Further Reading: Spin State by Chris Moriarty
Spin State by Chris Moriarty falls on that frustrating list of books I REALLY enjoyed, yet for some reason never got around to finishing. If I HAD finished it, I would have realized that it falls on an infinitely cooler list. It’s one of those rare novels that has a spectacular “further reading” section (you can checkout 2 of the 7 pages on Google Books). Here’s the list of Section Headings:
- Quantum Physics Generally (14 texts mentioned)
- Quantum Information Theory (EPR, Quantum Cryptography, and Quantum Computing) (33 texts mentioned)
- Spinfoam, Wormholes, Time and Other Strange Beasts… (17 texts mentioned)
I was a physics major in college and actually have a handful of the books referenced in this list and I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more of them.
When I made the discovery of this further reading list, I went back through the books on my shelves searching for other examples. Most anthologies have a good recommended reading section (like the New Weird one I blogged about) but very few novels do. I falsely remembered some of my favorite books having such a section. For instance, I thought Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson had such a section, but instead of a list of books about nanotechnology I just found Drexler mentioned in the acknowledgments. The only other novel I could find with such a section was Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, with a GREAT reading list about hacking and related topics.
Is this type of extra something that excites anyone else? Anyone have other good examples?
I read that book years back. It’s quite good as a novel and the reading list at the end was pretty cool (I bought one of the books on the list).
So, yeah, I get excited by the extras 🙂
Diaspora by Greg Egan includes a short but wonderful “References” section, thanks to which I discovered the incredible “Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity” by John Baez.
PS: I read Spin State I didn’t like it very much. I don’t think it qualifies as Hard SF just because of the mention, here and there, of “quantum this” or “quantum that”. Thus, I didn’t understand the inclusion of the Further Reading section, since it had nothing to do with the actual content of the novel.