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Required reading for the Black Rock Desert ð The Burning Man Survival Guide, which came with your registration materials ð Eric's web page: http://www.chorus.com/~eric/bm95/ ð Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ö Hunter S. Thompson ð Red Mars ö Kim Stanley Robinson ð Dune ö Frank Herbert For this particular list, the survival guide should be obvious, unless you're going for this year's Donner Party award. And Eric's web page gives what I thought was the most personal account of how Burning Man can take on deeply significant emotional qualities without ever being pinned down to one thing. Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas gives an excellent overview of what Nevada may seem to be to the uncultured mind. Often dismissed as merely anecdotes from a drug-crazed binge through the American Dream, Fear and Loathing contains incisive social commentary, like the point where Dr. Gonzo describes the great wave of social consciousness that arose somewhere in San Francisco during the '60s: "If you look west, toward the Sierra Nevada, you can see where the wave broke and rolled back on itself..." Kim Stanley And
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Robinson's Red Mars is the most
scientifically-valid fictional account of the colonization of Mars I have yet
seen. Along with a very accurate portrayal of the red desert planet, complete
with dust storms and water as a prized commodity, the reader is treated to the
unfolding of a social experiment in community, as various forces tug and pull
at the fabric of a new society on Mars. As the population swells, these forces
gain momentum. Hmmmm. 
Dune was a masterpiece that
never could have been made successfully into a film. Forget the movie. Frank
Herbert's Dune tells the story of a
young man stranded on a desert planet, befriended by the desert tribe known as
the Fremen. Besides containing wheels-within-wheels of plot intrigue, Dune carries an intimate knowledge of
survival in the desert, treating the desert as a powerful force to coexist with
and learn from, not to be tamed: "I will not be afraid. Fear is the mind
killer. I will let the Fear wash over me, and when it has gone, only I will
remain." Something like our lovely Black Rock Desert.
