Rage Against the Machine

With apocalypse permanently lingering on the horizon, this collection explores the new age of anxiety in five poetic sequences, from predators and prey to technology that changes the essence of what it means to be human.

Yay! You're an online video sensation! But thanks to a chip in your brain your every thought is out there for all to see…

Robots are increasingly integrated into modern society—on the battlefield and the road, in business, education, and health—Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff searches for an answer to one of the most important questions of our age: will these machines help us, or will they replace us?

Driverless cars, personal assistant in our pockets, predictive texting… no doubt artificial intelligence is integral to our lives. So will they act on their own? Markoff chronicles the history of automation, from the birth of the artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation communities in the 1950s, to the modern day brain trusts at Google and Apple in Silicon Valley, and on to the expanding tech corridor between Boston and New York, he traces the different ways developers have addressed this fundamental problem and urges them to carefully consider the consequences of their work.

Your guide to the 21st Century! The Ware Tetralogy is a four part series that begins innocently with rebel robots bring immortality to their human creator by eating his brain. Keepin' it real casual. By the fourth part, the robots have evolved into soft plastic slugs called moldies —and some human “cheeseballs” want to have sex with them. It's all very strange, but The Ware Tetralogy is an extremely fun read if you don't take everything about it too seriously, or try to find real teachings about what the future is or will be.

Just read it, be consumed with nightmares of robot sex and wake up to find that life is all good, and it all goes on.

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, this breakout science-fiction debut set in Thailand is the refreshing dystopia and future we've been waiting for for a while.

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. But she is not human; she is an engineered being, grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as devils by some, soulless by others, these new people are the toys of the rich and famous So what happens when to them? And on the flipside, we have a bounty hunter who's foraging foodstuffs thought to be extinct. Why? Because calories are now the currency of the world. Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly-acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century, and this book is a step away from the usual automated terror of futures.

What would you do if your best robots—children of your own brain—walked up and said “We want union scale”? This 1950s sci-fi may not be anything new seeing as how the ideas of future have changed so rapidly. But Mari Wolf's novel is great in forecasting the big question: what happens if and when computers and artificial intelligence develop sentience? This might have been written more than 50 years ago, but it's not bogged by outdated science or ridiculous predictions.

Well, you can't have a sci-fi shelf without the works of Philip K. Dick right?