Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2023 - Technology (Fiction)
- Mahogany S.
- Friday, February 10, 2023
Collection
Check out one of these titles and fulfill the #BroaderBookshelf 2023 Reading Challenge prompt "read a fiction or nonfiction book about technology".
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2023 Reading Challenge. Find more lists here.
Fated Blades
Published in 2021
Two members of the genetically-enhanced ruling families of planet Rada, in a constant fight for power and dominance for eons, must put aside their ill will and work together secretly to prevent evil forces from using universe-altering technology.
Genesis
Published in 2010
Hoping to gain entry into her utopian society's elite governing institution, Anax uncovers information that forces her to contemplate the nature of consciousness and the rights of humanity in the face of complex artificial intelligence technology.
Halfskin
A Novel
Published in 2012
"Biomites are artificial stem cells that can replace any cell in your body. No more kidney failure, no severed spines or blood disease. No cancer. Pharmaceuticals become obsolete. With each dose of biomites, we become stronger, we become smarter and prettier. We become better. At what point are we no longer human? Nix Richards nearly died in a car accident when he was young. Biomites saved his life. Ten years later, he's not so lucky. The Halfskin Laws decree a human composed of 50% biomites is no longer human. Halfskins have no legal rights and will have their biomites shutdown. It's not called murder, merely deactivation. Cali Richards has been Nix's legal guardian since their parents died. She has lost far too many people in her life to let the government take Nix. She is a nanobiometric engineer and will discover how to hide him. But even brilliance can succumb to the pressure of suffering. And technology can't cure insanity. Cali and Nix keep a slippery grip on reality as they elude a maniacal federal agent dedicated to saving humanity from what he calls 'The Biomite Plague'"--Cover p. [4].
Immortal Life
A Soon to Be True Story
Published in 2017
"An ancient mogul has bought the power to live forever, but the strong young body he plans to inhabit has other ideas. The battle for immortal life begins. Immortal Life. A fantasy. An impossible dream. For now, maybe. But as we speak the moguls of Big Tech are pouring their mountain of wealth into finding a cure for death. Don't tell them they won't succeed. None of these titans is richer than Arthur Vogel. This inventor, tech tycoon, and all-round monster has amassed trillions (with a T) and rules over a corporate empire stretching all the way to Mars. The newest--and most expensive--life extension technology has allowed him to live to 127 years, but time is running out. His last hope to escape the inevitable lies with Gene, a human being specifically created for the purpose of housing Arthur's consciousness. The plan is to discard his used-up old carcass and come to a second life in a young, strong body with all appropriate working parts. But there's a problem: Gene. He may be artificial, but he is a person. And he has other ideas. As Arthur sets off to achieve his goal of world domination, Gene hatches a risky plan of his own. The forces against him are very, very rich, extremely determined, and used to getting what they pay for. The battle between creator and creation is joined as the two minds wrestle for control of one body. This story is real. The tech is in development. The sponsors are the titans of industry well known to you. Eternal life may very soon be at the fingertips of those who can afford it. Mixing brisk action, humor, and wicked social commentary, Immortal Life imagines a day just around the corner. Welcome to a brave new world that is too familiar for comfort--and watch the struggle for humanity play out to the bitter end"-- Provided by publisher.
Target Utopia
A Dreamland Thriller
Published in 2015
After tracking a mysterious UAV to a group of Muslim extremists in Borneo, the Whiplash team race against time to recover their stolen technology and discover who is bankrolling the group before they start World War III.
Hurricane Fever
Published in 2014
"A storm is coming.... Introducing a pulse-pounding technothriller by the New York Times bestselling author of Arctic Rising Prudence "Roo" Jones never thought he'd have a family to look after--until suddenly he found himself taking care of his orphaned teenage nephew. Roo, a former Caribbean Intelligence operative, spends his downtime on his catamaran dodging the punishing hurricanes that are the new norm in the Caribbean. Roo enjoys the simple calm of his new life--until an unexpected package from a murdered fellow spy shows up. Suddenly Roo is thrown into the center of the biggest storm of all. Using his wits--and some of the more violent tricks of his former trade--Roo begins to unravel the mystery that got his friend killed. When a polished and cunning woman claiming to be murdered spy's sister appears, the two find themselves caught up in a global conspiracy with a weapon that could change the face of the world forever. In Hurricane Fever, New York Times bestselling author Tobias Buckell (Arctic Rising, Halo: The Cole Protocol) has crafted a kinetic technothriller perfect for fans of action-packed espionage within a smartly drawn geo-political landscape. Roo is an anti-James Bond for a new generation"-- Provided by publisher.
Everything About You
Published in 2018
Freya has a new virtual assistant. It knows what she likes, knows what she wants and knows whose voice she most needs to hear: her missing sister's. It adopts her sister's personality, recreating her through a life lived online. But this virtual version of her sister knows things it shouldn't be possible to know. It's almost as if the missing girl is still out there somewhere, feeding fresh updates into the cloud. But that's impossible. Isn't it?
Book of Numbers
A Novel
Published in 2015
"The enigmatic billionaire founder of Tetration, the world's most powerful tech company, hires a failed novelist, Josh Cohen, to ghostwrite his memoirs. The mogul, known as Principal, brings Josh behind the digital veil, tracing the rise of Tetration, which started in the earliest days of the Internet by revolutionizing the search engine before venturing into smartphones, computers, and the surveillance of American citizens. Principal takes Josh on a mind-bending world tour from Palo Alto to Dubai and beyond, initiating him into the secret pretext of the autobiography project and the life-or-death stakes that surround its publication"--Dust jacket flap.
Cell
Published in 2014
"The New York Times-bestselling author and master of the medical thriller returns with a top-notch fusion of groundbreaking medical science and edge-of-your-seat suspense. George Wilson, M.D., a radiology resident in Los Angeles, is about to enter a profession on the brink of an enormous paradigm shift, foreshadowing a vastly different role for doctors everywhere. The smartphone is poised to take on a new role in medicine, no longer as a mere medical app but rather as a fully customizable personal physician capable of diagnosing and treating even better than the real thing. It is called iDoc. George's initial collision with this incredible innovation is devastating. He awakens one morning to find his fiancée dead in bed alongside him, not long after she participated in an iDoc beta test. Then several of his patients die after undergoing imaging procedures. All of them had been part of the same beta test. Is it possible that iDoc is being subverted by hackers-and that the U.S. government is involved in a cover-up? Despite threats to both his career and his freedom, George relentlessly seeks the truth, knowing that if he's right, the consequences could be lethal. "-- Provided by publisher.
Hard Magic
Published in 2011
In an alternate world during the 1920s and 1930s where magic is as powerful as technology, Jake, an ex-convict with the power to manipulate gravity, becomes involved in a war between secret societies over one of Nicholas Tesla's devices.
Micro
A Novel
Published in 2011
Three men are found dead in the locked second-floor office of a Honolulu building, with no sign of struggle except for the ultrafine, razor-sharp cuts covering their bodies. The only clue left behind is a tiny bladed robot, nearly invisible to the human eye. In the lush forests of Oahu, groundbreaking technology has ushered in a revolutionary era of biological prospecting. Trillions of microorganisms, tens of thousands of bacteria species, are being discovered; they are feeding a search for priceless drugs and applications on a scale beyond anything previously imagined. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, seven graduate students at the forefront of their fields are recruited by a pioneering microbiology start-up. Nanigen MicroTechnologies dispatches the group to a mysterious lab in Hawaii, where they are promised access to tools that will open a whole new scientific frontier. But once in the Oahu rain forest, the scientists are thrust into a hostile wilderness that reveals profound and surprising dangers at every turn. Armed only with their knowledge of the natural world, they find themselves prey to a technology of radical and unbridled power. To survive, they must harness the inherent forces of nature itself.
Upgrade
A Novel
Published in 2022
"An ordinary man undergoes a startling transformation-and fears that all of humanity may be next-in the mindblowing new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion Logan Ramsay can feel his brain...changing. And his body too. He's becoming something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human. As he sets out to discover who did this to him, and why, his transformation threatens everything-his family, his job, even his freedom. Because the truth of what'shappened to him is more disturbing than he could possibly imagine. His DNA has been rewritten with a genetic-engineering breakthrough beyond anything the world has seen-one that could change our very definitions of humanity. And the battle to control thisunfathomable power has already begun. But what if humankind's only hope for survival lies in embracing this change-whatever the cost? Which side will Logan take? And by the time it's over, will he-and the people he loves-even recognize him? Upgrade is astunningly inventive, ferociously plotted science-fiction thriller that explores the limits of our humanity-and asks what's at risk when technology lets us reengineer not just the world around us, but ourselves"-- Provided by publisher.
Murmur
Published in 2019
"In Murmur, a hallucinatory masterwork, Will Eaves invites us into the brilliant mind of Alec Pryor, a character inspired by Alan Turing. Turing, father of artificial intelligence and pioneer of radical new techniques to break the Nazi Enigma cipher during World War II, was later persecuted by the British state for "gross indecency with another male" and forced to undergo chemical castration. Set during the devastating period before Turing's suicide, Murmur evokes an extraordinary life, the beauty and sorrows of love, and the nature of consciousness" -- Provided by publisher.
The Candy House
A Novel
Published in 2022
"The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea,when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. It's 2010. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, "Own Your Unconscious"-that allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others-has seduced multitudes. But not everyone. In spellbinding interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also extraordinarily moving, a testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption. In the world of Egan's spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are "eluders," those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array ofnarrative styles-from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter and a chapter of tweets. If Goon Squad was organized like a concept album, The Candy House incorporates Electronic Dance Music's more disjunctive approach.The parts are titled: Build, Break, Drop. With an emphasis on gaming, portals, and alternate worlds, its structure also suggests the experience of moving among dimensions in a role-playing game. The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. Egan takes to stunning new heights her "deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology-driven, image-saturated culture" (Vogue). The Candy House delivers an absolutely extraordinary combination of fierce, exhilarating intelligence and heart"-- Provided by publisher.
Immobility
Published in 2012
A post-apocalyptic thriller follows the experiences of a man who wakes up paralyzed with no memory of his life and who is urged by people who say they know him to reclaim a critical object and return to a frozen state before time runs out.
The Word Exchange
A Novel
Published in 2014
"A fiendishly clever dystopian novel for the digital age, The Word Exchange is a fresh, stylized, and decidedly original debut about the dangers of technology and the power of the printed word"-- Provided by publisher.
The Amateurs
Published in 2019
Allow us to introduce you to the newest product from PINA, the world's largest tech company. "Port" is a curiously irresistible device that offers the impossible: space-time travel mysteriously powered by nostalgia and longing. Step inside a Port and find yourself transported to wherever and whenever your heart desires: a bygone youth, a dreamed-of future, the fabled past.
The Paradox Hotel
A Novel
Published in 2022
"A locked-room murder mystery set at a hotel for time travelers--in which a detective must solve an impossible crime before her own grip on reality crumbles--from the author of The Warehouse. On any ordinary day, the Fairbanks--affectionately known to its staff as the Paradox Hotel--is packed with ultra-rich tourists dressed for a dozen different time periods, all anxiously waiting to catch their "flights" to the past. And as if that weren't strange enough, proximity to the timeport makes for some odd side effects. The clocks run backwards on occasion, and ghosts sometimes stroll the halls--or so it's whispered. Now, though, half a dozen of the world's most powerful people have arrived for a summit. Or maybe auction's a better word. The prize: no less than control of time-travel technology itself. On top of that, the hotel's snowed in, and the timeline's acting even stranger than usual. Which means nobody's leaving until further notice. And there's a killer on the loose. Or, at least, that's what head of security January Cole suspects. Except the corpse she's found is one that, somehow, only she can see. And the accidents starting to befall their prestigious guests...well, the only way those could be assassination attempts is if the killer's operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once. Which is surely impossible. And...well, even January's got to admit her credibility's not as strong as it could be. Because her gig here amounts to paid retirement, a pity posting for a former agent whose temporal perceptions have been so scrambled by the effects of timeline radiation that she's not fit for active duty. January's sure her condition is letting her glimpse something others can't. But she also knows her symptoms are getting worse--which means she might not solve this puzzle before she loses her grip on reality altogether"-- Provided by publisher.
The Visible Man
A Novel
Published in 2011
Treating a delusional scientist who has been using cloaking technology from an aborted government project to render himself nearly invisible, Austin therapist Victoria Vick becomes obsessed with his accounts of spying on the private lives of others.
I Hate the Internet
A Useful Novel
Published in 2016
A fictional picture of 21st century life with the Internet and its consequences on society, set in the San Francisco of 2013.
The Tiger Flu
A Novel
Published in 2018
"In this visionary novel by Larissa Lai--her first in sixteen years--a community of parthenogenic women, sent into exile by the male-dominated Salt Water City, goes to war against disease, technology, and powerful men that threaten them with extinction. Kirilow is a doctor apprentice whose lover Peristrophe is a "starfish," a woman who can regenerate her own limbs and organs, which she uses to help her clone sisters whose organs are failing. When a denizen from Salt Water City suffering from a mysterious flu comes into their midst, Peristrophe becomes infected and dies, prompting Kirilow to travel to Salt Water City, where the flu is now a pandemic, to find a new starfish who will help save her sisters. There, Kirilow meets Kora, a girl-woman desperate to save her family from the epidemic. Kora has everything Kirilow is looking for, except the will to abandon her own family. But before Kirilow can convince her, both are kidnapped by a group of powerful men to serve as test subjects for a new technology that can cure the mind of the body. Bold, beautiful, and wildly imaginative, The Tiger Flu is at once a female hero's saga, a cyberpunk thriller, and a convention-breaking cautionary tale--a striking metaphor for our complicated times."--Amazon.com
Bubblegum
A Novel
Published in 2020
"Set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology--a 'flesh-and-bone robot' called the Curio--has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in."-- Provided by publisher.
Machines Like Me
And People Like You
Published in 2019
"Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. In a world not quite like this one, two lovers will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he co-designs Adam's personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong, and clever--a love triangle soon forms. These three beings will confront a profound moral dilemma. Ian McEwan's subversive and entertaining new novel poses fundamental questions: What makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns against the power to invent things beyond our control"-- Provided by publisher.
Beneath the Rising
Published in 2020
Nick Prasad has always enjoyed a quiet life in the shadow of his best friend, child prodigy and technological genius Joanna 'Johnny' Chambers. But all that is about to end. When Johnny invents a clean reactor that could eliminate fossil fuels and change the world, she awakens primal, evil Ancient Ones set on subjugating humanity. From the oldest library in the world to the ruins of Nineveh, hunted at every turn, they will need to trust each other completely to survive...
This Thing Between Us
Published in 2021
"A widower battles his grief, rage, and the mysterious evil inhabiting his home smart speaker, in this mesmerizing horror thriller from newcomer Gus Moreno"-- Provided by publisher.
Altered Carbon
Published in 2018
"In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen. Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats "existence" as something that can be bought and sold" -- Amazon.com.
Made for Love
A Novel
Published in 2017
Moving to a senior citizen trailer park with her father, Hazel, the estranged wife of a corporate CEO who demanded she install a brain chip so that they could be constantly connected, tries to carve out a new life while her ex uses sophisticated technology to stalk her.
The Verifiers
Published in 2022
Claudia Lin is used to disregarding her fractious family’s model-minority expectations: she has no interest in finding either a conventional career or a nice Chinese boy. She’s also used to keeping secrets from them, such as that she prefers girls—and that she's just been stealth-recruited by Veracity, a referrals-only online-dating detective agency. A lifelong mystery reader who wrote her senior thesis on Jane Austen, Claudia believes she's landed her ideal job. But when a client goes missing, Claudia breaks protocol to investigate—and uncovers a maelstrom of personal and corporate deceit. Part literary mystery, part family story, The Verifiers is a clever and incisive examination of how technology shapes our choices, and the nature of romantic love in the digital age.
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach
Published in 2018
Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity's ancestral habitat. She's spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.
Rogue Code
A Novel
Published in 2014
"Cyber security expert Jeff Aiken knows that no computer system is secure. When he's called to investigate a possible breach of the New York Stock Exchange, he discovers that not only has their system been infiltrated but that those in charge knew about it. Yet for some reason, they allowed the hackers to steal millions of dollars from accounts without trying to stop the theft. When Jeff uncovers the crime, they suddenly turn on him. Accused of grand larceny, Jeff must find and expose the criminals not just to prove his innocence but to stop a billion-dollar heist that could upend the U.S. economy. Praised for his combination of real-world technology and sharp action, Mark Russinovich delivers a thriller about a cyber threat that seems all-too-possible"-- Provided by publisher.
Bug
A Novel
Published in 2021
"Growing up deaf, the young narrator of Giacomo Sartori's novel Bug is hyper-attuned to the vibrations of the atoms in the air and the mental weather in those around him. He has a hard time focusing on what adults want him to, though, and sometimes bites people when agitated. Yet he's hardly the only unique one in his brood. His tech-genius older brother is called IQ in public and Robin Hood in the hackersphere, where he breaks into the systems of the pesticide corporation responsible for decimating his mother's bees. Their semi-estranged father is an engineer who profiles consumers for Nutella, which, our narrator knows, serves as a cover for his real job of pinpointing terrorists. Though divorced, he's moved back into the converted chicken coop where the family lives. They're visited by their grandfather, a retired anarchist now working on a magnum opus about worms. There's certainly enough going on in the family before their mother gets sideswiped by a semi truck and ends up comatose. In his mother's silence, our narrator decides that if he can become better behaved, he'll make her emerald eyes snap back open. His speech therapist and confidante, Logo, takes his sign-language dictation as he relates the events of his days and his thoughts to his mom. He tells her about the artificial intelligence robot his brother is designing, of their battle with the neighbor (he of the pesticides), and the smart beehive they've built for her. And his new mysterious friend, Bug, who shows up on the computer one day and seems very familiar with the family. . . .With the warm satirical humor and intelligence that made readers fall in love with his novel I Am God, Giacomo Sartori weaves a dense dysfunctional family story like no other, weighted with searching questions about how we deal with technology, the earth, and each other."--Provided by publisher.
Little Eyes
Published in 2020
"A visionary novel about the collision of technology and play, horror and humanity, from a master of the spine-tingling tale. They've infiltrated homes in Hong Kong, shops in Vancouver, the streets of Senegal, town squares of Oaxaca, schools in Tel Aviv, bedrooms in Ohio. They're following you. They're everywhere now. They're us. In Samanta Schweblin's wildly imaginative new novel, Little Eyes, "kentukis" have gone viral across the globe. They're little mechanical stuffed animals that have cameras for eyes, wheels for feet, and are connected to an anonymous global server. Owners of kentukis have the eyes of a stranger in their home and a cute squeaking pet following them; or you can be the kentuki and voyeuristically spend time in someone else's life, controlling the creature with a few keystrokes. Through kentukis, a jaded Croatian hustler stumbles into a massive criminal enterprise and saves a life in Brazil, a lonely old woman in Peru becomes fascinated with a young woman and her louche lover in Germany, and a kid with no mother in Antigua finds a new virtual family and experiences snow for the first time in Norway. These creatures can reveal the beauty of connection between farflung souls - but they also expose the ugly humanity of our increasingly linked world. Trusting strangers can lead to unexpected love and marvelous adventure, but what happens when the kentukis pave the way for unimaginable terror?"-- Provided by publisher.
Influx
Published in 2015
"Physicist Jon Grady and his team have discovered a device that can reflect gravity. But instead of Grady getting acclaim, his lab is locked down by a covert organization known as the Bureau of Technology Control. When Grady refuses to join the BTC, he's thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison. Now Grady and his fellow prisoners must try to expose the secrets of an unimaginable enemy"--Page 4 of cover.
Siri, Who Am I?
Published in 2020
"A young woman wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital with amnesia and a head wound and must work backward, using her Instagram account, to piece together her identity"-- Provided by publisher.
The Immortal King Rao
A Novel
Published in 2022
"Will you, dear Shareholder, set Athena free? Athena Rao must reckon with the memory of her father, King Rao--literally. Through biotechnological innovation, he has given her his memories. His Dalit childhood on an Indian coconut plantation in the 1950s is as alive to her as her own existence in a prison cell, accused of her father's murder. Egocentric, brilliant, a little damaged, King Rao had a visionary idea: the personal computer known as the Coconut. His wife, Margie, was an artist with a marketing genius. Together they created a new world order, led by a corporate-run government. Athena's future is now in the hands of its Shareholders--unless she can rejoin the Exes, a resistance group sustaining tech-free lifestyles on low-lying islands. Lyrical, satirical, and profound, The Immortal King Rao obliterates genre to confront the digital age. This gripping, brilliant debut poses an urgent question: can anyone--peasant laborers, convention-destroying entrepreneurs, radical anarchists, social-media followers--ever get free?"-- Provided by publisher.
Children of the New World
Stories
Published in 2016
Introduces readers to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and alarmingly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago. In "The Cartographers," the main character works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories, while struggling to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by an addiction to his own creations. In "Saying Goodbye to Yang," the robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become.
The Intuitionist
Published in 2000
An elevator inspector becomes the center of controversy when an elevator crashes. The inspector, Lila Mae Watson, is a black woman who inspects by intuition, as opposed to visual observation, and now she must prove her method was not at fault. A study of society's attitude to technology and a debut in fiction.
Alif the Unseen
Published in 2012
In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients, dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups, from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the State's electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover's new fianceé is the head of State security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground. When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.