The Goldfish Chronicles

As many of us programmers are, I’m a sci-fi fan. I think I started programming before I started reading sci-fi, but it’s a very tricky call. Do books about Tobias the cat, witches and magic count? Just when did my early forays into BBC Basic become programming and not just copying from the book.

As I’ve gotten older, my voracious appetite for sci-fi has diminished a touch, assisted by my having read many of the greats. So I was overjoyed to spend Saturday afternoon reading Robert Sawyer’s Calculating God cover to cover in a few hours. For a long time my top 50 favourite books has been relatively unchallenged, but this book leaps in there, possibly into the top 30.

Sawyer has a successful series about Neanderthals in a parallel universe, but it’s relatively tame. Calculating God is far more visionary and reminds me of reading Stephen Baxter’s work a couple of years ago. (In fact, Baxter has a relatively tame series too, about mammoths that is perfect for kids).

Reading the best of both authors reminds me of when I first discovered Asimov. I highly recommend.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 29th, 2004 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Publication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.