Reading List

Below is a list of some of the books and articles I have read as part of my search. The one’s in bold I have finished reading. Add a comment below to name other books and articles you recommend on these topics.

Reality

Relativity and Time

• Relativity Visualized – Lewis Carroll Epstein
• A World Without Time – Palle Yourgrau
• The End of Time – Julian Barbour
• The Andromeda Paradox – Hilary Putnam, C. W. Rietdijk, and Roger Penrose
• Is There an Alternative to the Block Universe View – Vesselin Petkov
• The True Nature of Matter and Mass – Matt O’Dowd

Quantum Mechanics

• The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III – Peter Byrne
• QED – Richard Feynman
• The Fabric of Reality – David Deutsch
• The Beginning of Infinity – David Deutsch
• Boojums All the Way though – David Mermin
• Quantum Mechanics and Experience – David Albert
• Schrödinger’s Rabbits – Colin Bruce
• Something Deeply Hidden – Sean Carroll

Cosmology and Big Bang

• The First Three Minutes – Steven Weinberg
• The Magic Furnace – Marcus Chown
• The Black Hole War – Leonard Susskind
• The Comprehensible Cosmos – Victor Stenger
• Born in an Infinite Universe – Anthony Augirre and Max Tegmark
• The Mystery of Existence – John Leslie and Robert Lawrence Kuhn

String Theory

• The Cosmic Landscape – Leonard Susskind
• The Elegant Universe – Briane Greene

Extraterrestrial Life

• If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens … WHERE IS EVERYBODY? – Stephen Webb
• The Drake Equation – Frank Drake
• The Fermi Paradox – Enrico Fermi
• A Conversation – Douglas Jones
• The Transcension Hypothesis – John Smart

Mathematical Reality

• Godel’s Proof – Ernest Nagel, James R. Newman, and Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Our Mathematical Universe – Max Tegmark
• Just Six Numbers – Martin Rees
• The Hidden Reality – Brian Greene
• Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn – Amanda Gefter
• Theory of Nothing – Russell Standish
• The Amoeba’s Secret – Bruno Marchal
• On the Plurality of Worlds – David Lewis
• Parallel Universes – Max Tegmark
• Is “the theory of everything” merely the ultimate ensemble theory? – Max Tegmark

Consciousness

The Mind

• Consciousness Explained – Daniel Dennett
• The Minds I – Daniel Dennett and Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Godel, Escher, Bach – Douglas R. Hofstadter
• A Universe of Consciousness – Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi
• How to Create a Mind – Ray Kurzweil
• The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind – Julian Jaynes
• Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia – David Chalmers
• Computing Machinery and Intelligence – Alan Turing

Consciousness and Reality

• The Origin of Physical Laws and Sensations – Bruno Marchal
• Changing the Past by Forgetting – Saibal Mitra
• Law without Law – Markus Müller
• Quantum suicide and immortality – Hans Moravec, Max Tegmark, Bruno Marchal,

Freewill and Determinism

• Compatibilism
• Newcomb’s Paradox – William Newcomb

Computation

• The Pattern on the Stone – Daniel Hillis
• Meta Math! – Gregory Chaitin
• Quantum Computing since Democritus – Scott Aaronson
• Quantum Computing – Eleanor G. Rieffel and Wolfgang H. Polak
• On Computable Numbers – Alan Turing

Future of Humanity

• The Singularity is Near – Ray Kurzweil
• The Age of Spiritual Machines – Ray Kurzweil
• The Five Ages of the Universe – Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin
• Mind Children – Hans Moravec
• Engines Of Creation – Eric Drexler
• Superintelligence – Nick Bostrom and Napoleon Ryan

Simulation Hypothesis

• Permutation City – Greg Egan
• Simulation, Consciousness, Existence – Hans Moravec
• Are you Living in a Computer Simulation? – Nick Bostrom

Open Individualism

• What is Life? – Erwin Schrödinger
• The Book – Alan Watts
• One Self – Arnold Zuboff
• I am you – Danial Kolak

Science and Religion

• The Perennial Philosophy – Aldous Huxley
• The Tao of Physics – Fritjof Capra
• Einstein and Religion – Max Jammer
• The Physics of Immortality – Frank J. Tipler
• God’s Debris – Scott Adams
• The God Theory – Bernard Haisch
• The Mind of God – Paul Davies
• Tales of the Turing Church – Giulio Prisco
• Cosmic Consciousness – Richard Maurice Bucke

Global Ethics

• The Life you can Save – Peter Singer
• Pale Blue Dot – Carl Sagan
• Peace is the Way – Deepak Chopra
• The Universe in a Single Atom – Dalai Lama
• Cosmos – Carl Sagan
• Utilitarianism

Writing

Style

• On Writing – Stephen King
• Elements of Style – William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White
• Clear and Simple as the Truth – Francis-Noel Thomas
• Elements of Eloquence – Mark Forsyth

Publishing

• Writer’s Market – Robert Lee Brewer
• Guide to Literary Agents – Robert Lee Brewer
• How to Write a Book Proposal – Michael Larsen
• How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead – Ariel Gore