Edgy Novels. If you want to be intellectually hip, you've got to keep up with recent novels that challenge traditional techniques and concepts. Although they may not be in the canon of "classics" yet, many of them will be in a hundred years. Prove to those who know that you're way ahead of the curve.
Neuromancer
A cyberpunk novel set in an internet world, only this novel was written before there was an internet. William Gibson was a true visionary who predicted a world that currently appears to be coming into being. And the picture he painted wasn't always a pretty one! When you talk about this book, make yourself seem really with-it by pretending like you read it back in 1982.
Ishmael
A dialogue between a man and a telepathic gorilla. The gorilla is the man's teacher, and he explains the gorilla's superior weltenschaung in a series of dialogues. The book contrasts what the gorilla calls the "taker" mentality of civilized man with the "leaver" mentality of gorillas and simpler societies. The result is a fascinating treatise on ecological issues through the mouth of one of world literature's most unusual protagonists.
Microserfs
The anti-epic of a few geeky Microsoft employees (they work for "B-B-B-Bill") who decide to start up their own software company. Douglas Coupland chronicles and lampoons our own society in the same way Charles Dickens did 19th century Britain. Furthermore, Coupland uses some unsual techniques: my favorite is where one character decides to keep a file of random thoughts. In the book, this recurring motif is represented by a page filled with seemingly random words and sentence fragments, in various fonts and sizes. (an innovative approach to representing characters' streams-of-consciousness)
Send email to g. (Back to gTexts main page.)