Climate catastrophe. Disease. Violence. The season finale of Bachelor In Paradise. This is reality is getting to be too much. While I’d rather spend my days kicking around The Shire, up and moving to a fantasy world isn’t going to be a possibility ever. However, maybe through improvised cryogenics (i.e. locking myself in an industrial freezer) I could access a virtual paradise in a not so distant future! According to these sci-fi authors, that future may be close at hand! Before I close the door to the Waffle House walk-in freezer and prepare to thaw into a brighter tomorrow, allow me to leave you with these 10 best sci-fi books about virtual reality. Maybe you’ll feel inspired to follow in my footsteps! Just don’t go in the freezer of the Waffle House under the overpass, it’s occupied already.
Neuromancer
William Gibson quite literally wrote the book on virtual reality with his seminal cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy. Beginning with Neuromancer, the plot jacks us in to the life of Case – a washed up hacker hired to do one last job at the behest of a shady military official. As Case dives deeper into the data-verse to pull off a digital heist, he soon runs into the gods of that virtual frontier: AI. After a mysterious synthetic intelligence calling itself Wintermute begins to dog his digital footprints, Case wonders if there’s more to this gig than meets the eye. Neuromancer’s virtual reality isn’t a happy “do whatever you want” paradise, it’s a cutthroat digital battlefield where only the strongest codes survive.
Snow Crash
Another landmark cyberpunk novel, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is the story of Hiro Protagonist, who despite his name is an anti-hero at best. A sometimes pizza delivery guy for the mafia (long story) the freelance hacker finds himself in a deep dish of trouble when he’s offered a digital drug called Snow Crash in the metaverse. A digital drug, you say? Well, that’s what the guy who gave it to him said it was. In reality it’s a highly dangerous virus that can cause brain damage to anyone who views it. After learning that the virus has a strange connection to an ancient Sumerian writing system, Hiro is helpless to resist the call to investigate. Like a cat ignorant of the adage, Hiro might get murdered by his own curiosity. A heady combination of cutting edge future and ancient past, Snow Crash will overclock your mainframe in present day.
The Three Body Problem
Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem requires a many bodied solution. Stretching across the mid 20th century and into the not so distant future, the plot follows humanity’s attempt to solve a scientific problem that has baffled us for centuries. After a virtual reality simulator called “The Three Body Problem” appears in the Internet, people from all over the planet log in to help an alien world avoid extinction and the hands of the three suns it orbits. When the problem becomes impossible to solve, humanity is shocked to learn that their virtual failure will result in drastic real world consequences. An alien race has turned its gaze toward Earth, ready to leave their three sun-ed planet and take over ours. Reading this novel is like watching your friend play with an Oculus Rift. At first you don’t get it, it looks like a silly headset, but strap in for yourself and you’ll soon discover how real things are about to get.
Trouble And Her Friends
A landmark of queer sci-fi, Melissa Scott’s Trouble And Her Friends is the story of a hacker retired from the business – until she discovered someone on the internet using her old handle, that is. Shocked to see her “Trouble” moniker resurface online, India Carless jacks into the mainframe in order to get to the bottom of things. While she’s mucking about in the data-verse, she also happens to bump into an old flame willing to tag along for the ride. While many VR-centric novels feature a virtual world that is corporate, government, or AI controlled, the digital frontiers of this novel feel like the Wild West – until the state passes legislation to regulate the frontier like it did in the 1800s. Lesbian hacker cowboys fighting government control? That’s a virtual reality I’d like to be a part of.
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams almost didn’t come out. Conceived by the programmer turned author while still in college, William’s story spent over a decade as an unfinished work before it was finally released online. One of the first books to take a crack at the idea of technological singularity, the novel is set in a world ruled by a benevolent supercomputer known as Prime Intellect, whose godlike powers have granted immortality to humanity. Now living in a post-scarcity society, human are able to spend their time competing in a competitive suicide sport, only for Prime Intellect to continually resurrect them. After one of humanity’s best “death jockeys” Caroline decides she’s unhappy living under PI’s influence, she decides to embark on a quest to ruin things for the rest of us. This novel is woman’s attempt to drag humanity out of virtual heaven and back into real world hell – culminating in End of Evangelion style devastation. Gee, thanks Caroline.
Ready Player One
Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One is set in a world ruled by a turbo-charged version of Wii Sports. After tech genius James Donovan Halliday created the digital world of OASIS, the suffering masses of an economically stagnant future saw a way out of their cyberpunk drudgery. Eighteen-year-old Wade Watts is one of thousands of players seeking a fabulously valuable “Easter Egg” left behind by the departed Halliday himself. Facing off against a mega-corporation hunting for the same prize, Wade and a team of intrepid young gamers race against the clock to claim the Egg, and with it all of OASIS. A digital romp through pop culture, Ready Player One tugs at your nostalgia like Stranger Things. Remember summer days spent at the arcade with your friends? Neither do I. I was too young to experience it, but reading Ready Player One makes me feel like I was there – in a cooler, more futuristic way.
The Memory Libriarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer
Written in tandem with their album Dirty Computer, artist Janelle Monáe’s The Memory Libriarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer is anthology of stories set within the artist’s futuristic world. Beginning with The Memory Librarian, the anthology tells the story of Seshet – a “memory librarian” for the New Dawn regime. She spends her time Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind-ing away the memories of the population, ensuring that people only remember what Big Brother wants them to. After learning that her lover works for a rebel group opposing New Dawn, Seshet begins to wonder where her loyalties should really lie. While the series doesn’t technically take place in a digital constructed reality, it centers around an artificial reality nonetheless. When the government can control your mind, it manufactures the reality your mind can perceive.
Ender’s Game
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card takes place in a Starship Troopers-esque future where humanity is fighting a forever war against an insectoid alien race. In order to combat the “bugger” menace, humanity has decided employ the most lethal weapon in its arsenal: children. But not just any children, genius children trained from birth to inherit military command. Ender is one such child genius, taken to Battle School and forced to play digital strategy games against virtual foes. As Ender becomes a more formidable commander, he soon learns that the “games” have been playing have very real “bugger”-killing consequences. Reading this novel is like learning that you accidentally committed war crimes while playing Age of Empires.
The Seep
Chana Porter’s The Seep takes place in a world where the aliens won, and humanity is (arguably) better off. After an extraterrestrial super-intelligence called The Seep released humanity from war, violence and hunger, people are now free to pursue idle and childlike pleasures. Deeba took this literally when she decided to use Seep-tech to relive life as a baby, leaving her ex-wife Trina crushed. Left with a bone to pick against the alien entity, the heartbroken Trina goes on a part alcoholic bender part liberation quest to free humanity from The Seep’s control – one person at a time.
Permutation City
Warning, Permutation City by Greg Egan is not for the faint of heart. Or mind, for that matter. This intellectually complex novel is more of a thought experiment than work of literature, asking whether or not there’s a different between human and virtual consciousness. The novel explores a wild scientific theory that postulates that reality itself is a mathematical object, and that consciousness is nothing but a self aware equation. What’s the difference between you, me and the Pythagorean theorem? That’s exactly what this novel is attempting to suss out. In a climate-ravaged world where the mega-rich cling to life by making digital copies of their minds, Permutation City asks whether or not all of reality itself is “virtual” – and what difference does it make?
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