If you’re a fan of science fiction and fantasy books about advanced technology and gritty, dystopian societies, check out our recommendations of the Best Cyberpunk Books to read.
10 Best Cyberpunk Books to Read
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
Four hundred years from now, mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course.
But some things never change. So when ex-envoy, now-convict Takeshi Kovacs has his consciousness and skills downloaded into the body of a nicotine-addicted ex-thug and presented with a catch-22 offer he really shouldn’t be surprised. Contracted by a billionaire to discover who murdered his last body Kovacs is drawn into a terrifying conspiracy that stretches across known space and to the very top of society.
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Neuromancer is a science fiction masterpiece, a classic that ranks as one of the twentieth century’s most popular cyberpunk books.
Case was the sharpest data-thief in the matrix—until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace. Now a mysterious new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run at an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, a mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case is ready for the adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
It’s 2044 and reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.
But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win—and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.
The Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow
Far into the twenty-first century, the distinction between man and machine has become more blurred as people rely on mechanical implants for improvement and robots are enhanced with human tissue. Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg superagent, is tasked with tracking down the most cunning and dangerous terrorists and cybercriminals, including “ghost hackers” capable of exploiting the human/machine interface and reprogramming humans to become puppets to carry out the hackers’ criminal ends.
When Major Kusanagi follows the cybertrail of one of these master hackers, the Puppeteer, her journey takes her into a world beyond information and technology, where consciousness and the human soul are flipped upside down.
From Shirow Masamune, comes The Ghost in the Shell, the breakthrough cyberpunk manga that inspired the internationally acclaimed animated film. An epic dystopian tale of politics, technology, and metaphysics, The Ghost in the Shell has been hailed worldwide as an unparalleled visionary work of graphic fiction.
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
In a post-apocalyptic world, four men and one woman are all that remain of the human race, brought to near extinction by an artificial intelligence. Programmed to wage war on behalf of its creators, the AI became self-aware and turned against humanity. The five survivors are prisoners, kept alive and subjected to brutal torture by the hateful and sadistic machine in an endless cycle of violence.
This story and six more groundbreaking and inventive tales that probe the depths of mortal experience prove why Harlan Ellison has earned the many accolades to his credit and remains one of the most original voices in American literature.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the thriller of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo s Coso Nostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince.
Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous, you’ll recognize it immediately.
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature.
One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.
What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism’s genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?
Synners by Pat Cadigan
What does it mean to be human when you’re part of the machine?
Synners are synthesizers – not machines, but people. They take images from the brains of performers, and turn them into a form which can be packaged, sold and consumed. This book is set in a world where new technology spawns new crime before it hits the streets.
In Synners the line between technology and humanity is hopelessly slim; the human mind and the external landscape have fused to the point where any encounter with reality is incidental.
A classic novel from one of the founders and mainstays of the cyberpunk movement.
A Fire in the Sun by George Effinger
In a world filled with so many puppets, strings tend to get tangled. In this follow-up to the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails, the Budayeen is still a very dangerous place, a high-tech Arabian ghetto where power and murder go hand in hand.
Marid Audran used to be a low-level street hustler, relying on his wits and independence. Now he’s a cop planted in the force by Friedlander Bey, the powerful “godfather” of the Budayeen. Marid is supposed to simply be Bey’s envoy into the police, but as a series of grisly murders piles up—children, prostitutes, a fellow officer—he is drawn deeper and deeper into the city’s chaos.
Would Marid give up all his newfound money and power to get out of this mess? Absolutely. If only he could. But answers are never that easy and choices are never completely one’s own in the Budayeen.
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich, the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of LaRose and The Round House, paints a startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a cataclysmic event.
The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Twenty-six-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her.
But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant. Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.
If you enjoyed our reading list of Top Cyberpunk Novels to read, check out our Must Read Dystopian Novels
Cannot recommend The Windup Girl ! It has no sense of being in the future and most of the characters are boring. h.white @ [email protected]