Unincorporated Future Breaks A 20+ Year Drought

Unincorporated Future
The Unincorporated Future by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin

I was visiting the Schaumburg Library and the cover art of the science fiction book The Unincorporated Future which was on display as a new arrival caught my eye. Picking it up and looking it over I decided to check it out. I read it and enjoyed it. The significance? This is the first science fiction novel I have read in probably 20 years.

You may say "so what", which wouldn't surprise me at all. But when you consider that I am a regular participant at science fiction conventions and that in my younger days I was an avid reader of SF (accumulating a large collection that I still possess) you may wonder what happened? Why such a long hiatus from reading science fiction?

Frankly the time I devote to reading has for the last twenty odd years been devoted to non-fiction. With so much fascinating knowledge out there, I found it very hard to spend any time reading fiction. I also found it hard to justify spending time on fiction when there were technical books related to my profession that I wanted to read.

So what have I been reading all these years? To give you an idea, here is a list of the subject areas that I've spent the most time on (listed alphabetically):

  • 2D graphics software manuals
  • 3D graphics software manuals
  • Adobe Photoshop (a subject in itself)
  • algorithmic art
  • art history
  • art theory
  • artificial intelligence
  • astronomy
  • C++ programming
  • computer art
  • computer graphics
  • cosmology
  • digital photography
  • economics (my BS was in Economics)
  • general science
  • HTML/CSS programming
  • image processing
  • Java programming
  • planetary science
  • political theory
  • politics
  • SAS programming
  • search engine optimization
  • space development
  • space exploration
  • web design and development

So there you have it - the secret of my reading habits. I will say this with respect to reading computer manuals: it is remarkable how much of that knowledge acquired becomes obsolete. But that is a small price to pay because that obsolence is due to the continued advances in computing capabilities and the former is a reasonable price to pay for the latter.

Ad Astra, Jim

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