festival reading

While I was on the train I overheard a conversation about the Harry Potter books by people who looked as though they were also going to the green man festival. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against the boy wizard, but somehow spending the weekend with 10000 Harry Potter fans filled me with a Lord Voldemort like dread. Ok I was reading a fantasty novel as well. However my fantasy novel was based on a philosophical idea, so there is no way that it could be considered a nerdy book. In fact all 3 fantasy books that I read while travelling to and from the Green Man festival were all based on some deep idea. So here are the 3 books: Simak, "Why call them back from Heaven". The human race is constructing a business to revive the dead. But do we really want immortality? A.E Van Vogt, "the battle for forever". Pacifism mixes with vengeance. Tim Powers "The Anubis Gates". A man goes back in time to be a tourist guide for a talk by Coleridge. Things go wrong and he finds himself living the life of a person he was writing a biography about. Apart from being a good yarn, this touches on issues of free will and destiny. I think you will all agree that my choice of reading material was not at all nerdy or spotty faced.