Squeers

I can't think of any of Harpo's friends who was more eccentric than Alexander Woollcott.

David Niven could have told some interesting tales about his his time in the British army during WW2 and in post war Germany, however he seemed reluctant to do.

Dear WmTrevor,

Sci-fi nurtured me through my teen years and I have found my eldest teenager has much the same tastes, though a bit more contemporary

We sat down to watch Bladerunner the other night and she actually sat through and appreciated the whole, now rather dated, thing.

While I had extremely fond memories of the genre, I left for quite a few years until drawn back into it after discovering Ian M Banks. His Culture series is brilliant. He wrote what I consider one of the most exciting couple of paragraphs in any book I had read for a decade, all the more impressive because it was just one programmed machine escaping another.

Also I credit him with creating one of the most villainous villains in literature, one Archimandrite Luseferous, from The Algebraist.

I am not normally fond of mixing Gothic with my Sci-fi but Banks is such a master at it one can only go along for the ride.

Squeers, I'm finding Wikipedia excellent for following up on authors and book series or titles as people suggest them… For example Greg Egan's entry includes, "He specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind uploading, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion."

Almost sounds like a typical day of OLO offerings.

Csteele, your eldest teenager might be old enough to appreciate David Cronenberg's 1999 film 'eXistenZ' – which you can check out in full on YouTube. Thanks for the reminder, I know I've got a couple of Iain M. Banks titles I bought about 20 years ago stored in boxes somewhere. I'll have to dig them out for a revisit.

I used to devour science fiction and especially liked Ursula LeGuin. She was an anthropologist who created worlds with different social arrangements from ours. There was an anarchist planet and another planet where people would switch their sex every six months. I like to read writers who have a background in some non-literary area which they bring into their narrative.

Spinoza has caught the fancy of some writers. "The Spinoza Problem" by Yalom has alternate chapters dealing with Spinoza and Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi theorist, who was hanged at Nuremberg. The problem is that Goethe was influenced by Spinoza, and a Nazi was bothered by the fact that a great German was influenced by a Jew. Yalom is a psychiatrist and tries to see into the minds of both men. Rebecca Goldstein, a philosopher, wrote "Betraying Spinoza." She integrates Spinoza's philosophical works into her narrative. Spinoza's works are available on the net. Spinoza may have been the first person to advocate separation of religion and state.

What a sublime writer is Ian McEwan.

"...We tumbled out of our respective days, like creatures shaken from a net."

(and I got hold of "On Chesil Beach" today at the library and bought a big thick Penguin edition of "Moby-Dick" cheap from the discarded book pile)

: )