Rage Against the Machine

Yay! You're an online video sensation! But thanks to a chip in your brain your every thought is out there for all to see…

Your guide to the 21st Century! The Ware Tetralogy is a four part series that begins innocently with rebel robots bring immortality to their human creator by eating his brain. Keepin' it real casual. By the fourth part, the robots have evolved into soft plastic slugs called moldies —and some human “cheeseballs” want to have sex with them. It's all very strange, but The Ware Tetralogy is an extremely fun read if you don't take everything about it too seriously, or try to find real teachings about what the future is or will be.

Just read it, be consumed with nightmares of robot sex and wake up to find that life is all good, and it all goes on.

What would you do if your best robots—children of your own brain—walked up and said “We want union scale”? This 1950s sci-fi may not be anything new seeing as how the ideas of future have changed so rapidly. But Mari Wolf's novel is great in forecasting the big question: what happens if and when computers and artificial intelligence develop sentience? This might have been written more than 50 years ago, but it's not bogged by outdated science or ridiculous predictions.

Well, you can't have a sci-fi shelf without the works of Philip K. Dick right?

You watched the movie right? The one with Will Smith? Well this is not the book adaptation — Cory Doctrow's one is a completely different story. So now that the confusion's all sorted out…. The story is set in the type of police state needed to ensure that only one company is allowed to make robots, and only one type of robot is allowed. But will this backfire?

This short story is more than a hundred years old now, but it never fails to be fascinating and horrifying at the same time. In this short story, humanity is now living in pods and entertained by machines. So when the machine stops, what happens? Do they die helpless? Or is it time for humanity to break through? Fantastic writing and foresight by E.M. Forster.

Now this novel is somewhat special. War of the Worlds is technically no horror story about the future of automation and technology, since it's really about an invasion. But what's amazing about this is the radio reading behind it. People thought it was a real news bulletin and that the alien invasion was real! Think that says a lot about how we ingest information, and how technology assists that.