Book picks similar to
NeoAddix by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
cyberpunk
science-fiction
sci-fi
fiction
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Cory Doctorow - 2003
He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies...and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World.Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the keeping of a network of "ad-hocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.Now, though, the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents, and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself. Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war....
The Sentinels: The Devil's Hand / Dark Powers / Death Dance [Robotech Omnibus]
Jack McKinney - 1995
But the Robotech Masters were already on their way to Earth. And at Tirol, the SDF-3 would face the galaxy's fiercest warlord: the Invid Regent!#2 Dark PowersStranded on the far side of the galaxy after battling the Invid hordes, the Robotech Expeditionary Force's chances for survival were slim. But suddenly a starship unlike any other appeared -- manned by an incredible assortment of beings determined to challenge the Invid Regent himself! REF volunteers and their war mecha signed on for a campaign that would mean their destruction -- or liberty for the planets of the Sentinels!#3 Death DanceFour months had passed without a word from the Sentinels. Fearing the worst, the Expeditionary Mission to Tirol began truce negotiations with the Invid Regent himself. But far away, the surviving Sentinels were stranded on Praxis, a planet in cataclysm. Deep within that world's core were answers to the Sentinels' prayers -- if they could only reach them before Praxis tore itself apart...
The Skinner
Neal Asher - 2002
This remote world is mostly ocean, and it is a rare visitor who ventures beyond the safety of the island Dome. Outside it, only the native Hoopers dare risk the voracious appetites of the planet's wildlife. But somewhere out there is Spatterjay Hoop -- and Keech will not rest until he brings this legendary renegade to justice for hideous crimes committed centuries ago during the Prador Wars.While Keech is discovering that Hoop is now a monster -- his body and head living apart from each other -- Janer is bewildered by a place where the native inhabitants just will not die and angry when he finally learns the Hive mind's intentions for him. Meanwhile, Erlin thinks she has plenty of time to find the answers she seeks, but could not be more wrong. For one of the most brutal of the alien Prador is about to pay the planet a surreptitious visit, intent on exterminating all remaining witnesses to his wartime atrocities. As the visitors' paths converge, major hell is about to erupt in a chaotic waterscape where minor hell is already a remorseless fact of everyday life . . . and death.
Blood Music
Greg Bear - 1985
When the authorities rule that he has exceeded his authorization, Vergil loses his job, but is determined to take his discovery with him.This is a novel Greg Bear wrote in 1985. For novelette by the same name written in 1983 and published in Analog magazine see here: Blood Music.
Boneshaker
Cherie Priest - 2009
Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.
The Quantum Thief
Hannu Rajaniemi - 2010
Just another day in the Dilemma Prison. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is a currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turned-singularity lights the night. Meanwhile, investigator Isidore Beautrelet, called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur...Indeed, in his many lives, the entity called Jean le Flambeur has been a thief, a confidence artist, a posthuman mind-burgler, and more. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his deeds are known throughout the Heterarchy, from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. In his last exploit, he managed the supreme feat of hiding the truth about himself from the one person in the solar system hardest to hide from: himself. Now he has the chance to regain himself in all his power—in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.The Quantum Thief is a breathtaking joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people who communicate via shared memory, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as an MMORPG guild. But for all its wonders, The Quantum Thief is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, jealousy, and revenge.
Radiant Dawn
Cody Goodfellow - 2000
From a ruined chemical weapons bunker in Iraq to a shallow grave in California's San Andreas Fault, the lines are drawn for a shadow war that will decide who, or what, will inherit the earth and reign as the next dominant species. The escalating conflict engulfs the lives of three born survivors: a broken veteran of the Gulf War; a fiercely independent young nurse dying of cancer; and a brilliant novice FBI agent. Plunged into an arena where the stakes are survival or extinction, each must choose a side: between a militia of rogue government scientists and an enigmatic messiah who holds the cure for death itself, and the key to a new form of life. Trapped in a genocidal war the government will do anything to conceal, where top-secret military technologies vie with the primal power of evolution unleashed, they will struggle to understand and stay alive...and stay human.
Phule's Company
Robert Lynn Asprin - 1990
than most people do all day. Threatened by an alien enemy, Earth's military sends Phule and his soldiers to a distant planet. But now, the aliens have chosen a new target of war . . . Phule's Company.
The Man in the High Castle
Philip K. Dick - 1962
Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war — and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan.This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.
The Thing Itself
Adam Roberts - 2015
Two men while away the days in an Antarctic research station. Tensions between them build as they argue over a love-letter one of them has received. One is practical and open. The other surly, superior and obsessed with reading one book - by the philosopher Kant. As a storm brews and they lose contact with the outside world they debate Kant, reality and the emptiness of the universe. The come to hate each other, and they learn that they are not alone.
The Book of Atrus
Rand Miller - 1995
Based on the best-selling CD-ROM game, a fantasy novel fills out the lives of the game's characters, tracing the strange apprenticeship of Atrus to his father, Gehn, who wields the power to create worlds.
Diaspora
Greg Egan - 1997
Of the discovery of an alien race and of a kink in time that means humanity — whatever form it takes — will never again be threatened by acts of God.
McLendon's Syndrome
Robert A. Frezza - 1993
The decrepit trading ship he served on was also going nowhere: the Rustam's Slipper was grounded on Schuyler's World, a backwater planet lacking even a good bar. For diversion, Schuyler's offered bad bars, cute yet conniving aliens called Rodents, and Catarina -- a mysterious, beautiful, unsettlingly smart woman. Catarina wanted a berth on the Slipper; the Slipper needed a crew member. She Was hired.But Ken soon discovered that Catarina was more than a vamp with a razor-sharp wit. First was her case of McLendon's Syndrome, an obscure little contagious disease treatable only with chocolate-chip cookies. Then there were all the secrets she was hiding. So she wasn't the most trustworthy ally a guy could want as the Slipper hurried straight into murder, mayhem, intrigue, and an interspecies war -- but she was all Ken had. And unless she helped Ken whip the crew into shape and muster the misfits and malcontents of Schuyler's World, it would be the shortest war on record...Del Rey Discovery
Speak
Louisa Hall - 2015
A young Puritan woman travels to the New World with her unwanted new husband. Alan Turing, the renowned mathematician and code breaker, writes letters to his best friend's mother. A Jewish refugee and professor of computer science struggles to reconnect with his increasingly detached wife. An isolated and traumatized young girl exchanges messages with an intelligent software program. A former Silicon Valley Wunderkind is imprisoned for creating illegal lifelike dolls.Each of these characters is attempting to communicate across gaps — to estranged spouses, lost friends, future readers, or a computer program that may or may not understand them. In dazzling and electrifying prose, Louisa Hall explores how the chasm between computer and human — shrinking rapidly with today's technological advances — echoes the gaps that exist between ordinary people. Though each speaks from a distinct place and moment in time, all five characters share the need to express themselves while simultaneously wondering if they will ever be heard, or understood.
The Throne of Saturn
Allen Drury - 1970
Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found hereThis novel tells the story of America's race to Mars and the web of passionate conflict it weaves among the astronauts and their wives -- and between Russia and the United States, the contestants in this deadly race.