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[fizmat]

What book reminds you of DF the most? For me it's 'The Mysterious Island" by Jules Verne. If you've read it, you know what I mean. It has everything: a group five people and a dog (tame) crash-land a balloon on a volcanic island. They eat vermin that have shells first(oysters, not turtle ), then start hunting. They give geografic features strange-sounding descriptive names.

They eventually build a fortress in a cave left by a river that they drained. Then construct a wall upstream, raise the river level to conceal the construted wall (and plug that entrance forever) and carve a new door high in a cliff-face with a retractable ladder attached. There's also channeling a moat (with raising bridges, no less) to surround and protect the farm area with the windmill (that coveniently is on top of their fortress).

They breed mouflons (mountain goats) for wool which gets turned into clothes. They make soap, iron, steel, gunpowder and nitroglycerin (which is used as a substitute for picks, because explosives is human's magma that can solve any problem). They get raided by apes, catch and tame one. They sail to a nearby island to get some new kinds of seeds/breeding animals and suddenly find a good-for-nothing skill-less immigrant.

Everything DF has is in this book. They even get a local version of Carp: a dugong in a lake next to their smelter almost drowns their dog (who only got saved by the island's equivalent of HFS. Yes, that HFS is the Dwarf Companion of the book, without him they all would've died many times over, won't spoil it, in case you haven't read). Then pirates attack, they almost lose but in the end win themselves a cannon to install and protect the fort, which is cool.

Some things form the book DF doesn't have: cannons, explosives, candles, controllable fire (of course fire is the first thing they make, as cooking without it is impossible IRL), guns, Quinine, a boat, a ship, a balloon, a submarine, pirates, harvesting eggs (just like plants in DF) and tides. That is all.

If you can't predict the ending you've never played DF. Hint: MAGMA FUN.

[rhuntar]

I recently reread the LOTR trilogy, and some associated commentaries. 

I was astounded to see how directly so many of the DF concepts i thought came very directly from tolkien.

Specifically, the dwarven attempt to reclaim moria, which is built over a chasm/bottomless pit, and was lost because the ancient dwarves had mined too deep in their HFS (mithril)

i literally started playing more DF during the course of reading it.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Dwarf Fortress has been called a Moria simulator with good reason, everything is designed towards a rise and fall mirroring the tale of Moria in every detail.  Mysterious Island is new and something I hadn't considered before, its similarities do seem to rise above what would be expected of any 'cast-away' type story such as Robinson Curuso or Swiss Family Robinson.  I don't think its intentional though, these are just exciting and adventurous elements that happen to be in both works.