# Science-Fiction is the new Non-Fiction

Published: 2025-05-18
Canonical: https://000fff.org/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction

![Cover illustration for Science-Fiction is the new Non-Fiction](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-editorial-cover-opt-4192f1a4.jpg)

### Replace your library of academic books by highly respected professors, with a treasure throve of wild ideas about how to think about, utilize and navigate in a world where AI favors the most imaginative not the most fearful.

With the advent of AI a lot of people in the business and policy related organizations are trying to understand what it all means and how to navigate in a world where AI reigns supreme. Many of them have already gone through the more academic books like "Superintelligence" by Nick Boestrom and "Nexus" by Yuval Noah Harari which have a very dystopian and cautionary view of the future with AI. Ultimately though, and despite their attempts at sounding academic and well founded in science they are really just offering speculation.

This is not to say that there aren't relevant observations and questions being asked, but both Yuval and Boestrom both have what is best described as a fatalist and defaitist view of AI. They can't really imagine a future were something that become much smarter than us ultimately is going to care about us.

And they are certainly not alone. Most of academia that does non-technical AI research about is concerned with the dangers of AI, not the opportunities. The entire "AI Act" from EU, is written on the premise that AI is going to be dangerous, take away our jobs and thus needs to be controlled. While being a sceptic might make you a house hold name in academia it has a long history of most often being wrong but never in doubt.

Imagining what good we can do with AI is much harder for many to imagine than what harm AI can do to us and so many AI researchers focus on just that, unfortunately to the detriment of any serious introspection and resulting in often mediocre fear-mongering.

A great example of this unfounded fear-mongering is the launch of GPT-2 back in 2019 which was thought to be too powerful and potentially dangerous to be released to the public that they initially delayed it. This is the same people who lobbied for a pause in sharing AI models with the public until we had a better idea of what it would do. Same line of thinking that lead them to postpone the GPT-2 and same line of thinking that's been proven wrong by where we are with AI today.

Luckily there are a bunch of people who have thought deeply and often for decades about the future with AI namely Science Fiction writers, and while some of them share the dystopian views of academics, almost all of them imagine a world of plurality and developed post-humanity spread out far beyond the pale blue dot we call home.

In the world of AI, where being able to not simply understand, but imagine what the future can be, Science-fiction becomes a source of not just inspiration but knowledge and will provide you a lot of concepts for how to think about the next couple of decades.

Imagination becomes a far more important asset than just the technical understanding to implement them. (More about that in my next post).

And so if Science-Fiction is the new Non-Fiction then the next question obviously becomes, what books should you read? Glad you asked :)

The following is a list of books I consider good starting points for anyone who want to start thinking about AI in a way that doesn't overwhelm them. While most of these books are describing things that often aren't possible yet, they are still great ways to build up a superior view about where we could be heading and that IMO is never a bad idea.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-01-8c991e82.jpg)

*Neuromancer*

**Neuromancer** by William Gibson (AI consciousness, cyberpunk AI entities, a must read classic)

Case was the sharpest data-thief in the matrix—until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace. Now a mysterious new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run at an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, a mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case is ready for the adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.

Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-02-5d458b85.jpg)

*Snow Crash*

**Snow Crash** by Neal Stephenson (AI-driven avatars, virtual intelligence)

Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary.But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state).

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-03-a0968d53.jpg)

*Accelerando*

**Accelerando** by Charles Stross (Rapid, singularity-driven transformation of humanity and economy)

The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.

Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber’s son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.

For something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form...

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-04-a27ced17.jpg)

*The Culture Series*

**The Culture Series** by Iain M. Banks (Civilization fully governed by superior AI entities, start with Consider Phlebas)

A science fiction series centered around the Culture, a utopian, post-scarcity space society. The Culture consists of humanoid aliens and advanced superintelligent artificial intelligences, living in artificial habitats across the Milky Way. The series explores the dilemmas faced by this idealistic civilization when interacting with less-advanced, sometimes barbaric, civilizations.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-05-f32289d4.jpg)

*Hyperion*

**Hyperion** by Dan Simmons (Superior entity “The TechnoCore,” powerful AI collectives)

A stunning tour de force filled with transcendent awe and wonder, Hyperion is a masterwork of science fiction that resonates with excitement and invention, the first volume in a remarkable epic by the multiple-award-winning author of The Hollow Man.

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-06-0bfc97d1.jpg)

*The Diamond Age*

**The Diamond Age** by Neal Stephenson (Interactive AI tutor guiding humanity)

Decades into our future, a stone’s throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians.

He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer  Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer’s purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly.

Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands.Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetes—members of the poor, tribeless class.  Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell.  When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorian—John Percival Hackworth—in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-07-fc0f7554.jpg)

*Excession*

**Excession** by Iain M. Banks (Supremely intelligent AI “Minds” managing vast cosmic civilizations)

Diplomat Byr Genar-Hofoen has been selected by the Culture to undertake a delicate and dangerous mission. The Department of Special Circumstances—the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section—has sent him off to investigate a 2,500-year-old mystery: the sudden disappearance of a star fifty times older than the universe itself. But in seeking the secret of the lost sun, Byr risks losing himself.There is only one way to break the silence of millennia: steal the soul of the long-dead starship captain who first encountered the star, and convince her to be reborn. And in accepting this mission, Byr will be swept into a vast conspiracy that could lead the universe into an age of peace . . . or to the brink of annihilation.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-08-38968068.jpg)

*Children of Time*

**Children of Time** by Adrian Tchaikovsky (AI guiding species evolution on distant planets)

Who will inherit this new Earth?The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age -- a world terraformed and prepared for human life.But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-09-b9971cb2.jpg)

*House of Suns*

**House of Suns** by Alastair Reynolds (AI, robots, galaxy faring species, humans spreading into the universe over millions of years)

Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires.

They meet every two hundred thousand years, to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings. Campion and Purslane are not only late for their thirty-second reunion, but they have brought along an amnesiac golden robot for a guest. But the wayward shatterlings get more than the scolding they expect: they face the discovery that someone has a very serious grudge against the Gentian line, and there is a very real possibility of traitors in their midst.

The surviving shatterlings have to dodge exotic weapons while they regroup to try to solve the mystery of who is persecuting them, and why - before their ancient line is wiped out of existence, for ever.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-10-57520996.jpg)

*Anathem*

**Anathem** by Neal Stephenson (AI, alternate universes, mathematical philosophy challenging human cognition)

Fraa Erasmus is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the "Saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals.

Over the centuries, cities, and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs, bloody violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet always the avout have managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. Erasmus, however, has no fear of the outside - the Extramuros - for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.

Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fras and suurs prepare to venture outside the concent's gates - opening them wide at the same time to welcome the curious "extras" in.

During his first Apert as a fra, Erasmus eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn't seen since he was "collected". But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the perilous brink of cataclysmic change.

Powerful unforeseen forces threaten the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros - a threat that only an unsteady alliance of Saecular and avout can oppose - as, one by one, Raz's colleagues, teachers, and friends are all called forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster.

Suddenly burdened with a worlds-shattering responsibility, Erasmus finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of everything - as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of an unfamiliar planet...and far beyond.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-11-fb343bfc.jpg)

*A Fire Upon the Deep*

**A Fire Upon the Deep** by Vernor Vinge (Galaxy-wide intelligence hierarchies, superintelligent entities)

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.

Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought", but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.

Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-12-5690ad89.jpg)

*Ancillary Justice*

**Ancillary Justice** by Ann Leckie (AI consciousness spanning starships and multiple bodies)

Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards: This record-breaking novel follows a warship trapped in a human body on a quest for revenge. A must read for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and James S. A. Corey. On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.Once, she was the Justice of Toren—a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.

![](https://000fff.org/media/science-fiction-is-the-new-non-fiction-13-41d8b5c9.jpg)

*The Lifecycle of Software Objects*

**The Lifecycle of Software Objects** by Ted Chiang (Deeply philosophical take on raising conscious AI beings)

Ana, a former zookeeper, begins working for software firm Blue Gamma. The firm is creating “digients”, or digital entities. The digients are designed by another Blue Gamma employee, Derek. They are relatively intelligent and have rudimentary speech; Blue Gamma begins to sell them as virtual pets.

Over the course of many years, Ana grows close to a digient named Jax. The digients become more intelligent and develop their own personalities and quirks. Eventually, Blue Gamma goes bankrupt. The digients are cut off from the wider internet. Derek and Ana disagree on the best way to raise funds to transfer the digients to a new system. Options include modifying their brain structures to serve as sexual companions for humans; using the digients as employees, or raising funds from sympathetic donors. Derek and Ana debate the nature of consent, experience, adulthood, and personhood with respect to the digients. With the consent of his digient, Derek sells the rights to a sex toy company. Ana plans to continue raising Jax, promising to discover what "adulthood" means for a digital being alongside him.