Simply put I’d like to read a book, be it fantasy or sci-fi, where the main character/leads develop a product/service to the point where their customers find it impossible, or near impossible, to live without. Be it a drug or the internet itself. Simply put, they introduce something new and foreign that the consumers can’t live without. Any suggestions?
by Separate-Bag2415
6 Comments
I don’t know if this would fit your request, but The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton. Humans are, for the most part, shriveled gray things with red eyes, while the Belles are rare, and beautiful, and have the magical ability to make others beautiful. Beauty becomes a commodity that the very wealthy must have, and others take what they can afford in order to get by in society. The wealthy have their own personal Belle. Other people visit what are basically spas to get their treatments done. The book is about a Belle who is competing to join the service of the royal family, but discovers some dark secrets. It’s a trilogy.
*Hyperion* and the greater four-novel series *Hyperion Cantos* explores inter-galactic civilization almost completely dependent on Artificial Intelligence to travel between planets, and the risks that comes from that. The first book can be read on it’s own, too.
*Dune* also explores humanity’s dependence on the spic melange for commerce and intergalactic travel against a political and colonial backdrop.
Maybe Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson? It’s kinda YA, in my opinion, but some consider it seminal to the cyberpunk genre.
Infinite Jest is a motherfucker of a tome that is very much about addictions and it is SF. It’s also literary fiction, but it’s SF.
I don’t know if you like classics and/or dystopia but the first thing that comes to my mind is *Kallocain* by Karin Boye. That’s a short story.
Autonomous by Annalee Newitz touches on this.
_The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_ by Philip K. Dick is exactly this.