Saturday, July 6, 2013

Five science fiction novels for people who hate SF

Damien Walter argues that science fiction's "denser stories can seem rebarbative to general readers," so he came up with five books that "tell immediately relevant, compelling tales," including:
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson is quickly becoming historical fiction. It so astutely pinpointed the emerging trends in technology in 2003 that a decade on from its publication it reads more like a documentary record than a work of SF. Cayce Pollard is a 30-something hipster immersed in the new media world of global corporate brands, who finds herself drawn in to a dangerous conspiracy as she tries to track down a mysterious set of video clips on the internet. Gibson's seventh novel pre-empted the YouTube revolution by mere months, and is still required reading for anyone trying to understand the fractured reality of our media-saturated world today.
Read about the other books that Walter tagged at the Guardian.

Pattern Recognition is one of David Ulin's five essential 9/11 books.

Learn about why Gibson decided to set Pattern Recognition in the present, unlike his previous novels.

--Marshal Zeringue