My Recommendations
20 stories
Crystal by nick
nick
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An everyday trip to work takes a romantic twist when Susan strikes up a conversation with a mysterious man. But is he everything she has hoped for or is there more behind those glasses?
Homeland by CoryDoctorow
CoryDoctorow
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER -- In Cory Doctorow’s wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco—an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state. A few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus’s hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It’s incendiary stuff—and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier. Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him—but he can’t admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He’s surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can’t even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He’s not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he’s gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do. Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they’re used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want. Fast-moving, passionate, and as current as next week, Homeland is every bit the equal of Little Brother—a paean to activism, to courage, to the drive to make the world a better place.
The Rapture of the Nerds (written with Charles Stross) by CoryDoctorow
CoryDoctorow
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Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun. The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander…and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple.
Pirate Cinema by CoryDoctorow
CoryDoctorow
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Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household’s access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal. Trent's too clever for that too happen. Except it does, and it nearly destroys his family. Shamed and shattered, Trent runs away to London, where he slowly he learns the ways of staying alive on the streets. This brings him in touch with a demimonde of artists and activists who are trying to fight a new bill that will criminalize even more harmless internet creativity, making felons of millions of British citizens at a stroke. Things look bad. Parliament is in power of a few wealthy media conglomerates. But the powers-that-be haven’t entirely reckoned with the power of a gripping movie to change people’s minds….
The Headmaster's Wager by VincentLam
VincentLam
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Percival Chen is the headmaster of the most respected English school in Saigon. He is also a bon vivant, a compulsive gambler and an incorrigible womanizer. He is well accustomed to bribing forever changing lists of government officials in order to maintain the elite status of the Chen Academy. He is fiercely proud of his Chinese heritage, and quick to spot the business opportunities rife in a divided country. He devotedly ignores all news of the fighting that swirls around him, choosing instead to read the faces of his opponents at high-stakes mahjong tables. But when his only son gets in trouble with the Vietnamese authorities, Percival faces the limits of his connections and wealth and is forced to send him away. In the loneliness that follows, Percival finds solace in Jacqueline, a beautiful woman of mixed French and Vietnamese heritage, and Laing Jai, a son born to them on the eve of the Tet offensive. Percival's new-found happiness is precarious, and as the complexities of war encroach further and further into his world, he must confront the tragedy of all he has refused to see.
Reefer Ranger by LostDMBFiles
LostDMBFiles
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Texas Ranger, J.T. McCutchen, didn't heed the Mexican revolution until it spilled across his border. Soon every revolutionary'll know, you've got to kill the man before you fight the power. "Blood soaked and terse, J.T. McCutchen is an epic anti-hero in the making." Ranger J.T. McCutchen is as black and white as they come. He likes his law with a long arm and short trial. And he delivers the verdict via Colt .45, up close and personal. But protecting his Texas borderlands against the increasing turbulence of the Mexican Revolution pushes him to the brink. South of the border and alone he's blindsided and left for dead. Fractured, both physically and emotionally, the once singular man is forced to either reinterpret himself or the world around him. His decision will imprint the history of nations. "It's about time the world gets a reefer-smoking, lotus-sitting, Texas Ranger bad ass!"
The Coward King: Part One - Rebellion by JamesDSwinney
JamesDSwinney
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War has come to Elaech. In order to fund his new war in Gallanuul, King Allard Navri has placed unbearably high taxes on his people, taxes that they simply cannot pay. Mothers send their sons off to die for a king who cares nothing for them in a war they want no part of. Families crumble under the pressure of collecting enough money just to stay alive. Children are forced to work in slave-like conditions in order to keep food on the table. One man, however, does not stand for this. Dorad Erilion, a young lord of Elaech and a member of the former King's court, calls for the people to rise up in revolution against this new king. The lesser lords, who are suffering under the new reign because of the loss of the peasantry, flock to Dorad Erilion's banner in the hopes of defeating the King Allard in his mighty castle in Werach. This rebellion must succeed, however, for if they do not, no mortal strength can save them from the wrath of the Coward King.
The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum by dlmackenzie
dlmackenzie
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The Magnetron Chronicles, Volume 1 Phineas Magnetron is an eccentric Nineteenth Century inventor blessed with a strange gift he doesn't completely understand. As a former soldier and current member of the Hogalum Society, an inscrutable secret organization of crime fighting adventurers, Phineas is no stranger to peril and derring-do. But when the Society founder dies, Phineas embarks on a daring and improbable caper to bring the good doctor's greatest dream to fruition posthumously. In the process, he not only horrifies his Society brothers, but unearths a haunting and compelling mystery. About The Magnetron Chronicles: The Magnetron Chronicles is a serialized steampunk tale told in the grandiose style of Jules Verne, but with satirical Twainian wit. Chapter by chapter, the story builds as quirky new characters join the fray and perplexing new mysteries and situations arise. Traveling the globe, Phineas Magnetron and his Hogalum Society encounter suspicious policemen, mentally ill criminals, wood-craving aliens, a witch doctor, a mad oracle, and a cross-dressing female matador, among many others. However, this "steam dream team" always manages to triumph over impossible odds and improbable obstacles as they preserve order in a disorderly world. More information: http://themagnetronchronicles.blogspot.com
Hainan Dao by john_chan
john_chan
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In embarking on a journey to unveil his father's long held secret, a young man finds that in the end, what he discovers is himself. This story is based on the life of my father. Book II is about 90 percent true. :-) For those of you who wonder what 'Hainan Dao' means: Hainan is the island at the southernmost tip of China. Dao may mean 'island', though it may also mean 'the way of', as in Daoism or Taoism, or Tae Kwon Dao. Make sense?
Frightened Boy by ScottKelly
ScottKelly
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A young man is caught in a battle between existential terrorists and a paranoid populace over the last metropolis in America. Our hero must decide whether to destroy or salvage the last bastion of civilization. A gritty dystopian thriller (think Hunger Games meets the Matrix.)