Books like “Altered Carbon”

What to read after “Altered Carbon” by Richard K. Morgan: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Neuromancer
William Gibson · 1984
From the same world: “Cyberpunk” and “Noir”
Case is a washed-up computer hacker living in a Japanese city, until a mysterious employer hires him for one more job. Working with a street samurai and a woman with mirrored eyes, he is drawn into a scheme far larger than the theft he was promised.
2
The Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson · 1995
From the same world: “Cyberpunk”
- Cyberpunk
In a world split between rich enclaves and crowded cities, an engineer builds an interactive book meant to teach his daughter. It changes hands until it reaches Nell, an orphan whose slow education becomes the key to something larger.
3
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson · 1992
From the same world: “Cyberpunk”
- Cyberpunk
- Morally Grey Character
In a future Los Angeles split between franchised city-states, a hacker and a teenage skateboard courier chase a drug that works on both computers and human minds. The trail runs from the neon Metaverse to ancient languages and a plan to reshape civilisation.
4
The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester · 1956
From the same world: “Cyberpunk”
- Cyberpunk
- Morally Grey Character
Gully Foyle survives a wrecked spaceship and swears revenge on the vessel that left him for dead. His hunt across a future where people can teleport by thought turns him into a wealthy, dangerous man chasing a weapon that could end the war.
5
Schismatrix
Bruce Sterling · 1985
From the same world: “Cyberpunk”
- Cyberpunk
- Morally Grey Character
Abelard Lindsay is a trained diplomat moving between two posthuman factions, the Shapers and the Mechanists, as humanity spreads across space. His long career of alliances and betrayals carries him across a changing solar system.
6
Ready Player One
Ernest Cline · 2011
From the same world: “Cyberpunk”
- Cyberpunk
In a polluted future, most people escape into the OASIS, a vast virtual world. When its creator dies, he leaves his fortune to whoever finds the hidden egg, and teenager Wade joins a hunt that turns deadly.
7
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson · 2005
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
- Morally Grey Character
A disgraced financial journalist is hired by an old industrialist to solve the decades-old disappearance of his niece. His researcher is Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant, guarded hacker with her own scores to settle.
8
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett · 1929
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
- Morally Grey Character
A woman walks into Sam Spade's San Francisco office with a story about a missing sister, and the case becomes a hunt for a jewel-encrusted black bird. Spade's partner is killed, and he must decide whom to trust among liars, thieves and double-crossers.
9
The Dry
Jane Harper · 2016
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
A federal agent returns to the drought-stricken town he left twenty years ago, for the funeral of a childhood friend believed to have killed his family. Old questions about the death that drove him away surface again while he helps the local police look into a new one.
10
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick · 1968
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
- Morally Grey Character
In a dust-choked future, a bounty hunter is paid to retire androids that have escaped to Earth and passed as human. As he tracks them down he starts to question what makes a life real, and whether he can trust his own memories.
11
Storm Front
Jim Butcher · 2000
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
Harry Dresden is Chicago's only professional wizard, listed in the phone book and usually broke. When the police consult him on a double murder, he finds a sorcerer using black magic in a city where vampires and crime bosses all want a piece of the investigation.
12
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler · 1939
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a dying general to deal with a blackmailer, and the case leads him through a family of drifters and gamblers to a missing man and a tangle of secrets. He keeps working even when the general tells him to stop.