By Bruce Bethke
First Published: 1983
A gang of unruly teenagers cut school and go joy-riding around “the Net” on their hopped-up portable computers, committing casual acts of vandalism and just generally being a$holes. Our hero is a good kid who’s fallen in with a bad crowd; his parents eventually realize something is wrong and try to suppress the relationship. This results in the kid finally using his technical skills for deliberate purpose, to rebel against his parents — and to win, because the paradigm shift is completely in his favor.