Neuromancer

I can’t resist an invocation:) Most of these are old since I’ve been reading more articles these days but here are a few good books or series I’ve read more than twice: The Hobbit, LOTR, the Silmarillion, Neuromancer, the Chronicles of Narnia, Hong Lou Meng, The Heart Sutra, The Bhagavad Gita, The Tao De Ching, The Wheel of Time series, No country for old men, Persuasion, Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, The Way of Kings, The Talisman, the Dark Tower Series, and The Prophet.

I've lost count of the times I've read Neuromancer. Kim Stanley Robinson's The Wild Shore is another repeat favourite.

Read: American Gods, Consider Phlebas, Neuromancer, The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dune 1, Nineteen Eighty-Four listened to Foundation and I definitely recommend all. But for me Consider Phlebas is the best. Currently on 4th book in series, but cant get through it. Nineteen Eighty-Four doesnt feel geek novel, just political. Also great. I keep reading outputs from LLMs all day and don't have energy to focus on Eng written books in the evening.

I consolidated the comments for my reference later. Someone else might also find it useful: # Fiction Books Recommended for Programmers (HN Thread 46128404) ## Adrian Tchaikovsky - *Children of Time* — Science Fiction (Evolution, Space Opera) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-time) ## Rick Cook — Wizardry Series - *Wizard’s Bane* — Fantasy, Programming/Magic Mashup https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112616.Wizard_s_Bane - *Wizardry Series (overview)* https://www.goodreads.com/series/43084-wiz ## James P. Hogan - *Inherit the Stars* — Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/743568.Inherit_the_Stars - *Code of the Lifemaker* — Sci-Fi, Artificial Life https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296722.Code_of_the_Lifem... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296722.Code_of_the_Lifemaker) - *The Two Faces of Tomorrow* — AI, Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218017.The_Two_Faces_of_... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218017.The_Two_Faces_of_Tomorrow) ## D. F. Jones — Colossus Trilogy - *Colossus* — AI, Classic Sci-Fi Thriller…

These are all entertaining: Definitely the Wizardry series by Rick Cook https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/rick-cook/wizardry/ Programming meets magical realms James Hogan Inherit the Stars - Has supercomputers but not main characters Code of the Lifemaker Has Ancient Tech evolving into a robotic society Two Faces of Tomorrow - humans trying to get along with AI D.F.Jones Colossus, the Fall of Colossus, and Colossus and the Crab Humans creating machines to protect humanity (computers have different idea) and the rebellion, and a new threat. A Logic Names Joe - radioplay of short story. https://archive.org/details/OTRR_X_Minus_One_Singles/XMinusO... (https://archive.org/details/OTRR_X_Minus_One_Singles/XMinusOne55-12-28031ALogicNamedJoe.mp3) The internet and AI long before the internet and AI. David Gerrold - When H.A.R.L.I.E. was One - and other tales involving Artificial Super Intelligence William Gibson - Neuromancer and related - Cyberpunk series, the Difference Engine - a Steampunk technology tale.

I second Hyperion and Neuromancer -- both are amazing book and a great representation of modern and classic sci-fi

Multiple re-reads: - Saga of the Exiles by Julian May, which merges science fiction with folklore/fantasy in Pliocene Earth - Hyperion by Dan Simmons, excellent SF with a feel of the Canterbury Tales about it - Neuromancer by William Gibson, plus the follow-ups (all the Sprawl) are very good too - The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, about the eco collapse of the US in the 1980s (10 years after it was written) and which William Gibson called a "brilliant novel" And a couple of guilty pleasures: - Venus Equilateral by George O Smith, 1940s stories based around a three mile long space station at the L4 point in space, a bit like Babylon 5 meets DS9 in the era of vacuum tubes - Necrotech by KC Alexander, a brutal and obscene body-mod cyberpunk dystopia (the sequel of which, Nanoshock, has a superbly offensive opening sentence) - Halcyon Drift by Brian Stableford, about a corporate dystopia and a pilot who hooks up his body to merge with his ship (a bit blase now but less so then, especially as I had read far less at the time) - Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony, a 6 book series following the rise of a refugee to becoming the Tyrant of Jupiter

There are numerous science fiction books that have explored the potential impact of artificial intelligence on humanity, ranging from utopian to dystopian scenarios. Here are some of the most interesting and relevant titles that address the questions and fears you've mentioned: "Neuromancer" by William Gibson (1984): This cyberpunk classic envisions a future where AI is deeply ingrained in human society and plays a significant role in shaping it. "2001: A Space Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke (1968): The novel, as well as the film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick, explores the relationship between humans and AI, particularly when AI begins to develop its own goals and intentions. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick (1968): This novel, which inspired the movie "Blade Runner," questions the nature of humanity and consciousness as it relates to artificial beings. "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov (1950): A collection of short stories that feature the famous "Three Laws of Robotics" and explore various aspects of AI and their impact on society.…

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Neuromancer, of course.

Neuromancer and Snow Crash

Of the books I've read this year, the fiction ones that stand out to me would be: 1. The entire Sprawl Trilogy by Gibson, and the entire Bridge Trilogy, also by Gibson. The former I'd read before (multiple times) while the latter I had not read all the way through until now. Neuromancer I've read probably 7 or 8 times total in my life by now. I'm not as crazy about Gibson's later stuff, but the Sprawl and Bridge books are great. 2. The rest of the HHGTTG "trilogy" besides the first book. I'd read the first book a couple of years ago but never got around to reading the rest until this year. Note that when I say "the rest" I'm excluding that one book that was written by another author after Douglas Adams' passing. I may still read it one day, but I'm not in any hurry to do so. In terms of non-fiction: Real-World Reasoning: Toward Scalable, Uncertain Spatiotemporal, Contextual and Causal Inference by Ben Goertzel, Nil Geisweiller, and Lucio Coelho is the stand-out of the lot. How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker and How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe? by John R Anderson are also worthy of a mention.

Neuromancer Snow Crash Blindsight (Just some fun fiction to bolster one's passion for their chosen profession. Obviously TAOCP, SICP, K&R, and other books in their ranks are better answers.)

Neuromancer by William Gibson

A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L'Engle I probably read it in fourth or fifth grade, not too many years after it was published. It was definitely the first science fiction novel I ever read. It wasn't until many years later that I saw how foundational to my worldview it was that my first SF book had a female protagonist. I was going to give a few other examples of truly life-changing works (LOTR, Dune, Neuromancer), but I'm not sure how I would have found them if A Wrinkle In Time hadn't opened by pre-adolescent eyes.

Books that have changed my life: Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace Illuminatus Trilogy Neuromancer

- Sapiens - The Lord of the Rings - Siddhartha - Chaos: Making a New Science - The Death Gate cycle books - Neuromancer - Head First Design Patterns - Valis - Dune - The name of the rose I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones off the top of my head.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller and Neuromancer by William Gibson. Both of these I've read twice. The Dog Stars held up well on my second reading. Neuromancer did not.

"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein "Neuromancer" and sequels by William Gibson "Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut I've read all of them dozens of times over. Hard to explain why, they speak my language, and help me understand myself and the world around me, kind of like my favorite bands do. Hard to put into words.

My Favorite Sci-Fi book is Neuromancer by William Gibson. Also Philip K. Dick books like Ubik or his short stories are awesome.

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series is one of my all time favorites. Larry Niven’d Ringworld is a close second. Philip K Dick has some great stuff. I really enjoyed William Gibson’s Neuromancer and all of his other books. I just picked up a 1961 copy of Stanger in a Strange Land but I cannot comment on it yet.

Martian Chronicles, Crystal Express+Cysmatrix, Neuromancer,Hyperion, Portico...

Dune. Definitely Dune. The most epic sci-fi world that is so far in the future it feels like it could be middle earth. Politics, mysticism, prescience, intergalactic travel build an amazing world that feels utterly alien but still relatable. It’s like reading about modern battles between oil, culture and money, but in countless years and star system into the future. Honorable mentions for Hyperion and Neuromancer for my favorites :)

Read "Neuromancer" by William Gibson, also "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. Both offer something beyond just being Sci-Fi.

William Gibson's Neuromancer continues to hold up well both for adults and teens. Worth a read or re-read. Travel books can be a good fit for the summer, and Keri Smith's Wander Society is a fun pick. I also like to make a random pick or two that I'd never normally choose for myself. My next random pick may be off this thread... Z

There's a few: The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne False Memory by Dean Koontz Neuromancer by William Gibson

There's a recording[0] of Gibson reading Neuromancer that I really enjoyed. His reading is very stylistic and might be off-putting for some people, but I think it captures the spirit of the story better than a dry narration. [0] http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/neuromancer/neuromancer_audi... (http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/neuromancer/neuromancer_audio.html)

I find it somewhat hilarious to list Neuromancer as "Hard SF", though I liked it a lot... but Gibson has never even used a computer when he wrote it! Which explained so much about it's weirdness to me...

A few of my favorites like Accelerando and Neuromancer have been mentioned but I’ll add Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. It’s set in the near future but features general AI, lots of intrigue and conspiring governments and corporations. Really a great story.

Apart from classics like Neuromancer I'd recommend the fairly new Singularity Series by William Hertling and the first novel "Avogadro Corp" in particular.

My favorite: "Neuromancer" by William Gibson. A close second: "Accelerando" by Charles Stross. (I met Charles Stross once. He told me that "Accelerando" was not his favorite of the books he's written.)

Fundamentally changed are so big words but these were pretty cool: - Douglas Hofstadter's GEB: An Eternal Golden Braid - Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber - Ursula K. LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest - Propaganda by Edward Bernays - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond - Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States by Herfried Münkler - Smedley D. Butler's War is a Racket (more of an exposé) - In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (ditto) - Neuromancer by William Gibson

Or the "3 megabytes of hot ram" :) Still a good story though.

As a reader of books, one of the good things about growing older is that the books the younger version of myself read are books that this older version of myself hasn't and there is great pleasure in rereading the books the younger version of myself read as the older person I am. And that makes this exercise impossible for me. The books I would tell the younger version of myself to read wouldn't resonate the same way (or not at all) with that other person I used to be. Picking books that might have appealed to the younger version of myself accurately would mean picking the books I actually read -- e.g. The Fifth Discipline -- and not books that the younger version of myself tried to read but couldn't but that I read and recommend today: e.g. TAoCP. Part of the complexity is that the world in which I read books today is radically different from that of my younger self. Today I can get a MIX interpreter from the internet [1]...there's even help on StackOverflow. My younger self couldn't because even in the time when there was an internet bandwidth was low and Google didn't exist.…

Watchmen (Alan Moore) Origins of Form (Christopher Williams) Starship & The Canoe (Kenneth Brower) The Size of Lumber (Nicholson Baker) Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Shunryu Suzuki) Deschooling Society (Ivan Illich) Moby Dick (Herman Melville) Bolo'Bolo (P.M.) Le Ton beau de Marot (Douglas Hofstadter) Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (James Lovelock) Mouse or Rat: Translation as Negotiation (Umberto Eco) Neuromancer (William Gibson) The Intelligent Investor (Benjamin Graham) Don Quixote (Miguel Cervantes)

I'm sure there are many, but a few that jump to mind, in no particular order, and spanning both fiction and non-fiction: The Selfish Gene - Dawkins A New Kind of Science - Wolfram The Singularity is Near - Kurzweil Gödel, Escher, Bach - Hofstadter Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies - Hofstadter Atlas Shrugged - Rand The Fountainhead - Rand Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin Time Reborn - Lee Smolin Ambient Findability - Peter Morville Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software - Steven Johnson Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age - Duncan Watts Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life - Albert-laszlo Barabasi Artificial Life - Steven Levy The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman not a book, but the various writings of Douglas Engelbart - http://www.dougengelbart.org/library/library.html Glasshouse - Charles Stross Permutation City - Greg Egan Neuromancer - William Gibson The Shockwave Rider - John Brunner The Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky…

What I really liked about Neuromancer looking back, is how many black characters it had. Once of the first sci-fi books I read that had characters I could easily identify with. Maelcum was pivotal in the entire story and was a cool bad boy type. And you can't forget the whole crew in the "Marcus Garvey" spaceship. Quality stuff. That right there was enough to make me a lifelong Gibson fan.

+1 Neuromancer was a wild ride for me, Gibson practically invented cyberpunk fiction when he wrote this novel. Ahh, Case will always be in my heart! :)

Neuromancer - William Gibson REAMDE- Neal Stephenson Pattern Recognition / Zero History / Spook Country - William Gibson The Peripheral - William Gibson Not exactly the same thing, but I'll also throw in Glasshouse by Charles Stross. And since we're talking Charles Stross, also add Halting State to the list. Oh, and VALIS by Philip K. Dick. Definitely worth a read.

Lord of the Light Dune Neuromancer Hyperion Snow Crash Use of Weapons Pandora's Star / Judas Unchained

The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank Neuromancer - William Gibson Predictable Revenue - Aaron Ross, Marylou Tyler The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand The Ultimate Question 2.0 - Fred Reichheld‎ The Singularity is Near - Ray Kurzweil Moonshot! - John Sculley Zero To One - Peter Thiel Republic - Plato Meditations - Marcus Aurelius Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne Discipline of Market Leaders - Michael Treacy, Fred Wiersema False Memory - Dean Koontz NOS4A2- Joe Hill Revival - Stephen King Barbarians At The Gate - John Helyar and Bryan Burrough Into Thin Air - John Krakauer How To Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard and any collection of the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Books I imagine will have 'tremendous' (what a prior, lol) effect Non-fiction; Slavoj Zizek's Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism Evgeny Morozov's To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism Fiction; William Gibson's Neuromancer Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought)

The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne Neuromancer - William Gibson Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell Perdido Street Station - China Mieville Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card Foundation series - Asimov among others...

A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick Neuromancer - William Gibson Expanded Universe - Robert A. Heinlein

The trilogy of Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, and Mona Lisa Overdrive is still my favorite work of fiction, and also, to my mind, exemplifies the kind of taut, awesome writing that I would want to do if I wrote novels. It the only series of 3 books I have read more than once. I caught these books at just the right time in my life (age 13 or 14), leading my high-school fascination with Japan and rekindled interest in computing, and probably played an inordinately large role in me ending up as a programmer who lives in Tokyo, two decades later. I like great sci fi best, but I think most of it is crap, including virtually all of the old pulp sci fi and Asimov I grew up reading (which was basically all of it), Star Wars/Trek, etc. Other than Gibson's stuff, some of the truly spectacular sci fi I have read is the very-dense-and-not-at-all-thriller-ish Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars), and the fast-paced-and-awesome Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. That led me to read all of Wilson's books, many of which are also good. Also Haldeman is an author worth reading, though not all of his books hit their mark.…

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Both Neuromancer and Cryptonomicon are about "social, cultural and economic dynamics", and they are very good books to boot. Try as I might, I can't remember any mocking of Turing in the Cryptonomicon. I'm quite confident Neal Stephenson is not a homophobe.

I'll have to say Neuromancer by William Gibson. Changed my worldview and what I thought was possible. I'm a huge fan of Ian M Banks, Charlie Stross, Ian MacDonald, Cory Doctorow, Peter Watts and older (90's) Stephen Baxter. Baxter's Titan is a great piece of writing - makes you feel the isolation of being millions of miles from humanity

Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive. The Cukoo's Egg is good as well.

Neuromancer and Snow Crash always inspired me.

Non-developer specific good sci-fi books: -Dune -Hyperion + The Fall of Hyperion -The Book Of The New Sun -Ilium + Olympos -Takeshi Kovacs trilogy -The Culture Series (meh..) -The Demolished Man More dev-oriented: -Reamde (which I hated, but I seem to be in a minority) -Neuromancer I'll always have a special place in my heart for Calculating God (not science fiction), because its the book that got me into reading seriously.

I'm a big fan of Sci-Fi because I feel it makes people think about what they want the future to be, as well as avoiding the re-hashing of historical and current events that many fiction books set in the present do. With that in mind a list of great books to read: The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson Gridlinked - Neal Asher Neuromancer - William Gibson The Reality Dysfunction - Peter F. Hamilton The Dreaming Void - Peter F. Hamilton Fallen Dragon - Peter F. Hamilton Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan Market Forces - Richard Morgan Blindsight - Peter Watts The Electric Church - Jeff Somers Tunnel in the Sky - Robert A. Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein 1984 - George Orwell

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Technically, it's sci-fi. Neuromancer a close second.

Neuromancer by William Gibson, though it might not be inspiring, is a must-read; it's practically internet heritage!

Fiction: - The Time Machine (still holds up very well, and seems strangely eerie and prescient in places)... (H. G. Wells) - Dune (Frank Herbert) - The Hobbit (and LotR) (Tolkien) - Neuromancer (William Gibson) - Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties (I picked up Idoru first, so I haven't yet read Virtual Light) (also Gibson) - The Difference Engine (Gibson, Sterling) - Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) - Cryptonomicon (" ") - Circuit of Heaven, End of Days (Dennis Danvers) - All of the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories and novels. (Fritz Leiber) - The Earthsea trilogy (Ursula K. LeGuin) - 'salem's Lot (Stephen King) - Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein) - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain) - the Coldfire trilogy (C. S. Friedman) - various Cory Doctorow short stories - Kamikaze L'Amour (Richard Kadrey) - Lightpaths (Howard V. Hendrix) - A Canticle For Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr.) - Moonwar, Venus (Ben Bova) - the Stainless Steel Rat series (Harry Harrison) - Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) - Ringworld (Larry Niven) - Cthon (Piers Anthony) -- Trippiness level approaching Philip Jose Farmer ;-) - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams)…

The Search by John Battelle. Then, just for fun, Neuromancer.