Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, The FountainheadThese two books show how individualism is first punished, then rewarded. It kind-of explains why we should value individuals for their differences and not reward conformists.
Tom Clancy
I have read all his fictional works. I especially enjoy the "Jack Ryan" series, the movies made of his work, and his work on the OP-Center series.Michael Crichton (M.D.)
Many of his books border on sci-fi, although they are set in the present. I was disappointed by the movie Jurassic Park because it cut the plot short. The movie had excellent special effects and I was impresses at how the dinosaurs followed the best theories about their appearance and soft tissue details (personally, I think that at least some dinosaurs had feathers). The movie was good, don't get me wrong, I loved seeing it, but in this case the book is DEFINITELY better. Lost World read like a movie script, and Hollywood still changed it. I did like the writing in of the waterfall scene from Jurassic Park. I look forward to seeing the movie made of Sphere. That is a book hollywood could do a lot with. I caught a couple shows on HBO on how they did some of the special effects for the movie and I was impressed with their interpretation. Congo was a bad movie of a good book. I have read all the books released under his name, but just recently learned that he wrote under several pseudonyms while in med-school. I believe that his experience in med-school led to ER. While there aren't any books that directly connect him to the show, he does produce the show, and his novels The Terminal Man Andromeda Strain Case of Need all stem from his medical knowledge.Robert Ludlum
Spins a good tale. Very exciting to read, lots of action. Would really make good movies, good LOOOOOOOOONG movies.Books I have read:
- The Apocalypse Watch
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Holcroft Covenant
The Matarese Circle
The Matarese Countdown
The Scarlatti Inheritance
Trevane
Douglas
Adams
I have read all five books in THHGTTG trilogy and both
Dirk Gently books. I also have a copy of both The Meaning of Liff
and The Deeper Meaning of Liff. I would classify him more
as a humor/sci-fi writer because he usues absurd situations which could
only happen in a sci-fi story as setting for his humor.
William Gibson
I have recently read my copy of All Tomorrow's Parties. It has gotten good reviews from the sci-fi press as far as I have seen. I found it to be somewhat lacking in character depth as compared to his previous works. This might be because of pressure from the public or his publisher. He also wrote a short story and helped with the screenplay of Johnny Mnemonic. His award winning book, Neuromancer, written in 1984 (anyone else feel an Orwell-ian influence?), coins the term "cyberspace." His books seem to be set in the near future and include people you can identify with. I believe the internet of today is only a small jump from the "matrix" of Neuromancer. I have also found out that he was involved with Alien 3 and there are copies of a script on the net as well as an X-Files episode (the episode which involves computers and that blonde chick with the dark circles around her eyes that was living in a shipping container before it got blown up).
