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Comment by FL33TW00D | Hacker News Reader

Anyone have recommendations on books that can rival the first part of Accelerando in number of prescient ideas about how the near future, pre singularity might look?

My own list is:

  Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon
  Counting Heads by David Marusek
  Nexus by Ramez Naam
  Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

But I'm always on the look out for more! The more predictive the better!

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Not necessarily books, but:

Pantheon/the stories it's based on by Ken Liu (though I really do recommend the animated series).

Maybe more conventional/dated, but I always recommend it for "getting" the emotional, person-to-person side in a particular way that few others do: .hack//SIGN. None of the characters ever quite realize what's going on, but elements - especially the soundtrack - seem to understand that everyone is on the precipice of something irrevocable.

  Shine, bright morning light
  Now in the air the spring is coming
  Sweet blowing wind
  Singing down the hills and valleys

  Keep your eyes on me
  Now we're on the edge of hell
  Dear my love, sweet morning light
  Wait for me, you've gone much farther, too far...

The Pantheon animated series is pretty amazing. I enthusiastically second that recommendation.

Not quite what you’re requesting but “Across Realtime” by Vernor Vinge explores ideas around the singularity. In particular it contains the short novel “Marooned in Realtime” that is completely mind blowing imo.

The edition of Marooned in Realtime I read in the late eighties or around 1990 was my introduction to the concept of the Singularity, and it had an essay in the back of it by Vinge asserting that the reader would likely live to see the real thing within 30 years or so.

It's remarkable that so many of that circle in the 80s and 90s were so close, even without knowing exactly what detailed technologies would enable it. Trend lines on graphs undefeated, I guess.

Toss "Signal to Noise" and "A Signal Shattered" both by Eric S. Nylund into the pot - interesting conceptual things around biotech/selfmodification singularities in addition to the more common computational singularities.

A bit old but still very relevant is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants .

Rampant consumerism, a United States so dominated by corporations that there is a senator from Cocoa-Cola, and advertising so aggressive you might even prefer the world we live in... published in 1953.

The Neuromancer trilogy is great. At least post-singularity AIs appear to be uninterested in humanity.

Rudy Rucker also has a bunch of brain-benders that bent my brain so hard I can't name them.

The Long Run by Daniel Keys Moran takes place in 2069 but was written in 1989 and the tech still holds up decently (to me at least). Sort of a Snow Crash vibe but less satire. AI's exist on the network (called the Crystal Wind) but haven't taken over or anything. Many Players (hackers) use "Image" software that are essentially AI agents.

Apparently Counting Heads is currently a freebie for audible premium. Rainbows.. overrated IMHO.

Nexus series has a great story with great pacing, classic cyberpunk ambiance with genuinely fresh takes, but be warned.. fairly bad writing. Astonishing that there is no movie yet because it really seems like one of those things very much written with that in mind. As Hollywood continues to discourage original work and scramble for adaptations with an existing audience.. even more astonishing if it doesn't land in the next few years. Someone will realize they can get the ready-player audience and the cyberpunk 2077 audience without paying big royalties

Not a book, but the new Marathon computer game might be the first non-indie title where you play as a disembodied posthuman entity. Very neat and unconventional aesthetic for a sci-fi future, too.

StarMaker is awesome but really exhausting to read.

Lovestar by Andri Snaer Magnason (2012) is a good story around ubiquitous advertising, remote work, and veneration of Tech Bros and tech in everyday life gone too far.

For one example, if people are in debt, a debt collector is allowed to force their brain implants to take over their body at random to shout advertising jingles at strangers, to pay off the debt with advertising money.

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