3 book recommendations from Eliot Peper
Next week I'll be speaking at GamesBeat Summit 2017 in Berkeley. Here's what it'll cover:
The pace of innovation is accelerating. Technological revolutions that once took millennia to play out now take decades, years, months. At the same time, science fiction has rocketed from nerdy niche to mainstream blockbuster, capturing a popular imagination faced with the hard truth that change is the only constant. Science fiction stories inspire technologists, entrepreneurs, and scientists to build a future shaped by narrative. Are we living in science fiction? Is science fiction actually the most "realistic" tool we have to make sense of the modern world? Venture capital investor Tim Chang and author Eliot Peper discuss how science fiction and real world tech influence each other, and what that means for the rest of us.
Tim is a good friend as well as an investor at Mayfield Fund. He spends his time betting on entrepreneurs and helping them build the future. Every few months, we get together and gab about what's coming and his unique perspective has had a big influence on my writing. I'll also be on a separate panel with science fiction author Austin Grossman and Thwacke cofounder Sebastian Alvarado.
More details here. If you're around, it should be a good time. The event organizers tell me that if you use the code "Deantac" you'll get 35% off.
And now, books I love that you might too:
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari is a razor sharp piece of big picture thinking about the forces shaping our world. Harari's ideas aren't always original, but they're woven into a tapestry that is strikingly insightful and comprehensive. I found myself dog-earing countless pages to come back to for further reflection.
Killing Floor by Lee Child is a thriller that follows Jack Reacher, an ex military police officer, who discovers a dark secret hidden in a small town in rural Georgia. Reacher is a ridiculously fun protagonist because he's hyper-competent at martial arts and tactics while simultaneously hopeless at simple things like laundry. The action and pacing are perfectly executed with loads of twists and unexpected surprises.
The Iron King by Maurice Druon brings the court intrigue of medieval Europe to life in a story that is accessible, entertaining, and compulsively readable. This is the book that inspired George RR Martin to write Game of Thrones and it's an absolute blast. The richly drawn characters love, fight, and betray one another in an accelerating cycle of ambition played out against a fully realized historical backdrop.
Bonus recommendation: The Survivors by Nick Farmer is a post apocalyptic novelette that riffs on the sociological implications of a violent viral outbreak (expertly reviewed here). Nick's a close friend and also happens to be the linguist who created Belter, the fictional language on SyFy's The Expanse. I was lucky to read an early copy of his debut story.
In other news, I just finished the first batch of revisions on my next novel, The Feed, a science fiction thriller that explores the geopolitics of climate change and how algorithms shape our lives. It's been extremely weird seeing our government tear down net neutrality and environmental protections while working through the edits. I also spoke on a variety of panels at the Conference on World Affairs about bioengineering, hacktivism, science fiction, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, and the future of art. Fans of the Uncommon Series will appreciate how fun it was to be back in Boulder revisiting Mara and James' haunts. Finally, I interviewed legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson about his fabulous new book, New York 2140 (the interview will go live on Scout next week and I'll make sure to include a link in the next newsletter).
If you enjoy this newsletter and want to support it, forward this email to a friend. I love sharing amazing stories that explore the intersection of technology and culture. The goal of this newsletter is to recommend books, both fiction and nonfiction, that crackle and fizz with big ideas, keep us turning pages deep into the night, challenge our assumptions, help us find meaning in a changing world, and make us think, feel, and ask hard questions. In an age of digital abundance, quality is the new scarcity. The right book at the right time can change your life.
I also pull back the curtain on my creative process. When I'm not reading books, I'm writing them. If you're interested, you can find my books right here. They've been praised by Businessweek, Popular Science, TechCrunch, io9, and Ars Technica. I'd love to hear what you think if you give them a read.
Cheers, Eliot
If this email was forwarded to you and you'd like to sign up, just click here.