perfidy

Comprehensive as it may be, I would like to add my two cents to buckethead's very potent 22-item top-five list.

• William Gibson-Neuromancer (plus Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive)
• Philip K. Dick- A Scanner Darkly
• Dick- The Man In The High Castle
• Bruce Sterling- Islands In The Net
• Thomas Pynchon- Gravity's Rainbow
• David Brin- The Postman
• Isaac Asimov- I, Robot
• also... Stephenson- Snow Crash. Just to be thorough.

Some might argue that Gravity's Rainbow is not science fiction, being instead a turgid and pretentious turd laid by the biggest charlatan in English-language writing in the years between Joyce and Eggers. Those some are stupid people. It's fiction about science, and it kicks ass besides, so I'm fine with it. The Sterling book, by the way, is touchingly dated in its details. It was written just as computers and faxes were beginning to make speedy communication easier, and the book displays a strange-seeming reverence for and love of the fax machine.