Ever heard of The Prince of Nothing trilogy (or The Second Apocalypse if you want the 2nd trilogy of the series as well)? If not best way to get some idea is to google "The Prince of Nothing review coffee" (first result).
@@LK-em1bv Never considered this as I've only listened to Robert Foresters narration on audible. I'd imagine an amount of the original intent is lost, not just from translating the text to English, but also how that text is interpreted by an actor in a booth. Still love it nonetheless
@@LK-em1bv not sure what you're referring to, but original had some sort of over-stylization, IMO, which worked nice but sounded a little unnatural at times.
This was such a fun video to watch. I loved hearing about your influences, and I also love your taste in science fiction. Have you ever read Neal Stephenson? He's one of my favorite living science fiction writers, and I think he touches on many of the themes you mentioned (often has one or two really big ideas, writes stories which are epic in scope, etc.)
Greg Egan is also definitely worth a read - Permutation City and Quarantine were both excellent, and I have heard that Schild's Ladder is also great but I haven't read it just yet
For the first 9 minutes of the video, all I was thinking was "Tim would love Ursula K. Le Guin", then the prophecy came true. Thank you for the recommendations! Time to hit up the local used book store.
I'm surprised that Strugatsky brothers are on the list, but Stanislaw Lem isn't. Recent game "The Invincible" based on the book of the same name is very worth watching (considering that it's a walking simulator with a heavy focus on visuals).
I’ve read a lot of Lem (Solaris exploded my brain), but I had to draw the line somewhere. As much as I like his books, Lem didn’t influence my games as much.
@@CainOnGames Thank you for answer. I also wanted to express my gratitude for the influence that Fallout had on my life: it was a game that was so interesting and had so much text in it that it practically forced me to learn English language. Never before or after playing it I had to use dictionary so much. That game alone has set me so far ahead of the school program that I never had to study again, and without it I don't think I would ever go through such effort until the age when learning languages becomes difficult.
“The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?” ― Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters
Fred Saberhagen wrote the Lost Swords books hoping they'd be adapted into a videogame. It would be awesome to play a game based on those swords. Ive read all the Lost Swords books twice in my life.
Yay! I'm reading Excession now, as part of a Culture readalong with friends. I love that you put a picture of an omnibus with Tale of the Troika as an easter egg :D Given your list, I think you would like the Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein. It's one of my favorites.
6:10 In your first read of BoTNS, it feels like you are reading a fantasy novel. On a second read, you realise the first ranged weapon described in the novel is a laser pistol.
lol yeah unreliable narrator is Gene' Wolfe's calling card. What's even more amazing is how he manages to never let it go stale. Each time he uses it, he finds ways to make his narrator unreliable in a completely different way. Another fun trick I've seen him pull off is writing in second person. Not a thing I've seen much of before outside of mayyybe Choose Your Own Adventure?
YESSS! Olaf Stepledon is a great author. I loved reading Star Maker, and I really wanted to read "Last and First Men". You've convinced me to go look for it now! You suggest some other great sci-fi novels that I'm now interested in. Thanks for the list! Other authors I'd like to mention are of course, the trifecta.. the ABCs! Asimov (often mixes science with fiction, loved his "I, Robot" short story books, and some of his other books, Foundation series included), Bradbury (his short stories are also great little nuggets of inspiration, especially "The Martian Chronicles" and "A Sound of Thunder"), and Clarke who has quite a formidable catalogue ("Childhood's End" was quite a read, I must say). Special mention to Dan Simmon's Hyperion Cantos as - although It's kinda cheesy and has some weird prose and choice of words and actions from characters (I've only read the first two books so far) - it still also has an interesting world that got my mind going places when reading the series.
Video game writers should look more to short fiction, especially in fantasy, horror and science fiction. There's so many great ideas that could be made better with game mechanics behind them. Ted Chiang, Thomas Ligotti, Franz Kafka, Octavia Butler, Jorge Luis Borges all have weird but extremely engaging short stories. Le Guin, Dick, Calvino, Vonnegut, Strugatsky Bros all have under 250 page novels that throw a lot of ideas at you but still manage to keep it simple and straightforward for the most part.
Everyone should go read Roadside Picnic if it sounds at all interesting. It's short, there's nothing quite like it out there but you'll be thinking about it for some time after you finish it
Ive been binging these videos lately, ive also finally decided to play through fallout 1, im enjoying it more than i thought, im not into topdown-games or like turnbased combat, but its surprisingly fun in fallout
Hi Tim, I've been watching your content for a couple of years now and I just want to say how appreciative I am to be able to watch these videos on a consistent basis to be able to listen and think about the kinds of influences and stories a creative person like you has to talk about. I've played many of the games you've worked on without knowing about you, but with the knowledge and point of view I now have from watching your content I am compelled to express my gratitude to you for making such a positive impact on the gaming industry and culture at large. Without your influence, a lot of innovative and creative ways to tell stories would not exist, and your philosophy transcends all of those mediums that allows people to continue the kind of passionate storytelling we so desperately need nowadays.
At this point you probably can't NOT have heard of the Three Body Problem books, those are really big in scope and ideas, plenty of mind-blowing moments in there. Primarily has to do with the idea of alien contact and how it might turn out.
Thank you for this channel. Your sage and honest words have inspired me to stop being all talk and actually sit down and learn coding. It wasn't until this year that I realized you are responsible for so much of the moments I love most in gaming. Thank you again and keep being you.
Tim, I have been waiting for this exact sort of video! I've always appreciated your work immensely, and I love to read, so this is great. Would be great to learn about the films that influenced you as well! Thank you.
Thx for recommendation Tim :-) Also like when people say why they appreciate the books, what it meant to them personally etc. I really don't like to consume media without someone recommending it to me, because modern media just doesn't respect the time of the consumer anymore. The only con is that you essentially sent me on a book reading marathon, I'll have to read through all of them in succession now ... But hey, at least I got a curated list now of books I can assume are worth reading :-)
So cool that you mentioned roadside picnic! I read it the first time when I was about 16 (a really worn out swedish edition of the book) and it blew my mind. Then a few years later when I got into Andrei Tarkovsky films I kind of understood where Tarkovsky got the inspiration from ahahah
One series that resonated with me,also being a mix of fantasy and sci-fi, is Hugh Cooks Chronicles of an Age of Darkness starting with book 1, The Wizards and the Warriors. The first book is the main tale but the next 4 are the same take but from different characters PoV. It's a great concept
10/10 recommendations! I've read maybe a third of these, soon reading the rest Alistair Reynolds is so underrated. I really liked Chasm City and the Dreyfuss books, in addition to the excellent Revelation Space trilogy
My favorite books I've read in the past 10 or 15 years are Robin Hobb's 9 books featuring Fitz & The Fool. The Farseer trilogy ("Assassin's Apprentice", etc), The Tawny Man trilogy and Fitz & The Fool trilogy. The 9 books as a whole work beautifully, with a satisfying and worthy ending to the whole journey. She writes so richly and beautifully, and the mix of adventure and mystery, combined with intrigue and interpersonal machinations is just superb. (The only weakness I found was that the middle books of the trilogies can sometimes slow down a bit, but that is all!)
I loved this, Tim. This is a subject that is very interesting, yet not discussed a lot in the creative process. I wish more people would talk about the art and inspiration behind their works more
Interesting factoid: Fred Saberhagen had his own software company in the '80s (Berserker Works). I LOVED "Berserker Raids" on my Commodore 64. It is VERY dated at this point, but I really enjoyed playing it back in the early days of the C64. It was a precursor to the Master of Orion games, and I wouldn't be surprised if MOO was directly inspired by Saberhagen's game. Love this channel, Tim. Cheers!
12:05 "Cthulhu-esque" I think is doing an injustice to Hodgson. He beat Lovecraft to that brand of cosmic horror, but never received the recognition that Lovecraft eventually acquired. His other book, House on the Borderland, could be mistaken for an early work of Lovecraft's, and it was published the same year that Lovecraft wrote his first proper story iirc. If there's one series that I might recommend, it's the first trilogy of the Second Apocalypse. It's an amalgamation of Dune and the Bible, wrapped up in a setting that somewhat resembles the first crusade. The dunyain struck me as one of truly 'morally grey' characters that were ever written. The writer had a long standing interest in neuroscience, and it does seep into the book. However, the work is very dark, very graphic and includes a lot of things that many would find unpalatable. So there's that.
i had the pleasure of attending to Peter Watts lecture on one of the 'cons and it was immensely awesome to listen to him talk about his creative process.
A book that ends up being extremely hard to decipher and is my absolutely favorite novel is The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton. It's the only book I've reread twice in a row. It's been called an ideological or philosophical thriller.
Tim, you could tell us more about your upbringing. Where did you grow up? How nice was your childhood home? How big was your family? Where they come from? Were you a nerd or a popular kid in school? What your parents did for a living? What were your first experiences with computers? Did you admire some individuals in tech (programming / engineering) in particular before you became a programmer? If it's possible, show us pictures.
He was the fifth and final child. With, I believe, a 17 year gap between him and his oldest brother. To answer your "how big was your family" question.
I love Roadside Picnic, this kind of sci-fi in general. For the few people who like Roadside Picnic but also haven't read Solaris, I highly recomment it. It would fit right into the collection of books presented here and it also has two different but equally great film versions if you don't have time to read.* *The book is very short, so I don't see that as an issue...
My guy holy hell you have such great taste!!! I love the very clear love you have for the Dying Earth genre 😂 I recently bought and now own a collection of Hodgson's stories including The Night Land which I absolutely love the sound of and I'm in the middle of reading The Dying Earth stories by Vance! All incredible picks on here, so cool to see! Hope you are doing well, Tim! :)
I’m elated you mentioned Roadside Picnic, The New Sun series AND The Night Land! The Night Land in particular has some really cool world building and concepts if you can get over the narrator’s ridiculous prose. William Hope Hodgson is still a pretty underrated author compared to the bigger weird fiction guys but he’s got some real hidden gems.
I'm currently reading the D&D Second Edition manuals and the first Planescape Campaign Setting book for inspiration currently. Thank for these suggestions as well! They sound amazing!
A lot of the points you made about what you love about these stories reminded me of Brandon Sanderson's Series of fantasy books: Mistborn, and The Stormlight Archive (these are the ones I've read so far). They have interesting and detailed worldbuilding, have complex, flawed and very scarred characters that go through a lot of suffering, from many different backgrounds, from kings to slaves, interesting magic systems and settings that imply a certain time period that might actually not be accurate, together with narration and common sense that is unreliable for different reasons, from lack of knowledge to full blown conspiracies and propaganda
Great list of books! I'll definitely add Empire of the East because I've read and enjoyed just about every other book on your list. Surprised I didn't see anything by Gibson, Brunner, Sterling, or similar authors. Always figured those kinds of books influenced Fallout. Or maybe even A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Was expecting Lord of the Light based on the video you made on it a while back, I picked up the book after that recommendation and it's so good. Nevertheless a great list, hope you have a great day Tim!
Just got blindsight based on what you said. Any story where it tried to tackle the "what actually am I? If I am having thoughts, what is experiencing the thoughts that I' having" topic, it's an immediate buy from me. I'd love to make game exploring consciousness one day but I can't never think of any interesting mechanics that would work.
I imagine game devs would have the same problem adapting William Blake's work with anything approaching justice to it despite the awesome relief etchings that accompanied it. Obviously, there are video games inspired by Blake (the Devil may Cry series coming to mind) that have borrowed names and themes from his work, but don't actually seem to have much of anything to do with it, the borrowers seeming to comprehend Blake about as well as Senor Trump. I'll have to play the whole series one day to test that theory and take extensive notes in the process. "All deities reside in the human breast." - William Blake
PS You might appreciate Jean Gebser's exploration of human consciousness. I've mentioned his magnum opus a few times: The Ever-Present Origin. Gebser's insights were essentially derived by studying the "artifacts" of human consciousness. Might spark a few ideas.
PPS: No idea how much "nonfiction"(?) you've read on the subject, but wonder if you're familiar with David Bohm's 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order'; the Bohm-Krishnamurti dialogues; and assorted other literature and contemporary dialogue going on in the field. Maria Popova wrote an article outlining Bohm's thought titled 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality' on her web site, The Marginalian, which mentions the less well-known thinkers on the subject, e.g. John Muir and Iain McGilchrist, et alia. I doubt it will help in the "thinking of interesting mechanics" department, but i imagine could definitely get the art department's creative juices flowing. :)
If you haven't read it, I'd recommend Ceres Storm by David Herter. Great world building that doesn't hold your hand; you just have to pick it up as you go along. It definitely rewards repeated reading.
Oh yay! Roadside picnic is my favorite book of all time. I tried reading metro 2033 afterward (based on a recommendation) and it wasn't the same at all, and I didn't like it. So glad to see someone else likes roadside picnic too
Hmm, so Mr Cain is into very serious and dark books. I'll just guess Robert Asprin's Myth & Phule series flew right by then. I always gravitated more toward humor, made life growing up in a small southern town way more bearable. Loved Hitchhiker's Guide, Bill The Galactic Hero, Everything by the aforementioned Asprin, Terry Brooks, etc. Not to say I loved humor exclusively, was obsessed with Dragonlance for quite a time as well. Miss my eyes working right. Haven't been able to enjoy a book for years without constant double vision sadly. Still would fully recommend any/all of the above authors or series for some fun reads!
Blindsight is fantastic! My fav bit is (spoilers) the alien creatures can detect the electrical signals the brain sends to the eye to make it move, so they can move in the split second while the eye is moving and you can't see anything, functionally hiding IN staccades. A bit like the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who!
'Flatland' is a fun book from 1884, set in a 2 dimensional world where everyone is a geometric shape. It's an interesting vision of the time the book was written, of it's time in an odd way. Id also say any book by P K D is worth a look, most people know films like Blade Runner based on his books. He always plays with interesting ideas that still today are valid, some parts are from the times but a lot is still valid and can be seen influencing a lot of media.
I know several of these. Saberhagen is a writer I keep meaning to read more (I have an omnibus of his Swords books). Vance is great - reminds me a lot of Clark Ashton Smith. I'm a big fan of Poul Anderson. He wrote sci-fi and fantasy equally well, but I think my favorite book of his is The High Crusade, about a bunch of dim-witted aliens getting wrecked by medieval British crusaders (technology doesn't necessarily correlate to intelligence...).
Id recommend checking out Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It has one of the most unique "magic" systems I have read in a book. Along with that it is incredibly well written, great story, very unique word play; alot of the sentence structure is written in an odd way to encourage your minds eye. 10/10 have read it once every couple of years.
Tim, i was wondering if you ever read or heard of a book, or more accurately, a collection of smaller books into one called "Wastelands: The New Apocalypse" the very first story caught my attention becuase of the location and immediate feeling it gives, the other stories range from unique to extremely depressing, gross, confusing, and desperate all in their own way. Im not sure if each story is written by a differnt author or if some wrote more than one, but i thought the idea of having all these storys in one book with so many conflicting and different versions of a Apocalypse might be of interest to someone who essentially created my favorite Apocalypse game series. Also it reminded me of your video on game development and how everyone had their own take and variety, it would be interesting if those people wrote a book on their ideas, or vice versa with the authors of the genre.
Read and enjoyed Book of the New Sun, and reading Jack Vance right now. Really enjoyed Cugel the Clever, reading Rialto the Marvellous now and enjoying it somewhat less but still interesting.
Some of these sound really interesting I'm gonna give a couple a try thanks. If you don't mind a reciprocal suggestion I found a book series called 'Rebuild World' lately you might find unique. It focuses on an orphan kid from the slums venturing out into the old world ruins to reclaim relics from the past. The ruins are from a time when humanity was exceedingly advanced and you have no idea what happened to them and are only slowly discovering bit by bit hints and implications as to what might have happened.
Have you read A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay? It seems like absolutely your kind of book. Written in 1920, it has the philosophical depth of Last and First Men and the fantastical imagination and imagery of Night Land.
Have you ever read a book, or seen a movie that inspired your creativity, but then you felt that your particular craft of video games weren't the right medium to express that creativity?
Also I clicked this link thinking "I hope he says Roadside picnic, but really I think more of Avellone when it comes to having a whole career defined by Roadside Picnic"
The description of The Night Land reminds me of the interactive fiction game Glowgrass. Where you are going through this technologically advanced world, but the narrator doesn't know what anything is, you only have a description of what it looks like.
Wheel of Time might be up your alley. It's high fantasy set 3000 years post-apocalypse of a future earth where the age after ours was shaped by the discovery of magic.
Hey, Tim! It's me, Michael. If you put a list of links to buy these books in your video description, you'd probably earn a bit of kick-back monies. I know it's probably a bit too mainstream, but my all-time favorite book is Stephen King's The Stand. When I read it as a kid in the 80s, the pandemic blew me away. I'm glad I was wrong by calling Covid "Captain Trips"... Thanks for the list, and I'm definitely going to visit the used book store this weekend with this list printed out!
than you for this always interesting to hear about books. not so common thing nowadays. I'm atm rre-eading the roadside picnic and other strugatski brothers books and then stanislaw lems solaris... also holdstocks Mythago Wood is on the pile. I could recommend you finnish author Johanna Sinisalo.
"Hardcore" science fiction probably isn't for everyone. I doubt he's not read some Asimov, Asimov normally being heralded "the greatest science fiction writer of all time." Perhaps Asimov's works just haven't influenced him as much as those he's mentioned? No idea. That's certainly true in my case as I find myself recommending science fiction more in he vein of Le Guin and, even, Ray Bradbury, whose works aren't even considered science fiction by many, tending more toward the subgenre that demanded the coinage of a new term for it: speculative fiction, which is not so much the blending of genres, e.g. fantasy and science fiction, but very much its own thing. The classic era of pulp magazines, occuring between two world wars when everything we thought we knew was first turned on its head, produced a lot of material that probably appealed more to the uncertainty, but not necessarily anxiety about that uncertainty, that has characterized our times since and is much more about getting to know ourselves as a species, I think -- a task we'd largely neglected to that point -- than trying to predict the future with anything approaching absolute certainty. The original TV series, The Twilight Zone, could probably be so classified along with the works of authors such as Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein and Harlan Ellison, et alia. Edit: Need I mention Philip K. Dick?
Hey Tim, you mentioned games adapting the concepts in your influential books that you thought were interesting or inspiring, are there other games that you feel have adapted ideas from your influential booklist well? Any that almost made the cut but fell short for one reason or another in your opinion?
I always wondering if the book series Deathlands had any influence on the Fallout series. A post-apocalyptic book series that came out in the late 80s that shares many similarities with Fallout including alt-history, lots and lots of guns including some that are slightly different from real world guns, underground bunkers, mad scientists, mutants, and warlords. About as close to a Fallout book series I've seen. Probably came out too late to influence the originals but later games maybe, stuff like the Stingwing from Fallout 4 seems borrowed from the books. There was also a great New Vegas mod called A World of Pain that had a pretty big reference to the book series.
Dog cameo on glass display
I am sure you might be aware of it, Tim, but for those who do not know, STALKER even features the Gauss Rifle from Fallout!
Dmitry Glukhovsky who wrote Metro 2033 said Fallout was his biggest inspiration.
I saw Book of the New Sun on the thumbnail and audibly let out "holy shit"; it's my all-time favorite series, I'm glad to see it get some spotlight.
Ever heard of The Prince of Nothing trilogy (or The Second Apocalypse if you want the 2nd trilogy of the series as well)?
If not best way to get some idea is to google "The Prince of Nothing review coffee" (first result).
I knew you'd mention Roadside Picnic! Literally my favorite book
Yes! I also love that the Metro books were inspired by this book.
Roadside picnic was good. I feel like something was lost in the translation though.
@@LK-em1bv Never considered this as I've only listened to Robert Foresters narration on audible. I'd imagine an amount of the original intent is lost, not just from translating the text to English, but also how that text is interpreted by an actor in a booth. Still love it nonetheless
@@Existing_Echo more like exploited it as did Stalker.
@@LK-em1bv not sure what you're referring to, but original had some sort of over-stylization, IMO, which worked nice but sounded a little unnatural at times.
This was such a fun video to watch. I loved hearing about your influences, and I also love your taste in science fiction. Have you ever read Neal Stephenson? He's one of my favorite living science fiction writers, and I think he touches on many of the themes you mentioned (often has one or two really big ideas, writes stories which are epic in scope, etc.)
I’ve read a lot of Stephenson. I’ve read every Hugo Award winner, and I remember Diamond Age vividly.
Iain M Banks is so top tier - thanks for the recommendations, I will be checking a few of these out
Greg Egan is also definitely worth a read - Permutation City and Quarantine were both excellent, and I have heard that Schild's Ladder is also great but I haven't read it just yet
For the first 9 minutes of the video, all I was thinking was "Tim would love Ursula K. Le Guin", then the prophecy came true. Thank you for the recommendations! Time to hit up the local used book store.
I'm so glad you mentioned Roadside Picnic!
You probably know but if you don’t Pacific drive seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from this book.
I'm surprised that Strugatsky brothers are on the list, but Stanislaw Lem isn't. Recent game "The Invincible" based on the book of the same name is very worth watching (considering that it's a walking simulator with a heavy focus on visuals).
I’ve read a lot of Lem (Solaris exploded my brain), but I had to draw the line somewhere. As much as I like his books, Lem didn’t influence my games as much.
@@CainOnGames Thank you for answer.
I also wanted to express my gratitude for the influence that Fallout had on my life: it was a game that was so interesting and had so much text in it that it practically forced me to learn English language. Never before or after playing it I had to use dictionary so much.
That game alone has set me so far ahead of the school program that I never had to study again, and without it I don't think I would ever go through such effort until the age when learning languages becomes difficult.
“The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters
“Stalker! Join Duty and help defend humanity from the horrors of the Zone!”
Fred Saberhagen wrote the Lost Swords books hoping they'd be adapted into a videogame. It would be awesome to play a game based on those swords. Ive read all the Lost Swords books twice in my life.
Yay! I'm reading Excession now, as part of a Culture readalong with friends. I love that you put a picture of an omnibus with Tale of the Troika as an easter egg :D
Given your list, I think you would like the Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein. It's one of my favorites.
Thank you!
Regarding Roadside Picnic - you might also enjoy Stanislaw Lem's essay on the book, in his collection Microworlds from 1984.
6:10 In your first read of BoTNS, it feels like you are reading a fantasy novel. On a second read, you realise the first ranged weapon described in the novel is a laser pistol.
Good morning, Tim! Thank you, adding these to my reading list
lol yeah unreliable narrator is Gene' Wolfe's calling card. What's even more amazing is how he manages to never let it go stale. Each time he uses it, he finds ways to make his narrator unreliable in a completely different way. Another fun trick I've seen him pull off is writing in second person. Not a thing I've seen much of before outside of mayyybe Choose Your Own Adventure?
Tim if you liked the Roadside Picnic I would recommend the Snail on the Slope, it's my personal favorite by Strugatsky.
YESSS! Olaf Stepledon is a great author. I loved reading Star Maker, and I really wanted to read "Last and First Men". You've convinced me to go look for it now! You suggest some other great sci-fi novels that I'm now interested in. Thanks for the list! Other authors I'd like to mention are of course, the trifecta.. the ABCs! Asimov (often mixes science with fiction, loved his "I, Robot" short story books, and some of his other books, Foundation series included), Bradbury (his short stories are also great little nuggets of inspiration, especially "The Martian Chronicles" and "A Sound of Thunder"), and Clarke who has quite a formidable catalogue ("Childhood's End" was quite a read, I must say). Special mention to Dan Simmon's Hyperion Cantos as - although It's kinda cheesy and has some weird prose and choice of words and actions from characters (I've only read the first two books so far) - it still also has an interesting world that got my mind going places when reading the series.
Video game writers should look more to short fiction, especially in fantasy, horror and science fiction. There's so many great ideas that could be made better with game mechanics behind them. Ted Chiang, Thomas Ligotti, Franz Kafka, Octavia Butler, Jorge Luis Borges all have weird but extremely engaging short stories. Le Guin, Dick, Calvino, Vonnegut, Strugatsky Bros all have under 250 page novels that throw a lot of ideas at you but still manage to keep it simple and straightforward for the most part.
Everyone should go read Roadside Picnic if it sounds at all interesting. It's short, there's nothing quite like it out there but you'll be thinking about it for some time after you finish it
*Excession* was my favourite of The Culture Series. The whole series is great.
Jack Vance is out of this world. The Demon Princes definitely a Must Read if you're up for adventure. And Iain Banks omg.
Ive been binging these videos lately, ive also finally decided to play through fallout 1, im enjoying it more than i thought, im not into topdown-games or like turnbased combat, but its surprisingly fun in fallout
Hi Tim, I've been watching your content for a couple of years now and I just want to say how appreciative I am to be able to watch these videos on a consistent basis to be able to listen and think about the kinds of influences and stories a creative person like you has to talk about. I've played many of the games you've worked on without knowing about you, but with the knowledge and point of view I now have from watching your content I am compelled to express my gratitude to you for making such a positive impact on the gaming industry and culture at large. Without your influence, a lot of innovative and creative ways to tell stories would not exist, and your philosophy transcends all of those mediums that allows people to continue the kind of passionate storytelling we so desperately need nowadays.
My "To-read" pile just got a whole lot bigger haha. Thanks for the great recommendations!
At this point you probably can't NOT have heard of the Three Body Problem books, those are really big in scope and ideas, plenty of mind-blowing moments in there. Primarily has to do with the idea of alien contact and how it might turn out.
Thank you for this channel. Your sage and honest words have inspired me to stop being all talk and actually sit down and learn coding. It wasn't until this year that I realized you are responsible for so much of the moments I love most in gaming. Thank you again and keep being you.
Love Left Hand of Darkness. Big fan of the "stranger in a strange land" trope and its a master class.
Tim, I have been waiting for this exact sort of video! I've always appreciated your work immensely, and I love to read, so this is great. Would be great to learn about the films that influenced you as well! Thank you.
Thx for recommendation Tim :-) Also like when people say why they appreciate the books, what it meant to them personally etc. I really don't like to consume media without someone recommending it to me, because modern media just doesn't respect the time of the consumer anymore. The only con is that you essentially sent me on a book reading marathon, I'll have to read through all of them in succession now ... But hey, at least I got a curated list now of books I can assume are worth reading :-)
Soon as I saw Book of the New Sun in the thumbnail I clicked. Awesome series of novels.
So cool that you mentioned roadside picnic! I read it the first time when I was about 16 (a really worn out swedish edition of the book) and it blew my mind. Then a few years later when I got into Andrei Tarkovsky films I kind of understood where Tarkovsky got the inspiration from ahahah
One series that resonated with me,also being a mix of fantasy and sci-fi, is Hugh Cooks Chronicles of an Age of Darkness starting with book 1, The Wizards and the Warriors. The first book is the main tale but the next 4 are the same take but from different characters PoV. It's a great concept
10/10 recommendations! I've read maybe a third of these, soon reading the rest
Alistair Reynolds is so underrated. I really liked Chasm City and the Dreyfuss books, in addition to the excellent Revelation Space trilogy
My favorite books I've read in the past 10 or 15 years are Robin Hobb's 9 books featuring Fitz & The Fool. The Farseer trilogy ("Assassin's Apprentice", etc), The Tawny Man trilogy and Fitz & The Fool trilogy. The 9 books as a whole work beautifully, with a satisfying and worthy ending to the whole journey. She writes so richly and beautifully, and the mix of adventure and mystery, combined with intrigue and interpersonal machinations is just superb. (The only weakness I found was that the middle books of the trilogies can sometimes slow down a bit, but that is all!)
I loved this, Tim. This is a subject that is very interesting, yet not discussed a lot in the creative process. I wish more people would talk about the art and inspiration behind their works more
I am so pleased to hear you mention Gene wolfe as well as the culture books.
Interesting factoid: Fred Saberhagen had his own software company in the '80s (Berserker Works). I LOVED "Berserker Raids" on my Commodore 64. It is VERY dated at this point, but I really enjoyed playing it back in the early days of the C64. It was a precursor to the Master of Orion games, and I wouldn't be surprised if MOO was directly inspired by Saberhagen's game.
Love this channel, Tim. Cheers!
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"Cthulhu-esque" I think is doing an injustice to Hodgson. He beat Lovecraft to that brand of cosmic horror, but never received the recognition that Lovecraft eventually acquired. His other book, House on the Borderland, could be mistaken for an early work of Lovecraft's, and it was published the same year that Lovecraft wrote his first proper story iirc.
If there's one series that I might recommend, it's the first trilogy of the Second Apocalypse. It's an amalgamation of Dune and the Bible, wrapped up in a setting that somewhat resembles the first crusade. The dunyain struck me as one of truly 'morally grey' characters that were ever written. The writer had a long standing interest in neuroscience, and it does seep into the book.
However, the work is very dark, very graphic and includes a lot of things that many would find unpalatable. So there's that.
i had the pleasure of attending to Peter Watts lecture on one of the 'cons and it was immensely awesome to listen to him talk about his creative process.
Thank you Tim for your videos, I’ve been loving them all. You’re a good person
I absolutely ADORE book of the new sun. Glad to see it mentioned
Legit re-reading Book of the New Sun this last week and seeing it on the thumbnail is wild!
A book that ends up being extremely hard to decipher and is my absolutely favorite novel is The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton. It's the only book I've reread twice in a row. It's been called an ideological or philosophical thriller.
Tim, you could tell us more about your upbringing. Where did you grow up? How nice was your childhood home? How big was your family? Where they come from? Were you a nerd or a popular kid in school? What your parents did for a living? What were your first experiences with computers? Did you admire some individuals in tech (programming / engineering) in particular before you became a programmer? If it's possible, show us pictures.
He was the fifth and final child. With, I believe, a 17 year gap between him and his oldest brother. To answer your "how big was your family" question.
I was absolutely over the moon to see that you enjoyed Roadside Picnic! I honestly thought to myself how much you might enjoy it.
I love Roadside Picnic, this kind of sci-fi in general. For the few people who like Roadside Picnic but also haven't read Solaris, I highly recomment it.
It would fit right into the collection of books presented here and it also has two different but equally great film versions if you don't have time to read.*
*The book is very short, so I don't see that as an issue...
My guy holy hell you have such great taste!!! I love the very clear love you have for the Dying Earth genre 😂 I recently bought and now own a collection of Hodgson's stories including The Night Land which I absolutely love the sound of and I'm in the middle of reading The Dying Earth stories by Vance! All incredible picks on here, so cool to see! Hope you are doing well, Tim! :)
Definitely going to read Roadside Picnic. I enjoy Slavic "depression sim" games, but I didn't know they were heavily influenced by that book.
I’m elated you mentioned Roadside Picnic, The New Sun series AND The Night Land! The Night Land in particular has some really cool world building and concepts if you can get over the narrator’s ridiculous prose. William Hope Hodgson is still a pretty underrated author compared to the bigger weird fiction guys but he’s got some real hidden gems.
Finally someone else who appreciates Peter F. Hamilton. I prefer his Night's Dawn trilogy, but the Commonwealth Saga is a close second.
You are not alone... 🙂
There are a few of us. I like that Alastair Reynolds also got mentioned in the same sentence, both fantastic writers.
I was surprised you didn't mention a canticle for Leibowitz. It made an impression on me and really feels falloutesque.
It’s a great book and influenced Fallout, but I had to reduce the list somehow.
He has definitely mentioned it in his other videos.
I'm currently reading the D&D Second Edition manuals and the first Planescape Campaign Setting book for inspiration currently. Thank for these suggestions as well! They sound amazing!
A lot of the points you made about what you love about these stories reminded me of Brandon Sanderson's Series of fantasy books: Mistborn, and The Stormlight Archive (these are the ones I've read so far). They have interesting and detailed worldbuilding, have complex, flawed and very scarred characters that go through a lot of suffering, from many different backgrounds, from kings to slaves, interesting magic systems and settings that imply a certain time period that might actually not be accurate, together with narration and common sense that is unreliable for different reasons, from lack of knowledge to full blown conspiracies and propaganda
Great list of books! I'll definitely add Empire of the East because I've read and enjoyed just about every other book on your list. Surprised I didn't see anything by Gibson, Brunner, Sterling, or similar authors. Always figured those kinds of books influenced Fallout. Or maybe even A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Was expecting Lord of the Light based on the video you made on it a while back, I picked up the book after that recommendation and it's so good. Nevertheless a great list, hope you have a great day Tim!
some great recommendations in there, roadside picnic in particular was a great one
Just got blindsight based on what you said.
Any story where it tried to tackle the "what actually am I? If I am having thoughts, what is experiencing the thoughts that I' having" topic, it's an immediate buy from me.
I'd love to make game exploring consciousness one day but I can't never think of any interesting mechanics that would work.
I imagine game devs would have the same problem adapting William Blake's work with anything approaching justice to it despite the awesome relief etchings that accompanied it. Obviously, there are video games inspired by Blake (the Devil may Cry series coming to mind) that have borrowed names and themes from his work, but don't actually seem to have much of anything to do with it, the borrowers seeming to comprehend Blake about as well as Senor Trump. I'll have to play the whole series one day to test that theory and take extensive notes in the process.
"All deities reside in the human breast." - William Blake
PS You might appreciate Jean Gebser's exploration of human consciousness. I've mentioned his magnum opus a few times: The Ever-Present Origin. Gebser's insights were essentially derived by studying the "artifacts" of human consciousness. Might spark a few ideas.
PPS: No idea how much "nonfiction"(?) you've read on the subject, but wonder if you're familiar with David Bohm's 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order'; the Bohm-Krishnamurti dialogues; and assorted other literature and contemporary dialogue going on in the field. Maria Popova wrote an article outlining Bohm's thought titled 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality' on her web site, The Marginalian, which mentions the less well-known thinkers on the subject, e.g. John Muir and Iain McGilchrist, et alia.
I doubt it will help in the "thinking of interesting mechanics" department, but i imagine could definitely get the art department's creative juices flowing. :)
Very interesting! Thank you Tim for sharing!
If you haven't read it, I'd recommend Ceres Storm by David Herter. Great world building that doesn't hold your hand; you just have to pick it up as you go along. It definitely rewards repeated reading.
Oh yay! Roadside picnic is my favorite book of all time. I tried reading metro 2033 afterward (based on a recommendation) and it wasn't the same at all, and I didn't like it. So glad to see someone else likes roadside picnic too
I'll be sure to check out these recs!
Definitely check out The Doomed City by the same authors.
@@herczegmarton9972 I sure will. Thanks!
Ordered five of those right off the bat, can't wait to dig into them!
Hmm, so Mr Cain is into very serious and dark books. I'll just guess Robert Asprin's Myth & Phule series flew right by then. I always gravitated more toward humor, made life growing up in a small southern town way more bearable. Loved Hitchhiker's Guide, Bill The Galactic Hero, Everything by the aforementioned Asprin, Terry Brooks, etc. Not to say I loved humor exclusively, was obsessed with Dragonlance for quite a time as well. Miss my eyes working right. Haven't been able to enjoy a book for years without constant double vision sadly. Still would fully recommend any/all of the above authors or series for some fun reads!
Blindsight is fantastic! My fav bit is (spoilers) the alien creatures can detect the electrical signals the brain sends to the eye to make it move, so they can move in the split second while the eye is moving and you can't see anything, functionally hiding IN staccades. A bit like the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who!
'Flatland' is a fun book from 1884, set in a 2 dimensional world where everyone is a geometric shape. It's an interesting vision of the time the book was written, of it's time in an odd way.
Id also say any book by P K D is worth a look, most people know films like Blade Runner based on his books. He always plays with interesting ideas that still today are valid, some parts are from the times but a lot is still valid and can be seen influencing a lot of media.
I know several of these. Saberhagen is a writer I keep meaning to read more (I have an omnibus of his Swords books). Vance is great - reminds me a lot of Clark Ashton Smith. I'm a big fan of Poul Anderson. He wrote sci-fi and fantasy equally well, but I think my favorite book of his is The High Crusade, about a bunch of dim-witted aliens getting wrecked by medieval British crusaders (technology doesn't necessarily correlate to intelligence...).
thanks for the recommendation! Now I have about a Gig of ebooks to read!
Id recommend checking out Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It has one of the most unique "magic" systems I have read in a book. Along with that it is incredibly well written, great story, very unique word play; alot of the sentence structure is written in an odd way to encourage your minds eye. 10/10 have read it once every couple of years.
Tim, i was wondering if you ever read or heard of a book, or more accurately, a collection of smaller books into one called "Wastelands: The New Apocalypse" the very first story caught my attention becuase of the location and immediate feeling it gives, the other stories range from unique to extremely depressing, gross, confusing, and desperate all in their own way.
Im not sure if each story is written by a differnt author or if some wrote more than one, but i thought the idea of having all these storys in one book with so many conflicting and different versions of a Apocalypse might be of interest to someone who essentially created my favorite Apocalypse game series.
Also it reminded me of your video on game development and how everyone had their own take and variety, it would be interesting if those people wrote a book on their ideas, or vice versa with the authors of the genre.
Read and enjoyed Book of the New Sun, and reading Jack Vance right now. Really enjoyed Cugel the Clever, reading Rialto the Marvellous now and enjoying it somewhat less but still interesting.
Dying earth I've always heard wonderful things about. Perhaps it is time I pick it up.
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem is also a great read about people trying to research an alien entity.
Some of these sound really interesting I'm gonna give a couple a try thanks.
If you don't mind a reciprocal suggestion I found a book series called 'Rebuild World' lately you might find unique. It focuses on an orphan kid from the slums venturing out into the old world ruins to reclaim relics from the past. The ruins are from a time when humanity was exceedingly advanced and you have no idea what happened to them and are only slowly discovering bit by bit hints and implications as to what might have happened.
Have you read A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay? It seems like absolutely your kind of book. Written in 1920, it has the philosophical depth of Last and First Men and the fantastical imagination and imagery of Night Land.
I got distracted by reading through the full dune series but I can't wait to get back to the Culture books when I am done
Would love to know some of your favorite books or authors of the last decade or so.
Have you ever read a book, or seen a movie that inspired your creativity, but then you felt that your particular craft of video games weren't the right medium to express that creativity?
Also I clicked this link thinking "I hope he says Roadside picnic, but really I think more of Avellone when it comes to having a whole career defined by Roadside Picnic"
Damn as soon as the cover of Empire of the East came off, I was going to ask if you’d sell it. So close!
The description of The Night Land reminds me of the interactive fiction game Glowgrass. Where you are going through this technologically advanced world, but the narrator doesn't know what anything is, you only have a description of what it looks like.
Haven't seen Saberhagen in ages, used to tear through the Book of Swords series
Book of the New Sun is incredible, I’m almost positive it’s an influence for Elden Ring too
I really really appreciate your suggestions Tim.
Wheel of Time might be up your alley. It's high fantasy set 3000 years post-apocalypse of a future earth where the age after ours was shaped by the discovery of magic.
I knew that Tim was awesome, but now we have an official proof since he is a Strugatsky fan!
Thanks Tim, you are the greatest!
Hey, Tim! It's me, Michael. If you put a list of links to buy these books in your video description, you'd probably earn a bit of kick-back monies.
I know it's probably a bit too mainstream, but my all-time favorite book is Stephen King's The Stand. When I read it as a kid in the 80s, the pandemic blew me away. I'm glad I was wrong by calling Covid "Captain Trips"...
Thanks for the list, and I'm definitely going to visit the used book store this weekend with this list printed out!
I love Ursula Le Guin and book of the new sun!
My favorite story with an unreliable narrator is "Tales from the Gas Station" absolutely fantastic urban supernatural story. I highly recommend.
Uncle Tim, if you aren't up on Sanderson's Cosmere you are missing out.
I forgot to ask if Tim played Caves of Qud, the ultimate dying earth RPG.
than you for this always interesting to hear about books. not so common thing nowadays. I'm atm rre-eading the roadside picnic and other strugatski brothers books and then stanislaw lems solaris... also holdstocks Mythago Wood is on the pile. I could recommend you finnish author Johanna Sinisalo.
Tim! Have you read any Terry Pratchett? Discworld is so good. Based on your games, I think you would like it haha
Added a few to my reading list. I was surprised to see no Asimov amongst your mentions.
I have read a lot of his work, but I had to make a cut off somewhere
"Hardcore" science fiction probably isn't for everyone. I doubt he's not read some Asimov, Asimov normally being heralded "the greatest science fiction writer of all time." Perhaps Asimov's works just haven't influenced him as much as those he's mentioned? No idea. That's certainly true in my case as I find myself recommending science fiction more in he vein of Le Guin and, even, Ray Bradbury, whose works aren't even considered science fiction by many, tending more toward the subgenre that demanded the coinage of a new term for it: speculative fiction, which is not so much the blending of genres, e.g. fantasy and science fiction, but very much its own thing. The classic era of pulp magazines, occuring between two world wars when everything we thought we knew was first turned on its head, produced a lot of material that probably appealed more to the uncertainty, but not necessarily anxiety about that uncertainty, that has characterized our times since and is much more about getting to know ourselves as a species, I think -- a task we'd largely neglected to that point -- than trying to predict the future with anything approaching absolute certainty. The original TV series, The Twilight Zone, could probably be so classified along with the works of authors such as Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein and Harlan Ellison, et alia.
Edit: Need I mention Philip K. Dick?
@@CainOnGames Thanks for the reply Tim. I think I'm most looking forward to reading Excession. Seems right up my wheel house. Cheers.
Hi Tim. Any chance you can post the titles you mentioned here in a pinned comment? It'll make it easier to put these into a reading list.
Book of the New Sun is probably the best scifi novel ever written.
Untapped potential for anything is in it.
book of the new sun mentioned! my favourite sci-fi series of all time, and wildly underrated! so glad to find out you enjoyed that series
Hey Tim, you mentioned games adapting the concepts in your influential books that you thought were interesting or inspiring, are there other games that you feel have adapted ideas from your influential booklist well? Any that almost made the cut but fell short for one reason or another in your opinion?
Yes! This is exactly the insight I was waiting for! \O/
I always wondering if the book series Deathlands had any influence on the Fallout series. A post-apocalyptic book series that came out in the late 80s that shares many similarities with Fallout including alt-history, lots and lots of guns including some that are slightly different from real world guns, underground bunkers, mad scientists, mutants, and warlords. About as close to a Fallout book series I've seen. Probably came out too late to influence the originals but later games maybe, stuff like the Stingwing from Fallout 4 seems borrowed from the books. There was also a great New Vegas mod called A World of Pain that had a pretty big reference to the book series.
I've only read a couple of the Deathlands books but they're great fun. It really is a lot like Fallout in its pulpy style.