As a science fiction lover, cyberpunk remains one of my favorite subgenres. Best described as “high tech, low life,” cyberpunk is set in a futuristic dystopia where advanced technology and scientific wonders are contrasted against issues like wealth disparity, rampant corporatization, artificial intelligence, and social decay. If neon-lit dystopias or gritty noir mysteries are up your alley, then check out this list of cyberpunk books available at Davenport Public Library. (Descriptions below provided by the publisher.)
Midnight, Water City by Chris McKinney
Year 2142: Earth is forty years past a near-collision with the asteroid Sessho-seki. Akira Kimura, the scientist responsible for eliminating the threat, has reached heights of celebrity approaching deification. But now, Akira feels her safety is under threat, so after years without contact, she reaches out to her former head of security, who has since become a police detective.
When he arrives at her deep-sea home and finds Akira methodically dismembered, this detective will risk everything—his career, his family, even his own life—and delve back into his shared past with Akira to find her killer. With a rich, cinematic voice and burning cynicism, Midnight, Water City is both a thrilling neo-noir procedural and a stunning exploration of research, class, climate change, the cult of personality, and the dark sacrifices we are willing to make in the name of progress. – Soho Press
Glow by Tim Jordan
After the Nova-Insanity shattered Earth’s civilization, the Genes and Fullerenes Corporation promised to bring humanity back from the brink. Many years later, various factions have formed, challenging their savior and vying for a share of power and control.
Glow follows the lives of three very different beings, all wrestling mental instability in various forms; Rex – a confused junkie battling multiple voices in his head; Ellayna – the founder of the GFC living on the Cloud9 geostationary orbital and struggling with paranoia; and Jett – a virtually unstoppable voidian assassin, questioning his purpose of creation.
All of them are inextricably linked through the capricious and volatile Glow; an all controlling nano-tech drug that has the ability to live on through multiple hosts, cutting and pasting memories and personas in each new victim.
In this tech-crazed world where nothing seems impossible, many questions are posed: what makes us who we are? What is our ultimate purpose and place in this world? And, most frightening of all, what are we capable of doing to survive? – Angry Robot
Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling
Welcome to QualityLand, the epitome of a utopian society where a universal ranking system dictates social status and career paths. Here, an automated matchmaking service handles everything from pairing ideal partners to orchestrating breakups when those matches inevitably change. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop, know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it.
In QualityCity, Peter Jobless, a machine scrapper by trade, grapples with his role in dismantling machines that he secretly believes have worth. He unwittingly becomes the leader of a group of robotic misfits hidden in his home and workplace. When Peter receives a product from TheShop that he unequivocally does not want, he faces a monumental decision: return the product and challenge the infallible algorithms of TheShop, risking a seismic upheaval of QualityLand’s carefully constructed perfection.
Marc-Uwe Kling’s QualityLand, his first book translated into English, is a sharp, insightful satire reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and George Orwell. This brilliantly clever and thought-provoking novel offers a darkly humorous glimpse into a future that may be closer than we’d like to admit. Don’t wait—TheShop already knows you’ll enjoy this book, so dive in and discover why. – Hachette Book Group
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.
Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold. – Random House
An Unnatural Life by Erin K. Wagner
Murderbot meets To Kill a Mockingbird in Erin K. Wagner’s An Unnatural Life, an interplanetary tale of identity and responsibility. The cybernetic organism known as 812-3 is in prison, convicted of murdering a human worker but he claims that he did not do it. With the evidence stacked against him, his lawyer, Aiya Ritsehrer, must determine grounds for an appeal and uncover the true facts of the case. But with artificial life-forms having only recently been awarded legal rights on Earth, the military complex on Europa is resistant to the implementation of these same rights on the Jovian moon. Aiya must battle against her own prejudices and that of her new paymasters, to secure a fair trial for her charge, while navigating her own interpersonal drama, before it’s too late. – Macmillan Publishers
Noor by Nnedi Okorafor
From Africanfuturist luminary Okorafor comes a new science fiction novel of intense action and thoughtful rumination on biotechnology, destiny, and humanity in a near-future Nigeria.
Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt…natural, and that’s putting it lightly. Her parents spent most of the days before she was born praying for her peaceful passing because even in-utero she was “wrong”. But she lived. Then came the car accident years later that disabled her even further. Yet instead of viewing her strange body the way the world views it, as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. And then one day she goes to her local market and everything goes wrong.
Once on the run, she meets a Fulani herdsman named DNA and the race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria begins. In a world where all things are streamed, everyone is watching the “reckoning of the murderess and the terrorist” and the “saga of the wicked woman and mad man” unfold. This fast-paced, relentless journey of tribe, destiny, body, and the wonderland of technology revels in the fact that the future sometimes isn’t so predictable. Expect the unaccepted. – Astra Publishing
During the month of January, look for the “Cyberpunk” display at the Main branch for more recommendations.
