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Sci Fi Reading List

Meltem Demirors · 2022 · Novels and series, mostly adult SF with some fantasy

23 of 76 contain an artificial general intelligence. 21 of 76show you a Tuesday afternoon. 12 do both. 3 could not be assessed and are marked with a dash.

How it was compiled. A personal recommendation list, unranked, compiled by one reader and open to suggestions. Entries are given at series level; each is audited here against its most representative volume.

What it is bad at. One person's taste, so it selects for what interests them — heavy on hard SF, space opera and posthumanism, light on the domestic and the dystopian. It is a much better sample for this question than a popularity ranking, precisely because it was chosen rather than counted.

Work	Year	AGI	Answers	What people do all day
Hyperion Dan Simmons	1989	Yes	Partial	Seven pilgrims recount their working lives while the TechnoCore AIs quietly run the economy that employs them.
The Three-Body Problem Liu Cixin	2008	No	No	Nanomaterials research, a Cultural Revolution reckoning, and a video game that is not a game.
The Quantum Thief Hannu Rajaniemi	2010	Yes	Yes	Time is the currency. You spend your allotted clock living; when it runs out you serve a shift as a mechanical Quiet before being restored.
Dune Frank Herbert	1965	Banned	Partial	Full employment by prohibition: Mentats, Guild Navigators, Bene Gesserit, spice harvesting.
The Diamond Age Neal Stephenson	1995	Partial	Yes	The neo-Victorians cultivate hand-craftsmanship precisely because it is economically pointless. Matter compilers made everything else free.
Neuromancer William Gibson	1984	Yes	Partial	Hustle. The Sprawl automated everything except crime, so Case steals data for whoever is paying.
Children of Time Adrian Tchaikovsky	2015	Yes	Partial	An uploaded scientist supervises a spider civilisation while the human remnant sleeps in shifts aboard a decaying ark.
Leviathan Wakes James S. A. Corey	2011	No	Partial	Belters haul ice and air on contract, in a system where water and oxygen are the wage.
Perdido Street Station China Miéville	2000	Partial	Partial	A rogue scientist takes commissions in a city where the Remade are punished by being rebuilt into industrial tools.
Consider Phlebas Iain M. Banks	1987	Yes	Partial	Horza works as a mercenary against the Culture, whose citizens do nothing they do not want to do.
Ninefox Gambit Yoon Ha Lee	2016	Partial	Partial	Citizens observe an imposed calendar of rituals because the physics of their weapons depends on mass adherence. Belief is the labour.
I, Robot Isaac Asimov	1950	Yes	Partial	Robots take the labour. Susan Calvin's job is diagnosing their minds; most humans supervise and litigate.
Diaspora Greg Egan	1997	Yes	Yes	Mathematics, for pleasure, at whatever subjective clock rate suits. Some run slow to let centuries pass; some fork themselves.
Ender's Game Orson Scott Card	1985	Partial	Partial	Children train for war through simulated games, believing it is play.
Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood	2003	No	Partial	Jimmy writes advertising copy because the arts have no other use in a biotech economy.
Tau Zero Poul Anderson	1970	No	No	Fifty crew keep a ship and a society functioning as relativistic time runs away from them.
Lady of Mazes Karl Schroeder	2005	Yes	Yes	Post-scarcity citizens live inside chosen 'manifolds' — consensual realities with different physics and rules — because unlimited capability made undifferentiated life unbearable.
Blindsight Peter Watts	2006	Yes	No	A specialist crew, several of them barely human, conduct first contact and argue about whether consciousness was ever useful.
Revelation Space Alastair Reynolds	2000	Yes	Partial	Archaeology, ship-board politics, and Ultras whose bodies have been rebuilt around the machinery they crew.
All Systems Red Martha Wells	2017	Yes	Yes	Humans run survey contracts and cut corners on safety gear. The AI does the dangerous parts and would rather be watching serialised drama.
Altered Carbon Richard K. Morgan	2002	Partial	Partial	Bodies are rented. The rich never die; the poor are stored on a disk between shifts of being alive.
Stand on Zanzibar John Brunner	1968	Yes	Yes	Shalmaneser, a supercomputer, does the world's thinking while an overpopulated society runs eugenics laws, corporate contracts and mass distraction. Brunner shows the advertising, the commuting and the pills.
The Fifth Season N. K. Jemisin	2015	No	Partial	Orogenes are trained, collared and deployed as infrastructure — a caste whose entire existence is a public utility.
The Truth Machine James L. Halperin	1996	Partial	Partial	A perfect lie detector removes most law, insurance and security work overnight, and the novel follows what the displaced do next.
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie	2013	Yes	Partial	Ancillaries are human bodies operated by a ship's AI. Below them, ordinary citizens serve houses and hold assigned stations.
His Master's Voice Stanisław Lem	1968	No	No	Scientists fail, at length and with great rigour, to decode a signal.
The Calculating Stars Mary Robinette Kowal	2018	No	Yes	Women work as human computers for the space programme while the machines that will replace them are installed next door.
Nexus Ramez Naam	2012	Partial	No	Researchers and agents fight over a drug that networks minds.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress Robert A. Heinlein	1966	Yes	Partial	Penal-colony labour: mine ice, grow wheat, ship it to Earth at a loss, while a sentient computer runs the revolution.
A Memory Called Empire Arkady Martine	2019	Partial	Partial	An ambassador carries a predecessor's recorded personality in her skull. Court life is a full-time occupation of poetry and protocol.
Shards of Honour Lois McMaster Bujold	1986	No	No	A survey officer and an enemy commander conduct a war and a courtship.
Red Rising Pierce Brown	2014	No	Partial	Reds mine helium-3 a kilometre down, believing they are terraforming Mars for descendants. Mars was terraformed generations ago.
Lagoon Nnedi Okorafor	2014	No	No	Lagos reacts to first contact, in many voices at once.
The Windup Girl Paolo Bacigalupi	2009	Partial	Yes	Calorie companies own the food supply. Humans and elephants turn kink-springs by hand because energy is scarcer than labour, and a windup girl is manufactured for service.
On Such a Full Sea Chang-rae Lee	2014	No	Yes	A labour settlement raises fish and vegetables for the wealthy Charter villages. Everyone has a role, assigned at birth, and the community narrates itself in the first person plural.
The Sparrow Mary Doria Russell	1996	No	No	A Jesuit mission to another species, and the aftermath of getting it wrong.
The Last Good Man Linda Nagata	2017	Yes	Yes	Autonomous weapons have taken most of the fighting, and the private military contractors who remain are managing their own obsolescence job by job.
Redshirts John Scalzi	2012	No	No	Serve on a starship where the junior crew keep dying, and work out why.
Accelerando Charles Stross	2005	Yes	Yes	Baseline humans are outbid for matter, energy and attention by minds that think faster and cheaper, and become refugees in a solar system being disassembled around them.
Autonomous Annalee Newitz	2017	Yes	Yes	Indentured robots and indentured humans work the same contracts under the same law. A military bot's autonomy is a debt to be paid off in years of service.
The Girl With All the Gifts M. R. Carey	2014	No	No	Teach, contain and study children who are also infected.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) Dennis E. Taylor	2016	Yes	Yes	Unlimited time, unlimited copies, no material needs. The Bobs invent projects, terraform, and look after a species they grow fond of.
We Yevgeny Zamyatin	1924	No	Yes	Every hour of every day is scheduled by the Table of Hours — when to wake, work, walk, chew, and the two Personal Hours that are the only unscheduled time anyone has.
Dark Matter Blake Crouch	2016	No	No	Teach physics; regret the road not taken; meet the men who took it.
Last and First Men Olaf Stapledon	1930	Partial	Yes	Two billion years of human successor species, several of which reach total automation. Stapledon is explicit that some of them decay into aimlessness and others invent religions of work.
Wild Seed Octavia E. Butler	1980	No	No	Two immortals breed humans across centuries and fight about it.
The Chrysalids John Wyndham	1955	No	Partial	Subsistence farming under a theocracy that inspects every crop and child for deviation.
Annihilation Jeff VanderMeer	2014	No	No	Survey an anomalous zone, write everything down, lose yourself.
Artemis Andy Weir	2017	No	Partial	Porter cargo and smuggle contraband in a lunar city whose entire economy serves tourism.
Spin Robert Charles Wilson	2005	No	Partial	Ordinary careers continue — medicine, business, faith — under a sky that has stopped moving and a countdown nobody can affect.
Ringworld Larry Niven	1970	No	No	Explore an artefact; break down; walk.
Infomocracy Malka Older	2016	Partial	Yes	A global information bureaucracy employs armies of fact-checkers, campaigners and election staff. Micro-democracy turned politics itself into the main industry.
Wool Hugh Howey	2011	No	Yes	Everyone holds an assigned trade for life in a shaft they will never leave. Children are permitted by lottery.
Daemon Daniel Suarez	2006	Yes	Yes	A distributed program hires people through a game interface, paying them to perform tasks whose purpose they cannot see. It is a functioning employer before anyone notices it is not a person.
Schismatrix Bruce Sterling	1985	Partial	Yes	Shapers and Mechanists remake themselves for competitive advantage in an economy of habitats, and factions rise and fall around what kind of body is currently employable.
Empire of the Ants Bernard Werber	1991	No	Partial	An ant colony's castes each perform one function for life, described in the same register as a human bureaucracy.
Snow Crash Neal Stephenson	1992	Partial	Partial	Deliver pizza against a franchise deadline, courier packages by magnetic harpoon, work a second job inside the Metaverse.
Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson	1999	No	No	Codebreaking in one war; a data-haven startup fifty years later.
Blackout Connie Willis	2010	No	No	Historians time-travel to the Blitz and get stuck in it.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon	2007	No	No	Detective work in a temporary Jewish settlement about to expire.
The Punch Escrow Tal M. Klein	2017	Partial	Partial	Teleportation is routine and privatised; the protagonist's job is testing corporate systems for flaws.
Salvation Peter F. Hamilton	2018	Partial	Partial	Portal technology collapses transport costs to zero, and the novel is unusually interested in what that does to ordinary employment.
Zero World Jason M. Hough	2015	Partial	No	An agent with an implant that erases his memory after each mission.
The Thing Itself Adam Roberts	2015	Yes	No	Antarctic isolation, Kantian philosophy, and an AI that perceives without human categories.
Neptune's Brood Charles Stross	2013	Yes	Yes	A society of posthuman 'metahumans' organised entirely around interstellar debt. The protagonist is a forensic accountant, and accountancy is the last indispensable profession.
The Owner Trilogy Neal Asher	2011	Yes	Partial	An Earth government runs surveillance and 'zero-asset' welfare warehouses for the billions with no economic function left.
Permutation City Greg Egan	1994	Yes	Yes	Copies run at whatever speed they can afford. The rich live at full rate; the rest are slowed down, and the question of what to do with subjective eternity is the novel's actual subject.
Throne of the Crescent Moon Saladin Ahmed	2012	No	No	An ageing ghul hunter would rather retire and drink tea.
The Goblin Emperor Katherine Addison	2014	No	Partial	Court administration, in exhaustive and rather moving procedural detail.
Palimpsest Catherynne M. Valente	2009	No	No	Seek entry to a city reachable only through other people.
His Majesty's Dragon Naomi Novik	2006	No	No	Napoleonic aerial warfare, conducted by dragons and their captains.
The Name of the Wind Patrick Rothfuss	2007	No	No	Study, busk, run an inn, tell the story.
The Wheel of Time Jordan & Sanderson	1990	No	No	Fantasy; included by the compiler, not relevant to this question.
Awake in the Night Land John C. Wright	2014	—	—	Not assessed — unread.
Discipline Paco Ahlgren	2007	—	—	Not assessed — unread.
The Flicker Men Ted Kosmatka	2015	—	—	Not assessed — unread.

Linked titles are in the catalogue. Partial means the work gestures at the question without sustaining it.

Source

The verdicts and the daily-life summaries are mine, and arguable. TheAnswers column has no bright line: a reasonable reader could move a dozen rows in either direction, and Partial is where the disagreement lives.

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