Science fiction books I’ve been raised on science fiction books and computer games, and I’m not afraid to admit it.  I’m proud of my geekhood these days.   Although it took some years of talk therapy to help me deal with all the verbal and physical abuse I sustained in middle school, I feel an appreciation for good science fiction books was worth it.  I could come home from school, thoroughly beat up and demoralized, and escape in some fantastical universe created by one of the worlds more imaginative people.  Today, at my age, geekness is generally rewarded instead of punished, but I still find myself escaping into science fiction books often.  Maybe its just nostalgia, or maybe they’re just fun books to read, but its certainly my favorite genre.  While I’m also a fan of other genres, other books often just seem unimaginative and somehow lacking in the kind of depth that good science fiction books have.  Though its started as a small group of books that quickly developed an almost cult like following, science fiction is a pretty wide and fast growing genre these days.  No longer are science fiction books solely about some kind of space adventure, or some Star Trek like world.  There are a lot of science fiction books that are about alternative pasts, possible futures, or maybe even a present day scenario only slightly modified from the real world.  One of my all time favorite science fiction book series is Stephen Kings’s Dark Tower collection.  It’s an going series of science fiction books, five of which have been written, with  several more on the way.  Just reading the first one of the series, titled ‘The Gunslinger’, will give you a whole new impression of science fiction if you still think its just all like Star Trek.  Of course, I’m also a big fan of science fiction book classics like Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’.  While Dune is in fact a little like Star Trek, it should correctly be stated that Star Trek is a little like Dune, as it came first.  Also, Dune has a literary depth to it that far exceeds what you’d expect to find in a book about the distant future and space adventures.  Actually, if you give Dune a chance, you’d be surprised how deep Frank Herbert’s imagination could go.  While science fiction books are still somewhat overlooked by many, I think it is a growing genre that is quickly gaining acceptance in literary circles.  Of course, there is plenty of science fiction trash out there, but that’s true of any genre.