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What Else Are You Reading? > Computers in science fiction - female authors

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Jenny (Reading Envy) (readingenvy) | 2898 comments I can think of a handful of male authors that write specifically about computers as a theme or topic in science fiction. Can you help me compile a list of female authors that do the same?


message 2: by Geoff (new)

Geoff (geoffgreer) I'll start be saying the recent pick: Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson.

Its her only novel but it hits your criteria.


message 3: by Lindsay (new)

Lindsay | 593 comments A few that immediately leap to mind are:

Chris Moriarty with her Spin Trilogy. I've only read the first one (Spin State), but a large portion of it deals with the main character's interaction with an AI.

Catherynne M. Valente's book Silently and Very Fast is a brilliant and hauntingly beautiful story of the birth of an AI and its interactions with the family of the computer programmer that worked with it. One chapter of the book "The Prince of Thoughtful Engines" turns Alan Turing's story into a fairytale and just about had me in tears.

Up Against It by M.J. Locke (pseudonym of Laura Mixon and married to Steven Gould) is a action/political solar-system based thriller with a background of the emergence of an AI where many of the characters are programmers/hackers.

I'll try and come up with some more ...


message 4: by Lindsay (last edited Nov 24, 2014 04:33PM) (new)

Lindsay | 593 comments A couple of others:

Madeline Ashby has her brilliant vN and iD. The main characters are sentient humanoid vNs (von Neumann self-replicating machines).

Cassandra Rose Clarke has The Mad Scientist's Daughter with an artist growing up and falling in love with an android.


message 5: by [deleted user] (new)

Dreamships and everything by Melissa Scott. Amazing world building and a much more nuanced look at the "robots as people" while people aren't being treated as people. Reading this before reading Androids dream of electric sheep made Androids seem very "meh" and not ambitious enough to me.

The Bug is a classic.


message 6: by Alan (new)

Alan | 534 comments To mention another S&L pick, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.


message 7: by Tamahome (last edited Nov 25, 2014 08:57AM) (new)

Tamahome | 7003 comments


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