Cyberpunk Book Club: Dope Books About Future Tech
Here’s a list of futuristic books you should soak up into your hive mind.
From the creativity of Artificial Intelligence to sci-fi novels where Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are crucial for survival, we hope to blow your mind with our Cyberpunk Book Club.
I Forced a Bot to Write This Book: A.I. Meets B.S.
by Keaton Patti
Humorist Keaton Patti "forced a bot" to digest massive amounts of human media to produce these absurdly funny, “totally real,” “bot-generated” scripts, essays, advertisements, and more.
Ever wonder what an AI bot might come up with if tasked with creative writing? From Olive Garden commercials to White House press briefings to Game of Thrones scripts, writer and comedian Keaton Patti’s “bot” recognizes and heightens the tropes of whatever it’s reproducing to hilarious effect. Each “bot-generated” piece can be enjoyed as surrealist commentary on the media we consume every day or simply as silly robot jokes—either way, you’ll probably end up laughing.
Neuromancer
by William Gibson
Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer is a science fiction masterpiece—a classic that ranks as one of the twentieth century’s most potent visions of the future.
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
At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut - part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.
A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?
In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days.
When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself.
Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win.
Ready Player Two
by Ernest Cline
Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything.
Hidden within Halliday’s vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous—and addictive—than even Wade dreamed possible.
With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest—a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize.
And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who’ll kill millions to get what he wants.
Wade’s life and the future of the OASIS are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.
Lovingly nostalgic and wildly original as only Ernest Cline could conceive it, Ready Player Two takes us on another imaginative, fun, action-packed adventure through his beloved virtual universe, and jolts us thrillingly into the future once again.
The History of The Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality
by Blake J. Harris
The dramatic, larger-than-life true story behind the founding of Oculus and its quest for virtual reality, by the best-selling author of Console Wars.
From iconic books like Neuromancer to blockbuster films like The Matrix, virtual reality has long been hailed as the ultimate technology. But outside of a few research labs and military training facilities, this tantalizing vision of the future was nothing but science fiction. Until 2012, when Oculus founder Palmer Luckey - then just a rebellious teenage dreamer living alone in a camper trailer - invents a device that has the potential to change everything.
With the help of a video game legend, a serial entrepreneur, and many other colorful characters, Luckey’s scrappy start-up kick-starts a revolution and sets out to bring VR to the masses. As with most underdog stories, things don’t quite go according to plan. But what happens next turns out to be the ultimate entrepreneurial journey: a tale of battles won and lost, lessons learned, and never-ending twists and turns - including an unlikely multibillion-dollar acquisition by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg that shakes up the landscape in Silicon Valley and gives Oculus the chance to forever change our reality.
Drawing on more than 100 interviews with the key players driving this revolution, The History of the Future weaves together a rich, cinematic narrative that captures the breakthroughs, breakdowns, and human drama of trying to change the world. The result is a super accessible and supremely entertaining look at the birth of a game-changing new industry.
Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison—a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.
In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra 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.
Charlie Fink's Metaverse - An AR Enabled Guide to AR & VR
by Charlie Fink
Charlie Fink, who covers VR & AR for Forbes, brings thirty-five years of experience as an entertainment and technology executive to what he calls "the greatest business and technology story of our time". He and his collaborators have created a guide to emerging VR & AR that is engaging to professionals, accessible to non-technical readers, and relentlessly entertaining to everyone. The book features original character animation, presented through our free app, "Fink Metaverse", available in the App Store and Google Play.
"The Bible for VR & AR is an AR Book. I love this idea!” - Nolan Bushnell, Founder of Atari
"The most entertaining non-fiction book about computers ever written.” - Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman Emeritus of AOL
“A must read for anyone concerned about where the future is headed.” - Alvin Graylin, President HTC Vive, China
“Charlie gets that blending the physical and digital worlds in mixed reality is the future of computing and explains it in a very compelling way.” - Alex Kipman, Microsoft Technical Fellow and HoloLens Inventor
“Required reading for those seeking to understand immersive computing.” - Frank Soqui, General Manager Virtual Reality, Intel Corporation
Contributors Include: Matt Miesnieks, Stephanie Llamas, Michael Eichenseer, Annika Steiber, Mark Billinghurst, Ori Inbar, Peter Wilkins, Dirk Schart, Samuel Steinberger, Walter Greenleaf, Tim Kashani, Tony Parisi, Kyle Menick, Samantha G. Wolfe, Tim Merel, Tamiko Theil, Zenka and Penrose Studios