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VR Books

Luciferous
Consultant
VR Books recommended by users on the forum.

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline - (highly recommend) Fantastic Book
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson's - (highly recommend) Great unique novel
Altered Carbon - Cyber Punk Noir Mystery Book - (highly recommend) fast paced and Action packed. VR in it but not main story.

Love for three Zuckerbrins (2014) - by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Pelevin - not read
Otherland - not read

William Gibson trilogy
----------------------------
1. Neuromancer - (highly recommend) Brilliant book
2. Count Zero - OK but more like epilogue for the first one.
3. Mona Lisa Overdrive - (read) A bit better but no Neuromancer.

If you like cyberpunk few beat Gibson' imagined worlds.

more Gibsons

The Peripheral -
I really enjoyed this one, slow burner. (read it twice)

Burning Chrome -
Short stories, OK but not his best work.

Ascend Online Series: Nice light adventure story all based on a Skyrim type RPG VR game.
Jason logs into Awaken Online fed-up with reality. He's in desperate need of an escape, and this game is his ticket to finally feeling the type of power and freedom that's so sorely lacking in his real life. ...

Permutation City from Greg Egan - The concept of this book is mind blowing. A universe is born from virtual reality.
ShadowRun- not read


Not exactly VR but recommended good scfi ones
--------------------------------------------------------------
Bobiverse Series - A man is copied into a computer and sent into space as one of man's last hopes. These are epic books , really recommend them. VR turns up eventually 🙂

Daemon (Daniel Suarez) and the sequel, Freedom TM. not read but recommended by Cybereality

Rainbows End -
(read) Christmas Carol kind of story with a really interesting concept of an Augmented future. Takes a bit to get into and the lead character is difficult to sympathize with.

Dream Park -
(read) Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. Good read, who done it, feels at times a little dated though but the concept of a holographic adventure theme park is an exciting prospect. A warning though if you are buying this on Audible.com the quality of the recording is very metallic and the narrators voice is quite grinding.

Armada - Ernest Cline - Ok but not anywhere as gripping as Ready player one. It is almost like an exact copy of 'The last Starfighter'

'Masters of Doom'
(read)
So I bought this not even reading the synopsis, such is the faith I have had in the recommendations you guys have given me.
I thought it was another sci-fi novel but discovered it was the story of John Romero and John Carmack's rise to fame.
Not normally my kind of book but I really recommend this as it charts the rise from unknown teenagers to their eventual split and onwards until up to 2004. For me it was incredibly interesting as I never knew the back history of the games that help define my childhood (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake). Especially interesting as I had no idea how much I owed these guys and their team for bringing virtual worlds to my life and with John Carmack joining Oculus it was like jigsaw pieces clicking into place. Another bonus is Wil Wheaton is narrating it on Audible. That guy can make stamp collecting sound interesting.



32 REPLIES 32

bp2008
Protege
I haven't read Neuromancer, but Ready Player One was excellent. Snow Crash seemed a little too juvenile, but to each his own.

Armada (by Ernest Cline, same author who wrote Ready Player One) is also good and it involves VR a little, though not to the same extent.

cybereality
Grand Champion
Neuromancer was great, but don't forget the others in the series (Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive). I loved these so much, and really should read them again.

The Peripheral, Gibson's latest, is actually great. It's sort of VR (without giving away too much) and a good read.

If you like Gibson, be sure to check Burning Chrome. Very nice one.

Finally, I just finished Virtual Light (another from Gibson) but honestly thought it was boring. I guess VR related as the plot was around these VR glasses, but they didn't go into the tech nearly enough and I felt that barely anything happened until the end of the book. The writing was top-notch, of course, just not enough action.

Not strictly VR, but relevant, is Daemon (Daniel Suarez) and the sequel, Freedom TM. It's all about a famous game dev that dies, supposedly uploads himself into the internet, and then goes rogue and starts killing people and stuff like that. A real page turner.

Altered Carbon was interesting (about half-way through right now). Not VR, but it's in the future and people can buy new bodies, freeze themselves, and things like that. They are making this into a TV series so now is a good time to read the book.
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Miyh
Honored Guest
I'm about half way through Snow Crash right now and enjoying it.

I would recommend Rainbows End.

cybereality
Grand Champion
This thread got me searching for new books to read, and I found two that look promising.

Tea From an Empty Cup by Pat Cadigan

"How can you drink tea from an empty cup?"

That ancient Zen riddle holds the key to a baffling mystery; a young man found with his throat slashed while locked alone in a virtual reality parlor.

The secret of this enigmatic death lies in an apocalyptic cyberspace shadow-world where nothing is certain, and even one's own identity can change in an instant.


Halting State by Charles Stross

In the year 2018, a daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality land of Avalon Four. But Sergeant Sue Smith discovers that this virtual world robbery may be linked to some real world devastation.
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Ashles
Protege
It's not exactly VR (it talks about holograms but the sequels moved to VR) but I'm currently rereading Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes.
A great vision of a theme park of the future, high quality role playing events and, of course, murder.
The central plot is what an immersive RPG of the future might be like.
I think it was originally 1981 but very applicable today. And damn good fun.
"Into every life a little fantasy must fall..."

Luciferous
Consultant
Great thanks for the suggestions, I will work my way through them I must have listened to Neuromancer 4 times now and quite excited there are more in the series 'The meat' wants more 🙂

I found Snowcrash odd at first but on the second time round really enjoyed it. It has an unusual style that you have to get used to, especially after reading the fairly simplistic Ready Player One.

I joined Audible last night (I do a fair amount of traveling) so I am going to see if they have any of these on there.

Cheers

kaelsiemion
Honored Guest
Read Ready Player One many times; also, snow crash and neuromancer. One book I'm amazed I didn't see here is 'Masters of Doom', I think that is my favorite; it isn't fiction in VR but has a ton to do with the progression mindset coming into it. It ultimately plays out like a non-fiction version of ready player one without the oasis and protagonist, of course (if that makes any sense).

cybereality
Grand Champion
"luciferous" wrote:
I joined Audible last night (I do a fair amount of traveling) so I am going to see if they have any of these on there.

Audible does have a good collection, and that is what I used to read a bunch of those books. Specifically I've listened to Ready Player One, Snow Crash, Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, The Peripheral, Rainbow's End, Daemon, Freedom TM, and Altered Carbon.

Just keep in mind that the search feature and recommendation engine on the Audible website is poor. It's much easier to find books on the Amazon website, and then switch to Audible to buy them once you find there is an audio version available.
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aluniras
Honored Guest
To those who can understand russian language I advise to read -

1. Рус Дмитрий - Играть Чтобы Жить (a guy is dying from unknown disease and the only chance is to get into virtual reality world and stay there for good...)

2. Васильев Андрей - Файролл ( a guy works in a newspaper and his boss gets him a job to write an article about a virtual reality game, at first he doesnt want to get really involved in it but after seeing amazing visuals and getting some incredible quests he starts to feel how the game changes his life aswell...)

3. Дем Михайлов - Господство клана Неспящих (a guy who doesn't want to leave a game, has to delete his own acc and start new one,be cause leader of some strong clan paid him quite some cash to help another player to raise a char and make quests...)

4. Каменистый Артем - Самый странный нуб (a guy who played only early games with planes enters virtual reality world and starts getting called newb, he doesnt like it and has to change...)

5. Ильин Владимир - Шериф (a guy from space shuttle gets stuck in a far away area where no1 can access without spending lots and lots of cash and a virtual reality game asks him to let them use his ship pc as an game server, then his really fun adventures in virtual reality begins... (he's a real beginner who has 0 game knowledge.)

6. Василий Маханенко - Барлиона/Путь Шамана - ( a guy did some damage to property others and got jailed in virtual reality in a game where free players play aswell (without feeling pain), he gets a job of a miner in a place that cant be accesed by free players and his virtual reality life starts from hellish work...)

7. Георгий Смородинский - Семнадцатое обновление (a guy gets into a game against his wil, into virtual reality game, and he isnt lucky he gets into worst place of the game, demon plain and he cant get out of there (he gets there lvl 1vs 100+...)


Ofcourse my shortenings are quite awfull, but if you want to enter real virtual reality world before cv1 comes out, try reading those books, you will be amazed how creative can autors be and how captivating it can be to enter an unknown virtual world.
If you want to find some more books just write LITRPG in google. :geek: