Smokety, try Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Six genre stories intertwined [foppish, detective, dystopian sci-fi, etc), way too brilliant. And then we can talk about it ...

Also, you've probably read this: but for urban algorithms, Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (genre: detective stories. but meta.)

Heather ... several years ago, I worked in the literary section at CAA (the Beverly Hills talent agency), and David Mitchell was one of the clients I got to work with. We were trying to get the studios to option Ghostwritten and to hire Mitchell to write a screenplay version of it. It didn't work, and probable for the better. I own Cloud Atlas, but have not read it ... I'll let you know once I do, though!!!

As for Auster, I've never read the New York Trilogy, but I am a huge fan of Moon Palace.

Thanks for the suggestions!!!!

vernor vinge is a favorite sf writer. most anything by him is bound to be interesting... another great writer of the genre is greg bear...

my favorite mind candy though is anything by terry pratchett. satire fantasy at its best...he has done about 30 set in discworld, with my favs being THE TRUTH (freedom of the press) and JINGO (stupid wars).

none of the above pretend to be LITERATURE, and stand more at the level of stephen king, so def not for folks who hate disneyland on principle...but for pure relaxation ain't nothing better...

;-)

If you like sci fi, I recommend the original solaris novel by Stanislas Lem. Incredible descriptions of landscapes like you've never seen...
Also, if it has been translated, the last book by Michel Houellebecq is a pretty good sort of twisted/ contemporary science fiction book...

eric ambler
alan furst
james elroy

French ... are you referring to Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles?

And jump, on NPR I heard good things about this cyberpunkish writer named, I think, Richard Morgan. Some mindless Sci-Fi is actually not so mindless. For example, I love Alfred Bester's GOLEM 100 and The Stars My Destination.

As for detective/spy fiction, Robert Wilson's A Small Death in Lisbon and The Company of Strangers -- which take place during WW2 in Portugal -- are pretty lurid, but very good.

And noone has mentioned comic books/graphic novels. Alan Moore's Watchmen is a perennial favorite.

Oh, I loved Elementary Particles ... that's not sci-fi, though. Heard Platform was raunchy.
As for comics: my before-bed right now is Blankets by Craig Thompson ... heartbreaking. Usually manga is saved for the train, but this one is too heavy to lug-around.

speaking of raunchy: Pinocchio in Venice by Robert Coover. Filthy and intelligent. His depictions of the Venetian Landscape are honest, yet full of fantasy...the story of a lonely, aging Pinocchio, turning back to wood after having lived a succesful life as an award winning academic...

from Answers.com

thanks for tip smoke,

on that end, william gibson's "pattern recognition" is the best i have read lately in the cyberpunk genre...very fresh...

vernor vinge isn't mindless, nor is greg bear, but many of my smart archi-friends refuse to touch sf because it is about "ideas" or something...i don't get it, but am paranoid about recommending books to architects (we can be such pretentious people ;-) )...

BUT, if you want crazy acid trippin SF for the smart set i think nothing fits the bill better than DHALGREN, by samuel delany. it is a classic of the genre, filled with post-apocolyptic wonders, sex, drugs, gay sex, straight sex, group sex, violence, and lots and lots and lots of pondering about the nature of reality and civilisation...i read it in high school and did a book report on it that nearly killed my english teacher. craziest shit i have ever read.

my reading list.
1. neil gaiman's american gods.
2. orson scott card's ender's game.
3. william gibson's neuromancer.
4. isaac asimov's foundation
5. frank herbert's heretics of dune.

i have three weeks to get through this + 2 books on architecture for umich.

if you guys haven't read anything in the dune series, it is just amazing, and it's definitely worth a read, up until god-emperor. afterwards, it gets a bit slow.
american gods.. i'm on page 480 out of about 570, and it's pretty good so far.

jump ... I read Dhalgren two years ago ... and people think Philip K. Dick is wacked out! I remember getting to the part in the book with the simultaneous narratives (as in two different narratives printed side by side on the page), and putting it down, thinking to myself ... now this is what I call weird...

Yo Smoke, if you haven't already, you should check out the classic noir detective stuff from Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Hammett in particular is really out there, experimenting with strange POVs and proto-stream-of-consciousness writing. He's doubly my hero because he's from Maryland, and he went to jail for refusing to name names to the House Unamerican Activities Committee. What a guy!

ha smoke, that is about the part where my attention slipped too. i managed to plough through to the end but barely remember it after the bifurcation...def wierder than phillip k dick, though i do prefer the latter; thinking that hard with sf just seems wrong...;-)

if into that sort of stuff J G Ballard has a fair amount of psychological SF out there ( maybe mostly as short stories )...not as crazy as dhalgren.

also read james m. cain.

A friend of mine recommended Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock (mystery/thriller). Has anyone read LeCarre's The Spy Who Came in From The Cold?

I need to re-read Hammett, Chandler, and Cain ... classic stuff.

i second the "cloud atlas" rec... you've got the mystery, sci fi, historical fiction genres thoroughly covered, and in brilliant and compact ways.
also for a good brain excursion try "vineland" by thomas pynchon. a whacked-out bit-of-everything (scifi, mystery, dreamfic) novel, totally worth the read. i can still feel myself careening around the switchback redwood throughways he writes about.

smoke i bought a volume called 3xCain awhile back at a used store. had double indemnity, mildred pierce and the postman always rings twice. great stuff. read the the spy who...so long ago but remember the movie more. absolute friends was quite good.
some summer page turner recs:
martin cruz smith: stallion gate
robert harris: enigma
jophn burdett: bangkok 8
for starters

THere is also William Gibson's Pattern Recognition

Or the series by Jasper Fford, starting with The Eyre Affair...

Both, entertaining reads where the central figure is trying to piece together a mystery, set within very peculiar, very interesting visions of what the world can be...

Are post-9/11 novels a genre? It sure seems to be the theme of my summer reads. (Well, they all just emerged at once ... five years later.) Ian McEwan's Saturday was as good as everyone said it would be ...