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- Two excellent books on Diogenes and other Cynics;
1) Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes translated by Robin Hard.
2) The Cynic Philosophers: From Diogenes to Julian translated by Robert Dobbin.
- Fiction:
- The Time Machine (still holds up very well, and seems strangely eerie and prescient in places)... (H. G. Wells)
- Dune (Frank Herbert)
- The Hobbit (and LotR) (Tolkien)
- Neuromancer (William Gibson)
- Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties (I picked up Idoru first, so I haven't yet read Virtual Light) (also Gibson)
- The Difference Engine (Gibson, Sterling)
- Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)
- Cryptonomicon (" ")
- Circuit of Heaven, End of Days (Dennis Danvers)
- All of the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories and novels. (Fritz Leiber)
- The Earthsea trilogy (Ursula K. LeGuin)
- 'salem's Lot (Stephen King)
- Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
- the Coldfire trilogy (C. S. Friedman)
- various Cory Doctorow short stories
- Kamikaze L'Amour (Richard Kadrey)
- Lightpaths (Howard V. Hendrix)
- A Canticle For Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr.)
- Moonwar, Venus (Ben Bova)
- the Stainless Steel Rat series (Harry Harrison)
- Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- Ringworld (Larry Niven)
- Cthon (Piers Anthony) -- Trippiness level approaching Philip Jose Farmer ;-)
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams)
- The Black Company (Glen Cook)
- there's one particularly good post-cyberpunk series that takes place in a world in which Canada emerged as a major world power, but for the life of me I can't rememeber the title.
- the 1632 series (Eric Flint)... see also S. M. Stirling's Nantucket series ("Island in the Sea of Time", et al.), and H. Beam Piper's novel Kalvan of Otherwhen
Non-fiction:
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hume)
- the surviving words and works of Epicurus, and Diogenes the Cynic
- Freakonomics (Levitt, Dubner)
- The Gay Science (Nietzsche)
- The Jefferson Bible (Christ, Jefferson (ed.))
- The Devil's Dictionary (Bierce)
- Brain Droppings (George Carlin)
- anything by P. J. O'Rourke
- anything by Dave Barry
- > His stoicism was mostly turned outward.
Huh? How so? In most of his writings, he's introspecting. They're basically reflections about himself and his own thoughts about things. I don't recall a passage where he's focused on anything other than internal dialogue (not saying they don't exist, but none are coming to mind).
> He believed that the powerless man should accept his place below the powerful man.
Maybe, but so did everyone else. Although, we do have Diogenes the Cynic, who heavily inspired the founding of Stoicism. Diogenes... The stories about him are quite intense. Feel free to look them up. In short, he mocked social conventions, wealth, and so-called "power".
> I didn't even get 2 pages[...]
In the first two pages, Marcus wrote about the good qualities of people throughout his life e.g. his teachers, parents, etc. Did you actually read it?
