Fantasy

The best fantasy novel in 20 years?:

Magic

An amazing, gigantic, and colorful book:

Science Fiction

Cory Doctorow:

"Big Brother" for the 21st century. Very enjoyable, feels like Robert A. Heinlein.
Read it. Get strong encryption. Use it.

Steven Gould:

He's revisited several classic themes of science fiction, and made them new again ... very successfully.

Anything Amazon gives me for pointing you towards these books will be donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org).

Fantasy

Ilona Andrews:

The "Kate Daniels" series. Enjoyable. Urban fantasy.

Patricia Briggs:

The "Mercy Thompson Series" is quite enjoyable. I like the series a lot. (Aside: I'm looking for a copy of "Masques" by Patricia Briggs ... preferably well under $250 :)

Karen Chance:

The "Touch the Dark" series (aka "Cassandra Palmer" series). Enjoyable. Alternate earth: magic works, vampires exist, but most people are unaware of magic/vamps. Protagonist has some powers, was raised in a vampire's fiefdom in Las Vegas(?).

Carrie Vaughn:

The "Kitty Norville" series. Quite enjoyable. "Kitty" is a werewolf, turned into one by the bite of a existing werewolf. Vampires exist, and a few others. IIRC, no fairies/elves.


(first three books combined)

Eileen Wilks:

The "World of the Lupi" series. I enjoyed them all (although one (second?) dealt a lot with a kind of parallel world that wasn't too interesting to me, because the premise behind what happened to the protagonist was awkward).

J. K. Rowling:

Tales of Beedle the Bard.

Anything Amazon gives me for pointing you towards these books will be donated to the next Potlatch convention.

History of Computers

Anything Amazon gives me for pointing you towards these books will be donated to the Computer History Museum (www.computerhistory.org).