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Agree, there are far too many, but a few more worthwhile:
Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere, American Gods, Stardust, Coraline
KJ Parker - Engineer's Trilogy
Garth Nix - The Old Kingdom (Sabiral, Lorial, Clariel, etc)
Jasper Fforde - The Thursday Next series
Ben Elton - Two Brothers and Time and Time Again are both brilliant, but so are most of his books
Umberto Eco - Name of the Rose, The Island of the Day Before, Foucault's Pendulum
Luke Rhienhart - The Dice Man
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Thank you, fishing for new authors I see, picked up a couple of potentials.
I'm with OG, who the hell can list only 5 favourite authors let alone books.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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As others have already said, far too many. 
Just throwing "The Laundry Files[^]" series by Charles Stross into the mix.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
I read this over 10 years ago, but it still stands out as the most gripping non-fiction book I have ever read. Oppenheimer led the Los Alamos project to develop the atomic bomb and then, having realised what he'd done, sensibly announced that dropping atomic bombs on people was a bad idea. This resulted in a Government witch hunt, led by J. Edgar Hoover, accusing him of being a communist.
It's a fairly long read, (around 600 pages), but gives a real insight into a complex genius and polymath - and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2006: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kai-bird-and-martin-j-sherwin[^]
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Wow, it's been a long time since I could enjoy a good read, let alone 5 books in a week. And since these are the top 5, it means you must have read even more.
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Forever War - John Haldeman
The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
The Princess Bride - William Goldman The description of the fight scene atop the Cliffs of Insanity is in my opinion the reason the English language was invented Also the description of the fabrication of the six-fingered sword I was fascinated by
Chung Kuo - David Wingrove all six or so volumes give or take
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I just finished re-reading "The Stainless Steel Rat" by Harry Harrison for about the fifth time!
Basically anything by Harry Harrison, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Trying to implement LL(k) parsing I've stumbled upon the need to generate viable suffixes without knowing precisely what they are. I've implemented viable prefix generation before, but it's just different enough to confound me.
Google doesn't help much.
And it got me thinking of how many times this happens to me over the course of say, a year, where I end up well off the beaten path, or swimming way out past the markers.
Clearly, I do it to myself, considering how many people go through their careers without encountering problems that are clear out in left field, and when I do, it's usually for my own projects. I must enjoy it.
I also find it frustrating, just because there's nobody around to ask the questions I want to ask, and it makes me wish I had gone to school for some of these things.
Anyway, as often as not, the answers are out there, but what is there is spotty and difficult to understand. I'm a determined plodder though. I will trudge through the muck of it and get the goods.
Edit: Aaaand just writing this led something to click for me. Not sure how much is going to be gained from it, but some of you probably wonder why I write stuff like this here. Part of this is why, and part of it is there's no good forum for writing about things like the way we think about code.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Going to school for something presumes that you know ahead of time that you're going to need it. My guidance counselor said I could be a scientist or an astronaut. What school should I have picked?
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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I knew I'd be a coder by the time I was 8.
Real programmers use butterflies
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... morphs into "omigod"
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Comes with a built in CCC too.
Another variant would be moronic.
If you can't laugh at yourself - ask me and I will do it for you.
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Well I hope you've had a PCR* since ...
* Personal Computer Revelation
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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It seems the original movie is the best according to a viewer:
Quote: The November 2021 remake is a little more moronic
But I guess what more can you expect from billionaire movie-makers. There are no funny moments in the remake so I suggest everyone should watch the original instead. I'm certainly going to.
Hopefully the crowds see the remake for what it is this time.
Omicron (1963) - IMDb[^]
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i wonder how long before it gives birth to Omacron.
«The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled» Plutarch
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Turn that Omicron into a macaron.
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Just finished the "BattleStar Galactica" series Ending was a surprise Not what I expected Rather sad Almost cried Not a bad final "message" Nice tie in Now back to "Billions" - Cheerio
Edit
Maybe it will happen again just as they said
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-11-xenobots-team-robots.html[^]
modified 29-Nov-21 20:23pm.
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which series ? the most recent one ? or the original or the dreaded 1980 series.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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you learned something today.
go watch the original series.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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I recall watching the first few episodes of the original series starring Lorne Greene when it first came out How can it not be cartoonish compared w/ the stark brutality of the 2003 series Lorne Greene I can more or less tolerate but will give a re-try per recommendation Those shifting red eyes on the Cylons always frightened me - Cheerio
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Maximilien wrote: the dreaded 1980 series
Was that the "we haven't got the budget for space battles any more; let's turn the show into a Superman rip-off" one?
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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