Traveller inspirational reading

There's a great post over at The Zhodani Base today recommending some classic sf novels that influenced Traveller. I tried to comment, but the website ate my post. You can't go wrong with any of those books, and you're sure to get some great ideas from them.

There are a couple more novels that relate to CT that I'd recommend. Andre Norton's Plague Ship and Voodoo Planet are part of a series that recounts the adventures of the Free Trader Solar Queen and her crew. No points for guessing how they relate to the game.

And BeRKA mentions the "obsolete" CT computer rules. While they do seem a bit dated today, I think that when they were written they were a clever attempt to add computer management to space wargames. There were other sf combat games that achieved a similar effect with different rules. In Star Fleet Battles you had energy management rules, and later in BattleTech you had heat management rules. In CT it was computer program management. So to me the CT computer rules make much more sense when seen in the context of wargaming conventions where it's taken for granted that there's something, whether energy, heat or programs that the player has to finesse to get the better of their opponent.