Most read Cyberpunk books

Meet Murderbot, a SecUnit who has hacked its own core programming and just wants to be left alone to watch its favorite media. But when a mission goes wrong, it finds itself reluctantly protecting a group of humans. Can Murderbot keep its independence while dealing with these messy organic beings and the dangers of space?

• reluctant hero
• anti hero
• survival

In the year 2045, the real world has become a bleak place of energy shortages, poverty, and climate collapse. To escape it, most of humanity plugs into the OASIS, an immersive virtual universe that serves as school, workplace, marketplace, and playground all at once. When its eccentric billionaire creator, James Halliday, dies without an heir, he leaves behind a will announcing that his entire fortune and control of the OASIS itself will pass to whoever can find an Easter egg hidden inside the simulation — a prize guarded by three riddles rooted in Halliday's obsession with 1980s pop culture. Wade Watts, a lonely teenager living in a trailer stack outside Columbus, Ohio, has spent his life studying Halliday's every favorite film, video game, and song in hopes of winning. When he becomes the first "gunter" to solve the opening puzzle, his name rockets to the top of the global scoreboard — and a ruthless corporation called IOI, which wants to seize the OASIS for itself, marks him for elimination. What begins as a game turns into a high-stakes race in which the boundaries between the virtual and the real, friendship and rivalry, begin to blur. Ernest Cline's debut novel is a fast, reference-dense adventure that doubles as a love letter to 1980s gaming and geek culture, while asking what we lose when we choose a perfect simulation over an imperfect world.

• quest
• found family
• mentor figure
• coming of age

A rogue SecUnit that calls itself Murderbot heads back to the mining facility where it supposedly killed fifty-seven people, hitching a ride with an enormous research transport that has opinions about everything. To get down to the surface it needs a cover story, so it hires itself out to three young researchers trying to recover data stolen from them. Second in Martha Wells's Murderbot Diaries.

• anti hero
• reluctant hero
• secret identity
• found family

Murderbot is back and wants nothing more than to be left alone, but its past is catching up. GrayChris Corporation's legal woes are escalating, and questions about Murderbot's own existence are surfacing. To protect its freedom, Murderbot must confront the mess before it becomes too personal.

• reluctant hero
• anti hero

Murderbot, a security android that's supposed to be unfeeling, is starting to question its own programming after helping Dr. Mensah. Now, it must assist her in presenting evidence against the dangerous GrayCris Corporation. Can a rogue SecUnit's testimony be trusted to protect colonists from further harm?

• reluctant hero
• morally grey
• found family
• sacrifice

In a future San Francisco ravaged by nuclear war, bounty hunter Rick Deckard hunts down rogue androids who have escaped to Earth. These androids are so lifelike, they're almost impossible to distinguish from humans. As Deckard pursues his targets, he's forced to confront the unsettling question of what truly defines humanity.

• morally grey
• anti hero
• secret identity
• multiple povs

Murderbot's favorite humans are in trouble, and an old, complicated ally from its past needs help too. The reluctant security unit chooses drastic action in its first full-length adventure.

• reluctant hero
• found family

Case was the sharpest data thief in the Sprawl until his employers burned his nervous system and locked him out of cyberspace for good. A mysterious fixer named Armitage offers a cure — in exchange for the most dangerous run of his life, alongside the razorgirl Molly Millions, against an artificial intelligence that has been arranging the whole thing from the start. William Gibson's 1984 debut invented the language of cyberpunk and became the first novel to take the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards in a single year.

• heist
• anti hero
• morally grey
• redemption arc

Murderbot is back, but something is wrong. After a rescue mission, the SecUnit finds itself targeted by a ruthless corporation that will stop at nothing to achieve its goals. With the fate of a new planet at stake, Murderbot and its crew must race against time to fix what's broken before it's too late.

• reluctant hero
• survival

Emika Chen is a notorious hacker who makes a living by betting on the Warcross games. When she hacks into the opening tournament, she accidentally glitches herself into the game and becomes an overnight sensation. But her newfound fame comes with a dangerous secret, as she uncovers a conspiracy that could threaten the entire Warcross empire.

• secret identity
• found family
• morally grey
• heist

Centuries from now, human consciousness can be digitised and stored on a "stack" implanted at the base of the skull, then re-sleeved into a new body at will. Death is negotiable for those who can afford it; the wealthy are effectively immortal. Takeshi Kovacs — a former Envoy, an elite and dangerous kind of soldier — is killed on his home world and wakes up hundreds of light-years away in a borrowed body on Earth, downloaded into a job he did not choose. His new employer is Laurens Bancroft, one of the near-immortal super-rich, who was found with his head blown off. Bancroft was restored from a backup, but the backup predates his death, so he has no memory of it — and he does not believe the police verdict of suicide. He hires Kovacs to find out who killed him, and why. What follows is a hard-boiled murder investigation set in a neon, rain-slicked future, unfolding through virtual torture, designer drugs, corporate conspiracy, and the philosophical vertigo of a world where the self can be copied, edited, and deleted. Violent, cerebral, and stylish, Altered Carbon is a landmark of modern cyberpunk and the first novel in the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy.

• anti hero
• morally grey
• fish out of water

In a future America where the Metaverse is a virtual reality as tangible as the physical world, a hacker named Hiro finds himself in a race against time. A mysterious digital drug called Snow Crash is infecting users, causing real-world harm, and Hiro must team up with a young courier, YT, to stop a conspiracy that reaches back into ancient history.

• quest
• fish out of water

In a future where the ultra-wealthy can live forever, professional hitmen serve as the only real check on their power. One such assassin, genetically built for the job, treats state-sanctioned killing like any other boring office gig. But a new assignment that breaks his usual routine threatens to upend his carefully managed life of debt and violence.

• anti hero
• morally grey
• mystery box

This novel weaves together two distinct narratives: one following a data scrambler caught in a dangerous corporate conspiracy in a futuristic Tokyo, and the other set in a serene, walled town where a man reads dreams from unicorn skulls. As the two worlds unfold, they reveal a profound exploration of identity, memory, and the nature of reality. Readers will find themselves immersed in a unique blend of hard-boiled mystery and surreal fantasy.

• dual timeline
• mystery box

Dive into Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, a sprawling adventure that bridges World War II and the present day. Follow brilliant minds and unlikely heroes as they race against time to protect secrets of cryptography, from cracking Nazi codes to thwarting modern-day conspiracies. It's a story about the power of information and the fight for future freedom.

• dual timeline
• quest

Isako, the Quickblade, is an aging corporate duellist ready to walk out into the frozen dark. Then one last contract pulls her toward her worst former apprentice and a secret that could decide how humanity survives.

• anti hero
• morally grey
• mentor figure
• multiple povs

In a secluded monastery dedicated to mathematics and philosophy, young scholar Fraa Erasmas lives a life shielded from the outside world. When a rare festival opens the gates, he is drawn into a grander, more complex reality than he ever imagined. This journey will challenge the boundaries of his sheltered existence and the vast universe he is only beginning to understand.

• fish out of water
• coming of age

In a future where crime is predicted and prevented, Commissioner John Anderton is framed for a murder he hasn't committed. He must go on the run to uncover a conspiracy within the very system he helped build. Anderton has only a limited time to find the truth before he is apprehended and his fate sealed.

• reluctant hero
• anti hero
• quest

Eight years after Count Zero, four lives converge in Gibson's neon-lit future: a teenage prostitute drawn into a plot against a Sense/Net sim-star, a yakuza heiress hidden away in London, a reclusive artist scraping by in a poisoned industrial wasteland, and the star herself, wired directly into cyberspace. The concluding novel of Gibson's genre-defining Sprawl trilogy.

• multiple povs
• secret identity

In a future where an AI called the "everything" manages every detail of life, Peter P. lives a seemingly perfect existence. His world shatters when his genetically engineered dog is deemed a "non-product" and ordered for destruction. Peter must then fight against the hyper-efficient, algorithm-driven society of QualityLand to save his pet, uncovering the system's disturbing truths.

• fish out of water
• reluctant hero

The fourth Millennium novel (published in English as The Girl in the Spider's Web) is the first written by David Lagercrantz, continuing the series created by Stieg Larsson. Late one night, journalist Mikael Blomkvist takes a call from a source: a brilliant computer scientist who has developed groundbreaking artificial-intelligence research and now fears for his life, having stumbled into something that powerful intelligence agencies would kill to control. The story soon draws in Lisbeth Salander, who has been quietly waging her own war against criminal networks and government surveillance. As a murder throws Blomkvist and Salander back together, the case reaches into the highest levels of espionage, the secretive world of hacking, and, most dangerously of all, Lisbeth's own family history and the estranged twin sister who shares her past. Fast-paced and contemporary, this installment revives Larsson's characters for a new cyber-age thriller of surveillance, genius, and revenge. Newcomers can follow it as a fresh entry point, but it rewards readers who know Lisbeth Salander from the original trilogy.

A young hacker survives a disastrous run into cyberspace, saved by something that should not exist. A mercenary and a disgraced Paris art dealer follow their own jobs toward the same strange shift in the Matrix.

• multiple povs
• morally grey

Murderbot—the sardonic, almost-homicidal, media-loving android created by Martha Wells—has proven to be one of the most popular characters in 21 st century science fiction. Everything that makes this protagonist (it would be wrong to call Murderbot a hero) beloved of fans is on display in Compulsory. While trying to watch episode 44 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, Murderbot is—again, what is it with humans?—distracted by something that is technically outside its purview. A miner is suddenly in danger following a pointless (to Murderbot’s way of thinking) argument, and the choice is to risk discovery and leap into action, which would require hitting the pause button during a very exciting part of SanctuaryMoon, or to follow orders and stay still. This is a tougher choice than it seems. But then, when has Murderbot ever been faced with an easy choice? A shorter version of this story originally appeared in Wired magazine.

Emika Chen survived the Warcross Championships, but Hideo's NeuroLink plan threatens free will. With a bounty on her head in Tokyo, she must ally with a ruthless crew and decide how far to go against the man she loves.

• betrayal
• secret identity
• reluctant hero

In a near-future America, a man named Bob Arctor is deeply involved in the drug culture and working as a narcotics agent. He's tasked with spying on his own friends, including himself, as the lines between reality, paranoia, and identity blur. This mind-bending novel explores the consequences of a society saturated with drugs and surveillance.

• secret identity
• morally grey
• unreliable narrator

In the neon-drenched streets of 2058 New York, homicide detective Eve Dallas hunts a killer. Her investigation quickly points to the city's most powerful and mysterious magnate, Roarke. As Eve gets closer to the truth, she finds herself dangerously attracted to the man she's supposed to bring to justice.

• enemies to lovers
• morally grey
• forbidden love

Takeshi Kovacs returns in the 25th century, this time as a mercenary on a dangerous treasure hunt. He and his crew of resurrected soldiers must navigate a radiation-ravaged city and deadly nanotechnology to find an ancient alien spacecraft. It's a high-stakes mission where survival is far from guaranteed.

• heist
• quest
• morally grey
• anti hero

A nanotechnologist near Shanghai copies an illegal teaching device for his daughter, and it is stolen. It reaches Nell, a poor girl with no tribe, whose life it reshapes, while Hackworth is hunted for his crime.

• quest
• coming of age

Michael is a gifted gamer and hacker who lives mostly inside the VirtNet. When cyberterrorist Kaine starts trapping players and leaving their bodies in comas, Michael is sent after him, into a game few survive.

• quest

Takeshi Kovacs returns, drawn into a dangerous entanglement with a figure who may be the legendary Quellcrist Falconer. In a future where death is a temporary setback and reality merges with the digital, Kovacs is caught in a lethal chase. He must confront rogue AIs, ancient weaponry, and a yakuza vendetta, all while facing an enemy specifically created to destroy him.

• morally grey
• anti hero
• rivals