After experimenting with fictional digitized worlds for the greater part of a decade, my writing journey has led me to discover a new, never-before-tried flavour of science fiction. My name is Louise Blackwick and I am the creator of Neon Science-Fiction – a subgenre of sci-fi that combines stylistic, thematic, and aesthetic elements of Post-Cyberpunk, Cyber noir, and Nanopunk. The reading list I compiled includes five science fiction stories that both influenced and facilitated the birth of this fresh and hopefully thought-provoking new genre. I hope Neon Sci-Fi can be a stimulating new addition for science fiction readers and authors alike.
Philip K. Dick’s famous dystopian science fiction novel is a thought-provoking, era-defining story, and the novel that facilitated the birth of Neon Science-Fiction the most. Retitled as Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the book’s dichotomous setting – both neon-shiny and depressingly bleak – has hugely inspired my work on my book. I remember reading about the new line of Nexus-6 androids and asking myself questions about the nature of consciousness.“What does it mean to be truly alive?”I remember my inner child squealing with joy when Deckard picked up that electric toad and decided synthetic creatures are just as entitled to life.
The book’s neon aesthetic, with its spectacle of ubiquitous advertisements and its decadent cityscapes was not just awe-inspiring, but foundational to my discovery of neon science fiction.
As the eagerly-anticipated new film Blade Runner 2049 finally comes to the screen, rediscover the world of Blade Runner . . .
World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life.
Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were…
As a Jungian author, I’ve been fascinated with the subject of “escaping to a virtual universe” since the early days of the internet. Anything from compelling video games to immersive virtual realities holds a strange sway over me, both psychoanalytically and artistically. For that reason, Ernest Cline’s debut novel Ready Player One delivers the perfect social commentary on escapism, popular culture, and shared virtual realities. Equally pliant and rigid, the intrinsic laws of virtually-generated worlds are often fun and endearing, and provide a beguiling spectacle. Concepts such as avatars, virtual reality visors, haptic gloves, hikikomori, and non-playable characters (NPCs) were central to my discovery of Neon Science-Fiction and more than pivotal to my work on my book. I would recommend science fiction readers to give both novels a try.
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG
It's the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place. We're out of oil. We've wrecked the climate. Famine, poverty, and disease are widespread.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia where you can be anything you want to be, where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade is obsessed by the ultimate lottery ticket that…
As one of the founding fathers of Nanopunk, Neal Stephenson’s writings form a straightforward bridge between Postcyberpunk and Neon Science-Fiction. His novel is a collection of exotic technologies like matter compilers, smart paper, immunity-enhancing particles, and foldable transportable mech-horses. Eventually, I found myself inspired to create exotic tech of my own (e.g. foods, arts, weapons, and technologies fully based on “Dark”, an unconstructed area of “empty space” featured somewhat heavily in my neon sci-fi novel). Stephenson’s novel also depicts an extremely globalized future, founded on molecular nanotech, rapidly assembled usable goods, and socio-cultural division. The title’s allusion to a “Diamond Age” fully based on nanotechnology (diamonds can be assembled from individual carbon atoms) is a complex commentary on economics and how an object loses its value through mass production.
And who could be smaller or more insignificant than poor Little Nell - an orphan girl alone and adrift in a world of Confucian Law, Neo-Victorian values and warring nanotechnology?
Well, not quite alone. Because Nell has a friend, of sorts. A guide, a teacher, an armed and unarmed combat instructor, a book and a computer: the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is all these and much much more. It is illicit, magical, dangerous.
There is something about digitized neon worlds that captures a reader’s imagination each time. In Daniel Suarez’ Techno-thriller and Postcyberpunk novel, Daemon, an eponymous operating system is activated to take over multiple socio-political and economic systems. While Daemon is never directly personified in the novel, its digital influence is so majorly interwoven with the novel’s many storylines I can easily consider it an honorary character. The novel’s “government by algorithm” was my inspiration for Algo, the A.I. behind the Neon God’s Algorithm introduced in my Neon Science-Fiction novel. To me, the book reads like a darker, more technologically-elaborate Ready Player One; one in which the morality of automated decision-making is profoundly questioned. More than a science fiction novel, Daemon is a cautionary tale of the software-ruled world we are building.
Matthew Sobol is dead, but his final creation survives.
It begins with a bizarre murder, where the only possible perpetrator happens to be dead. As more killings follow, the police are completely out of their depth. It falls to the unlikely partnership of Sebeck, a computer-illiterate cop, and Ross, an enigmatic hacker, to realise the scale of the imminent danger.
The Daemon is seemingly unstoppable, and murder is the least of its capabilities. As it leaves a trail of death and destruction in its wake, Sebeck and Ross must face up to a terrifying possibility. Can they convince a disbelieving…
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is the first title on my list that is merely a short story. That said, what Harlan Ellison’s Hugo Award-winning sci-fi tale lacks in length, it makes up in complexity. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the story follows the horrific ordeal of five humans artificially kept alive by AM (Allied Master computer), a programme responsible for the near-extinction of humanity. AM derives its pleasure and purpose from endlessly torturing the last living humans, rendering them immortal and unable to commit suicide. This unique supervillain became my inspiration for the Neon God – a corrupt, mind games-obsessed A.I. announced in my Neon Science-Fiction novel. Ellison’s story, however, conjures up images of desolation and despair I’ve yet to encounter in a work of science fiction.
"Ellison is a true virtuoso in his genre." PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY By law, one cannot copyright a title. If someone were stupid enough to do it, novels could be written and published with such titles as MOBY DICK, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, or GONE WITH THE WIND. But also, by law, ownership of a title can be guaranteed if it can be proved that the original author has established such a connection with the title that any duplication would infringe that linkage. How famous is this most famous of all Harlan Ellison's books? Well known enough that an English film company was…
Five days before the inevitable end of humanity, five unlikely heroes find themselves on an impossible quest to outlive the apocalypse. Aurora, Stella, Rolf, Tümay, and Sorano must challenge themselves to beat the Neon God’s Algorithm in a crumbling, totalitarian, surveillance state complicated by crime, technology, and civil unrest. Under the ubiquitous eye of the Neon God, they set out to collect “Gold Stars” – an elusive, difficult to obtain, merit-based currency – and secure a seat on the last shuttle to Luna. In a desperate attempt to save her baby daughter, Aurora must navigate the Dark and do her utmost to survive the last technological remnants of a dying civilization.
A ground-breaking story, written in a never before seen genre of fiction - Neon Science-Fiction.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
