Much of this could have been contained on the
Books & Music page, but this section should mainly serve as a pointer to author
sites and other useful stuff such as Uchronia
and the
CoDominium Headquarters. One of the areas in which this page
slops over into politics (and technology) is with this link:
This is an incredibly useful site if you (like me) are wrestling with Windows issues, but he also discusses science fiction (duh!), space issues, Linux, and current events. The mail section of the site is very much worth reading, and not only because I have letters published there. :)
I'm also rather fond of David Drake, who is probably best known for his short story collection Hammer's Slammers. He's also written some other fine historical/combat SF, most notably The Forge, which is the first of five novels in a series co-written with S.M. Stirling and patterned on the life of Belisarius. I don't claim to be nearly as good a writer as either
Pournelle or Heinlein- most of what I've written is fanfic about
"Space: Above and Beyond". You can take a gander at
Encounter on Cronos and "Delaying Actions", which is actually the first of the two. I'm at work on a much longer fanfic, "Strange Bedfellows", which details the unlikely alliance between Identity Party chief Nicholas Chaput and General (yes, you read that correctly) T.C. McQueen. I don't know if I'm ever going to finish it; what's done is posted here. You can find a link to "Delaying Actions" on this page.
I've also written some fanfic based on the characters of Revolutionary Girl Utena. The biggest piece of that is Shojo Kakumei Ukyo, a kitchen-sink crossover involving characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Mark Rogers' Samurai Cat stories, Apocalypse Now, The Tick and a couple of other places I can't recall off the top of my head. Some folks liked it. The rest of the fanfic, "Two for the Road", "After the Revolution", and "Global Replacement", which is a precursor to Blood Red Skies, can be found here.
These days I'm working on something original. A synthesis of anime themes and good old-fashioned space opera, Blood Red Skies and its sequel Sad Wings of Destiny have their own page.
Want to know more about "Space:Above and Beyond"? You should
take a look here.
I've gotten very interested in anime and manga lately, but so much of it doesn't fit neatly ino the category of SF and fantasy that I've given it its own page on my site.
On the other hand, if your concerns are more heavily weighted towards Linux and other *nixes, to say nothing of cyberpunk, you should take a look at
Slashdot. A collaborative effort of the geek community spearheaded by Commander Taco, Hemos the Wonder Hamster and Roblimo, Slashdot will tell you more than you'll ever need to know about the hard, the soft, the SF, privacy issues and other hot topics in geekdom. However, be
forewarned that you should set the comment filters to "2" before
looking through the posted comments; as in so many other areas
of life, 90% of the comments are time-wasting flup and not just because I have comments posted there.
Getting back to authors and their works, the best SF author of the 20th century is Robert Heinlein. Most people these days seem to know him only through the execrable movie "Starship Troopers" -better you should read the book. I personally prefer one of his other Hugo-winning novels, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, the story of the Lunar Revolution in 2076. Other works by Heinlein worth reading are Tunnel in the Sky, one of his better juvenile novels, and his massive "Future History" collection The Past through Tomorrow. This book contains several novels and a plethora of shorter stories detailing a future that's probably safely stowed in an alternate universe someplace.