Hooray that the summer time is here, now I can read some books for fun. Currrently I am going through Lolita, The Once and Future King and i just bought Phil Dick's Time Out of Joint supposedly of which The Matrix is a rip, but we shall see, we shall see... 
genshi:
I'll have to check out that PDK book. Have not read that one. As for the Matrix, it was taken from many books including, loosly based on the philosophy of "Simulacra and Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard which states there are no originals in the world, everything is just a copy of a copy of a copy. (this book makes a cameo appearence in the Matrix as well!)
genshi:
Baudrillard's book shows up in the first Matrtix near the beginning when the people show up to his (Neo's) apartment for software and he goes to the bookshelf and opens up "Simulacra and Simulation" which is where he hides his 'illegal' software...