Science Fiction for Young Adults: A Recommended List

What books can we give our teens that don't mire them in a swamp of  vampires, domineering wizards or nostalgia for feudalism? These are a few of my personal science fiction favorites for young adults, weighted more toward SF and a little common sense mixed with lots of sense-o-wonder. Many are classics that I grew up with...along with some marvelous recent additions.

Adams, Douglass: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Seconds before Earth is destroyed to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved...for a hilarious journey across space and time.

Anderson, M.T.: Feed A futuristic consumer-mad world where news and advertisements are fed continuously to the brain--till a hacker disrupts the flow during a teen trip to the moon...

Anderson, Poul: The High Crusade Nominated for a Hugo Award. An alien spaceship from the Wersgorix Empire lands in 14th century England during the Hundred Year's War. Adaptability plus stubbornness tilt the odds! (Any book by this author will please a bright teen.)

Anthony, Piers: A Spell for Chameleon A humorous fantasy, from the Xanth series. Every citizen possesses magical powers, except for our young hero, Bink.

• The Source of Magic Bink and his friends set off on quest to determine the source of Xanth's magic, when they encounter unexpected enemies. And worse puns.

Asaro, Catherine: Quantum Rose  This Nebula Award winner is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast, incorporating quantum science and hard science fiction elements.

Asimov, Isaac: The Caves of Steel A murder mystery, set in a far future, when vast domed cities house an over-populated Earth. Detective Elijah Bayley teams with a humanoid robot to solve the crime.

• Foundation Trilogy Gibbon's Decline of the Roman Empire with an interstellar twist. The Galactic Empire is going to fall, but Hari Seldon has a plan. Vast in scope. (Later concluded by us Killer B's).

• I, Robot Selected stories about humanity's future love/hate relationship with our artificial friends.

Bacigalupi, Paolo: ShipBreaker presents a gritty near-future world where young people work long hazardous jobs scavenging beached oil tankers among the drowned cities of the Gulf Coast. Nailer makes an unexpected find which will change his future…

• The Drowned Cities is the companion book, telling the story of refugees trying to survive in an America suffering from the effects of climate change and flooded cities. 

Barnes, John: Orbital Resonance Through our 13-year old protagonist, Melpomene Murray, Barnes presents a riveting portrayal of life in space aboard the Flying Dutchman, an asteroid colony  which supplies the overpopulated home planet Earth.

Baxter, Stephen: The H-bomb Girl An alternate history look at the Cuban Missile Crisis through the perspective of a teen girl living in a gritty Liverpool in 1962.

Bear, Greg: Dinosaur Summer In a world where Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World actually happened, only one dinosaur circus remains on Earth. Fifteen year old Peter Belzoni sets off on an expedition to return the creatures to the wild.

Benford, Gregory: Against Infinity A coming of age story of a young man on the icy surface of Ganymede, searching for a dangerous alien artifact that haunts the dreams of humans.

• The Jupiter Project A teenage boy has spent his entire life on The Can, a scientific station orbiting Jupiter--looking for signs of alien life.

 
Bester, Alfred: The Stars My Destination A classic of Science fiction, this is a story of revenge. Gulliver Foyle, left stranded in space, is determined to track down those responsible.

• The Demolished Man Winner of the first Hugo Award in 1953. Ben Reich intends to commit murder in a world where crime is virtually unheard of, due to Espers, telepaths who can probe the inner reaches of the mind.

 
Bradbury, Ray: The Martian Chronicles A short story collection about the colonization of Mars, as terrestrial expeditions set off to explore the planet, often with devastatingly poignant consequences for the native inhabitants.

• Fahrenheit 451 A chilling future dystopian world where "firemen" ransack houses, looking for forbidden books to burn. Often assigned reading in many classrooms.

 
Brin, David: Glory Season Genetic engineering has largely reduced the role of males on planet Stratos--ruled by clans of cloned females. Young variant twins, Leie and Maia set off to earn their fortunes in a world where they don't quite belong, uncovering their world's role in a wider human cosmos.

The Postman After much of America has been devastated by war, a wanderer comes across an abandoned mail truck and finds long abandoned letters...and delivers hope to isolated towns. (Okay, that's a self-plug. But lots of kids prefer the lighter tone in The Practice Effect!) 

Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower Set in a future dystopian America, the book tells the story of an 18 year old woman with hyper-empathy syndrome -- who assumes the pain of others. 

Card, Orson Scott: Ender’s Game Boy genius Ender Wiggin trains to save the world from alien Buggers. A blatant "chosen one" fantasy that appeals to the Harry Potter "I'm a demigod" reflex.

 
Cherryh, C.J. : The Chanur Saga These novels tell the story of the alien races that make up The Compact, a spacefaring civilization and their first contact with a human. (Any book by this author will please a bright teen.)

Christopher, John: Tripods Trilogy  Humanity has been conquered and enslaved by aliens who travel in giant three-legged machines--and control the minds of humans.

Clarke, Arthur C.: Childhood’s End Just as Earthlings are about to launch their first spaceship, alien invaders, the Overlords appear, imposing peace and a golden age. And yet...

Clement, Hal: Mission of Gravity An adventure story told from the point of view of an alien living on the planet Mesklin, venturing from the extreme gravity of the poles to the low gravity of the equator--as they encounter human visitors seeking a lost probe.

Collins, Suzanne: The Hunger Games Sixteen year old Katniss is forced to represent her district, by competing in the televised Hunger Games--a fight to the death contest for survival.

deCamp, L. Sprague: Lest Darkness Fall is the classic timeslip tale about an achraeologist who finds himself in 435 CE Rome. Can he stop the Dark Ages from coming? Terrific. Started the modern era of "Connecticut Yankee" tales.

Dick, Philip K.: The Man in the High Castle Hugo Award winning alternate history, that tells the story of life after World War II if the Axis powers had won, occupying America. For that history buff!

• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? A post-apocalyptic story of the near future. Bounty hunter Rick Deckard tracks down and kills escaped androids. Served as the basis of the film, Bladerunner.

Doctorow, Cory: Little Brother After a terrorist attack on San Francisco, a group of teens are taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security. After his release, 17 year old Marcus Dallow uses his computer expertise to take down the DHS.

Farmer, Nancy: The House of the Scorpion In the land of Orpium, an opium-producing estate between Mexico and the United States, a drug lord enslaves illegal immigrants, through chips planted in their brains. Our protagonist, Matt, has been raised as a clone for organ replacement.

Gaiman, Neil: The Graveyard Book To escape the clutches of Jack the man who killed his parents, Nobody Owens was raised in a graveyard--learning history from the ghosts among the headstones.

Harrison, Harry: The Stainless Steel Rat A great joyride fantasy for teens who like to think they're smarter than civilization or the law. Take a master thief. Turn him into a supercop. Way fun!

Heinlein, Robert: Tunnel in the Sky Teens who want jobs in space must spend a week surviving an alien world, but what if they're stranded? Heinlein's answer to Lord of the Flies.

• The Door into Summer Brilliant time travel tale. Great predictions about robots. Just a super yarn--one I read aloud to my kids.

• Have Space Suit, Will Travel Boy wins spacesuit in a soap contest. Winds up on rollicking interstellar adventure. A classic!

• Farmer in the Sky Teenager Bill Learner and his father leave over-crowded Earth to emigrate to the farming colony on Ganymede--in the process of being terraformed. The harsh reality is not quite as Bill imagined...

• The Star Beast Heinlein's mastery of point of view at its best. Lummox had been a family pet, growing increasingly cantankerous--until aliens arrive with a demand.

• Red Planet Mars, Mars, Mars - done by the master.

• Podkayne of Mars Podkayne Fries, a bright young woman, dreams of becoming a starship pilot. She and her genius brother travel from their home on Mars to Earth. Some female readers cringe, but others say Heinlein nailed it. You decide.

Henderson, Zena: Ingathering Henderson's classic "The People" novels--about alien refugees stranded and hiding on Earth--is a bit languid by modern tastes, but deeply moving and thoughtful. Personal and character-driven portrayals. 

Herbert, Frank: Dune A Hugo and Nebula Award winner: the story of the desert planet Arrakis and its complex ecology and struggles between the House Atreides and the dreaded Harkonnen. Demanding but detailed, for bright kids.

Howey, Hugh: Sand In a lawless future dystopia, the old world is buried beneath an ocean of sand. Scavengers eke out an existence by diving to the depths to bring back precious relics.

Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World A dystopia fast becoming more likely than 1984. Also more fun, but creepy. Thought provoking and on college reading lists.

Laumer, Keith: Earthblood and Reteif's War and The Great Time Machine Hoax are all great fun.

Le Guin, Ursula: The Earthsea Trilogy If you must have imperious secretive wizards, at least make them self-consistent and well-intentioned. Le Guin's fantasy world of Earthsea.

• The Lathe of Heaven A young man  has effective dreams that change the world when he wakes. A doctor schemes to manipulate dreams for his own purposes.

• The Dispossessed Le Guin's exploration of a non-Marxist Anarch-Socialist society, with all its pros and cons. Her best book.

Matheson, Richard: The Incredible Shrinking Man The basis for the movie of the same title, Scott Carey mysteriously begins shrinking to encounter ever-larger dangers looming in the world.

McCaffrey, Ann: The Ship who Sang A second life opens for a crippled woman, to live as a starship. But first she must choose a human partner. (Any book by this author will please a bright teen who likes a very personal-feminine style.)

• Dragonsong Not fantasy! Dragons, lords, arts and crafts... all the fantasy "furniture...  but genuine sci-fi about a human colony knocked flat but determined to rise up again. They want science back...while riding dragons!

McDevitt, Jack: The Engines of God Two archeologists struggle to preserve the alien artifacts on planet Quraqua before terraforming destroys all traces of the alien civilization--which may hold essential clues to humanity's survival! 

Mieville, China: Railsea A fully imagined take on Herman Melville's Moby Dick -- melded with the stark landscape of Duen. Hunters ride criss-crossing railways, seeking whale-sized moldywarpes, or giant moles -- in particular the great white! 

Miller, Walter: Canticle for Leibowitz Must civilization fall? Brilliant stories about the few who maintain candles in the darkness after nuclear war.

Niven, Larry: Ringworld The Hugo and Nebula Award winning story of a vast habitat larger than a million earths! Stunning ideas!

Nix, Garth: Shade’s Children Evil overlords rule the Earth, and no child is allowed to live past their fourteenth birthday. Gold-Eye escapes his fate, meeting up with other refugees. Will they be able to destroy the Overlords?

Norton, Andre: The Stars are Ours No one wrote escapist adolescent adventure in space better than Andre Norton. Her Young Adult novels were legend, and SFWA's YA award is named after her.
(Any book by this author will please a bright teen.)

O’Brien, Robert: Z for Zachariah Sixteen year old Ann Burden has been left completely alone after a nuclear war, until a stranger enters her remote valley...

Palmer, David: Emergence A bionuclear war has killed over 99% of earth's population. Candida, an eleven year old girl is among the few who remain--who soon discover they are the next phase of human evolution.

Panshin, Alexei: Rite of Passage A multi-generation colony ship tests its youth by casting them out to survive for a month of Trial upon the hostile colony worlds. Truly the classic YA science fiction novel and a pioneer at the young-female point of view.

Pangborn, Edgar: Davy A post-apocalyptic novel, which follows the adventures of Davy, as he escapes life as an indentured servant in a church-based society that suppresses technology.

Piper, H. Beam: Little Fuzzy Nominated for a Hugo Award, this classic by H. Beam Piper explores the discovery of a sapient race on planet Zarathustra--previously believed devoid of intelligent life. Oh... features the cutest lil' aliens you ever met.

• Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen Korean War veteran Calvin Morrison is caught up in a passing Paratime Patrol time machine, and sent to a parallel time track, the feudal kingdom of Hostigos, where he becomes Lord Kalvan, "inventor" of gunpowder and champion of freedom against the Cult of Styphon. (Any book by this author will please a bright teen who likes action adventure in space.)

Pratchett, Terry: The Color of Magic The first of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels offers a light-hearted spoof of fantasy. (Any book by this author will please a bright teen who likes groaner humor.)

Sargeant, Pamela: Earthseed To save the remnants of humanity, Ship was launched, containing the DNA of Earth's flora and fauna, as well as children created from the genes of the starship's builders. To prepare for colonization, these teenagers are sent to a final test, a competition within the Ship's hollow--which pits friends against friends.

Scalzi, John: Zoe’s Tale A first person narrative, told from the point of view of teenager Zoe Boutin, who travels with her adoptive parents to establish a new colony on Roanoke, struggling against hostile aliens.

Sheckley, Robert: Store of the Worlds Sheckley's stories are classic, and great to read aloud to your kids.

Sleator, William: The Last Universe  A story inspired by the uncertainties of quantum mechanics. Susan and her invalid brother, Gary, discover an ever-changing garden which allows them to access parallel universes.

• Interstellar Pig Barney is sucked into an addictive role-playing game called Interstellar Pig--when he begins to wonder if it is a game after all..

 
Smith, E.E. “Doc”: The Skylark of Space A classic from the pre-Golden era of 1930's Sci-Fi. Terran genius Dick Seaton and his violinist girlfriend shake up the galaxy.

• The Lensman Series Humanity rocks! We're the great hope for goodness across the galaxy. Our uber-sheriffs take on the ancient baddies from Boskone!

Stewart, George: Earth Abides In this post-apocalyptic story, most of humanity has been wiped out by pandemic. Ish Wiliams emerges from his solitary cabin to find the land deserted... almost. A gentle, thoughtful book, easy to read but very literary.

Sturgeon, Theodore: More than Human This Science Fiction classic tells the stories of six outcasts with special gifts. When they 'blesh'  or blend their abilities, they can obtain superhuman powers.

Tevis, Walter: The Man Who Fell to Earth Alien Thomas Newton arrives on Earth, hoping to construct a spaceship to rescue the rest of his civilization and transport them to earth. He is discovered, setting off waves of paranoia and distrust.

Tolkein, J.R.R.: The Hobbit Classic fantasy...the tale of Bilbo Baggins and his quest. Prequel to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series.

Varley, John: Red Thunder China and the United States are in a space race to reach Mars. Teenager Manny Garcia and friends meet a brilliant inventor who has developed a 'squeezer' that can power a spaceship. They set off to win the race to Mars.

Verne, Jules: Verne wrote brief, captivating "go there" adventure tales that still read well. Choose a direction: up, down or into the sea and Verne's intrepid adventurers head that way! But his Captain Nemo, in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, was a character with tragic depth.

Weber, David: Mission of Honor The Honor Harrington series typifies the Space War Sci Fi genre. Other authors along this vein include Dave Duncan and Lois MacMaster Bujold.

Wells, H. G.: The Time Machine One of the earliest works of science fiction, this classic tale by H.G. Wells tells of the Time Traveller, who journeys into the far future to meet the placid Eloi who live on the surface and the oppressive Morlocks who live underground.

• The Invisible Man A dark tale of a scientist who discovers a potion to render one invisible. He tries it on himself; at first he feels invincible, but the consequences eventually drive him mad.

Westerfield, Scott: Uglies A future dystopian world where everyone undergoes extreme cosmetic surgery at age sixteen to render them beautiful. But our protagonist, Tally Youngblood rebels against this imposed conformity...

• Leviathan This steampunk novel presents an alternate history of World War I, pitting the Central Powers and their steam-powered war machines, against the British Darwinists, who have genetically modified animals for fighting. Our protagonist, the son of Archduke Franz Ferdinand rides into battle on the Leviathan, an enormous biological dirigible.

Wilhelm, Kate: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang The Hugo Award winner. This post-apocalyptic novel centers on a surviving community. Finding themselves infertile, they turn to cloning, which leads to a stagnant society. Until a teenager, Mark seeks another way....

Wylie, Phlip: The Disappearance This book follows two worlds that split from ours. In one, women learn to get along without men (it's difficult in the 1950s, but do-able).  In the other, men start out better but find it harder to make it alone!

• When World's Collide (written with Edwin Balmer) This was huge in the 1960s. Two planets enter the solar system. One will smack Earth. The other might replace it. Can teams build space arks to cross over in time?

 
Wyndham, John: The Day of the Triffids A post-apocalyptic novel. Bill Masen awakes in the hospital to find he is the one of the few who can see, while most of the population has been blinded by a meteor storm. He must survive giant walking, stinging plants, Triffids, who wage war upon a collapsing civilization.

• The Chrysalids (Re-Birth) In the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war, a rigid religious civilization has arisen which persecutes anyone with genetic deformities. Our protagonist, David Strorm, discovers he has unusual telepathic abilities, and escapes with others to the Fringes, where he contacts a more advanced society.

Zelazny, Roger: Lord of Light Set on a Hindi-settled world, this book introduced us in the 1960s to many eastern concepts, amid a great (if philosophical) action-packed adventure. Zelazny's "Amber" series rollicked with sword fights across countless parallel worlds.

Other very reliable authors worth a look for young adults: Nancy Kress ("Beggars" series), Alan Dean Foster's "Flinx" series, David Gerrold's "Bouncing Off the Moon" series and Erik Flint's "1632" series. Look them up!

I have mostly left out fantasy, but some are epochally good! For example William Goldman's "The Princess Bride" is by far the best book to read aloud to kids. It was designed for that exact purpose. Do this at least with the first big chapter.  Simply do it.  Right now.

For those young people ready to transition into the really thoughtful, grownup stuff, these authors pack in mind-stretching ideas:  Kim Stanley Robinson, Vernor Vinge, Robert Sawyer, Neal Stephenson, Iain M. Banks, Charles Stross, John Varley, Kay Kenyon, Greg Egan, Russell Hoban, Frederik Pohl, James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon) and so many others.

Science Fiction and Fantasy are the twin genres that still supply the vastness of imagery and wonder that filled the tales of human cultures stretching back to Achilles and Gilgamesh. But what a pity if kids only wallow in images of faux-feudal nolstalgia-romances.

Turn their gaze down the road ahead of them! A road filled with dangers, opportunities and possibilities. Into a future they will imagine, and then boldly make come true.


Books for Younger Readers

Cooper, Susan: The Dark is Rising

Coville, Bruce: My Teacher is an Alien

Dickinson, Peter: Eva

Duane, Diane: So You Want to be a Wizard

DuPrau, Jeanne: The City of Ember

Gaiman, Neil: Coraline

Haddix, Margaret: Running out of Time

L’Engle, Madeleine: A Wrinkle in Time

• A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Lowry, Lois: The Giver

Pfeffer, Susan Beth: Life As We Knew It

Pinkwater, Daniel: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars

Pratchett, Terry: Only You can Save Mankind

Pullman, Philip: The Golden Compass

Schusterman, Neal: The Dark Side of Nowhere

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See also a list of my personal favorite Science Fiction novels

 More Lists of Recommendations for Young Adults:

The Golden Duck Awards

Young adult: Speculative fiction

Science fiction & fantasy: Books for teens

From io9: List of young adult science fiction

Worlds of Wonder: Science fiction for teens

Plymouth Library: Young adult list

From Jeffrey Carver: Recommended science fiction & fantasy

Hoagie's Gifted Education: Science fiction & fantasy favorites

From Tamara Pierce: Young adult science fiction & fantasy

From Tor books:  A young adult reading guide 

A World of Wonders and Worries

From the vitally important... See the most significant article of 2011: The Capitalist Network that Rules the World.  Consider how Adam Smith himself would have disapproved of the consolidation of total economic power into the grip of just a few hundred people... and Karl Marx would be rubbing his hands right now, murmuring yessssss! I'll discuss this further, soon. Those of you who have read EARTH - or studied any history at all - know where this leads. Proving that the present generation of aristocrats ain't anywhere near as smart as they think they are.  (More politics at-bottom.  But first lots of science & cool stuff.)

To the way-cool fun... James Erwin posted a 350 word what if story, Rome, Sweet Rome, about a U.S. Marine battalion plopped into the Roman Empire... went off for a meal... and came back to find “viral” had a whole new meaning. Thousands were writing for more. Within a day he had an agent. By week’s end he had sold movie rights!  And when I re-tweeted this? Mr. Erwin tweeted back “In my next work, they'll have to fight off 2,000 Holnists. Honored by the retweet.”

Hey James, my man, keep up the what-if spinning!  Great stuff.

...to "it's about time!  Remember in EARTH where people use brain scanners to achieve meditation feats like monks, faster and easier?  Two brain-training games tested at Stanford University have proven remarkably successful at preventing depression in at-risk teenagers before it starts. A generation ago it was called "biofeedback" and seemed to show real promise. Now, this may just be the start of some long-delayed powers... and challenges to wisdom.

== Fighting back with light ==

One way a man dealt with suspicions from the FBI: by logging his own life, posting every flight, every trip, every detail online, by flooding the world... and the surveillors... with personal data, photos of his meals, travel itineraries, receipts, logs of people met. Here is Hasan M. Elahi's rationalization: You Want to Track Me? Here You Go, F.B.I!

“In an era in which everything is archived and tracked, the best way to maintain privacy may be to give it up. Information agencies operate in an industry that values data. Restricted access to information is what makes it valuable. If I cut out the middleman and flood the market with my information, the intelligence the F.B.I. has on me will be of no value. Making my private information public devalues the currency of the information the intelligence gatherers have collected.

“My activities may be more symbolic than not, but if 300 million people started sending private information to federal agents, the government would need to hire as many as another 300 million people, possibly more, to keep up with the information and we’d have to redesign our entire intelligence system.”

An interesting experiment and believe me, as author of The Transparent Society, I am sympathetic with transparency-oriented experiments in spilling accountability upward.  Still, in the end I find this all rather silly.  Oh, the fellow has found a way to turn lemons into lemonade and he -personally - will probably never be bothered again, because he has become a quasi-public-figure.  In the end, this is a stunt. It is not “sousveillance” at all. Of course the state and corporations will adapt and Moore’s Law style surveillance AI will learn to cope with such floods.

== And more... ==

The ACLU issued a document clarifying your right to photograph in public. "When in public spaces where you are lawfully present you have the right to photograph anything that is in plain view. That includes pictures of federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police. Police may not delete  your photographs or video under any circumstances." I'm moderate about the state looking at us, but we must be militant about looking back.

And see this: The Justice Department Wants To Be Able To Lie In Response To Freedom Of Information Requests. Federal agencies would be able to deny the existence of documents they choose to withhold.

Rather than just recording what you think will happen, PredictionBook allows you to record just how sure you are that it will happen. Not quite as sophisticated as what I meant by a Predictions Registry, but it’s getting closer.  WIll some volunteers try it and report back? Another such site is Longbets: The Arena for Accountable Predictions.

New data from a national math test show that U.S. fourth- and eighth-graders have made slight gains since 2009, but only 35 to 40 percent of the students tested showed proficiency in math.

== More Science! ==
Could the brain be using electromagnetic fields to communicate between hemispheres — the electromagnetic field theory of consciousness proposed by Johnjoe McFadden (School of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Surrey)?  Now Neuroscientists at Caltech have made a puzzling finding: people born without a corpus callosum (which links the two hemispheres of the brain) still show remarkably normal communication across the gap between the two halves of their brains. This occurs in approximately one of every 4000 live births. The typical corpus callosum comprises almost 200 million axons  -- the largest fiber bundle in the human brain. (I was at Caltech when Roger Sperry started working with the split brain....)

A research team at Georgia Tech has discovered how to do exactly that, using a smartphone accelerometer — the internal device that detects when and how the phone is tilted — to sense (very nearby) keyboard vibrations and decipher complete sentences with up to 80 percent accuracy.

Quantum cryptography — which uses the quantum states of photons to encode information for transmission — exploits the fact that measurements cannot be made of a quantum system without disturbing it. It was thought impossible for an eavesdropper to intercept a quantum encryption key without disrupting it and triggering alarm bells. But “uncrackable” quantum cryptographic systems can in fact be cracked by using lasers to “blind” photon polarization detectors and force them to detect fake quantum-entanglement correlations, falsely indicating that a key is certified as secure.

Scientists generated a strain of mouse in which all the senescent cells can be purged by giving the mice a drug that forces the cells to self-destruct. Rid of the senescent cells, the Mayo Clinic researchers reported online Wednesday in the journal Nature, the mice’s tissues showed a major improvement in the usual burden of age-related disorders. They did not develop cataracts, avoided the usual wasting of muscle with age, and could exercise much longer on a mouse treadmill.

Re consciousness, this from childhood chum Daniel Packman: “ It is interesting to see two different evolutionary routes to increased mental capacity: apes & company with bolted on stuff like the prefrontal lobes and parrots with a more fully developed reptilian brain. Both lead to some of the same thought processes so perhaps higher thought processes are an emergent inevitability of complexity.”

Ah, the power of words to kill…Four times, Captain Kirk talked evil computers into committing suicide. In Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, enemies exposed to the dour views of Marvin the Paranoid Android choose to commit suicide. Doctor Who manages this trick as well, as does Oedipus, when he solves the mystery of the sphinx. Here’s a compilation of the ways monsters and enemies have been talked to death…

==The Political Lamp is Lit ==

See, all-too clearly, the effects that Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan would have on the middle and upper classes.  Class War has already been declared.  And, as Warren Buffett said “my class is winning.”

Folks.  Order this T-Shirt.  Seriously. “Scudder for President 2012.”  People will ask you about it.  You’ll explain. They will come away wanting to (1) read Heinlein and (2) do anything in their power to prevent it.

The Earth's surface is warming, after all, says a team of researchers who sought to investigate claims that flawed data and methods had skewed existing analyses of global temperature trends. "When we began this, I didn't know whether we would see more warming than people had previously seen, or less. I knew that some skeptics had raised legitimate issues that needed further study," said Muller, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "We've done that study now, and I think I'm surprised that the results agree with previous groups."

Alas, the fact that the group is located at Berkeley means it will simply be shrugged off by those who need to consider it most.

Why is the CIA withholding its own report on Climate Change?

And finally....

Researchers at University College in London find brain structure differences in young adults with varied political beliefs.  “We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala. These results were replicated in an independent sample of additional participants. Our findings extend previous observations that political attitudes reflect differences in self-regulatory conflict monitoring [4] and recognition of emotional faces [5] by showing that such attitudes are reflected in human brain structure. Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work [4, 6] to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.”