Rayden Tron’s Bookshelf

  Amazon.com is pleased to have Rayden-Tron's Domain in the family of Amazon.com associates. We've agreed to ship books and provide customer service for orders we receive through special links on Rayden-Tron's Domain.

Amazon.com associates list selected books in an editorial context that helps you choose the right books. We encourage you to visit Rayden-Tron's Domain often to see what new books Rayden-Tron has selected for you.

Thank you for shopping with an Amazon.com associate.

Sincerely,
Jeff Bezos
President
Amazon.com

P.S. We guarantee you the same high level of customer service you would receive at Amazon.com. If you have a question about an order you've placed, please don't hesitate to contact us.

When I have money I buy books.

If I have any left over, I buy food and clothes.

Someday (hopefully soon) this bookshelf will contain published works of my own but for now here is a quick selection of some of the works that I admire and which helped make me the person I am. With each book if you like what you see, you will have the opportunity to "git yer own copy" from Amazon.com , Geocities’ official virtual bookstore, by simply clicking on the title. As of this posting, all titles shown were in stock or otherwise available in a reasonable amount of time, but this is the Internet and things change quickly. I will endeavor to provide regular updates to this site.

Science and Technology

Mind Children by Dr. Hans Moravec:

When I was in my first year of college, putting the finishing touches on the ideas expressed elsewhere in my Domain, I felt terribly alone. (As you can imagine, I wasn’t winning any popularity contests with passions like that.) Then, while sulking in the Undergraduate Library, procrastinating on a term paper on another topic, I picked up a copy of the journal Robotica. On the last of the inside pages I saw an ad for this book and a chill went down my spine. I could tell it was by a kindred spirit and I was right. I mail-ordered it, broke as I was, and found that not only had he thought of what I wanted to do, he thought of two more ways to do it. Dr. Moravec is a visionary and he backs it up with tight logic, interdisciplinary evidence, and vivid illustrations. Now, 10 years later, his hard technological predictions have proven a bit conservative. If you want to know what will happen when the lines of human evolution and computer evolution converge (and likely part ways afterward), read this book. Also, try his somewhat more challenging and detailed sequel, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind .

Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky:

This is from the man who has been in AI since the very beginning. His is the voice of experience. He has been there through the fads, the hype, the false starts, and the great expectations. He has survived the notorious fickleness of the government agencies that support basic research, where congressional whims in "bringing home the bacon" can have a researcher wading in money one day and penniless the next. As always, he remains a hopeful and enthusiastic researcher who may just see the light at the end of the tunnel. He even took a stab at science fiction with Harry Harrison (though the Turing Option is currently out of print). I’d believe what he says if I were you.

Mobile Robots: Inspiration to Implementation 2nd Edition by Joseph L. Jones and Anita M. Flynn:

Want to get in the robotics action but are starting from Square One? Allergic to cats? Puppies pee on rugs too much for you? Your little brother/roommate has a snake/iguana/tarantula and you need to upstage him? This is the book for you..It's a real nuts-and-bolts introduction that starts with a simple project the average hobbyist can grasp and progresses to issues of design for the more creative and mechanically-inclined. Clear instructions, diagrams, and explanations are given throughout, neatly covering the combination of art and science that is the essence of modern robotics.

Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Robots
Edited by David Kortenkamp, R. Peter Bonasso, and Robin Murphy:

It's tough to argue with success, which is exactly what this book presents: case studies of working mobile robot systems. These are robots who left the lab to properly operate in the real world and/or win real-world oriented contests. Some technical knowledge is assumed, so this is not for the completely wet-behind-the-ears unless they had some prior electro-mechanical, programming, or mathematical-modelling training. Details hardware and software architectural issues, algorithms, and high-level language coding. If you're really serious about your robotics and have cleared the beginner's hurdles with ease, this may be the book for you to take it to the next level.

In Our Own Image by Maureen Caudill:

This book is subtitled, "Building an artificial person". The author is an expert in the field of neural networks, understanding how they work in natural brains and using the same methodology to build artifical ones. She describes the progress being made on both ends and what hurdles must still be cleared before creation of an intelligent android will be possible, a feat which she predicts will occur in 20 years. In addition to the technical areas presented, she also gives serious coverage to moral and ethical issues implicit in such an event, a treatment rare outside science fiction. She even starts with the social and human changes forecast in various science fiction works featuring intelligent machines and progresses to "Redefining the Measure of Mankind".

Cosmos by Carl Sagan:

This is one of the all-time legendary science-for-the-masses books. Based on his PBS miniseries that brought me to tears and kept my sense of wonder alive past the age in this culture where it’d normally be dying. Dr. Sagan is everything a good preacher should be. He speaks to your soul, grabbing and shaking you with his words and then inviting you on a transcendental journey from which you will emerge like a newborn child. The only difference is that his message is science and leads the newborn child to reconnect with the highest faculties of his/her brain. He was truly anguished over the woeful ignorance and indifference to scientific fact and the experimental method expressed by modern Americans and it is a battle he fought to the end. I have most of Dr. Sagan’s works and will post more individual reviews as I get the time.

Skyscrapers & Project AVATAR

Skyscrapers by Judith Dupre:

A reference book for all my moods, well organized, crammed top-to-bottom with facts, pictures, and an icon guide on the bottom-right of the right hand pages. Contains historical vignettes, anecdotes, hard numbers, and unique features of the elite and significant among the big. Fascinating, especially in the overviews on broader topics marking sections in the book. I can skip through it when I'm feeling hyper or need info on a particular building, or sit and read page-by-page when I'm feeling contemplative. A beauty of a book, but I dare you to fit it on your bookshelf.

Manhattan Skyscrapers by Eric Peter Nash:

Like the above, but longer, more colorful, more detailed text-wise, and focused solely on Manhattan. While all the buildings may not be as big as those covered in the previous title (and the book itself is not as big as the previous title), there is some overlap because NYC is the world's foremost vertical city. I didn't mind, because the focus solely on Manhattan allows deeper coverage of style and history (particularly important in NYC, because of ongoing real-estate pissing matches that somehow have glorious results). This book is a great boon to an inveterate city-traipser like yours truly. If I'm missing, check my apartment for this book. If it is missing as well, you'll know where to find me.

Twin Towers by Angus K. Gillespie:

Now let's get specific. This book is one of two "biographies" of the Twin Towers released before the horrors of September 11th. Written by a local folklorist, a Rutgers University professor of American History, this is the lighter, airier, and surprisingly, the more technical of the two. Playing off dynamic clashes of opposing sides, New York vs. New Jersey, for example, or architecture critics vs. the common city residents, he weaves a lively tale of a trailblazing complex from its conception to completion. It's a tale of pushing the envelope, of innovation, of the human desire to improve on what has gone before. This account is topped with a profile of life in the complex, how its operations were carried out day-to-day. A delight to study, this book makes learning easy.

Divided We Stand by Eric Darton:

A self-described "architectual biography", this book gives much more in-depth coverage to the aforementioned "real estate pissing matches" that play such a large role in shaping Manhattan. The larger historical contex also brings to life numerous fantastic plans that never made it past the drawing board. The clashes between governments, financers, developers, and outsize egos have killed or greenlighted projects with little regard to actual merit, and often not the best results. While Eric and I might disagree as to which projects were beautiful, good, or both, his research into the actual decision-making process shows how little the long-term welfare of city residents and workers really figured into the biggest deals.

Building the Empire State edited by Carol Willis:

A must for fans of the Tall Quiet Guy, grown to full 1252-foot height in eleven months, rising a story a day to hold the "World's Tallest" title for 40 years. This was accomplished in 1930-31, before any of the modern machinery and material handling tactics had evolved. How did they do it? Some light can now be shed on this remarkable achievement through a notebook preserved from the time. Found in the files of a descendant firm of the original builders, these typewritten pages allow one to see just how much skyscraper construction is kin to the art of military strategy. Carol Willis, a co-founder of the Skyscraper Museum and a personal acquaintance of mine, puts these writings in context and explains them, offering for further research extensive references.

Skyscrapers: The New Millennium Ed. by John Zukowsky and Maria Thorne:

Looking to the future is what this website is all about. This is especially important given the depressing present reality. I find myself hungering for reassurance that we will go forward. This book is my choice for that reassurance in this particular field. Colorful, technical, and covering all regions of the world, this book will impress with the variety of shapes and uses the third generation of skyscrapers will assume.

The Railroad

All Aboard – The Railroad in American Life by George H. Douglas:

This book provides an easy introduction to railroad history as it pertains to the shaping of American culture and mentality. America grew up with the railroads and many of the problems we deal with today where government has to wrestle with private enterprise were first encountered then. The origins of the railroad’s imprints on our culture are covered and many still endure.

Railroads Triumphant by Albro Martin:

This book is a more serious history of the railroads and how they enabled America, a nation based on the subsistence farmer, to become an industrial powerhouse. Concentrating on economics, business practices, and government regulation, this book takes us through from the days of state charters to the modern era, where a superior technology is emerging from underneath a mountain of handcuffing regulations to retake what it lost.

Getting There by Stephen B. Goddard:

This book is subtitled "The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century" and shows how the creation of our national transportation system, with its outsized reliance on the automobile, had nothing to do with "progress" and everything to do with business and politics. There is no shortage of villains, from the childish greed of the "robber barons" to the propagandizing and backroom deals of the automakers. We all suffer as a result. Goddard yanks the wool from our eyes about the true costs of our auto society and proposes some new directions for a sane transportation policy.

Supertrains by Joseph Vranich:

This is from one of the leading experts on advanced railroad technology. He covers high-speed rail developments in Europe and Asia and notes how one country conspicuously lags behind. The consequences of this lag are becoming increasingly obvious as alternate modes of transportation, even airports, become gridlocked. This book is a call to action as well, for a major re-commitment of resources that would put us back in the league of our international competition.

The Railroad, What it is, What it does by John H. Armstrong:

Covering the nuts and bolts of railroading, this is practically a textbook. It covers operating practices of all major departments of the modern railroad. One only wishes modern railroad managers had studied its pages. Don’t get all your information from railfan magazines and those laughable passages about railroad issues printed in the newspapers. Read this and put some depth in your railroad studies.

Jane's World Railways 2001-2002

A detailed profile of modern railroading comprehensive enough for the manager with million-dollar decisions on his shoulders and a complete education for the amateur. Pricey but thick, loaded with photos and information on practically every railroad in the world. For each railroad, covers lines operated, basic business strategy, sources of revenue, results for the past year, equipment roster, capital projects, and a list of company contacts. This reference is updated every two years.

Environmental Living

The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler:

Ever have a tune play in the back of your head that calls up the deepest emotions from your heart and you can remember hearing it from heaven-knows-when but you can’t recall the words? When I read this book it was like finally learning those words. I had a bottom-of-my gut hatred for places like Levittown, Long Island (mentioned in the book) but I did not have the vocabulary to express why. All I knew was that every other place I’ve been I’ve liked better than Long Island (except when it was just like Long Island, like Amherst, NY). This book gave me the validation my soul called for. It will be like an earthquake to the untrained psyche and you will come away fuming at the crap you have had to put up with just because you haven’t been taught better. This book attempts to measure the damage wrought to our natural and social environment since World War II and should be an opening salvo in a national dialogue about place. A sequel to this book has also been published, Home From Nowhere , proposing solutions to our mess of a nation.

A Better Place to Live by Philip Langdon:

This book also goes into issues of design and planning that fall below the radar screens of the people who are forced to live with the consequences. He makes a compelling case that it is these details that make a better place to live, and that the poor choices we have made since World War II have had effects opposite of what was intended. Like The Geography of Nowhere he tackles suburban features that have made large swaths of America look like noplace in particular and have made children, the elderly, and those too poor to afford a car (or a second or third car) second class citizens. He discusses throwaway commercial architecture, houses that look like garages with human habitations stuck on as an afterthought, and the thousand different ways individual decisions add up to encouraging or discouraging the public realm and communities with permanence despite changes in the lives of its resident families. Loaded with case studies, this book provides a wealth of ideas of how zoning laws and a fresh look at old ideas can lead us away from the unhealthy environments we have been creating.

Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth T. Jackson:

This is a serious history of the suburbanization process in America, how the ideal that we should live in one place and commute to another arose and became popular. It also covers how that ideal became dysfunctional, a trap filled with maintenance-intensive features ripped from their historical context, an environmental disaster, a sop for racial and economic prejudices that only worsened them in the long run, and the force that threw out the urban baby with the bath water. What was advertised as an opportunity for the common man to "get away from it all" is now remaking Americans into isolated, insular, entertainment and convenience driven consumers with a hollowness in their cores where a sense of place, community, heritage, and history used to go. This book sets the foundations of suburbia on the availability of cheap land, cheap forest products, and subsidized, ridiculously cheap automobile transportation. These conditions are not likely to carry forth much farther into the future with efforts to preserve farms and countryside, dwindling forest, and the large sections of America choking on car traffic. This is taken into account as the author makes his projections for the future, seeing the older inner ring of suburbia decay while cities and rural areas revive.

Clutter’s Last Stand and Clutter Free by Don Aslett:

How does one live an environmentally sound lifestyle when you can’t even walk 10 feet in this country without seeing an ad? These books provide a valuable how-to. The process is painful but worthwhile: de-junk your life. After finally facing that overstuffed drawer and that avalanche-waiting-to-happen closet you won’t be so predisposed to accumulating junk all over again. Take the self-test in Clutter’s Last Stand to find out how much of a junk problem you have and then get to work. The author punctures all the bad reasons for owning stuff and shows how that junk can really weigh down your life. What is junk? If you give to it more than it gives to you, it’s junk. These books are life-changers and survival manuals for modern America.

Fiction

Code of the Lifemaker by James P. Hogan:

As a science-fiction writer I stand in awe of his achievement, accomplishing what I thought was impossible, natural selection and evolution for robots. I bought their world and culture hook, line, and sinker. The struggles among the human characters draw you in as well. The robot world on Titan, Saturn’s moon, is caught up deep in the bowels of ignorance and vilification of the scientific method while the spacefaring human culture that goes to meet them is still dealing with the remnants of the same problem. Without doubt a five-star work, superbly imagined, heart-touching, and hard to put down. I've just gotten the sequel to this book, The Immortality Option . No sophomore slump here, for sure. Five stars again for a plot that spans over a million years, two star systems, three distinct species, and several outstanding individuals. Human naivete has led to the reconstitution of preserved alien intelligences embedded in Titan's machine biosphere, with devestating consequences for Earth and the Taloids. A three-way tug of war ensues for the future of Titan with stage psychic Zambendorf and his Taloid allies left to clean up the mess left by the gullibility he once exploited and find a chink in the aliens' seemingly impenetrable defenses.

Mind Transfer by Janet Asimov:

For another perspective on organic-to-mechanical body transfer, try this book. It should be noted, though, that the method described here does not, quite deliberately, answer my objections about creating a copy of an individual rather than transferring the individual. Also, the author was the wife of the late Issac Asimov, tainting the robotic technology with Asimovian notions. In the first half of the book, the writing can be pretty plodding and at times awful, but stick with it. She lets it rip in the second half.

As a science fiction writer in the field of robotics, I would be derelict in my duty if I didn’t mention Issac Asimov, despite our deep philosophical differences. It was he who first created popular stories about robotics that weren’t in the "glorified Frankenstein" vein. Also, he wrote what I consider to be the worst story ever about robots, "The Bicentennial Man" and one of the best, "The Segregationist". Both of these stories were together in one collection, but I can’t recall which. As soon as I find out, it will be added.

The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead:

This was a story I could relate to on several counts, besides the obvious building technology tie-in. Lila Mae is a physical anomaly, a black woman in a technical profession dominated by white men. She lives in a city where not enough time has passed since overt humiliation of other races was commonplace. Remants of that degradation continue to persist in the darker recesses of the story. She is also a philosophical minority, an Intuitionist, a member of an upstart group in the elevator field that relates to machines on their terms and never loses sight of the big picture when troubleshooting and inspecting. Just as the "coloreds" in this book face the disdain of the whites, so do Intuitionists bear the scrutiny of the majority Empiricists, who would painstakingly dissect every subsystem and measure every parameter to come up with their answers. The physical and philosophical anomalies intertwine in Lila's search for the last works of an elevator hero, James Fulton, while fighting to clear her name in a case of sabotage. Who loses and who wins is just one small subset of who tells the truth and who lies.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair:

DON’T read this book just before or after a meal, even if you are vegetarian. DON’T read this book just before bed. DO read it sitting on the floor with Midnight Oil playing in the background. Too often pigeonholed as a "muckraking" book for its expose of the Chicago meat packing industry, this book is really a critique of capitalism and its propensity to chew people up and spit them out. You will see how little has changed despite all this nation has been through. Think about it next time you see how obscenely CEOs are compensated while you, a friend, or family member drowns in debt, and how, just as you begin to feel a modicum of security and comfort, the bar is raised to entice you to work or spend more.

Tron (20th Anniversary Edition):

OK, so this isn't a book...it's a DVD...But, of course you'd expect to find this somewhere on the website of a Rayden Tron, now, wouldn't you? The first truly computer-enhanced movie, before Jurassic Park, before Toy Story, before The Matrix, there was Tron. Those of you who remember what an Atari 2600 is should recall the eager tingle up the spine at the vision of the future Tron presented. Those of you who were raised on the Internet should appreciate the prescience of Tron. Now, the original movie has been supplemented in typical DVD collectors' edition fashion with additional scenes and other features.

This is a work in progress.