Sime~Gen - KeyBooks

We're looking for a few good books. Know any? Recommend them to us.
See our Reading List -- Religion in Speculative Fiction by Elizabeth Barrette.

People ask sf/f writers, "Where do you get those crazy ideas?" And the best answer is "From studying philosophy."

Here is a book to help writers with "world building" -- imagining an internal consistent alien way of thinking.

This book gifts you with a world view which assumes the universe is totally beneficent and out to shower you with great goodness.

As hard as this world view is for most Americans today to encompass -- suppose we met up with an alien species that simply couldn't imagine our normal, more paranoid view of reality and so couldn't understand us.

This is a treasure book for writers creating a long historical story-arc with sociological evolution. You don't have to buy it -- read the long reviews!

This book tells the story of how University Admissions - especially among the Big Three Ivy League schools in the USA - changed from the 1890's to the 1920's and on to today's totally different admissions policies.

It's not so much a book on how to get into college as it is an explanation of how come certain classes of people have been systematically excluded from higher education. It would make a dandy interstellar tale!

This University Press book is expensive and very heavy reading -- but it just might be the book that can break writer's block for you. It delves into the psychology of decision-making on the basis of incomplete information.

Judgment pervades human experience. Do I have a strong enough case to go to trial? Will the Fed change interest rates? Can I trust this person? This book examines how people answer such questions. How do people cope with the complexities of the world economy, the uncertain behavior of friends and adversaries, or their own changing tastes and personalities? When are people's judgments prone to bias, and what is responsible for their biases? This book compiles psychologists' best attempts to answer these important questions.

Heuristics and Biases : The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment
by Thomas Gilovich (Editor), Dale Griffin (Editor), Daniel Kahneman (Editor)

List Price:

$40.00

In the Paths of Our Fathers: Insights into Pirkei Avot from the Works of the Lubavitcher Rebbe
by Eliyahu Touger, Menachem M. Schneerson, Menahem Mendel, Bat Schneersohn

List Price:

$21.00

If you've ever wanted to include a Jewish character in your novel, or if you are looking for ways to leap outside the "box" of common American culture to find other ways of looking at reality, get this book.

The Lubavitch point of view is based on mystical insights that have influenced the direction of our world today, yet still sound and feel "different."

Pirkei Avot is the section of bits of wisdom from the great sages of Judaism studied between the afternoon and evening prayers and included with sparse commentary in most daily/holiday prayer books. These are observations about the best ways to behave, and as such provide any writer with a wealth of plot ideas. But the Lubavitch "take" on these observations is unique and this commentary is more extensive.

This is the epic story of Rama -- if you don't know who Rama is, you better read the customer reviews here.

From the Publisher
The Ramayana (the Journey of Rama) is perhaps the world's oldest literature. Cherished throughout India and Asia for milennia, it has been faithfully preserved and passed on in varied forms of popular expression-epic poems, folk tales, music, dance, drama, puppet shows, sculpture, painting, even films and comic books. Its story and characters have captured the hearts and minds of countless generations.

I maintain that the success of TV shows such as Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel, have a lot to do with how they integrate the classics into their plots. Pay close attention to the myths and classics of the world.

Ramayana: India's Immortal Tale of Adventure, Love and Wisdom by Krishna Dharma, Krishna Dharma, Valmiki Ramayana

List Price:

$27.95

And usually a nice discount.

The Talmud and the Internet: A

Journey Between Worlds
by Jonathan Rosen

List Price:
$10.00

Rosen observes that "the Talmud offered a virtual home for an uprooted culture, and grew out of the Jewish need to pack civilization into words and wander out into the world." And the Internet suggests to Rosen "a similar sense of Diaspora, a feeling of being everywhere and nowhere. Where else but in the middle of Diaspora do you need a homepage?" In Rosen's analysis, the Internet and the Talmud signal and salve social and spiritual isolation. MORE

When the Christian theologian Harvey Cox married Nina Tumarkin, a Jewish woman, he plunged into a "crash course in interfaith relations." Cox's Common Prayers reminds readers that there was a literal space in Jerusalem's ancient Temple called the Court of the Gentiles, where Jews welcomed all "strangers and sojourners" to worship alongside them. In an age of interfaith marriage, Cox asserts that the Court of the Gentiles has considerable symbolic resonance. It is, figuratively, a space where thousands of husbands and wives of Jewish women and men find themselves every day. Cox's memoir of family life follows MORE

Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian's Journey Through the Jewish Year by Harvey Cox (Author)

List Price:

$13.00

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
by Kuhn, Thomas S. Kuhn

List Price: $12.00

Mull this over and you'll have 5 new novel series plotted out overnight.

The 48 Laws of Power
by Robert Greene

List Price: $16.00

If you have trouble creating great villains you MUST have this book NOW.
Here is how the villains of our society think and operate. Of course, some of it is good common sense used by the wisest and kindest among us - that's what's so supremely useful about this book.

Heroes of History: A Brief History of Civilization from Ancient Times to the Dawn of the Modern Age
by Will Durant

List Price: $27.50
If you need to create an Alien world as rich as C. J. Cherry's Foreigner novels, this is the kind of thing you should be reading.

Durant (1885-1981), the principal author of The Story of Civilization, saw history as a branch of philosophy, and he peppered his stories of great historical actors and events with moral lessons and observed patterns ("One of the most regular sequences in history is that a period of pagan license is followed by an age of puritan restraint and moral discipline"). These brief lectures, touching on leaders and innovators, such as Buddha, Marcus Aurelius, Leonardo da Vinci, and Martin Luther, afford him plenty of opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the past and to offer models for his readers to study and emulate.

3/05/01 Free Music Downloads -- get free Passover Song clips by Theodore Bikel from "A Taste of Passover" album.

Dona, Dona - Theodore Bikel & NEC Jewish Music Ensemble

A Taste Of Passover
Hankus Netsky Theodore Bikel

List Price: ~~$16.97~~

This album always makes me smile -- it feels like home.

Philosophy

Updated on Sunday November 13, 2005.

I maintain that the success of TV shows such as Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel, have a lot to do with how they integrate the classics into their plots. Pay close attention to the myths and classics of the world.