already have/read them first.

  8. I love Cyteen, so I’m all thumbs-up and shit on Cherryh. I’ve added the first couple of Foreigner books to my wish list.

    I read Butler’s Wild Seed and wasn’t blown away by it, so I haven’t read anything else by her. But the recommendations come in so hot and heavy, I obviously can’t ignore her any longer.

    I can’t figure out how to add stuff to someone else’s wishlist, either. I’ve tried to send things to other people at times, and I thought you could, but now I can’t find a way to do it.

    Anyway, thanks for the recommendations! I’ve added them to the list!

  9. Whoa… I just realized how many comments I missed here. Sorry, everyone!

    So, I’ve added Courtny’s, Sven’s, Soren’s, Adam’s, and Dave’s suggestions to the list! Thanks!

    Soren, I see a lot of Company novels. Which one should I start with?

    Soren, by the way, is someone everyone here should know about. He’s written some of the Human Contact setting stuff, particularly the nanotech and Esoterics articles, and has been a hyperactive sounding board throughout the creative process.

  10. Oh, yeah, I totally forgot A Mote in God’s Eye, and the sequel The Gripping Hand. You’ve probably read those, but if you haven’t, you’re in for a treat. (Niven and Pournelle, in case your google finger is broken)

    Butler’s Xenogenesis/Lillith’s Brood trilogy are so dear to me I probably reread them yearly.

  11. I haven’t read either Mote or Hand, though I’ve sure heard a lot of enthusiasm for the former.

    I’ve added Xenogenesis to my wishlist and I’ll add the others now!

  12. Oh, hey, I never responded to Michael.

    The important thing to me is not the colonial aspects — at least not the 16th-20th century versions of it — but the actual culture clash of sympathetic people who I can get behind.

    We all know that Columbus brought plague, forced conversion by torture, slavery, and genocide. We know that heroes are usually murderers when you’re down on the ground with them. What I want to look at are the challenges of a modern, Rationalist liberal democracy as it deals with cultures that don’t share its values.

    But I didn’t know that Magellan was killed by a yo-yo. That’s pretty awesome.

    …Hm. Wikipedia disagrees with you.

  13. _Hand_ is terrible, and even _Mote_ has creepy right-libertarian motifs woven throughout. It’s a great study on technology but politically and emotionally sterile-to-monstrous. And I say that as someone who read it and liked it. It definitely doesn;t mesh with the goals and intentions of the Human Contact setting.

    _In the Garden of Iden_ is the best starting place for the Company novels.

    On, and if there’s no Eleanor Arnason on there, I’m a total fuckup. _Ring of Swords_ is a must, as are any of the Hwarhath stories that accompany it (many of which are introduced as though they come from a primer on hwarhath mythology and literature). There’s a sequel as-yet unpublished, and she has a blog at http://eleanorarnason.blogspot.com/. You should sound her out about her fiction, anthropology, and maybe writing something short for Human Contact (even if it’s just a blurb).

  14. i didnt have the visual energy to read all of the threads…but if no one has mentioned Midnight Robber by nalo hopkinson you should give it a try

    if someone did mention it then…well…it’s worth mentioning again, i guess.

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