A new ranking of 21st-century cyberpunk books brings together stories about societies where technological advances coexist with inequality, political manipulation and corporate influence. The selection ranges from near-future thrillers to sprawling science-fiction epics, with Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon taking the top spot.
The list opens with T.R. Napper’s 36 Streets, a 2022 novel set in a Chinese-occupied Hanoi. Lin Vu, known locally as “The Silent One,” is drawn into an investigation after a developer of the immersive war simulation Fat Factory arrives in the city seeking answers about his friend’s murder. The trail leads into a world of corporate conspiracy and violence.
Zachary Mason’s Void Star follows three characters in a future San Francisco shaped by rising seas, extreme inequality and advanced technology. Their paths intersect through events involving a robbery, a demand for memories and a spying laptop. Artificial memory and questions of identity are central to the novel’s investigation of technology and morality.
In Lincoln Michel’s The Body Scout, physical modification and corporate-owned baseball shape a climate-damaged New York. Kobo works for a pharmaceutical company scouting genetically edited players. When his brother is murdered, he begins searching for the killer and enters a world of body transformation and exploitation.
Richard K. Morgan’s Market Forces imagines companies profiting from war and employees climbing the corporate ladder through deadly duels. Its protagonist, Chris Faulkner, has risen from poverty by working as an assassin for Shorn Associates, a firm that backs conflicts for a share of the spoils. The novel examines ambition, inequality and moral compromise.
Malka Older’s Infomocracy shifts the focus to political systems. In its future, communities of 100,000 people choose their own governments, while a search-engine monopoly called Information oversees elections. A campaign researcher’s discovery of a possible conspiracy brings him into contact with an Information operative and an activist opposed to the system.
Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide is set on Silicon Isle, where migrant workers sort discarded electronics. Mimi is among the laborers who discover that promises of fair wages have proved false. As an American company and local gangs seek control of the island, the novel connects technological consumption with environmental harm and the exploitation of workers.
Ian McDonald’s River of Gods is set in a politically fractured India in 2047 and follows nine interconnected characters amid drought and technological disorder. Among them are a police officer tasked with destroying illegal artificial intelligences, political figures, journalists and scientists. The story also follows Thomas, who encounters Aj, a teenager with abilities that make her far more than she first appears.
Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl builds a cyberpunk world around food rather than computers. In a future Bangkok facing shortages, agribusiness representative Anderson Lake searches for genetic material that could help his company control the food supply. He meets Emiko, an engineered humanoid who has been abandoned and exploited, as political tensions threaten the city.
William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition brings the genre into a contemporary setting. Cayce Pollard, a consultant who predicts consumer trends, is hired to identify the anonymous creator of a series of internet videos. Her search takes her across several cities and into a web of marketing, globalization and conspiracy, while she continues to process her father’s disappearance on September 11.
At number one, Altered Carbon imagines a future in which human consciousness can be stored digitally. The novel uses that premise to explore wealth, immortality and corruption, and its popularity was strengthened by adaptations including a Netflix series that ran from 2018 to 2020 and the 2020 animated film Altered Carbon: Resleeved. The ranking presents the book as a defining example of noir-inflected cyberpunk.
Sources: Comic Book Resources.