3 book recommendations from Eliot Peper
I wrote an essay for TechCrunch that explores the literary culture of Silicon Valley (warning: paywall). It digs deep into the feedback loop between books and innovation and turns up weird gems along the way. Think of the essay as a reading guide to building the future.
In the same vein, I'm prepping for a SXSW panel with Kevin Bankston, Malka Older, and Tim Fernholz about how science fiction influences real world technologists and entrepreneurs. If you're in Austin, come say hi and ask us tough questions. This Twitter thread makes for a fun sneak preview.
And now, books I love that you might too:
Light by M. John Harrison is a masterpiece of mind-expanding science fiction that follows three strange characters through present day London and far flung galaxies centuries hence. Harrison reads like a theoretical physicist trying his hand at space opera. Complex, recursive, and profoundly weird, this novel reaches beyond the frayed edge of reason to grasp at the ineffable.
How To Be Loved by Eva Hagberg Fisher is a raw, moving memoir about the transcendent power of friendship. Hagberg Fisher documents her journey through addiction, illness, grief, and brain surgery with keen emotional insight. In sharing what it took for her to learn how to be loved, she throws back the curtains to let more love into our own lives.
The Forest by Riccardo Bozzi is a gorgeously illustrated book about the grand adventure that is each of our voyages from cradle to grave. This extraordinary feat of visual storytelling that took me on a journey of imagination that challenged me to update my assumptions about what a book can be. I will be gifting it often.
Bonus recommendation: Kevin Bankston's debut science fiction short story, Early Adopter, is a thought-provoking tale of love and loss that channels the feeling of technological dislocation between and across generations.
In other news, I interviewed Nick Harkaway for the Los Angeles Review of Books about algorithmic futures, the power of speculative literature, and how he wrote his mind-bending novel, Gnomon. (Thanks to William Gibson, Max Gladstone, Hannu Rajaniemi, and Michael Dirda for their generous suggestions on the interview.) Gnomon is one of my very favorite books, so this conversation was a real treat. In this in-depth profile of my own journey as an author, I talked to Richard MacManus at Creator Interviews about lessons I've learned writing and publishing novels. I also published blog posts on why edges are the best places to glean insight and why most important things are both simple and difficult. Finally, I just hit 39k words on the rough draft of a new novel.
If you enjoy this newsletter and want to support it, tell your friends. 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 earned praise from the New York Times Book Review, Businessweek, Popular Science, Boing Boing, TechCrunch, io9, and Ars Technica. I'd love to hear what you think if you give them a read.
Cheers, Eliot
"Peper guides his story with a sure hand, lacing its narrative with issues and references that resonate powerfully in the age of net neutrality, algorithms, and social media hacks.”
-Publishers Weekly on Bandwidth
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