John Carmack

Independent newbie AI researcher, Consulting CTO Oculus VR, Founder Id Software and Armadillo Aerospace

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Book Recommendations:

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

The first Expanse book was very good, but the second was even better. I’ve heard that the TV show is also great, but I don’t want to impact my reading of the books. https://t.co/aCp57bxN5B (from X)

For the first time in hardcover, the first three novels in James S. A. Corey's New York Times bestselling epic science fiction saga the Expanse. Now a Prime Original series. Hugo Award Winner for Best Series "Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written."- George R.R. Martin Humanity has colonized the solar system, but two hundred years after migrating into space, mankind is in turmoil. When a reluctant ship's captain and washed-up detective find themselves involved in the case of a missing girl, what they discover brings our solar system to the brink of civil war, and exposes the greatest conspiracy in human history. The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath The Expanse Short Fiction The Butcher of Anderson Station Gods of Risk The Churn The Vital Abyss

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

@TBrendanHughes Yes, fantastic book! (from X)

A Fire Upon the Deep book cover

by Vernor Vinge, Peter Larkin, Macmillan Audio·You?

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought", but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization. A Fire upon the Deep, which began the Zones of Thought series, is the winner of the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

"The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" by Hamming is great, but the actual quality of the physical book is so much better than typical that I looked up the publisher -- I had no idea that https://t.co/zkjKHvx7gj was a thing! (from X)

Highly effective thinking is an art that engineers and scientists can be taught to develop. By presenting actual experiences and analyzing them as they are described, the author conveys the developmental thought processes employed and shows a style of thinking that leads to successful results is something that can be learned. Along with spectacular successes, the author also conveys how failures contributed to shaping the thought processes. Provides the reader with a style of thinking that will enhance a person's ability to function as a problem-solver of complex technical issues. Consists of a collection of stories about the author's participation in significant discoveries, relating how those discoveries came about and, most importantly, provides analysis about the thought processes and reasoning that took place as the author and his associates progressed through engineering problems.

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

Reap3r book cover

by Eliot Peper·You?

How far would you go to achieve your greatest ambition? Nothing is what it seems in this speculative thriller about a quantum computer scientist, virologist, podcaster, venture capitalist, and assassin coming together to untangle a twisted enigma that will change the course of future history. Everyone has something to hide, and every transgression is a portal to discovery. Taking you on a whirlwind journey from the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area to the distant shores of the Galápagos, Reap3r is a propulsive adventure that grapples with the price of progress and how technology shapes our lives and world.

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

Sprawl Series Complete 4 Books Collection Set by William Gibson (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive & Burning Chrome) book cover

by William Gibson, Neuromancer By William Gibson, Burning Chrome By William Gibson, Count Zero By William Gibson·You?

Please Note That The Following Individual Books As Per Original ISBN and Cover Image In this Listing shall be Dispatched Sprawl Series Complete 4 Books Collection Set by William William Gibson revolutionised science fiction in his 1984 debut Neuromancer. The writer who gave us the matrix and coined the term 'cyberspace' produced a first novel that won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, and lit the fuse on the Cyberpunk movement.Count When the Maas Biolabs and Hosaka zaibatsus fight it out for world domination, computer cowboys like Turner and Count Zero are just foot soldiers in the great useful but ultimately expendable.When Turner wakes up in Mexico - in a new body with a beautiful woman beside him - his corporate masters let him recuperate for a while.Mona Lisa Mona is a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is turned upside down when her pimp sells her to a plastic surgeon in New York and overnight she's turned into someone else.Angie Mitchell is a famous Hollywood Sense/Net star with a special talent. And despite the efforts of studio bosses to keep her in ignorance, Angie's started remembering things.Burning Best-known for his seminal sf novel NEUROMANCER, William Gibson is also a master of short fiction. Tautly-written and suspenseful, BURNING CHROME collects 10 of his best short stories with a preface from Bruce Sterling, co-Cyberpunk and editor of the seminal anthology MIRRORSHADES. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson's characters and intensely-realized worlds at his absolute best.

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress book cover

by Robert A. Heinlein·You?

For fans of Artemis—the visionary tour de force from “one of the grand masters of science fiction” (The Wall Street Journal).Widely acknowledged as one of Robert A. Heinlein's greatest works, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress rose from the golden age of science fiction to become an undisputed classic—and a touchstone for the philosophy of personal responsibility and political freedom. A revolution on a lunar penal colony—aided by a self-aware supercomputer—provides the framework for a story of a diverse group of men and women grappling with the ever-changing definitions of humanity, technology, and free will—themes that resonate just as strongly today as they did when the novel was first published.The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress gives readers an extraordinary, thought-provoking glimpse into the mind of Robert A. Heinlein, who, even now, “shows us where the future is” (Tom Clancy).

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

Hackers: the undisputed masters of code who more than anyone are responsible for making computers widely available, splendidly useful, and fun. They are an astonishingly unique new breed of american hero, and Steven Levy has talked to the wildest brains among them to present the inside story of the computer revolution. What drove Ricky Greenblatt, Bill Gosper, and their friends to seize control of the multimillion-dollar computers at MIT in the fifties and sixties, so they could not only use them night after night but create, explore, and play on them? What drove Lee Felsenstein and his California hardware cohorts in the seventies to liberate the genie in the machine and give it to the people? What drove superstar game designer John Harris from the software company he had enriched in the Sierras in the eighties? It was a set of shared ideas and a vision they held in common – the Hacker Ethic. The Hacker Ethic was an idealistic and obsessive standard that led to weird lifestyles, to hilarious clashes with bureaucracies, and even to potential illegalities: in their urge to explore computers, hackers don’t necessarily care whose computer is being explored. But their hands-on, anti-authority Ethic, along with their technical brilliance, enabled them to triumph – as they do in scene after scene of this twenty-five-year epic of young American wizardry.

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

This discounted ebundle of The Zones of Thought Series includes: A Fire Upon the Deep, The Children of the Sky, A Deepness in the Sky “Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.” —David Brin Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. A Fire Upon The Deep — Fleeing a galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. The Children of the Sky — Ten years have passed on Tines World, and Ravna and the children have survived a war. While there is peace among the Tines, there are those among them—and among the humans—who seek power…and no matter the cost, these malcontents are determined to overturn the fledgling civilization that has taken root since the humans landed. A Deepness in the Sky — Thirty-thousand years before A Fire Upon the Deep, two human groups, the Qeng Ho, a culture of free traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds, stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. Other Books by Vernor Vinge Realtime/Bobble Series The Peace War Marooned in Realtime Other Novels The Witling Tatja Grimm's World Rainbows End Collections Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge True Names At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

The Book of CP-System book cover

by Fabien Sanglard·You?

Before the era of overpowered PCs and home consoles, there was a time when video-game enthusiasts could only experience the very best and the most challenging in places called "arcades". In these locations, players of all ages and origins gathered to take their passion to a level no consumer grade hardware could. The arcades of the early 90s were a highly competitive environment where publishers only had a few seconds to catch a player's attention, and more importantly their quarters. It was during that time that a young company named Capcom managed to elevate itself above the competition and turn itself into an icon. This book is an engineering love letter to the platform that allowed this metamorphosis. If you have always wanted to learn about the machine behind the legendary CPS-1 titles Street Fighter II, Ghouls 'n Ghosts, and Final Fight, the "Book of CP-System" is for you. Inside, you will find the hardware of the CPS-1 described and explained in excruciating detail. The software is also covered with a fully detailed modern pipeline, turning code and assets into ROMs . Jump in and discover a world of one hundred explanatory illustrations, sprinkled with typos and broken English to remind you this isn't just a dream!

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Ed.) book cover

by Ayn Rand·You?

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy...why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction...why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph...why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill. Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism—her groundbreaking philosophy—offers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth century’s leading artists.

JC

Recommended by John Carmack

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SELECTED BY THE ECONOMIST AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR “A rambunctious book that is itself alive with the animal spirits of the marketplace.”—The Wall Street Journal Freedom’s Forge reveals how two extraordinary American businessmen—General Motors automobile magnate  William “Big Bill” Knudsen and shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser—helped corral, cajole, and inspire business leaders across the country to mobilize the “arsenal of democracy” that propelled the Allies to victory in World War II. Drafting top talent from companies like Chrysler, Republic Steel, Boeing, Lockheed, GE, and Frigidaire, Knudsen and Kaiser turned auto plants into aircraft factories and civilian assembly lines into fountains of munitions. In four short years they transformed America’s army from a hollow shell into a truly global force, laying the foundations for the country’s rise as an economic as well as military superpower. Freedom’s Forge vividly re-creates American industry’s finest hour, when the nation’s business elites put aside their pursuit of profits and set about saving the world. Praise for Freedom’s Forge “A rarely told industrial saga, rich with particulars of the growing pains and eventual triumphs of American industry . . . Arthur Herman has set out to right an injustice: the loss, down history’s memory hole, of the epic achievements of American business in helping the United States and its allies win World War II.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . It’s not often that a historian comes up with a fresh approach to an absolutely critical element of the Allied victory in World War II, but Pulitzer finalist Herman . . . has done just that.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A compulsively readable tribute to ‘the miracle of mass production.’ ”—Publishers Weekly “The production statistics cited by Mr. Herman . . . astound.”—The Economist “[A] fantastic book.”—Forbes “Freedom’s Forge is the story of how the ingenuity and energy of the American private sector was turned loose to equip the finest military force on the face of the earth. In an era of gathering threats and shrinking defense budgets, it is a timely lesson told by one of the great historians of our time.”—Donald Rumsfeld