Here's where I post my recommendations for favorite:

• nonfiction books
• fiction novels and authors
• music
• film
• blogs & web sites

Believe it or not, this civilization is just full of bright and exciting thinkers, pushing the envelope in all directions. These are just a few I've come across lately. Send your recommendations to my email address.

Recent Favorites:

Planet Africa is a way-cool tour of the best modern sounds coming out of Africa these days, including innovative rock and pop with an irresistible beat.

Images by Jean Michel Jarre is lively, experimental, yet pleasing... and it reminds me of two years we spent living by the Seine.

Rapa Nui... the score from an obscure and very chilling-yet-accurate, quasi-historical film of the same name.

Blind Before I Stop. Sorry, but I have a weakness for Meat Loaf. He and his songwriting partner seem to be the only people creating music about old-fashioned concepts like honor. Their almost-Shakespearian fixation lends an intensity and passion to their gritty nihilism. True, I am far more of an optimist and a family man. But I can really respect these guys and their beloved angst. They make it kick.

Musical artists I like in general: guitarist Joe Satriani, pianist Keith Jarrett, Suzanne Ciani, Frank Zappa, Japan's Ayame and Rinken Bands, Frank Zappa, Perez Prado, Frank Zappa, Danny Elfman.... plus an old 1968 group called Quartermass. David Crosby and I are mutual fans of Quartermass, or so he told me once. And yes, I'm that old.

Music Based on Brin SF:

Matucana, an electronic music group led by German composer Helmuth Schomberg, based half an hour of highly evocative music in their album To Beat The Feeling on the dolphin rhythms, melodics and story lines that Schomberg found in Startide Rising.

A Canadian rock n' roll band, Treebeard, produced a more hard-biting song with lyrics based on the lament of the wounded dolphin captain, Creideiki.

Inspired by an urrish ballad that she found in Brightness Reef, Baltimore composer Katherine Gilliam created yet another work in a completely different musical form -- a haunting a capella choral work called "Starships." (See also my games/music/media pages.)

When I go to a flick, or rent one, I try to adjust my expectations beforehand, in order to minimize disappointment. Think of it as fine tuning a stereo system. I may crank down my controls for logic and plot consistency, for example, and thereby manage to enjoy films that make no sense, but have high quality in other ways.

A good example is The Fifth Element, a film that not only had to be zeroed in both of those categories... I had to reach inside and rip out the wires! No matter, though. The movie was a positive pleasure throughout. True, not a single scene made any sense, even in its own context. But the director's sheer joy poured from the screen. He was so bloody happy to be doing this flick, and the fizzing thrill that he felt was utterly contagious. Like when he interrupts the frenetic action to bring us... an aria.

Some movies need more drastic surgery. The visually hilarious Mars Attacks! had such horrible dialogue that is is best watched with the sound off. Or even better, with satiric background commentary, like provided by Mystery Science Theater 3000. (It's sad when a satirical film is only funny when satirized.)

There are other dials I am more loathe to turn down in watching a film or reading a book. For example, dials associated with message and morality. There have been movies that might appear -- at first sight -- similar to The Fifth Element, in that tons of special effects seemed aimed at delivering nothing but harmless eye-candy. But it's not true. Pop culture can contain propaganda, often heavy-handed and stinking of truly evil notions. Some of it (as I discuss elsewhere) is too awful to stomach.

Of course when a film appeals to the adult within, never requiring a single dial to be turned down, that's best of all. It doesn't happen often. My latest recommendation is a sterling example. Frequency, starring Dennis Quaid, is about a father and son who communicate across a time gap of 30 years by ham radio, changing history and their lives. The temporal paradoxes -- while not completely solved -- are approached with deeply earnest attentiveness and real storytelling sincerity. Something for grownups.

Greg Bear suggests two others: "I'll also recommend Dark City -- the only sf noir film that explains why it's dark all the time. It's a dynamic, beautifully structured film with a great score. And of course Gattaca."

I especially liked the fact that Gattaca lets you add a layer of story in your own mind. The society portrayed is not an evil one, it is simply trying its best to deal with a really tough technological problem of genetic predetermination. In the background, bright and hard working people are trying to adjust the law and education to deal with the problem, which ultimately will depend on improving public compassion. The hero is not helping in this struggle. His great talents are being applied solely toward a selfish end. You cheer for his success and hope that he returns safely (in which case his success may help solve the social problem). Still, he is selfish. He may endanger his crew. It's a tasty moral quandary.

Here are some of my favorite sites, but I'm always up for suggestions -- email me with your favorites.

Author/inventor Wil McCarthy has just posted a a free, annotated, multimedia edition of Hacking Matter on his web page. This is one of the most innovative and fascinating ideas to come along in years -- the topic of several novels and now a bona fide patent.

The Society for Amateur Scientists -- founded by Shawn Carlson in 1994 -- helps ordinary people with a passion for science to take part in scientific adventures of all kinds. They educate, stimulate, and facilitate everyday people, often folks without any formal education in science as well as youngsters, to follow their interests in science as far as their time, talents and interest will take them. (I helped establish their sub-group for amateur theoretical physicists.)

Worldchanging.com edited by Jamais Cascio and Alex Steffen is so good, so extensive and far-reaching, that it is departing the blogosphere and becoming a highly influential Netzine. One of the most interesting places on the Web.

Science Daily has a wide variety of short articles on science and technology. They are a bit higher level than those you'll find in mainstream magazines.

MAKE magazine has a nice blog with pointers to interesting "DIY" projects. A small step in opposition to the de-engineering of America. (What has happened? There are sports and arts camps everywhere, but I cannot find a single engineering summer camp for my kids.)

Kevin Kelly compiles Cool Tools, which has reviews of intersting books and tools. This is a direct descendent of the Whole Earth Catalog.

A new type of online "magazine" is Amazon Shorts where you can buy individual stories or articles at 49 cents a pop, following in the tradition of music downloads. It was inevitable, and it will draw the best stuff, since authors get 25 cents from every reader. (I foresaw this in Earth, that book's 15th predictive hit!)

Considerably more radical, but entertaining, is Armageddon Buffet. Eat while you can!

Check out this site for an organization employing the strategies I outline in my book The Transparent Society, Witness: Using Technology to Fight for Human Rights.

The Heifer Project International provides heifer animals (and training in their care) to hungry families around the world as a way to feed themselves and become self-reliant.

BioMedNet is the website for biological medical researchers, but is useful for anyone wanting more information about the biomedical field.

Closer to Truth, a PBS TV show dealing with fascinating issues, has spun off a website encouraging people to read or participate in discussions about some of the critical issues of our time -- science and technology planning, sustainable development, and others.

The Webs of Wonder Contest provides a cash prize to encourage the creation of excellent new sites on the World Wide Web that unite a love of learning with a passion for good stories.