Neuromancer begins with a brilliant, highly memorable line: "The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel." The novel was first published in 1984, when very few people had access to computers. Famously, William Gibson wrote the book on a typewriter. But despite this, it goes on to draw a vivid portrait of a futuristic world where data is currency and business is done in "cyberspace", though companies can also be hacked into and robbed. And, shimmering mysteriously in the background, there are powerful AIs that no one really understands.

Long before the technology even existed in the real world, the concept of artificial intelligence has long been a topic of fixation for writers. From cautionary tales and science fiction epics to nonfictional explorations of the implications of AI in our modern world, artificial intelligence seems to be an endlessly fascinating subject of books both big and small. As such, there are all kinds of truly exceptional books about artificial intelligence out there for you to read, enjoy, and maybe even learn a thing or two from. As to be expected, these books about artificial intelligence truly run the gamut. Beyond simply falling under both fiction and nonfiction, artificial intelligence books cover topics ranging from the future to the past, from work to society, from computing to critiques… and all sorts of other topics along the way.

Mike Pondsmith started playing Dungeons & Dragons in the late seventies, as an undergraduate at the University of California, Davis. The game, published just a few years before, popularized a newish form of entertainment: tabletop role-playing, in which players, typically using dice and a set of rule books, create characters who pursue open-ended quests within an established world. "The most stimulating part of the game is the fact that anything can happen," an early D&D review noted. Soon, other such games hit the market, including Traveller, a sci-fi game published in 1977, the year that "Star Wars" came out. Pondsmith, a tall Black man who grew up in multiple countries because his dad was in the Air Force, loved sci-fi, and fancied himself a bit like Lando Calrissian, the smooth-talking "Star Wars" rogue played by Billy Dee Williams.

"I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards." What do we talk about when we talk about science fiction? Science challenges us to imagine the world differently. Fiction invites us to imagine other selves in other lives -- and, like science, challenges us to imagine the world differently, or other worlds entirely. Technology is in some sense a blend of the two, turning scientific concepts and innovations into tools that improve or enhance human lives.

William Gibson published his classic novel Neuromancer almost 40 years ago, but it still feels fresh today. Science fiction author Matthew Kressel has been a fan of the book ever since reading it back in 1987. "When I first read Neuromancer, everything I had read before that was golden and silver age [sci-fi]--Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Asimov, all that stuff," Kressel says in Episode 477 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "So when I encountered Neuromancer, I was like, 'What is this? Science fiction of the '40s and '50s tended to evoke a consensus future of jetpacks, flying cars, and domestic robots. Neuromancer helped crystallize an alternative view of the future, one dominated by hackers, drugs, and mega-corporations. This darker view, which came to be called cyberpunk, proved far more prophetic. "More than any other science fiction book that I can think of, Neuromancer conveys what the future is going to feel like," says Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley. Science fiction author Sam J. Miller constantly finds himself discarding story ideas because he realizes that Neuromancer beat him to the punch. "The ideas are so dense and exciting," he says. "If you were to rip off half the things in this book and use them in a book now, it would be amazing.

The line between humans and robots is blurred. You're on a mission either to hack into a corporation and steal its secret plans, or to advance those agendas on behalf of a powerful conglomerate. This is the plot of Android: Netrunner, a card game we've both played dozens of times during the pandemic, and neither of us is done getting vengeance on our opponent. After long days staring at our respective computer screens, we look forward to sitting down for a game where hackers install programs to access corporate servers. Even though the game went out of print in 2018, a fan group called Project NISEI has kept the enthusiasm alive by organizing tournaments and even designing and printing new cards that fans can add to their existing sets. A selling point of Netrunner is its inclusivity, which contrasts with many games that tend to feature American cities and characters that appear largely white and cis-gendered.

The appeal of thinking machines, particularly those that seem human, is understandable. If we could create an intelligent being, it might relieve our loneliness, protect us from our enemies, cure our illnesses, comfort our griefs. Then again, it might just as easily turn on us, destroy us, and take over the world. Books, movies and other cultural representations of AI are shot through with this tension: Will the being we create be our savior or our crucifier? But the actual title was, "Frankenstein, or…" Or what?

Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.

The future has looked the same for almost four decades. A skyline of densely packed skyscrapers, corporate logos lighting the night sky, proclaiming ownership over the city below. At street level, a haze of neon shines down from the cluster of signs above and shimmers at your feet in the rain that runs down the filthy streets. Here, the have-nots, excluded from the safe, luxurious enclaves enjoyed by the super-rich, are preyed upon by hustlers dealing in illegal tech and street gangs composed of green-haired, leather-clad technopunks, decked out with cyborg enhancements and high on synthetic drugs. You've seen it a million times since it was first constructed in the 80s by the pioneers of cyberpunk, most notably William Gibson in Neuromancer and Ridley Scott in Blade Runner. Hollywood recently returned to it with Blade Runner 2049.

One particularly arresting moment in William Gibson's cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer, occurs toward the end when Case, the protagonist, meets the eponymous and anthropomorphized AI face-to-face: You're the one who wants to stop Wintermute. The boy did a handstand in the surf, laughing. He walked on his hands, then flipped out of the water…"To call up a demon you must learn its name. Men dreamed that, once, but now it is real in another way. "Neuromancer," the boy said, slitting long gray eyes against the rising sun…"Neuro from the nerves, the silver paths.