Two favorites of mine:
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (author graduated from Ames High)
Wikipedia summary: The novel follows the exploits of two groups of people in two different time periods. The first is World War II-era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. The second narrative is set in the present day with descendants of the first narrative's characters employing cryptologic, telecom and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a longer range objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.
The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons:
- Hyperion (sort of a sci-fi retelling of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales)
- The Fall of Hyperion
- Endymion
- The Rise of Endymion
Wikipedia summary: Set in the far future, and focusing more on plot and story development than technical detail, it falls into the soft science fiction category, and has been described as a space opera. The title was originally used for the collection of the first pair of books in the series, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, and later came to refer to the overall storyline, including Endymion, The Rise of Endymion, and a number of short stories. Within the fictional storyline, the Hyperion Cantos is an epic poem written by the character Martin Silenus.
