Snow Crash
by Neil Stephenson

If I could recommend only one book to the people who play Uplink, then it would be Snow Crash. This is ESSENTIAL reading for any fan of the high-tech future. Myself and the other members of Introversion Software have spent hours debating the technical side of this book, in which Neil Stephenson describes a complete "Metaverse" - essentially a huge clump of cyberspace real-estate populated by "Avatars" from the real world (ie people with VR gear on). Most of the book takes place in this Metaverse in fact. It's a fascinating idea - undoubtadly heavily inspired by Neuromancer but (in my opinion) brought to life in a much more vivid way - the description of this high-tech future is more grounded in reality and somehow seems more real. The programmer/geek side of me sees this Metaverse as the Ultimate computer project - and I firmly believe somebody will make a great deal of money from implementing it one day.

Cryptonomicon
By Neil stephenson

Same author, very different book. Cryptonomicon is a sodding huge book in both scope and page-count, and it regularly flicks between present-day and World-War-II. Things can get confusing as the same families are involved - giving a couple of the characters the same name even though they are seperated by 50 years. I would admit that the overall story (concerning some lost gold) does not entirely hold together (it ends up quite disjoint and fractured), but this book is packed with fantastic mini-stories and ideas. As the name suggests the book is heavily involved with cryptography - it's another book that rings bells with my geeky side, and the inventions and devices employed in the book are imaginative and amusing. This book was an inspiring read from start to finish.

Neuromancer
By William Gibson

The book that started it all - the term "Cyberspace" was invented with this book, leading on to many different interpretations and ideas that became Virtual Reality. It is perhaps interesting to note that the cover art for the copy of Neuromancer that I owned for years is entirely blue. Neuromancer has a reasonable story and some good characters, but its main appeal (apart from the VR technology) lies in the atmosphere it creates - a brooding, dark vision of a dysfunctional future. This used to be "the bible" of Silicon Valley start ups - companies would give this book to all their new recruits to give them ideas. Rumour has it that Snow Crash has now taken over in that role.