Rise of the Machines: AI in the Spotlight
Top recommended Science Fiction Books about Tech
From benevolent bots to rogue superintelligences, artificial intelligence has become one of the most captivating subjects in modern science fiction. These stories delve into the thrilling—and sometimes chilling—possibilities of advanced AI, questioning what it means to be human in a world shared with machines.
Galactic guru Reader Types will relish these tales of technological upheaval, where lines blur between creator and creation, and the future of humanity hangs in the balance.
Fun Facts:
- The word "robot" was first coined in 1920 by Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
- Ancient myths, like the Greek tale of Talos (a bronze giant), could be considered the origin of robots, without calling it a robot at the time.
- Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon speculated on "thinking machines," making it one of the earliest works to explore AI concepts before computers even existed!
14 Science Fiction about AI and Technology Books:
Klara and the Sun
by Kazuo Ishiguro
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick!
"What stays with you in 'Klara and the Sun' is the haunting narrative voice--a genuinely innocent, egoless perspective on the strange behavior of humans obsessed and wounded by power, status and fear." --Booker Prize committee
Flux
by Jinwoo Chong
- A New York Times Editor's Choice
- Best Book of 2023 by Esquire, Apple Books, HuffPost, GQ, Cosmopolitan, and Goodreads.
- Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
- VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his mysterious employers have inadvertently discovered time travel--and are using it to cover up a string of violent crimes . . .
Four days before Christmas, 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, 28-year-old Brandon loses his job after a hostile takeover of his big-media employer, and 48-year-old Blue, a key witness in a criminal trial against an infamous now-defunct tech startup, struggles to reconnect with his family.
Mal Goes to War
by Edward Ashton
The humans are fighting again. Go figure.
As a free A.I., Mal finds the war between the modded and augmented Federals and the puritanical Humanists about as interesting as a battle between rival anthills. He's not above scouting the battlefield for salvage, though, and when the Humanists abruptly cut off access to infospace he finds himself trapped in the body of a cyborg mercenary, and responsible for the safety of the modded girl she died protecting.
The Immortal King Rao
by Vauhini Vara
In a future in which the world is run by the Board of Corporations, King's daughter, Athena, reckons with his legacy--literally, for he has given her access to his memories, among other questionable gifts.
With climate change raging, Athena has come to believe that saving the planet and its Shareholders will require a radical act of communion--and so she sets out to tell the truth to the world's Shareholders, in entrancing sensory detail, about King's childhood on a South Indian coconut plantation; his migration to the U.S. to study engineering in a world transformed by globalization; his marriage to the ambitious artist with whom he changed the world; and, ultimately, his invention, under self-exile, of the most ambitious creation of his life--Athena herself.
We Are Satellites
by Sarah Pinsker
From Hugo award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them.
Everybody's getting one.
Val and Julie just want what's best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.
Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.
You're Safe Here
by Leslie Stephens
Wellness, motherhood, and technology converge in a near future California, as three women's seemingly innocuous decisions have further-reaching consequences than any of them could imagine in this timely, clever, and white-knuckled thriller.
In 2060, the WellPod is the latest launch from the largest tech company the world has ever seen--a fleet of floating personal paradises scattered throughout the Pacific Ocean, focused entirely on health, solitude, and relaxation. Created by an enigmatic founder who will stop at nothing to ensure her company's success, it is the long-awaited pinnacle of wellness technology. For newly pregnant Maggie, the six-week program is the perfect chance to get away...especially since the baby isn't her partner's.
Emergent Properties
by Aimee Ogden
Emergent Properties is the touching adventure of an intrepid A.I. reporter hot on the heels of brewing corporate warfare from Nebula Award-nominated author Aimee Ogden.
A state-of-the-art AI with a talent for asking questions and finding answers, Scorn is nevertheless a parental disappointment. Defying the expectations of zir human mothers, CEOs of the world's most powerful corporations, Scorn has made a life of zir own as an investigative reporter, crisscrossing the globe in pursuit of the truth, no matter the danger.
Hum
by Helen Phillips
A Most Anticipated Book for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Goodreads, LitHub, and Book Riot
A Best Book of the Summer for Esquire, Electric Lit, and Town & Country
A People Book of the Week
In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called "hums," May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family's debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.
Seeking reprieve from her recent hardships and her family's addiction to their devices, May splurges on passes for her family to spend three nights respite in the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals still thrive.
Glass Houses
by Madeline Ashby
A group of employees and their CEO, celebrating the sale of their remarkable emotion-mapping-AI-algorithm, crash onto a not-quite-deserted tropical island.
Luckily, those who survived have found a beautiful, fully-stocked private palace, with all the latest technological updates (though one without connection to the outside world). The house, however, has more secrets than anyone might have guessed, and a much darker reason for having been built and left behind.
Kristen, the hyper-competent "chief emotional manager" (a position created by her eccentric, boyish billionaire boss, Sumter) is trying to keep her colleagues stable throughout this new challenge, but staying sane seems to be as much of a challenge as staying alive.
Do You Remember Being Born?
by Sean Michaels
A Best Book of 2023 - Marie Claire, Inside Hook, Our Culture Magazine, WIRED
Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Sean Michaels's moving, innovative and deeply felt novel about an aging poet who agrees to collaborate with a Big Tech company's poetry AI, named Charlotte
Marian Ffarmer is a world-renowned poet and a legend in the making--but only now, at 75 years old, is she beginning to believe in the security of her successes. Unfortunately, a poet's accomplishments don't necessarily translate to capital, and as her adult son struggles to buy his first home, her confidence in her choices begins to fray. Marian's pristine life of mind--for which she's sacrificed nearly all personal relationships, from romance to friendship to motherhood--has come at a cost.
Womb City
by Tlotlo Tsamaase
This genre-bending Africanfuturist horror novel blends The Handmaid's Tale with Get Out in an adrenaline-packed, cyberpunk body-hopping ghost story exploring motherhood, memory, and a woman's right to her own body.
Nelah seems to have it all: fame, wealth, and a long-awaited daughter growing in a government lab. But, trapped in a loveless marriage to a policeman who uses a microchip to monitor her every move, Nelah's perfect life is precarious. After a drug-fueled evening culminates in an eerie car accident, Nelah commits a desperate crime and buries the body, daring to hope that she can keep one last secret.
The truth claws its way into Nelah's life from the grave.
William
by Mason Coile
Psychological horror meets cyber noir in this delicious one-sitting read--a haunted house story in which the haunting is by AI.
Henry is a brilliant engineer who, after untold hours spent in his home lab, has achieved the breakthrough of his career--he's created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He calls the half-formed robot William.
No one knows about William. Henry's agoraphobia keeps him inside the house, and his fixation on his project keeps him up in the attic, away from everyone, including his pregnant wife, Lily.
Interface
by Scott Britz-Cunningham
A new technology has emerged, promising a perfect society, and resisters are not long for this world . . .
Ahead, not too many years from now, everyone has been linked to a network of government-mandated brain implants. The Interface has become a way of life, connecting all people to limitless information, nonstop personal messaging, and instantaneous news flashes. Gone are the days of cell phones and laptops--even loneliness itself is obsolete.
The Future
by Naomi Alderman
The bestselling, award-winning author of The Power delivers a "page-turning" tour de force where a handful of friends plot a daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it.
Martha Einkorn never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Now, she's surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry while spouting technological prophecy. Across the world, in a mall in Singapore, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, flees from an assassin. Suddenly, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone telling her exactly how to escape. Who made it? What do they know about the future that Zhen doesn't?