[geeks] Good computer fiction books

[Mouse]

> What/who are some of your favorite computer-centric fiction books and
> authors?  Not ordinary sci-fi (lots of great book lists there
> already), but overtly computer-oriented books like Snow Crash or
> other Neal Stephenson books.

Mmm.  Rick Cook's books come to mind (The Wizardry Compiled, The
Wizardry Cursed, and similar punny titles).  Daniel Keyes Moran's _The
Long Run_.  _Wyrm_, by...(someone) Fabi, if memory serves (the book is
not readily accessible to me right now).  Numerous short stories, of
which Asimov's _The Last Question_ is perhaps one of the best known.
The presence of computers in fiction is of course a spectrum, not an
all-or-nothing thing; there are plenty of stories (eg, Vinge's book
_Marooned In Realtime_ is an example: computer technology is
ubiquitous, but the book is hardly computer-oriented; the tech is
backdrop and world, not the focus of the story.  Another example might
be Ghostwheel in Zelazny's second Amber pentalogy: an important piece
of computer technology, but hardly the focus of the books.  And what
about stories like "Q. U. R." (I think that's what it's called,
presumably a deliberate nod to R. U. R.), all about sentient robots
that, had it been written during the computer age, would have overtly
involved embedded computers?  The story is focused on the robots, but
not their computer nature; much the same story could have been written
about artificial protoplasmic entities.  The Wikipedia page
List_of_fictional_computers has a (very partial) list, reminding me in
particular of Zelazny's _For A Breath I Tarry_ and Clarke's _The Nine
Billion Names Of God_.  And then there are things like Jack Chalker's
Soul Rider series, which (rot13ed as it's an ending spoiler) vf
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pbaprearq sbe zbfg bs gur frevrf vf, snagnfl engure guna grpuabybtl.  N
pyrne rknzcyr bs Pynexr'f Guveq Ynj.

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