12 Books Like Synners

Ho boy, Schismatrix. Our third book this year is a standout amongst the golden-age cyberpunk novels, as it is Bruce Sterling’s most ambitious—and one of his weirdest—novels. Schismatrix takes many of the core cyberpunk themes and turns them up to 11: corporate republics have replaced traditional countries, businesses and philosophies intermingle, rising and falling with the market and with the current fashion, and life-and-death decisions are made as matters of policy, profit, and the inner urgings of hardwired human augmentation.

The story follows the protagonist/anti-hero Abelard Lindsay through his rather bizarre life. Lindsay undergoes augmentation, diplomatic programming, and gets involved with numerous plots throughout the universe, promoting first this corporation and then that one, becoming involved with schemes to boost this philosophy and then turning on it, and competes or cooperates with several main characters as circumstances dictate. It’s a dizzying, twisting plot of betrayed or abandoned loyalties and goals,… show more.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a new Soviet Union has invaded Europe, micro-drones fill the sky, providing ubiquitous surveillance to governments and powerful NGOs, the USA is paralyzed by infighting and economic concerns, and in the midst of all of this, a powerful fascist organization has militarized and sells its services to the west—for money, yes, but also for the chance to remake the world in its own twisted image. Nope, that’s not a story ripped from today’s newspapers or nightly news programs, it’s the setup for John Shirley’s Eclipse Trilogy. What had seemed like a wild, typically cynical cyberpunk riot to sci-fi readers in 1985 now reads like an eerily prescient view into the future.

Shirley, as fellow devotees of cyberpunk will remember, is the subgenre’s first author, having written the first cyberpunk novel, City Come A-Walkin’, published in July 1980. The Eclipse Trilogy, though, is far… show more.

I teach sci-fi, but reluctantly admit that much sci-fi is, well, bad: formulaic or cheesy geekiness, and impenetrably long book series. I am surprised how well Dick's 1968 novel holds up, and how good it is. What appears to be a formulaic noir-detective pastiche turns into a deeply problematic rumination on what, exactly, is human? In a post-nuclear setting of ruins, few people, and so few animals that consuming them has become horrendously unthinkable, what is left of civilization is augmented by artificial animal pets as well as semi-reanimated human-robot-androids ("andys," renamed "replicants" in the 1982 Bladerunner adaptation). As his job leads him into increasingly thorny ethical decisions, Decker gradually questions how he is any better or distinguished from these various life (life?) forms. The movie is thinky. The book is thinkier. Like any good fiction, "Androids" both entertains and poses complex questions to the reader.

One of the progenitors of the Cyberpunk genre; unlike modern takes on Cyberpunk, this keeps to the core dystopian themes that have been all but forgotten thanks to the over emphases on aesthetics.

This is a cyberpunk classic, but what I really love about it is the combination of modern computer technology with Sumerian mythology, the Tower of Babel myth, and how well Stephenson is able to integrate them, so we have hackers throwing around Sumerian terms like 'me' and 'nam-shub'.

And for me, I love that there’s just a lot of cool stuff happening here, like a biker with an atomic bomb on a deadman switch, a nuclear-powered needle gun. And our lead character is named Hiro Protagonist. But probably the biggest point for me is that despite the dystopian setting, there really is more hope in this story than one would think.

Akira is a must-read manga masterpiece, a deep analysis of government corruption, political upheaval, criminality, and decay of society. Apart from the breathtaking art, what caught my attention was the complex story and the nihilistic, harsh, and hopeless world Akira shows. There are virtually no good characters in this story and it fits the apocalyptic, decadent reality they face and live. Expect a lot of psychic abilities and motorcycles, along with gritty, graphic violence.

What I love about a murder mystery is joining the dots, connecting all the different elements together.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is all about connections. Whether it is the aliens who’ve been secretly living on Earth for millions of years; or the ghost of the murder victim trying to leave a message on his sister’s phone; or Richard, the book’s hero, attempting, with the "help" of the ever-unreliable Dirk, to figure out what is going on here and why.

I was simply lost in the convolutions of a plot that also involves time travel and the highly vexing question of how a sofa came to be impossibly stuck on a landing. It’s ALL connected, and the solution makes sense of (nearly) everything.

I am in awe of this book! I think it’s close to perfect, if not perfect. The detective here is Meyer Landsman, who “only has two moods: working and dead.” The novel is set in an alternate history that imagines Sitka, Alaska as a sprawling, Yiddish-speaking metropolis where all the Jews have fled after World War II.

The dead body is a mysterious young drug addict with connections to Sitka’s seedy underbelly. The story is a page-turner, but the sentences are truly incredible. It’s also very funny. I keep returning to this book year after year and every time it blows me away.

Cyberpunk Noir isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (sorry), and this story is dark and downbeat, with two female protagonists who aren’t especially sympathetic, so readers tend to love this book or hate it. For me, the kinetic writing style, crackling dialogue, and richly-detailed descriptions of cyberspace—as well as the fresh take on the “locked-room murder” (a virtual reality parlor in this case)—makes it a highly-recommended read.

I found this book to be a masterful blend of murder mystery and science fiction, taking us on a journey through a future world where robots are beginning to take over jobs. The ethical and social questions raised by the integration of robots into everyday life are more relevant today than they were when the book was first published in 1953.

I liked Asimov's insights into the effects of robotics, offering a reflection into our own world as the AI revolution unfolds. Asimov's writing style is engaging, balancing technical detail with compelling storytelling.

I enjoyed this book immensely, not just for its intriguing plot but also for its thought-provoking exploration of a future that in many ways feels increasingly plausible.