Reading an advanced copy of The Fortress of Glass, by David Drake.
The most profound book he’s read--Death Comes to the Arch Bishop, by Willa Cather, which is about the Jesuits coming to CO, NM, NE in the 1600s and 1700s. It gives perspective and insight. It changed him, let him know it doesn’t matter what group you belong to, that there’s awesome people in each group. It taught him to question his prejudices.
Another good book--Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, which has about 100 different ideas in it.
He once wrote a book for his kids, who were eight and nine at the time. It was written from the perspective of a boisterous, capable storyteller on a stage. The story comes from there. The idea was mankind messing with power of group consciousness. The are two groups and one group gives up their place on earth for their kids, giving them the caves of the Earth—an expansive cave system in the Rockies. There's not much of the Earth that remains. The other group gives up a strip of land—maybe near the Cal coast--for their kids. The parents die. The rest of the planet is destroyed. Later, the groups of kids, who nothing about each other, meet through dream travel. His kids loved it.
The book he’s currently reading is an advance uncorrected proof from April 2006. You read it and then go on line and make whatever corrections you might offer. There’s some wizardry in the book. It’s about a catlike people who raise people like we here on Earth raise cattle and the main character has a mind inside his mind, a sort of genetic defect. The mind is that of a general in the military and so he sees everything with a military perspective.
What he likes about Denver—the downtown area has free music on Saturday and Sunday near the library, the whole mall has free buses, sometimes three in a row when it's busy--lots of cool things. The downtown area has the hottest sales in homes in Colorado, the 80202 zip code. The mall is becoming a community because of this.
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