Transhumanist Reading List

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Permalink Reply by Christopher on April 4, 2007 at 9:15pm

I don't read RAW, or anyone for that matter, for their ability to accurately predict the future. RAW is, above all else, a philosopher, not a soothsayer.

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Permalink Reply by Christopher on April 6, 2007 at 9:01pm

mmm...okay, do you have any reading suggestions?

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Permalink Reply by Aistan on April 4, 2007 at 11:12pm

Let me chime in with some unsung proto-transhumanist fare:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
The Game of Life - Timothy Leary
Intelligence Agents - Timothy Leary
Info-Psychology - Timothy Leary
The Phenomenon of Man - Teilhard De Chardin
The Archaic Revival - Terence Mckenna
Understanding Media - Marshall Mcluhan
Modern Man in Search of a Soul - Carl Jung
Utopia or Oblivion - R. Buckminster Fuller
Here to Go - Brion Gysin

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Permalink Reply by Miron on April 5, 2007 at 3:08am

At the risk of being obvious:

The Singularity is Near - Ray Kurzweil
Diamond Age - Neil Stephenson

And others:

Beyond Humanity - Paul / Cox
Axiomatic, Permutation City and others - Greg Egan
Robot - Hans Moravec
the Physics of Immortality - Frank J Tipler
Lady of Mazes, Ventus - Karl Schroeder
Ribofunk - Paul Di Filippo
Transcension, K-Machines, Spike - Damien Broderick
William Gibson
Dreams of Gods and Men - W. T. Quick
The Golden Age trilogy - John C. Wright
Toast, Accelerando - Charles Stross
Alastair Reynolds

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Permalink Reply by Safety Neal on April 6, 2007 at 8:32pm

This is great, thanks to everyone who contributed. I think we should organize the titles by author, since authors often have multiple works that should be included. Other thoughts?

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Permalink Reply by Christopher on April 6, 2007 at 8:58pm

I'd like to leave this thread open a bit longer to get some more input...there's such a vast amount of material related to transhumanism out there and we've barely scratched the surface...also, since opinions vary wildly, I doubt we could really come up with anything 'definitive'....that said, perhaps we could put up a list somewhere (where?) that would include all of the members picks...or maybe anyone looking for reading material could check this thread.

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Dotse on April 8, 2007 at 3:41pm

Everything I would have liked to add has already been written, except Simon Funk's After Life.

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Dotse on April 8, 2007 at 8:33pm

Please do, it's amazing. I just sailed through it and was quite disappointed when the adventure had to end.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anissimov on April 24, 2007 at 1:54pm

The only problem with After Life is that it's too damn short!!

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Henegar on April 9, 2007 at 12:18pm

So after this reading list is compiled, are we going to pick a book for us to read through every month or so? And then once we have read the book, or as we are reading it, discuss what is being read, and get each other's point of view and interpretation? I think that might be beneficial, and even if all cannot participate, it will at least give us something to talk about. This might apply more to the non-fiction books, but we can still get some discussion from the fiction books. Thoughts?

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Permalink Reply by Christopher on April 9, 2007 at 1:34pm

Yeah, let's leave this thread open so others can input their list of favourites when they have the impetus. I can set up a poll to democratically determine which book we should discuss....of course that means we will need a list of 5-10 books to vote on and then we can start a new forum topic based on the results. I would personally rather discuss non-fiction but I'm open. Now to figure out the 5-10 books...

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Permalink Reply by John Acrinoe on April 10, 2007 at 12:55pm

Woweeee, A whole bunch of books I haven't read yet. Here's a short list of some of my favorites (trying not to repeat any of the excellent works already noted in this thread): [* items are available online]

The Engineer - Neal Asher
Player of Games, Excession, Look to Windward - Ian M. Banks
Mother of Storms, Candle - John Barnes
Immortality : how science is extending your life span--..Ben Bova
The Transparent Society, Stones of Significance*, Lungfish* - David Brin
Einstein's Bridge - John Cramer
Understand* - Ted Chiang
Diaspora - Greg Egan
The First Immortal - James Halperin
The Collapsium, Hacking Matter - Wil McCarthy
The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime, Rainbow's End - Vernor Vinge
Mutineer Moon - David Weber
Aristoi - Walter Jon Williams
Star Dragon* - Mike Brotherton
Evolutions Darling, The Risen Empire, The Killing of Worlds - Scott Westerfield
Down and Out in Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctrow
Blindsight - Peter Watts

Looking forward to more.

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