Micah Joel

From the statistics gathered by Goodreads, here’s everything I rated five stars (which to me means will-reread-again) in 2011: A Memory of Wind, Rachel Swirsky The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang Steering the Craft, Ursula K. Le Guin Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension, Rudy Rucker Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny Story Engineering, [...]

The Difference Engine starts off with a fantastic premise: what if Babbage’s ideas turned out to be more than mere ideas? The resulting history brings the information age a century early, complete with mechanical computers, punched cards, and a “clacker” culture. Information wants to be free. But it also brings oppressive elements. Government and/or corporate [...]