Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by facepalm | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

facepalm

I recently tried to make a list of good virtual reality reads (not all of them cyberpunk, though):

Otherland - Tad Williams

Ready Player One

Daemon - David Suarez

Neuromancer - William Gibson

Shadowrun - ?? there are lots of possibly varying quality, I only read the ones by Nigel Findley which I liked

Snowcrash - Stephenson

Reamde - Stephenson

Der falsche Spiegel - Sergej Lukianenko (not sure about the english name)

Masters of Doom - Story of ID developing the games Doom and Quake - not really a VR story, but it sets the mood.

Pollen - Jeff Noon

Bruce Sterling is great, too, but I don't remember which of his stories are about virtual reality.

I suppose Ian Bank's "The Culture" novels might be a candidate, but I haven't read them yet.

View on HN

Another vote for Neuromancer, Snowcrash and the relatively little-known but excellent Pollen. I read some Iain Banks recently at the behest of an old friend who I introduced to science fiction over 15 years ago, but didn't find it particularly engrossing. Embassytown by China Miéville was an excellent and pithy meditation on the nature of communication, albeit longer than I would have deemed necessary.

Iain (M) Banks' "Culture" novels are great fun, but they are (IMHO) in no way cyberpunk, nor do they concern VR. His SF is about people running around in meatspace doing things.

well okay there's a decent chunk of VR in 'Feersum Endjiin' but that's very much the exception

I see - didn't know that. I thought they are about artificial life or a society that chose to withdraw into cyberspace. But as I said, I haven't read them.

Vernor Vinge's True Names should be on that list as well.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1280983.True_Names

Lukianenko's book name in English is "Labyrinth of Reflections". I loved Lukianenko and read all his books (in Russian) until I realized that I am strongly opposed to his political views.

I must admit I don't really know his political views. Do you mean what shines through in his books, or do you have some other source (like interviews with him or whatever)? I have only read his books, and only the ones that have been translated to German.

Have you read "Das Schlangenschwert"? I really liked his reflections on society in that one.

No, I would not say his political views shine through his books. But he is pretty vocal about them in his Russian-language blog: http://dr-piliulkin.livejournal.com/

I cannot really figure out what would be the name of the book you mentioned, in Russian or English, but most likely no - I have not read it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com