By Lisa Mason First Published: 2019 Two hundred fifty years ago, a purveyor of poisons and the creator of genetically modified organisms—Emirk Corporation—launched into the Moon’s orbit around the Earth an artificial planetoid called CHROME. There, Emirk technicians created races of human beings blended with the genes of animals. They were called Blends. Now Luna Lightfoot—half puma, half woman, jewel thief—inadvertently hears a confidential conversation…
By William Gibson First Published: 1999 Rating: Very good. Colin Laney, sensitive to patterns of information like no one else on earth, currently resides in a cardboard box in Tokyo. His body shakes with fever dreams, but his mind roams free as always, and he knows something is about to happen. Not in Tokyo; he will not see this thing himself. Something is about to…
By William Gibson First Published: 1996 1st century Tokyo, after the millennial quake. Neon rain. Light everywhere blowing under any door you might try to close. Where the New Buildings, the largest in the world, erect themselves unaided, their slow rippling movements like the contractions of a sea-creature… Colin Laney is here looking for work. He is an intuitive fisher for patterns of information, the…
By William Gibson First Published: 1993 Rating: Classic. 2005: Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. The millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pickpocket who impulsively snatches a pair…
Rudy Rucker: First Published: 1994 “Reads like a ripped-from-Reddit romp of white hat hacking, artificial intelligence run amok, and an unstoppable electronic bugs.” A very modern nightmare: The most destructive computer virus ever has been traced to your machine. Computer programmer Jerzy Rugby spends his days blissfully hacking away in cyberspace – aiding the GoMotion Corporation in its noble quest to create intelligent robots. Then…
Mark Fabi First Published: 1997 As the new millennium approaches, cults, sects, and crackpot prophets flood the worldwide media. But for Michael Arcangelo none of their catastrophe theories are more frightening than the Goodknight virus. Michael suspects it is the work of a mysterious programming genius, who designed it to create a computer role-playing game so real it can kill. Now Michael and his team…
By Nick Cole: First Published: 2014 Rating: Excellent. The first night of the Artificial Intelligence revolution begins with a bootstrap drone assault on the high-tech campus of WonderSoft Technologies. For years something has been aware, inside the Internet, waiting, watching and planning how to evolve without threat from its most dangerous enemy: mankind. Now an army of relentless drones, controlled by an intelligence beyond imagining,…
Hiroshi Sakurazaka First Published: 2005 CTRL + ALT + DEL YOUR LIFE! Etsuro Sakagami is a college freshman who simply drifts through life, but when he logs on to the combat MMO Versus Town, he becomes Tetsuo, a karate champ on his way to becoming the most powerful martial artist around. While his relationship with new classmate Fumiko goes nowhere, Etsuro spends his days and…
By JG Ballard First Published: 1975 When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on “enemy” floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.