In which tng catches a nasty viral blog meme that's been going around, and dutifully acts as an infection vector... Well, since coturnix [1] and Jenna [2] double tagged me days ago I better get this done ASAP.

1. One book that changed your life?
   Robert Heinlein's Have Spacesuit Will Travel. It was the first serious science fiction novel I read and it was like a whole new world opened for me. And for those naysayers who would claim that HSWT couldn't be considered serious science fiction because it was written for the juvenile market, I'm not the only one to note that Heinlein's juveniles were harder SF than his adult fiction -- he didn't talk down to his younger readers.
   
   
2. One book you have read more than once?
   This is a tough one. I've reread so many of my favorites so many times. But I think I'll go with Fred Pohl's 1984 The Merchant's War, which was the sequel to the classic The Space Merchants written by Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth in 1952. I read both books in order, and very nearly in one sitting. The parallels between the Reagan era United States and Pohl and Kornbluth's world were eerie and have only grown stronger over time. coturnix also mentioned [3] these two books today.
   
   
3. One book you would want on a desert island?
   Easy. Teleportation For Dummies.
   
   
4. One book that made you laugh?
   I'm really tempted to go with Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, easily one of the funniest books ever, but I think instead I'll go with a somewhat lesser known novel by Douglas Adams -- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Over the years DGHDA has grown on me and I find it even more humorous than HGTTG, perhaps because it has a much darker edge to it. DGHDA was a expanded version of Douglas Adams' lost Tom Baker era Doctor Who script Shada (I say lost because filming was never completed on this story arc due to a worker's strike at the BBC). However, a few years ago the BBC did an animated version using the Paul McGann Doctor which you can watch online here [4].
   
   
5. One book that made you cry?
   I'm going to slightly cheat here and go with Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars for one and only one scene in particular -- Arkady's death. If you haven't read it I won't spoil it for you, but to this day it haunts me because one of the very substances that give us life (I'm being evasive, but I really don't want to spoil it) was used as the instrument of death. And the total callousness involved... just... frightening.
   
   
6. One book you wish had been written?
   Mistakes and Bad Luck tng Will Suffer, A Future Retrospective Compendium
   
   
7. One book you wish had never had been written?
   I've got to go with Jenna on this one. There can be no other choice. The Bible.
   
   
8. One book you are currently reading?
   Daniel Pipes' Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From. Yeah, I know he's a right winger. And I think his attitude toward the Middle East stinks, but it's part of the literature on conspiracism, of which I am slowly working through one by one.
   
   
9. One book you have been meaning to read?
   Milton Rokeach's The Open and Closed Mind: Investigations into the Nature of Belief Systems and Personality Systems. If I can locate a good and suitably cheap used copy it's next on my list.
   
   
10. Tag five people
    I'll kill two birds with one stone and tag both Rich and John at Bloodthirsty Vegetarians [5] (MP3 audio [6], book meme starts 19:30 into the show). Additionally I think I'll tag Rich and John's most faithful listener, chief detractor and token libertarian of their message boards, Kirsten from Enjoy Every Sandwich [7].
    Next up is spotted elephant from The Bipolar View [8].
    And finally, J.R. Kinnard from Don't Floss With Tinsel [9].

So, how about all the silent masses who read NG (that includes my AWOL contributors too!)... What books had big impacts on your life?

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