Pattern Recognition / Zero History / Spook Country - William Gibson
The Peripheral - William Gibson
Not exactly the same thing, but I'll also throw in Glasshouse by Charles Stross. And since we're talking Charles Stross, also add Halting State to the list.
Oh, and VALIS by Philip K. Dick. Definitely worth a read.
What I really liked about Neuromancer looking back, is how many black characters it had. Once of the first sci-fi books I read that had characters I could easily identify with.
Maelcum was pivotal in the entire story and was a cool bad boy type. And you can't forget the whole crew in the "Marcus Garvey" spaceship.
Quality stuff. That right there was enough to make me a lifelong Gibson fan.
I know the pain. Well, it would be worth your while once you get to it - as I said, "Ubik" is pretty awesome. "The Man in the High Castle" too, although it's different, not that much of "pure" s-f element, it's political fiction, but still very Dickesque (it depicts a world where nazis won the war - where certain writer gains fame for his alternative history novel in which they actually lost :) ).
Sounds good. I'm on book 12 of the "Wheel of Time" series by Jordan now, plus all the non-fiction I'm reading. But maybe after I finish WoT I'll binge on PKD for a while. I did enjoy VALIS quite a lot, even though it was pretty f'in weird. :-)
Given what you've just read and a VR/AR requirement I'd suggest either -
Rainbows End - Vernor Vinge
Daemon - Daniel Suarez
They are both more AR, which I suspect will be the next step rather than VR, AR novels have if anything proven to me it's more relevant than VR, for now.
The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins... this book starts at human-bonobo-chimpanzee split and goes backward into a LOT of evolutionary history, including scientific discoveries and different branches of the evolutionary tree.
Believe it or not: Slaughterhouse V by Kurt Vonnegut and No. 44 The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain. The first for the idea of being "unstuck" in time, and the second for introducing the concept of nihilism.
A man goes out to buy shoelaces and a cookie during his lunch break, but the story is packed with insane levels of detail about the objects around us and the narrator's imagination about how those details came to be.
One such detail: the way a plastic straw will float in a can of soda until it's horizontal, but sometimes the microscopic burrs in the pull-tab opening will dig into the straw and keep it from doing that.
(Baker is a much more entertaining writer than I am.)
Boom! Another Greg Egan fan, here. Reading through Axiomatic right now and loving it.
One thing I've noticed (& which I'm sure a lot of people have stated) is that his fictional works are mostly just a platform for him to explore ideas. Whether or not they entertain is a side effect. A few stories on Axiomatic for instance end rather abruptly. It is as if Egan just couldn't be bothered with tying everything in a neat little package once he'd already finished exploring the implications of a particular philosophical idea.
For more mind altering fiction from Egan, tackle his "Orthogonal" books, which posits a universe where the speed of light is not a constant and builds on that (and Riemannian Geometry).
I had to put this one down but I plan to pick it up later. His ideas can be super dense at times and it makes fun reading feel like work. It definitely doesn't "cool down" my brain at the end of the day.
Have to agree to this. Some of his stories are stellar, but others were very textbook-like, which isn't a bad thing in particular, but usually whenever I'm reading fiction i'm aiming for something lighter.
Obviously not s-f as such, but - quite a few novels by Nabokov. "The Luzhin Defence" (aka "The Defense"), "The Eye", "Bend Sinister", "Transparent Things" - all very immersing, and posing the question of what's the true reality, its underpinnings and seams. Challenging reads for sure, every detail matters.
Some might recommend Pynchon as well, personally I'm not convinced but to each his own.
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Read it around three years ago and I was never the same since. It is non-fiction, and I think VR is only mentioned in passing, but if you see it anywhere, be sure to pick it up. It was a fun and informative read.
REAMDE- Neal Stephenson
Pattern Recognition / Zero History / Spook Country - William Gibson
The Peripheral - William Gibson
Not exactly the same thing, but I'll also throw in Glasshouse by Charles Stross. And since we're talking Charles Stross, also add Halting State to the list.
Oh, and VALIS by Philip K. Dick. Definitely worth a read.