What should I read after Reamde (Stephenson)
November 22, 2011 5:37 PM Subscribe
Book recommendation: Help me find more books like Reamde
Just finished Reamde by Neal Stephenson; page turner. That got me thinking, what next? Here's what I'm looking for...
Sci-fi / cyberpunk a la Snowcrash, but with more action.
Loved Neuromancer, but it was a little too intense, and lacked the descriptive writing of Stephenson. In Reamde, Stephenson took his time to thoroughly describe everything. I like that.
I loved Dan Browns earlier books. The Da Vinci Code was good of course, but Digital Fortress was my favorite.
The more futuristic the better.
Humor is always a plus, but I like when it comes from a very complex sentence, featuring the most correct words strung together to get right to the core of what is funny about the topic. In Reamde, there's a paragraph where one of the sci-fi writers is asking why his predecessors used so many apostrophes in his writing. Those two pages of the book were awesome!
Just finished Reamde by Neal Stephenson; page turner. That got me thinking, what next? Here's what I'm looking for...
Sci-fi / cyberpunk a la Snowcrash, but with more action.
Loved Neuromancer, but it was a little too intense, and lacked the descriptive writing of Stephenson. In Reamde, Stephenson took his time to thoroughly describe everything. I like that.
I loved Dan Browns earlier books. The Da Vinci Code was good of course, but Digital Fortress was my favorite.
The more futuristic the better.
Humor is always a plus, but I like when it comes from a very complex sentence, featuring the most correct words strung together to get right to the core of what is funny about the topic. In Reamde, there's a paragraph where one of the sci-fi writers is asking why his predecessors used so many apostrophes in his writing. Those two pages of the book were awesome!
Tim Powers, Declare, a spy novel with secrets, the baba yaga and the most infamous traitor of the 20th century. Entirely historically acurate too.
posted by bonehead at 6:00 PM on November 22, 2011
posted by bonehead at 6:00 PM on November 22, 2011
I would think you'd enjoy Pattern Recognition and All Tomorrow's Parties, both by Gibson. You might also enjoy The WindUp Girl by Paulo Bacigalupi. Codex and The Magicians by Lev Grossman, too.
Of course, you should read Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. They are better than Reamde, I think.
posted by minervous at 6:15 PM on November 22, 2011
Of course, you should read Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. They are better than Reamde, I think.
posted by minervous at 6:15 PM on November 22, 2011
Blindsight by Peter Watts. Even comes with its own Powerpoint slide presentation.
posted by logicpunk at 7:03 PM on November 22, 2011
posted by logicpunk at 7:03 PM on November 22, 2011
Charles Stross
I've read Accelerando and Singularity Sky.. both very descriptive futuristic sci-fi.. I believe his other books are in the same vein..
posted by j03 at 7:04 PM on November 22, 2011
I've read Accelerando and Singularity Sky.. both very descriptive futuristic sci-fi.. I believe his other books are in the same vein..
posted by j03 at 7:04 PM on November 22, 2011
Stross is great but i can't say most of his stuff is anything like Reamde. You may want to take a look at John Courtnay Grimwood. In particular his Pashazade series and 9tail Fox.
posted by bitdamaged at 9:00 PM on November 22, 2011
posted by bitdamaged at 9:00 PM on November 22, 2011
American Gods by Neal Gaiman. All his books are terrific. He's better than Stevenson, in a similar vein with cleaner style.
posted by anadem at 9:10 PM on November 22, 2011
posted by anadem at 9:10 PM on November 22, 2011
Stross is a good example (particularly Rule 34) and maybe Cory Doctorow too. Lots of the gold farming in Reamde is reminiscent of Doctorow's For The Win (and there is similar stuff in Little Brother).
Harkaway also has those brilliant Stephensonian digressions but they are more fantastical than factual.
posted by ninebelow at 5:51 AM on November 23, 2011
Harkaway also has those brilliant Stephensonian digressions but they are more fantastical than factual.
posted by ninebelow at 5:51 AM on November 23, 2011
Altered Carbon (and sequels) is exactly what you want - cyberpunk technoir, written with a style more like Stephenson than Gibson, and as much action as you could want in a book. It's also much further in the future- some centuries ahead. Book is actually amazing and I can't say enough to recommend it
posted by MangyCarface at 6:47 AM on November 23, 2011
posted by MangyCarface at 6:47 AM on November 23, 2011
I recently enjoyed Ready Player One which had a similar near-futuristic uber-MMO premise.
I also really enjoyed The Speed of Dark, which is also set in the near-future. In this case, it is about a high-functioning autistic adult who must choose between the world he's always known or becoming "normal" through a new treatment that will reverse the effects of autism.
posted by elmay at 2:08 PM on November 23, 2011
I also really enjoyed The Speed of Dark, which is also set in the near-future. In this case, it is about a high-functioning autistic adult who must choose between the world he's always known or becoming "normal" through a new treatment that will reverse the effects of autism.
posted by elmay at 2:08 PM on November 23, 2011
Response by poster: Two months later, I wanted to post a follow up...
Altered Carbon hit the nail on the flippin' head. As someone else wrote, you cannot cram more action into one book. The technology was awesome and the violence was gratuitous. I'm reading Broken Angles (#2 in the series) right now, and its good, but not as good.
I read Singularity Sky, and that was excellent also. Entirely different from Altered Carbon, and very very technical, but the take on and use of the theory of relativity was fantastic.
Thanks for all the suggestions. The Gone-Away World is next and I will get to all of them.
posted by Arbitrage1 at 7:01 PM on January 26, 2012
Altered Carbon hit the nail on the flippin' head. As someone else wrote, you cannot cram more action into one book. The technology was awesome and the violence was gratuitous. I'm reading Broken Angles (#2 in the series) right now, and its good, but not as good.
I read Singularity Sky, and that was excellent also. Entirely different from Altered Carbon, and very very technical, but the take on and use of the theory of relativity was fantastic.
Thanks for all the suggestions. The Gone-Away World is next and I will get to all of them.
posted by Arbitrage1 at 7:01 PM on January 26, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
They're trashy, but if you liked Dan Brown you might like Clive Cussler books- more Indiana Jones-style adventure than sci-fi, but deals with various supernatural/sci-fi plot devices.
I haven't read it yet myself, but Rule 34 by Charles Stross fits your request almost exactly.
posted by Wretch729 at 5:58 PM on November 22, 2011