thanks Gsry, Been a long time since i read sci-fi, but J.G. Ballard comes to mind. literary: Percy Shelley ... Ozymandias Borges: ,,, The Library of Babel, Asterion philosophy: the recurrent myth of a "lost paradise:" Rene Dubos"The Mirage of Heakth"cheers, bill history: Lisa Jardine, "Worldly Goods" the profound stimulus to the Renaissance that unique goods from China (silk, porcelain) had, as well as the assimilation of ancient Greek science, geometry, astronomy from the Arabs who had preserved it and developed it much further,
«The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled» Plutarch