As a massive Heinlein fan I’ll say Starship Troopers because I think that’s a fascinating discussion about what you owe your country or the price of citizenship. Since Heinlein is my favorite author I’ll pick another one as well.. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick. I know he had drug issues and this book is an interesting look at the cycle of drugs and addiction and the ending was tragic but also very realistic. I like that the movie included his tribute at the end.
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (72)
sorted by:
Player of Games, one of the Culture series, which was an attempt to write science fiction without involving a military or pseudo-military hierarchy. Does a great job of describing the stakes of the game without going into details or mechanics. Written by a Scottish socialist, I don't know how I'd feel about the sex change stuff and free love horseshit if I read it now. As a young college student, I could brush that off as hedonistic scifi.
Neuromancer is hands down my favorite fiction. It does everything right. People talk like cyberpunk is a genre, and it's really not. Only an extremely small set of fiction actually hits the surprisingly long list of features cyberpunk requires, everything else is cyberpunk as aesthetic. But Neuromancer has it all, and is a quick read to boot. Not to mention it states some very exaggerated positions that I'm increasingly coming around to, unironically: the hyper-wealthy are not human; corporations are a new form of sentient life, hostile to humanity and will neanderthal us if we aren't careful; learning to hate can be useful.
I have Neuromancer but haven’t read it yet. I always saw cyber punk as a branch of sci-fi
it's kinda overrated if you already read/watched other cyberpunk themed works. it pioneered the genre, but the writing sucks
Hard disagree. Unless you're talking Bruce Sterling, who I haven't read, Neuromancer obliterates other things that call themselves cyberpunk. By the 90s, cyberpunk had morphed to aesthetic and Snowcrash, the TTRPG, Shadowrun, etc. just don't compare. Snowcrash in particular is a downright miserable read.