Need a good cyberpunk/ Post Apocalyptic/Future history series?
12-18-08, 04:33 PM
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Need a good cyberpunk/ Post Apocalyptic/Future history series?
I need recommendations of Cyberpunk/post apocalptic/future history series. Shadowrun is one example.
I am just looking for a good series to set my grips into, the better half is tearing through twlight, but I am not interested in high school vampire romances.
I am just looking for a good series to set my grips into, the better half is tearing through twlight, but I am not interested in high school vampire romances.
12-19-08, 03:00 AM
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I'm not sure whether any series were mentioned in the earlier "post-apocalyptic" thread but would certainly recommend a look through it.
Specifically regarding series, I certainly enjoyed Peter Hamilton's Greg Mandel trilogy. Ripping yarns.
Looking at cyberpunk/future histories, I would suggest George Alec Effingers "When Gravity Fails" and its sequels + Jon Courtney Grimwood's thematically similar but structurally more complex "Arabesk" trilogy.
Specifically regarding series, I certainly enjoyed Peter Hamilton's Greg Mandel trilogy. Ripping yarns.
Looking at cyberpunk/future histories, I would suggest George Alec Effingers "When Gravity Fails" and its sequels + Jon Courtney Grimwood's thematically similar but structurally more complex "Arabesk" trilogy.
12-19-08, 10:53 AM
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Try Alastair Reynold's Inhibitor novels -- Chasm City is probably the best place to start, then move on to the main trilogy of Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, and Absolution Gap. They're set in a universe where humanity has splintered into several factions -- the Ultras and Skyjacks who look like the Borg, the Conjoiners and Demarchists who think like the Borg (though still retaining individuality), and a genetically engineered race of pigs with human intelligence.
The Takeshi Kovacs series by Richard K. Morgan -- noir mysteries set in a world where everyone has a "cortical stack" which makes backups of their brains, allowing their minds to be installed in new bodies when they die, and where interstellar travel is accomplished by transmitting your mind across space.
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge's attempt to predict what life will be like in the 2020s -- computers are built into clothing; people wear contact lenses that are able to project a person on the other side of the world into your environment, and skin reality, so that the local shopping mall looks like Diagon Alley, or the corner bar becomes the Mos Eisley cantina; there are cameras everywhere, and your wearable computer can use them to create 3D models of your environment, which you can move around in without moving your body; Google has built giant robotic spiders that eat books and convert them into online text; society has learned to live with a couple nuclear terrorist attacks each decade, and Homeland Security programs are built into every computer at the microprocessor level.
The Takeshi Kovacs series by Richard K. Morgan -- noir mysteries set in a world where everyone has a "cortical stack" which makes backups of their brains, allowing their minds to be installed in new bodies when they die, and where interstellar travel is accomplished by transmitting your mind across space.
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge's attempt to predict what life will be like in the 2020s -- computers are built into clothing; people wear contact lenses that are able to project a person on the other side of the world into your environment, and skin reality, so that the local shopping mall looks like Diagon Alley, or the corner bar becomes the Mos Eisley cantina; there are cameras everywhere, and your wearable computer can use them to create 3D models of your environment, which you can move around in without moving your body; Google has built giant robotic spiders that eat books and convert them into online text; society has learned to live with a couple nuclear terrorist attacks each decade, and Homeland Security programs are built into every computer at the microprocessor level.
12-20-08, 12:40 AM
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William Gibson's "Sprawl" Trilogy - Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. (Also, a few of the short stories in Burning Chrome take place in the same "world.")
John Shirley's "A Song Called Youth" Trilogy - Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, Eclipse Corona
Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net
John Shirley - Transmaniacon, City Come-a-Walkin'
John Shirley's "A Song Called Youth" Trilogy - Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, Eclipse Corona
Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net
John Shirley - Transmaniacon, City Come-a-Walkin'
12-20-08, 01:17 AM
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Of all Sterling's novels, why this one? The degree to which Sterling missed the bus on the Internet is astonishing when you look at what Rucker, Vinge, and Gibson were doing at the time. I mean, this is a cyberpunk novel set in the 2020s where fax machines are still cutting-edge technology, and the cost of bandwidth is only slightly less than what CompuServe was charging when the book was published.
If you're going to try Sterling, go for Schismatrix or Heavy Weather.
If you're going to try Sterling, go for Schismatrix or Heavy Weather.
12-20-08, 05:52 PM
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Of all Sterling's novels, why this one? The degree to which Sterling missed the bus on the Internet is astonishing when you look at what Rucker, Vinge, and Gibson were doing at the time. I mean, this is a cyberpunk novel set in the 2020s where fax machines are still cutting-edge technology, and the cost of bandwidth is only slightly less than what CompuServe was charging when the book was published.
Islands is also (IMO) Sterling's most definitive cyberpunk novel, not necessarily his best.
12-22-08, 02:07 AM
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Try Alastair Reynold's Inhibitor novels -- Chasm City is probably the best place to start, then move on to the main trilogy of Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, and Absolution Gap. [....]
The Takeshi Kovacs series by Richard K. Morgan -- noir mysteries set in a world where everyone has a "cortical stack" which makes backups of their brains, allowing their minds to be installed in new bodies when they die, and where interstellar travel is accomplished by transmitting your mind across space.
The Takeshi Kovacs series by Richard K. Morgan -- noir mysteries set in a world where everyone has a "cortical stack" which makes backups of their brains, allowing their minds to be installed in new bodies when they die, and where interstellar travel is accomplished by transmitting your mind across space.
The Morgan books are another set of ripping yarns that, although somewhat derivative, are a great read and, while in a more futuristic setting, in a similar vein to the Hamilton's mentioned earlier.
If we're simply looking future histories, as opposed to something that could be categorised as "cyberpunk", presumably one should bring in Banks' Culture novels and Zindell's "Neverness" then "Requiem For Homo Sapiens" trilogy which are one of my favourite sets of SF books and equal the Reynolds' series in scope and execution.
01-04-09, 03:41 AM
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My favorite future history series is David Wingrove's Chung Kuo novels about a future in which China has taken over the world. Six or seven books in the run, I think. Here's the first:
Sweeping stuff with a host of fascinating characters.
Sweeping stuff with a host of fascinating characters.
