If Bug Jack Barron's media-war theatrics against corporate immortality lit your fuse, The Shockwave Rider by weaponizes code the same way weaponized airtime.
Buy on AmazonWhy It's Your Next Read
- Hacker anti-hero rewrites reality w/ code
- Data surveillance state vs rogue programmer
- Identity-hopping fugitive outsmarts corporate AI
- New Wave satire shreds technocratic dystopia
If Jack Barron's media-war theatrics against corporate immortality dealers lit your fuse, then The Shockwave Rider delivers the next evolution: a data-ghost anti-hero who rewrites his own identity to dodge totalitarian surveillance and expose the rot festering in a near-future cartel state. Brunner's hacker protagonist weaponizes code the way Barron weaponized airtime—opportunistic, brilliant, and unafraid to burn the system down from the inside. You get the same raw indictment of media manipulation, class exploitation, and technological horror, but now the battlefield is pure information warfare.
The prose crackles with countercultural fury and unapologetic sexuality, skewering elite conspiracies with every keystroke. This is New Wave satire for disaffected intellectuals who need their dystopia served ice-cold and profane.
Weaponize code, burn the system, and never look back.
What Readers Are Saying
"…Written in 1975, much of the technology forecast in this book is amazingly prescient, especially that relating to the Internet." — Kiri, Goodreads
"Brunner is really a master of this technique as it has the potential to go sideways very quickly, but he pulls it off with aplomb. About this future America-- d*** if he was not prescient!" — Phil, Goodreads
"This book absolutely sizzles with ideas…" — Brian Clegg, Goodreads
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