I'm looking for something with an evil or misguided computer intelligence (Hal, etc.) more than a robot.
Someone recommended
Lords of the Middle Dark Del Rey Books, May, 1986 (ISBN 0-345-32560-5)
Pirates of the Thunder, Del Rey Books, March, 1987 (ISBN 0-345-32561-3)
Warriors of the Storm, Del Rey Books, August, 1987 (ISBN 0-345-32562-1)
Masks of the Martyrs, Del Rey, February, 1988 (ISBN 0-345-34309-3)
Any other recommendations would be appreciated.
I just finished one actually, brand new.
The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I won't give anything away but the AI was once a Tibetan motorcycle repairman. I really enjoyed it and actually hope he follows up with a sequel.
Any of Ian Banks Culture books pretty much.
This.Originally Posted by forgeforsaken
William Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy comes to mind, though admittedly I haven't read it in about 20 years, so I might be misremembering.
If you want to read the (sort of) original, check out Colossus by D.F. Jones.
Fair warning....don't read the sequels.
Arthur C. Clarke's 2001?
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein 1966
Berserker collection, Saberhagen 1967-
Not evil, but fantastically written:
The Lifecycle of Software Objects, by Ted Chiang (hugo winner, novella, 2010)
Some quick suggestions, not thinking of anything particular evil though:
Neal Asher, Polity series
Charles Stross, Singularity Sky series and others.
Diaspora, Greg Egan
The Golden Age, John C Wright
Lots of Ian Banks stuff
the Hyperion cantos, but the AIs don't really come in until the 3rd and 4th book.
Daniel Keys Moran's Continuing Time series has some very engaging AIs: Ring, Johnny Johnny, and Ralf come immediately to mind.
Oooh, this bigtime.
Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space stuff certainly has AIs of various ilk in it, and some of them are quite ... well, evil is not exactly the right word but certainly ah, with interests not exactly aligned with the rest of the universe, but they're not the main characters.
Hmm, I wonder if he's written anything new lately.
This. I was just thinking about them the other day, specifically the spearships where they would ram the berserker (with a warhead at the prow to puncture the armor) and then board it. The very first collection (titled Berserker) is probably the best, though there's a lot of good stuff to choose from.
John Varley's Steel Beach is a great read
Haha, I've just thought of a recent s-f book from a well-known writer that has an amazingly well-written AI, but the trouble is, knowing that it's about an AI would give away the plot of the book :(
Quite an odd conundrum that lol.
These were some of my all time favorite books. I'm not sure where you would find them now though.
Awesome list everyone. Thank you all for the suggestions. I picked up a few of these. I'll let you know how they go.
Alfred Bester, The Computer Connection.
Seconding Neuromancer, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Hyperion(I only liked the first book). Although a big part of why I consider the AIs well written in these is because they're not really evil or misguided.
I think we had the answer here and glossed over it. The answer to the question is Iain Banks, specifically Excession.
He set up an online store and carries them all as ebooks. He also has books by Matt Stover, Eluki bes Shahar, Margaret Weis, Steve Perry and Michael Williams. Site is here.
While I'd prefer he wrote full-time rather than code, DKM's got some real-world development chops and set the whole thing up.
Last edited by Mike O'Malley; 07-05-2012 at 08:02 PM.
^^ What Mike said.
DKM re-released all of his works, along with the latest that came out last year(?). You can get them in hard copy or ebook from his site, there, and the bonus is that he gets all the proceeds.
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