God's Debris: A Thought Experiment


Scott Adams - 2001
    Adams describes God's Debris as a thought experiment wrapped in a story. It's designed to make your brain spin around inside your skull. Imagine that you meet a very old man who you eventually realize knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life: quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light psychic phenomenon, and probability in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? You may not find the final answer to the big question, but God's Debris might provide the most compelling vision of reality you will ever read. The thought experiment is this: Try to figure out what's wrong with the old man's explanation of reality. Share the book with your smart friends, then discuss it later while enjoying a beverage.

The Dirk Gently Omnibus


Douglas Adams - 1987
    There is a long and honourable tradition of great detectives and Dirk Gently does not belong to it. Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Dirk Gently, however, does not like to eliminate the impossible.In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency a simple search for a missing cat reveals two ghosts, a dodo, an Electric Monk, the devastating secret that lies behind the whole of human history and threatens to bring it to a premature close, and, finally, the utterly terrifying reason why Richard MacDuff has had a sofa stuck on his stairs for three weeks.As The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul opens a passenger check-in desk at Terminal Two, Heathrow Airport, shoots up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flame. The usual people try to claim responsibility. However, no rational cause can be found for the explosion - it was simply designated an act of God. But, thinks Dirk Gently, which God? And why? What God would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15.37 to Oslo?What do a dead cat, a computer whizz-kid, an electric monk, quantum mechanics, a chronologit over 200 years old, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and pizza have in common? Apparently not much, until Dirk Gently begins his investigation.

The Case of the Colonist's Corpse


Bob Ingersoll - 2004
    Cogley, a cranky old man who prefers books to padds and people to computers. Now, once again, it's SAM COGLEY FOR THE DEFENSE!The planet Aneher II sits in the middle of the Neutral Zone, and neither the Klingon™ Empire nor the Federation can claim it. Under the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty, any such contested colony world will go to the party -- Federation or Klingon -- which shows it can best develop the planet.At first the two colonies live in peace, but it's a fragile peace, one shattered when Administrator Daniel Latham, the head of the Federation colony, is found murdered, and Commander Mak'Tor, the head of the Klingon colony, is found crouched over Latham's body, discharged phaser still hot in his hand.When Lieutenant Areel Shaw of Starfleet is assigned to prosecute Mak'Tor, Sam Cogley volunteers to defend the accused Klingon. But when Cogley's own investigation provides the prosecution with its key piece of evidence and his courtroom tactics unexpectedly backfire, can even the galaxy's most brilliant defense attorney win the day in...The Case of the Colonist's Corpse