Two books by Greg Egan: Permutation City and Teranesia. Permutation City's been on my wish list for years, as an apparently seminal cyberpunk story. But Teranesia blew me away. An Indian Rationalist couple travels to a tiny nameless Indonesian island to study mutant butterflies. Here they raise two precocious kids who explore the island and study its peculiar fauna, while learning math and biology online via satellite. It's a great exotic setup with a Nick Bantock flavor, and a unique bildungsroman.