Hi all. I had an idea for what I reckon could be a potentially decent techno-thriller story, but since I don’t really read all that much of that particular genre, I don’t really know where to start. Can anyone give me a few good recommendations? Thanks.
Pretty much anything by Philip K. Dick, except anything written within a few years of his death. He went kind of crazy and thought God was a machine in space that transmitted via a pink laser beam the idea that reality was actually fake and time stopped after the Romans killed Christ. Or something. Yeah, don’t ask.
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan is another good example of what you’re looking for, I think. It’s a gritty future novel where you can download your consciousness at the instant of death and be inserted into another body. Crazy government/corporate conspiracies abound.
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by someone whose name escapes me might be another, although I’m not sure you’d classify it as a thriller. Basically humanity builds a giant intelligent super computer. The computer goes crazy, as they are wont to do, takes over the world and then digitizes reality and uploads everyone into a virtual reality where no one can die. People, lacking excitement in their lives, turn to death sports and the like. They invent new ways to kill each other but right before the instant of death Prime Intellect saves them. One women figures out how to kill herself before Prime Intellect can reassemble her and she is dead for fourteen seconds or something before she is brought back. She becomes a celebrity and hijinks ensue.
While good books, chinchalinchin, I’m not sure those are really what most people consider as techno-thrillers. In my mind, the techno in techno-thrillers are at most slightly more advanced then what’s available at the time the book is written. More stuff like Tom Clancy and Neal Stephenson, Not so much stuff with sentient androids and computer-derived immortality .
Just pick a Michael Crichton book at random and start there.
Fair enough. I would contend sentient androids and computer derived immortality isn’t so far off, but then in my youth, I managed to kill about half of my brain cells with various chemicals, so I’m probably bonkers.
I really enjoy the Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry. The first is Patient Zero. There are five novels in the series currently in print and at least two more planned. All have a strong bio-terrorism element. As an aside, I also recommend his straight horror works as well.
Daemon by Daniel Suarez. Dying techno- billionaire plants a program to go off on his death and take control…
Can’t go wrong with Snow Crash or Reamde, by Neal Stephenson.
Matthew Reilly’s got some good novels of this sort. Have a read of Ice Station, and see what you think.
I beg to differ; Reamde was terrible and long (and terrible). It should have been titled Reamed.
William Gibson’s recent stuff, especially Pattern Recognition, Spook Country and Zero History.
Is Tom Clancy too obvious for what you’re asking?
My favourites in the genre, in no particular order are as follows;
Tom Clancy
- Red October through to Sum of all Fears, IMO he started to go downhill after that. The next two, Without Remorse and Debt of Honour are readable, but whatever you do don’t go further than that, it will sully your opinion of someone who started out as a decent author.
Larry Bond
- Red Phoenix and Vortex were both decent. I don’t recall thinking much of his third book.
Eric L Harry’s first novel Arc Light I recall liking very much. But may be hard to locate, I seem to recall seeing it is now out of print. I don;t think his next two were anywhere near as good.
Dale Brown’s earlier ones were OK, but the longer the series went the more incredible the events an scenarios became to keep the main series protagonist in the books.
Stephen Coonts - Flight of the Intruder was good his work also went downhill IMO
Harold Coyle - I’ve only read the first 3-4 of his books, and I really enjoyed the first couple. I liked that they had a really granular focus, and followed a small armoured unit (I think it was a company sized unit IIRC)
I haven’t read some of them in quite some time, so hopefully there’s not too much rose coloured memory happening. But I did recently reread some of my Clancy collection.
Pattern Recognition is one of my favorite books period. But you can also look at his earlier stuff but it is very advanced tech. But there is a lot of tech and a lot of thriller.
I’ll second this. Stephenson is one of my favorite authors, but Reamde was terrible.
Cryptonomicon is a much better techno-thriller by the same author.
Like Simplico says I think most of the recommendations in this thread aren’t really techno-thrillers as I understand the term.
For the OP, ‘Firefox’ by Craig Thomas is a classic, all of his books are good but more on the ‘thriller’ side of the spectrum than ‘techno’.
I also really liked ‘Storming Intrepid’ by Payne Harrison, ‘Thunder of Erebus’ was pretty good as well.
Though those were written some time ago so may not really suit.
The Cobra Event by Richard Preston. Chilling and very real.
I echo the Michael Crichton suggestion too. Personally I find him an average writer but his ideas are gold.
I rather liked Alif the Unseen, though there’s a strong supernatural element to it, so it’s more like Neil Gaiman by way of Neal Stephenson than Stephenson alone.