A Fable by the American author William Faulkner. He spent more than a decade and tremendous effort on it, and considered it his masterpiece when it was completed. It won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award but critical reviews were mixed and it is considered one of Faulkner's lesser works. The critics are wrong. Historically, it can be seen as a precursor to Joseph Heller's Catch-22. The book takes place in France during World War I and stretches through the course of one week. It tells the stories of "Corporal Stephan", who is representative of Jesus. The Corporal orders 3,000 troops to disobey orders to attack in the brutally repetitive trench warfare. In return, the Germans do not attack, and the war is simply stopped when the soldiers realize that it takes two sides to fight a war. The Generalissimo has the corporal arrested and executed; he is representative of leaders who use war solely to make themselves stronger (he invites the German general over to discuss how to start the war again). Before he has him shot, the Generalissimo tries to convince the Corporal that war can never be stopped because it is the essence of humanity.
In WWI there was considerable fraternization between the two sides. Often this resulted in large segments of men unwilling to fight.
Fail Safe by Eugene Burdick. Something has gone wrong. A group of American bombers armed with nuclear weapons is streaking past the fail-safe point, beyond recall, and no one knows why. Their destination -- Moscow.
In a bomb shelter beneath the White House, the calm young president turns to his Russian translator and says, "I think we are ready to talk to Premier Kruschchev." Not far away, in the War Room at the Pentagon, the secretary of defense and his aides watch with growing anxiety as the luminous blips crawl across a huge screen map. High over the Bering Strait in a large Vindicator bomber, a colonel stares in disbelief at the attack code number on his fail-safe box and wonders if it could possibly be a mistake.
First published in 1962, when America was still reeling from the Cuban missle crisis, Fail-Safe reflects the apocalyptic attitude that pervaded society during the height of the Cold War, when disaster could have struck at any moment. As more countries develop nuclear capabilities and the potential for new enemies lurks on the horizon, Fail-Safe and its powerful issues continue to respond.
Farnham's Freehold by Robert Heinlein. Heinlien explores the far future after WWIII.
A serialised version, edited by Frederik Pohl, appeared in Worlds of If magazine (July, August, October 1964). The complete version was published in novel form by G.P. Putnam later in 1964.
Farnham's Freehold is a post-apocalyptic tale, as the setup for the story is a direct hit by a nuclear weapon, which sends their fallout shelter containing a man, his wife, son, daughter, daughter's friend, and black domestic servant into the future. Heinlein drew on his own experience in building a fallout shelter under his own house in Colorado Springs, Colorado in the 1960s. (First printings have Heinlein's home address in the back.)
The book is popular with survivalist groups as it combines the civil engineering and physics of fallout shelter survival with the social dynamics of "lifeboat rules," or autocratic authority under extreme conditions, a theme further explored in depth in The Number of the Beast. To paraphrase Mr. Farnham, "How do you know who is the officer in the lifeboat? The one with the gun."
He and his family have managed to survive neuclear war but are flung into the distant future. The White Race is a remmanent, blacks control everything. He cleverly makes the reader deal with racism.
Fear of Fifty by Erica Jong. A publishing event, a real-life novel, Fear of Fifty is the true story of the woman who 20 years ago showed her generation how to soar in Fear of Flying and now looks back -- and ahead -- to assess the costs, the rewards and the meaning of the journey.
Opening on her fiftieth birthday, Jong's midlife memoir reads like fast-paced fiction as it flashes back and forth in time to tell at last the truths at the heart of her novels. Poet, novelist, essayist, Jong has forged one of the most visible and volatile careers in American letters, and as a charter member of what she calls the "whiplash generation," she has had a front seat on the roller coaster American women have been riding for the past decades. Raised to be Doris Day, growing up wanting to be Gloria Steinem, now rearing daughters in the age of Princess Di and Madonna, today's women have had their expectations raised and dashed and raised and dashed again, as they've watched themselves go in and out of style like hemlines. Now, as she and her contemporaries look for answers to the second half of their lives, Jong offers powerful, provocative insights into sex, marriage and aging; feminism -- past, present and future; the writing life; motherhood and family; identity and love, loyalty and loss, drawn through the brilliant prism of her own experience.
In chapters such as "Fear of Fifty," "The Mad Lesbian in the Attic," "How I Got to Be the Second Sex," "How I Got to Be Jewish," "Fear of Fame," "Seducing the Muse," "Dona Juana Gets Smart," "Becoming Venetian" and "How to Get Married," Erica Jong takes readers on an impassioned, outrageous, irreverent tour de force through the sea changes that have defined a generation. From technical virginity to the sexual revolution to the AIDS pandemic; from The Feminine Mystique to "political correctness"; from monogamy to open marriage and back again; from stay-at-home moms to moms who have won the right to be eternally exhausted; from sexual secrecy to sexual openness -- Jong proves yet again her unique ability to tap into the inner lives of women and the issues that matter most to them.
Fear of Fifty is an intoxicating, riveting read, free-wheeling and fun, warm, tough and full of wisdom. Sure to be embraced by women everywhere, it is destined, like its classic predecessor Fear of Flying, to become required reading for a generation on the threshold of a new revolution.
Fear of Fifty is a funny, touching, unflinchingly honest cri de coeur about the joy and pain of being a fully sentient woman in the last half of the 20th century. Elegant and eloquent, this moving midlife meditation chronicles the daunting feat of juggling all at once the roles of wife, mother and lover; daughter, sister and friend; writer, feminist and Jew. Many women who came of age in the '60s and '70s will recognize Jong's struggles, contradictions, and hard-won conclusions as their own.
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong. Originally published in 1973, the ground-breaking, uninhibited story of Isadora Wing and her desire to fly free caused a national sensation—and sold more than twelve million copies. Now, after forty years, the iconic novel still stands as a timeless tale of self-discovery, liberation, and womanhood.
My mother was terrified of flying. I often offered to pay her way to visit me or other places she longed to see. She always refused. I did suggest that she read Fear of Flying while she was on the plane to distract her from her fears. She just smiled. I suspect she had read the book.
The Federalist Papers by John Jay. "This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren ... should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties." So wrote John Jay, one of the revolutionary authors of The Federalist Papers, arguing that if the United States was truly to be a single nation, its leaders would have to agree on universally binding rules of governance--in short, a constitution. In a brilliant set of essays, Jay and his colleagues Alexander Hamilton and James Madison explored in minute detail the implications of establishing a kind of rule that would engage as many citizens as possible and that would include a system of checks and balances. Their arguments proved successful in the end, and The Federalist Papers stand as key documents in the founding of the United States.
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins. Switters is a contradiction for all seasons: an anarchist who works for the government; a pacifist who carries a gun; a vegetarian who sops up ham gravy; a cyberwhiz who hates computers; a man who, though obsessed with the preservation of innocence, is aching to deflower his high-school-age stepsister (only to become equally enamored of a nun ten years his senior). Yet there is nothing remotely wishy-washy about Switters. He doesn’t merely pack a pistol. He is a pistol. And as we dog Switters’s strangely elevated heels across four continents, in and out of love and danger, discovering in the process the “true” Third Secret of Fatima, we experience Tom Robbins—that fearless storyteller, spiritual renegade, and verbal break dancer—at the top of his game. On one level this is a fast-paced CIA adventure story with comic overtones; on another it’s a serious novel of ideas that brings the Big Picture into unexpected focus; but perhaps more than anything else, Fierce Invalids is a sexy celebration of language and life.
The First Wives Club by Olivia Goldsmith. Elise, Brenda, and Annie have one thing in common: they were all first wives. Make that two things in common -- they were the secret to success for each of their spouses, faithfully supporting them as they rose to the top. Okay, three things: they were each abandoned for younger, blonder, sleeker women, "trophy wives" for their exes to sport about town.
It may not be on the menu at New York's finer restaurants, but revenge is a dish best served cold -- and while lunching at Le Cirque, the ladies decide the time for self-pity is over: now it's time to get even. How they conspire to give each man his due -- in full view of New York society -- makes The First Wives Club the "deliciously wicked" (San Francisco Chronicle) indulgence that, like vintage champagne, goes straight to your head...and captures your heart along the way!
The Flight of the Iguana: A Sidelong View of Science and Natureby David Quammen. Delightful, funny and charming look at science and nature. Quammen's columns in Outdoor Magazine are famed as an entertaining source of offbeat information. In this collection, he casts sidelong glances at creationism and extinction, at giant earthworms and Canada geese. But he takes a direct view at the plight of Salvadoran refugees and at the Sanctuary Movement; he accompanied one group on a dramatic journey across the Sonoran desert. Quammen examines the special problems of species survival on islands (and tells us what is happening to the birds of Guam); he discusses the unusually small gene pool of cheetahs and how the Papago Indians survive in desert lands. There is a piece about visiting the Okefenokee Swamp, while the title essay is set in the Galapagos. Readers who enjoyed Natural Acts will find Quammen's new collection equally interesting.
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. The novel opens with an epigraph discouraging people from laughing at those who are perplexed or weak of vision. The epigraph is taken from Plato's The Republic, part of which reads: “Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eye are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye.”
Charlie Gordon, 32 years of age, suffers from phenylketonuria and has an IQ of 68. He holds a menial job at a bakery which his uncle had secured for him so that Charlie would not have to be sent to a State institution. Wanting to improve himself, Charlie attends reading and writing classes at the Beekman College Center for Retarded Adults; his teacher is Alice Kinnian, a young, attractive woman. Two researchers at Beekman are looking for a human test subject on whom to try a new surgical technique intended to increase intelligence. They have already performed the surgery on a mouse named Algernon, dramatically improving his mental performance. Based on Alice's recommendation and his own peerless motivation to improve, Charlie is chosen over smarter pupils to undergo the procedure. The operation is a success, and within the next three months Charlie's IQ reaches an astonishing 185. However, as his intelligence, education, and understanding of the world around him increases, his relationships with people deteriorate. His coworkers at the bakery, who used to amuse themselves at his expense, are now scared and resentful of his increased intelligence and persuade his boss to fire him. One night at a cocktail party, a drunken Charlie angrily confronts his scientific mentors about their condescending attitude toward him. Charlie also embarks on a troubled romance with Alice. Unable to become intimate with the object of his affection, Charlie later starts a purely sexual relationship with Fay Lillman, a vivacious and promiscuous artist in the neighboring apartment. When he's not drinking at night, Charlie spends intense weeks continuing his mentors' research on his own and writing reports which include observations of Algernon, whom he keeps at his apartment. Charlie's research discovers a flaw in the theory behind Nemur's and Strauss's intelligence-enhancing procedure, one that could eventually cause him to revert to his original mental state. His conclusions prove true when Algernon starts behaving erratically, loses his own enhanced intelligence, and dies. Charlie tries to mend the long-broken relationships with his parents but without success. He remembered that as a boy his mother had insisted on his institutionalization, overruling his father's wish to keep him in the household. Charlie returns after many years to his family's Brooklyn home, and finds his mother now suffers from dementia and, although she recognizes him, is mentally confused. Charlie's father, who had broken off contact with the family many years before, does not recognize him when visited at his worksite. Charlie is only able to reconnect with his now-friendly younger sister, who had hated him for his mental disability when they were growing up, and who is now caring for their mother in their now-depressed neighborhood. Charlie promises to send her money. As Charlie regresses intellectually, Fay becomes scared by the change and stops talking to him. However, Charlie finally attains sufficient emotional maturity to have a brief but fulfilling relationship with Alice, who cohabits with him until the extent of his mental deterioration causes him to finally order her to leave. Despite regressing to his former self, he still remembers that he was once a genius. He cannot bear to have his friends and co-workers feel sorry for him. Consequently, he decides to go away to live at the State-sponsored Warren Home School where nobody knows about the operation. In a final postscript to his writings, ostensibly addressed to Alice Kinnian, he requests that she put some flowers on Algernon's grave in Charlie's former back yard.
Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore. Just why do humpback whales sing? That's the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.
Trouble is, Nate's beginning to wonder if he hasn't spent just a little too much time in the sun. 'Cause no one else on his team saw a thing -- not his longtime partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona (né Preston Applebaum). But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot -- and his research facility is trashed -- Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.
By turns witty, irreverent, fascinating, puzzling, and surprising, Fluke is Christopher Moore at his outrageous best.
If you lined Chris's books up in a straight line, they would still point in different directions. Chirs is truly insane but in a good way. I want to be him when I grow up.
Fool by Christopher Moore. In Moore’s randy alternate Britain, in which Lear is a thirteenth-century monarch rather than the fourth-century BCE figure he most probably was (if he was real, not legendary), the fool doesn’t disappear in the third-act storm. Indeed, he sets the ball rolling that eventually crushes the king, his ingrate elder daughters, and most of the others that perish in Shakespeare’s most devastating tragedy. He and Cordelia survive, though, as well they might, since the fool loves Cordelia. How’s that for a new wrinkle? Others include a horny, dumbbell, giant apprentice fool, named Drool after his chronic propensity; all manner of hot-to-trot supernumeraries; and more or less wall-to-wall, farcical fornicating and fighting. While a jolly good time can be had, the horror and high pathos of the basic plot frequently douse the comic and sexual fires like so much ice water in the face, or lower. King Lear is one tough play to parody, at least at this length, and the book feels like something Moore had to get out of his system. His legion of fans will forgivingly enjoy it, while newcomers should be quickly steered toward The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (1999) or The Stupidest Angel (2004) for a giddy taste of Moore at his ludicrous best. Also made into an off Broadway play and as the Fool would say, "Fuck Stockings"
Forbidden Flowers by Nancy Friday. This is Nancy Friday's second collection of sexual fantasies -- and it's even more explicit and outspoken than her original erotic masterpiece, My Secret Garden. The constant refrain from the legions of women across America who read My Secret Garden was, "Thank God I'm not the only one..." who had those wild, exciting erotic thoughts. With Forbidden Flowers, these women can yet again experience the exhilarating freedom that comes with the awareness and acceptance of their sexual selves.
This may seem passé today but in the 70s people felt alone and guilty about their fantasies. This book helped justify the sexual revolution.
Foundation and Empire by Isacc Asimov. The Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are one of the great masterworks of science fiction. Unsurpassed for their unique blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of men and women to preserve humanity’s light against an inexorable tide of darkness and violence.Led by its founding father, the great psychohistorian Hari Seldon, and taking advantage of its superior science and technology, the Foundation has survived the greed and barbarism of its neighboring warrior-planets. Yet now it must face the Empire—still the mightiest force in the Galaxy even in its death throes. When an ambitious general determined to restore the Empire’s glory turns the vast Imperial fleet toward the Foundation, the only hope for the small planet of scholars and scientists lies in the prophecies of Hari Seldon.But not even Hari Seldon could have predicted the birth of the extraordinary creature called The Mule—a mutant intelligence with a power greater than a dozen battle fleets…a power that can turn the strongest-willed human into an obedient slave.
Foundation by Isacc Asimov. For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Sheldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future—to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire—both scientists and scholars—and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a fututre generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun—or fight them and be destroyed.
Foundation and Empire by Isacc Asimov. The Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are one of the great masterworks of science fiction. Unsurpassed for their unique blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of men and women to preserve humanity’s light against an inexorable tide of darkness and violence.Led by its founding father, the great psychohistorian Hari Seldon, and taking advantage of its superior science and technology, the Foundation has survived the greed and barbarism of its neighboring warrior-planets. Yet now it must face the Empire—still the mightiest force in the Galaxy even in its death throes. When an ambitious general determined to restore the Empire’s glory turns the vast Imperial fleet toward the Foundation, the only hope for the small planet of scholars and scientists lies in the prophecies of Hari Seldon.But not even Hari Seldon could have predicted the birth of the extraordinary creature called The Mule—a mutant intelligence with a power greater than a dozen battle fleets…a power that can turn the strongest-willed human into an obedient slave.
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. When The Fountainhead was first published, Ayn Rand's daringly original literary vision and her groundbreaking philosophy, Objectivism, won immediate worldwide interest and acclaim. This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. This edition contains a special Afterword by Rand's literary executor, Leonard Peikoff which includes excerpts from Ayn Rand's own notes on the making of The Fountainhead. As fresh today as it was then, here is a novel about a hero--and about those who try to destroy him.
I am not a big believer in Ayn's Objectivism. It is an outdated Social Darwinism concept. Still her tale is well told and worth reading.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Few creatures of horror have seized readers' imaginations and held them for so long as the anguished monster of Shelley's Frankenstein. The story of Victor Frankenstein's monstrous creation and the havoc it caused has enthralled generations of readers and inspired countless writers of horror and suspense.
Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.
Shelley had travelled in the region of Geneva, where much of the story takes place, and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her future husband, Percy Shelley. The storyline emerged from a dream. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for weeks about what her possible storyline could be, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made. She then wrote Frankenstein.
Frankenstein is infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction. Some have argued that it should be considered the first true science fiction story, because unlike in previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, the central character "makes a deliberate decision" and "turns to modern experiments in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results. It has had a considerable influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films.
Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer by Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander. Ask consumers and users what names they associate with the multibillion dollar personal computer market, and they will answer IBM, Apple, Tandy, or Lotus. The more knowledgable of them will add the likes of Microsoft, Ashton-Tate, Compaq, and Borland. But no one will say Xerox. Fifteen years after it invented personal computing, Xerox still means "copy." Fumbling the Future tells how one of America's leading corporations invented the technology for one of the fastest-growing products of recent times, then miscalculated and mishandled the opportunity to fully exploit it. It is a classic story of how innovation can fare within large corporate structures, the real-life odyssey of what can happen to an idea as it travels from inspiration to implementation. More than anything, Fumbling the Future is a tale of human beings whose talents, hopes, fears, habits, and prejudices determine the fate of our largest organizations and of our best ideas. In an era in which technological creativity and economic change are so critical to the competitiveness of the American economy, Fumbling the Future is a parable for our times.A bit dry in places but well worth reading.
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