Fiction

Great Reads About Computer Geeks

Rebecca Joines Schinsky

Chief of Staff

Rebecca Joines Schinsky is the executive director of product and ecommerce at Riot New Media Group. She co-hosts All the Books! and the Book Riot Podcast. Follow her on Twitter: @rebeccaschinsky.

This installment of Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker protects watched groups from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble—until he falls in love with the wrong woman and unleashes a forbidden text thought to be written by the jinn. 

As the book opens, Alif ’s computer has just been breached by the “Hand of God,” as the hackers call the state’s electronic security force, and he is scrambling to protect his clients—dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other vulnerable groups in autocratic states across the region. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and when it turns out the fiancé is the Hand, and the state security forces come after Alif with guns drawn, he must go underground, trying all the while to fight back against a piece of code he wrote to protect his lover but which the Hand is using to create the most sophisticated state surveillance the world has ever known. 

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Earlier this week, we asked you to recommend books about computer geeks. Here’s what you suggested in the comments and on Facebook and Twitter.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Erebos by Ursula Poznanski

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Harmonica & Gig by RJ Astruc

The Vanessa Michael Munroe series by Taylor Stevens

Brain Jack by Brian Faulkner

anything by John Sundman

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Jpod by Douglas Coupland

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

The Laundry series by Charles Stross

Amped by Daniel H. Wilson

The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson

Any more to add?