Altered Carbon (2002)

Artemis

Andy Weir

2017 · 320 pages · 4 reviews

Others: Leaning negative

JASMINE BASHARA never signed up to be a hero. She just wanted to get rich. Not crazy, eccentric-billionaire rich, like many of the visitors to her hometown of Artemis, humanity's first and only lunar colony. Just rich enough to move out of her coffin-sized apartment and eat something better than flavored algae. Rich enough to pay off a debt she's owed for a long time. So when a chance at a huge score finally comes her way, Jazz can't say no. Sure, it requires her to graduate from small-time smuggler to full-on criminal mastermind. And it calls for a particular combination of cunning, technical skills, and large explosions--not to mention sheer brazen swagger. But Jazz has never run into a challenge her intellect can't handle, and she figures she's got the "swagger" part down. The trouble is, engineering the perfect crime is just the start of Jazz's problems. Because her little heist is about to land her in the middle of a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself. Trapped between competing forces, pursued by a killer and the law alike, even Jazz has to admit she's in way over her head. She'll have to hatch a truly spectacular scheme to have a chance at staying alive and saving her city. Jazz is no hero, but she is a very good criminal. That'll have to do. Propelled by its heroine's wisecracking voice, set in a city that's at once stunningly imagined and intimately familiar, and brimming over with clever problem solving and heisty fun, Artemis is another irresistible brew of science, suspense, and humor from #1 bestselling author Andy Weir. This description comes from the publisher.

Daemon

Daniel Suarez

2009 · 540 pages · 2 reviews

Others: Positive

Already an underground sensation, a high-tech thriller for the wireless age that explores the unthinkable consequences of a computer program running without human control—a daemon—designed to dismantle society and bring about a new world order. Technology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can't always be said for the people who design them. Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer—the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company's stock price. But Sobol's fans aren't the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol's secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it's up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy—or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control... Computer technology expert Daniel Suarez blends haunting high-tech realism with gripping suspense in an authentic, complex thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson.

Freedom™

Daniel Suarez

2010 · 411 pages · 3 reviews

Others: Overwhelmingly positive

The propulsive, shockingly plausible sequel to New York Times bestseller DaemonIn one of the most buzzed-about debuts of 2009, Daniel Suarez introduced a terrifying vision of a new world order, controlled by the Daemon, an insidious computer program unleashed by a hi-tech wunderkind, Daemon captured the attention of the tech community, became a New York Times and Indie bestseller, and left readers hungry for more.Well, more is here, and it's even more gripping than its predecessor.In the opening chapters of Freedom(tm), the Daemon is firmly in control, using an expanded network of real-world, dispossessed darknet operatives to tear apart civilization and rebuild it anew. Soon civil war breaks out in the American Midwest, in a brutal wave of violence that becomes known as the Corn Rebellion. Former detective Pete Sebeck, now the Daemon's most powerful-though reluctant-operative, must lead a small band of enlightened humans toward a populist movement designed to protect the new world order. But the private armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon once and for all.In a world of conflicted loyalties, rapidly diminishing human power, and the possibility that anyone can be a spy, what's at stake is nothing less than human freedom's last hope to survive the technology revolution.

Recursion

Blake Crouch

2019 · 341 pages · 9 reviews

Others: Overwhelmingly positive

Memory makes reality. That’s what New York City cop Barry Sutton is learning as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome—a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived. That's what neuroscientist Helena Smith believes. It’s why she’s dedicated her life to creating a technology that will let us preserve our most precious memories. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent. As Barry searches for the truth, he comes face-to-face with an opponent more terrifying than any disease—a force that attacks not just our minds but the very fabric of the past. And as its effects begin to unmake the world as we know it, only he and Helena, working together, will stand a chance at defeating it. But how can they make a stand when reality itself is shifting and crumbling all around them?

The Tar-Aiym Krang

Alan Dean Foster

1972 · 251 pages · 1 review

Others: Mixed

When Gravity Fails

George Alec Effinger

1987 · 284 pages · 2 reviews

Others: Positive

In a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death, Marid Audran has kept his independence and his identity the hard way. Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he is available ...for a price. For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the decadent Arabic ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audran has been made an offer he can't refuse. The two-hundred-year-old "godfather" of crime in the Budayeen has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to stop a killer with the powers of every psychopath since the beginning of time... Wry, savage and unforgettable. When Gravity Fails is a new major work of dark genius by one of the most celebrated talents in science fiction today--a cutting-edge, heart-stopping tour-de-force detective story about an insane future world not so far removed from our own. ... from the cover