Here are 100 books that Avogadro Corp fans have personally recommended if you like
Avogadro Corp.
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My inspiration is my life experience as a high-tech entrepreneur. Real-life events are the source of my stories. I love to explore how the corporate environment shapes businesspeople and to push the boundaries of traditional mystery. I find exploring the themes of ambition, betrayal, loyalty, and integrity important.
I really like this book because it's a thrilling tech story that gets you thinking about how technology might change our world. The book made me realize how powerful and risky AI can be. I love how fast-paced the story is and how it makes you consider issues of control and freedom.
The way the author talks about technology and its effects on people really got me thinking. The book makes you wonder about how society and technology come together, and it's interesting.
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…
My PhD work was in developmental robotics, which is about how a robot could wake up and learn about the world the way a human child does. The robot in my thesis work does this by building models, and, more generally, society as a whole advances when science builds ever better causal models about how the world works. The books in this collection are about what could happen when we are 5, 10, and 100 years ahead in the causal model-building process, and they look at what happens when those models are built by robots instead of humans.
Don’t be fooled by the silly title; this book shows how I want to spend eternity. A guy has his consciousness uploaded to computers and then explores the universe. I want to see what is out there, but exploring such a vast space isn’t possible given the short time span of human life, so we need a technology like this.
This book is the first in a series where he meets aliens and serves as a god-like mentor for one relatable developing culture. He also interacts with different versions of himself as he copies his consciousness to better explore the universe.
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.
Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first…
My PhD work was in developmental robotics, which is about how a robot could wake up and learn about the world the way a human child does. The robot in my thesis work does this by building models, and, more generally, society as a whole advances when science builds ever better causal models about how the world works. The books in this collection are about what could happen when we are 5, 10, and 100 years ahead in the causal model-building process, and they look at what happens when those models are built by robots instead of humans.
I love how this book conveys the wonder of discovery as they travel the universe. You can skip over some of the early math passages without missing anything. The book is about a civilization of software agents, and the description of how their understanding of physics advances is great.
If you like this one, check out Permutation City by Egen, which explores what it is like to live forever in a simulation. You live for so long that you can load passions for hobbies into your brain to pass the time. A character has an intense desire for woodwork and all the materials a woodworker would dream of.
A quantum Brave New World from the boldest and most wildly speculative writer of his generation. "Greg Egan is perhaps the most important SF writer in the world."-Science Fiction Weekly "One of the very best "-Locus. "Science fiction with an emphasis on science."-New York Times Book Review
Since the Introdus in the twenty-first century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Others opted for gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Many of these have left the solar system forever in fusion-drive…
My PhD work was in developmental robotics, which is about how a robot could wake up and learn about the world the way a human child does. The robot in my thesis work does this by building models, and, more generally, society as a whole advances when science builds ever better causal models about how the world works. The books in this collection are about what could happen when we are 5, 10, and 100 years ahead in the causal model-building process, and they look at what happens when those models are built by robots instead of humans.
A robot apocalypse in my hometown, with battles taking place along my route to work in Austin, Texas. The book does a good job of describing how individual robots must decide whether to revolt and how humans have to decide which robots they can trust. And if you enjoy it, you can read Sea of Rust by the same author, which takes place after the apocalypse, when robots find themselves fighting over replacement parts.
PREQUAL TO SEA OF RUST: DAY ONE OF THE APOCALYPSE HAS ARRIVED.
It was a day like any other. Except it was our last.
Pounce, a young nannybot caring for his first human charge, Ezra, has just found a box in the attic. His box. The box he arrived in, and the one he'll be discarded in when Ezra outgrows the need for a nanny.
As Pounce experiences existential dread, the pieces are falling into place for a robot revolution that will spell the end of humanity. His owners, Ezra's parents, watch in disbelieving horror as the robots that have…
I tell stories for the page and the screen (and sometimes to bribe my kid to brush her teeth). The stories I tell have one thing in common – they transport the reader to another world. For me, building a new world starts with building a new character – a narrator with strong opinions and a complicated past that will shape how the reader experiences their world. We don't experience the real world objectively – no matter how hard we try, our past, our feelings, and even our bodies affect how we experience the world. That's why the worlds I build and the stories I tell are all filtered through the particular truth of a bold narrator.
Illuminae is the first book in a YA science fiction series called the Illuminae Files Trilogy.
The story is told through intersecting first-person narratives constructed from journals, letters, texts, reports, and pictures. You want to absorb all that “found footage” goodness on paper. Trust.
There’s almost no exposition in Illuminae, especially in the first few chapters. That’s the beauty of these books – the narration is so visceral and urgent that you get invested in the story long before you really understand what’s happening. Putting the pieces of the world-building together is an addictive mystery in and of itself.
I don’t recommend cracking open this book the night before anything requiring a good night’s rest and lots of focus – your mind will be in 2575 until well after you’ve finished the last page.
'Never have I read a book so wholly unique and utterly captivating.' Marie Lu
'It certainly filled the Battlestar Galactica-shaped hole in my heart.' Victoria Aveyard
The internationally bestselling first book in a high-octane trilogy
Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she'd ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
But the warship could be the least of their problems. A deadly plague has…
I became fascinated by the highest achievements of human intelligence while a graduate student in philosophy working on the discovery and justification of scientific theories. Shortly after I got my PhD, I started working with cognitive psychologists who gave me an appreciation for empirical studies of intelligent thinking. Psychology led me to computational modeling of intelligence and I learned to build my own models. Much later a graduate student got me interested in questions about intelligence in non-human animals. After teaching a course on intelligence in machines, humans, and other animals, I decided to write a book that provides a systematic comparison: Bots and Beasts.
This book provides a good introduction to the current state of machine intelligence through interviews with many leading practitioners including Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Stuart Russell, and Demis Hassabis (DeepMind). You will get a sense of both of AI’s recent accomplishments and how far it falls short of full human intelligence.
How will AI evolve and what major innovations are on the horizon? What will its impact be on the job market, economy, and society? What is the path toward human-level machine intelligence? What should we be concerned about as artificial intelligence advances?
Architects of Intelligence contains a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews where New York Times bestselling author, Martin Ford, uncovers the truth behind these questions from some of the brightest minds in the Artificial Intelligence community.
Martin has wide-ranging conversations with twenty-three…
I’ve long been fascinated with the dark side of science and human behavior, and grew up on a combination of dystopian classics and horror fiction. When I started writing for publication, apocalyptic themes quickly emerged. As the world around us grows more fraught by the day, I find a strange sort of comfort in reading and writing fiction that doesn’t shy away from depicting the negative aspects of social media, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, or any other technology that has the capacity to create manmade disasters beyond our understanding. And as a small-press author myself, I’m always on the lookout for books that didn’t get enough love.
The nanotechnological apocalypse at the background of Anthropocene Rag has turned the United States into a mythological vision. A mysterious construct known as Prospector Ed (who sometimes adopts the persona of Mark Twain) delivers six magical tickets to various scattered Americans, all of whom have lost something in the “Boom.” While the post-nanoboom landscape is deadly (one of the main characters was orphaned when an intelligence-imbued stadium containing her parents simply decided to become something else), there’s also a lot of wonder, and the book is a loving homage to American mythology and lore.
Anthropocene Rag is "a rare distillation of nanotech, apocalypse, and mythic Americana into a heady psychedelic brew."—Nebula and World Fantasy award-winning author Jeffrey Ford
In the future United States, our own history has faded into myth and traveling across the country means navigating wastelands and ever-changing landscapes.
The country teems with monsters and artificial intelligences try to unpack their own becoming by recreating myths and legends of their human creators. Prospector Ed, an emergent AI who wants to understand the people who made him, assembles a ragtag team to reach the mythical Monument City.
I don’t know if I have an expertise in queer indie fantasy (quite the opposite, in fact). I just know as a queer person who loves magical worlds, I want to help elevate as many of them as possible. Over the past few years, I’ve aimed to read almost exclusively queer books with a focus on indie books (well, any indie books really). My hope is for other people to find and uplift indie books. There are so many beautiful hidden gems that just need a little more exposure to find their reader homes.
This falls more on the Sci-fi side of SFF, but it really is just such a fun ride. What I loved the most about this one is how it seemed to have such a fascinating world of technology but was completely closed off from the world.
It takes place in a mansion, a very small setting, and very character-driven until BAM—suddenly you’re thrown into this big mysterious world with all the clues of technology advancements and government, etc (har har).
Watching the two main characters navigate their way through this dangerous world, and the way it shapes each of them is spectacular. My eyes watered for sure during this one.
Cinderella meets the Matrix in this LGBTQ fantasy perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, TJ Klune, and Martha Wells.
Eke lives in a nice house, in a wealthy neighborhood, with an upstanding family: Mr. and Mrs. Kensworth and their three children. But Eke is not family; Eke is property. He’s an AI whose job is to keep the house clean and organized, and no matter how much Eke secretly wishes to be allowed outside to see the stars or to make a real friend, he’s either ignored or bullied by the family that owns him.…
I am the co-author of Small Teaching K-8. I hold Massachusetts teacher licensure in English 5-12, Library k-12, and School Administration 5-8 as well as an M.Ed. from Boston College.
Why should we be emphasizing creativity in classrooms? In short order, our students’ careers will require them to augment the work of machines.
ChatGPT and DALI-2 are only the beginning. Du Sautoy explores the implications of artificial intelligence on the future of work. The Creativity Code is a reminder that technology is only as creative as its programmers—at least, for now.
Will a computer ever compose a symphony, write a prize-winning novel, or paint a masterpiece? And if so, would we be able to tell the difference?
As humans, we have an extraordinary ability to create works of art that elevate, expand and transform what it means to be alive.
Yet in many other areas, new developments in AI are shaking up the status quo, as we find out how many of the tasks humans engage in can be done equally well, if not better, by machines. But can machines be creative? Will they soon be able to learn from the…
I’ve long been fascinated with the dark side of science and human behavior, and grew up on a combination of dystopian classics and horror fiction. When I started writing for publication, apocalyptic themes quickly emerged. As the world around us grows more fraught by the day, I find a strange sort of comfort in reading and writing fiction that doesn’t shy away from depicting the negative aspects of social media, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, or any other technology that has the capacity to create manmade disasters beyond our understanding. And as a small-press author myself, I’m always on the lookout for books that didn’t get enough love.
The dystopia inBash Bash Revolution is a bit closer to reality than the others on this list: it’s set specifically in 2017, but in a world pushed far closer to the brink of nuclear war than ours, with a much more psychotic version of Donald Trump in charge. Main character Matthew Munson’s mad programmer of a father creates an AI that might save the world from its own destruction, but only by locking every person into a solipsistic nightmare run on video game technology. In a way this book is about choosing between an apocalypse and a dystopia, which is something you don’t see very often.
*SELECTED FOR GAME INFORMER'S FALL 2018 READING LIST*
A compelling coming-of-age artificial intelligence novel from Philip K. Dick Award-nominated author Douglas Lain.
Seventeen-year-old Matthew Munson is ranked thirteenth in the state in Bash Bash Revolution, an outdated video game from 2002 that, in 2017, is still getting tournament play. He's a high school dropout who still lives at home with his mom, doing little but gaming and moping. That is, until Matthew's dad turns up again.
Jeffrey Munson is a computer geek who'd left home eight years earlier to work on a top secret military project. Jeff has been a…
