Top Ten Cyberpunk Books to Read

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 challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

In a post-apocalyptic world, four men and one woman are all that remain of the human race, brought to near extinction by an artificial intelligence. Programmed to wage war on behalf of its creators, the AI became self-aware and turned against humanity. The five survivors are prisoners, kept alive and subjected to brutal torture by the hateful and sadistic machine in an endless cycle of violence.

This story and six more groundbreaking and inventive tales that probe the depths of mortal experience prove why Harlan Ellison has earned the many accolades to his credit and remains one of the most original voices in American literature.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand. Undercover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature.

One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, hard wired to satisfy the whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered diseases run rampant around the world.

A Fire in the Sun by George Effinger

In a world filled with so many puppets, strings tend to get tangled. In this follow-up to the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails, the Budayeen is still a very dangerous place, a high-tech Arabian ghetto where power and murder go hand in hand.

Marid Audran used to be a small-time criminal, relying on his wits and freedom. Now he’s an undercover policeman planted by Friedlander Bey, the powerful leader of the Budayeen. Marid is supposed to just be Bey’s eyes in the police force, but a series of grisly murders piles up draws him deeper and deeper into the city’s chaos.

If you enjoyed this Cyberpunk reading list, check our best Dystopian Books to Read.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Hundreds of years in the future, humans are strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. These are connected only by the occasional spaceship and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course.

But some things never change. So when ex-envoy, now-convict Takeshi Kovacs has his consciousness and skills downloaded into the body of a nicotine-addicted ex-thug and presented with a catch-22 offer he really shouldn’t be surprised. Contracted by a billionaire to discover who murdered his last body, Kovacs is drawn into a terrifying conspiracy that stretches across known space and to the very top of society.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set in an imagined 1992, where mankind has been nearly wiped out and many have subsequently moved off-world to Mars. Richard Deckard is a bounty hunter who finds and destroys androids, made of materials fashioned into true likenesses of human internal organs and appearances, with only minute differences. Who deserves to live, and should an android even count as a “who” instead of a “what”?

This novella was loosely adapted into the 1982 film Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash weaves virtual reality, myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cyber sensibility to bring us the thriller of the information age. In real life, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's Cosa Nostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a prince.

Diving headfirst into the mystery 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 an apocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind bending roller coaster through a future America so weird, so outrageous, that it seems very familiar.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

It’s 2044 and reality is an ugly place. The only time teen Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual metaverse known as the OASIS. Wade devotes his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But as he uncovers the first clue, he finds himself under siege by other players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win it all.

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

Published in 1975, The Shockwave Rider is considered a classic of the cyberpunk genre. Set in a dystopian future where corporations control the world and individuals have no privacy or autonomy.

The protagonist, Nickie Haflinger, is a fugitive from the government who has been trained as a data pirate and has the ability to manipulate information in cyberspace. To fight the system, he hides who he is by altering his identity, and tries valiantly to change the system for the better.

Synners by Pat Cadigan

What does it mean to be human when you’re part of the machine?

Synners are synthesizers – not machines, but people. They take images from the brains of performers, and turn them into a form which can be packaged, sold and consumed. This book is set in a world where new technology spawns new crime before it hits the streets.

In Synners the line between technology and humanity is hopelessly slim; the human mind and the external landscape have fused to the point where any encounter with reality is incidental.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

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 challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

In a post-apocalyptic world, four men and one woman are all that remain of the human race, brought to near extinction by an artificial intelligence. Programmed to wage war on behalf of its creators, the AI became self-aware and turned against humanity. The five survivors are prisoners, kept alive and subjected to brutal torture by the hateful and sadistic machine in an endless cycle of violence.

This story and six more groundbreaking and inventive tales that probe the depths of mortal experience prove why Harlan Ellison has earned the many accolades to his credit and remains one of the most original voices in American literature.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand. Undercover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature.

One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, hard wired to satisfy the whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered diseases run rampant around the world.

A Fire in the Sun by George Effinger

In a world filled with so many puppets, strings tend to get tangled. In this follow-up to the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails, the Budayeen is still a very dangerous place, a high-tech Arabian ghetto where power and murder go hand in hand.

Marid Audran used to be a small-time criminal, relying on his wits and freedom. Now he’s an undercover policeman planted by Friedlander Bey, the powerful leader of the Budayeen. Marid is supposed to just be Bey’s eyes in the police force, but a series of grisly murders piles up draws him deeper and deeper into the city’s chaos.

If you enjoyed this Cyberpunk reading list, check our best Dystopian Books to Read.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Hundreds of years in the future, humans are strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. These are connected only by the occasional spaceship and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course.

But some things never change. So when ex-envoy, now-convict Takeshi Kovacs has his consciousness and skills downloaded into the body of a nicotine-addicted ex-thug and presented with a catch-22 offer he really shouldn’t be surprised. Contracted by a billionaire to discover who murdered his last body, Kovacs is drawn into a terrifying conspiracy that stretches across known space and to the very top of society.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set in an imagined 1992, where mankind has been nearly wiped out and many have subsequently moved off-world to Mars. Richard Deckard is a bounty hunter who finds and destroys androids, made of materials fashioned into true likenesses of human internal organs and appearances, with only minute differences. Who deserves to live, and should an android even count as a “who” instead of a “what”?

This novella was loosely adapted into the 1982 film Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash weaves virtual reality, myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cyber sensibility to bring us the thriller of the information age. In real life, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's Cosa Nostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a prince.

Diving headfirst into the mystery 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 an apocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind bending roller coaster through a future America so weird, so outrageous, that it seems very familiar.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

It’s 2044 and reality is an ugly place. The only time teen Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual metaverse known as the OASIS. Wade devotes his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But as he uncovers the first clue, he finds himself under siege by other players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win it all.

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

Published in 1975, The Shockwave Rider is considered a classic of the cyberpunk genre. Set in a dystopian future where corporations control the world and individuals have no privacy or autonomy.

The protagonist, Nickie Haflinger, is a fugitive from the government who has been trained as a data pirate and has the ability to manipulate information in cyberspace. To fight the system, he hides who he is by altering his identity, and tries valiantly to change the system for the better.

Synners by Pat Cadigan

What does it mean to be human when you’re part of the machine?

Synners are synthesizers – not machines, but people. They take images from the brains of performers, and turn them into a form which can be packaged, sold and consumed. This book is set in a world where new technology spawns new crime before it hits the streets.

In Synners the line between technology and humanity is hopelessly slim; the human mind and the external landscape have fused to the point where any encounter with reality is incidental.