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Dark Future Sci Fi Novels

Jonbo

Jonbo

New Member
Ok. This is kind of obscure (maybe) but I've read A Scanner Darkly a fair while back and was quite interested with the idea of a "grotty" version of the future as opposed to gleaming cities of spires with hover cars and inter-dimensional space travel etc etc etc. This is kind of hard to explain so bear with me on this one. The easiest way I could describe it would be to those out there who played the Deus Ex video game. To those that haven't the world is technologically advanced in ways such as body augmentation and robots but there is a huge black market/underworld kind of feel to it all. Accompany this with cities that aren't gleaming as I said but are the opposite. Grotty, dark almost post-apocalyptic style with bums and hobos etc.
Ok that was tough but hopefully somebody will get hold of what I'm failing to describe.
I especially like the drug culture of A Scanner Darkly (which is also present in Deus Ex but away from that)
The question at the end of all that is that I'm trying and failing to find more books that deal with the not-so shiny side of things in the future.
Any help would be much appreciated.
 
A Scanner Darkly is one of my favourite science fiction books! Some of PKD's other novels probably have a similar tone, but I've only read a couple of his which aren't that similar in the future they portray. For some reason, these types of environments I can think of a lot more in fantasy than in science fiction.
For darker SF in general (rather than the specifics of drug culture etc) I'd say check out Alfred Bester's the Stars My Destination, Joe Haldeman's the Forever War and Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon. But in fantasy there are a few authors who have very similar style cultures - China Mieville, Jeff Vandermeer, M John Harrison and Ian R Macleod all have this very gritty, urban underculture, but they're fantasy, not science fiction, so don't have the technology and instead are based around 19th century technology. (Harrison's Viriconium is technically set in the future, but so far in the future that it's fantasy).
 
Cheers, Brys. I'll read more into some of the author's you mentioned. It's interesting that you mentioned fantasy novels, though. Fantasy was, and still is to a certain extent, my genre of choice, I just feel like branching out at the moment. I own roughly 180 fantasy novels read about 160 of them and own 1 Sci-Fi novel - Dune! Anyways, personally, I really enjoyed Viriconium. The last bastion on earth if I remember rightly. The drug culture is really a side issue - it was just something that caught my interest in one or two things I've read/seen. I'm not a junkie :p

PS: My friend recommended The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner. If anyone has read it, it is it worth a read?

Any more suggestions from anyone would be great too.
 
Jeffrey Thomas's Punktown work shoud be looked into.

As noted above for one to start with China Mieville's Perdido Street Station is to start on a great path. M. John Harrison's Light is one of the best SF novels in recent memory IMHO.

But I think you'd love visitng Mieville's New Crobuzon.
 
For dark future scifi, I fully recommend Walter M. Miller Jr's A Canticle for Liebowitz. A wonderful portrayal of a very possible future, and a showcase of what happens to when history repeats itself.

Another one I'd recommend is Star Wars.

Just kidding.

Play Fallout. :)

Hmm, relooking at your post I saw something about Deux Ex-like human augmentation and all that jazz, and what I had in mind is something by George Alec Effinger, which I had recommended here before. It's in the future, gritty world of Marid Audran where people can be augmented with moddies and daddies - brain modules that people plug in and out to assume abilities that they otherwise wouldn't have. Recommended.

Another one: Greg Egan's Quarantine, where molecular robotics (ingested by people by sniffing it up via their nostrils) meets a world where the ozone layer is completely depleted and the world has to be quarantined to ensure humankind's continued survival. Hardcare scifi, this one.

ds
 
Oh don't worry. I've played Fallout. I remember when it came out yonks ago. One of the first games I played.

Quarantine sounds very interesting. But then so does everything that has been recommended so far. This could get expensive. Oh well, that's where eBay comes into play I guess.
 
Try William Gibson pretty much anything he writes is in this category
the Sprawl series(Neuromancer etal) and the Bridge Trilogy are my favorites

Beamer
It's only forever, not long at all (Jareth)
 
Righteo. Have picked up a copy of Perdido Street Station. My crappy local bookshop had none of the others in stock, and gave me quizzical and condescending looks as I reeled off book after book that they had never heard of, which vexed me more than a little! Now that the World Cup is over for England I can commence reading again...
Well I'm off to New Crobuzon ;)
Cheers y'all!
 
Back in the 80s Peter Beere wrote a trilogy called Trauma 2020 which dealt with a rather bleak future. The books were Urban Prey, The Crucifixion Squad, and Silent Slaughter.

They seem to be available from Amazon UK.
 
A scanner darkly is part of a short storie collection, in fact I think most of that authors works would fall under dark, futuristic, he had that kind of view I feel.

I got a good book - Imprint by Paull Bates - now that was a dark sci-fi futuristic story that I enjoyed:D
 
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