Hardwired
by Walter Jon Williams · first published 1986
78% recommend22% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Fast, high-tech cyberpunk in the vein of Neuromancer, with a morally ambiguous tone and a Gibson-like prose style; often cited as an early favorite for readers who want the genre's roots.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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…Sagan The (mis)Behavior of Markets - Benoit Mandelbrot The Black Swan - Nicholas Nassem Taleb Fiction Gates Of Fire - Stephen Pressfield Neuromancer - William Gibson Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson Hardwired - Walter Jon Williams Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson Space - Stephen Baxter Enders Game - Orson Scott Card Skeleton Crew - Stephen King I've given away a lot of…
on “Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?” ↗…Maybe When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One for the AI side of things. The amusing Headcrash, writings by Pat Cadigan, Jeter's deliciously dystopian Noir is a favorite if you want to see how bad it might get. Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams, but that one has been a while.
on “Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’” ↗Hardwired Water John Williams Proto /early CP Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick Babel 17 - Delany Fury - Kutner/More Tiger! Tiger! (The stars my destination) - Bester And Arguably Gravity's…
on “Neuromancer, 30 years old this month” ↗If you like Neuromancer, you might like Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams. It's even more high-tech and morally ambiguous, and writing style very much like Gibson's in Neuromancer.
on “Eyes Everywhere: Encryption programmer Paul Le Roux and his commando kill squad” ↗Pity they didn't film Walter Jon Williams' 1986 novel Hardwired; it's one of the major cyberpunk works.
on “Apple is making a show based on Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ books” ↗Walter Jon Williams, author of the cyberpunk classic Hardwired, also wrote two books in a setting that fuses cyberpunk and fantasy: Metropolitan and City on Fire.
on “Is Cyberpunk Dead? A Conversation with Bruce Bethke” ↗I found his books (which IMO are not that famous) because our local library had them. Otherwise I don't think I would have stumbled upon it. Same applies to Walter Jon Williams and his Hardwired which was one of my early favorites. I was amazed to find out later that this book is one of inspirations for Cyberpunk tabletop games and Cyberpunk 2077.
on “A Search for Technosignatures Around 11,680 Nearby Stars” ↗We're not too far away from the world of 'Hardwired' by Walter Jon Williams. I was reading an article a while back about the drug cartels where they've created their own submarines to ship cocaine up from South America. Not nearly as cool as turbojet…
on “What Science Fiction Movie or Novel Is Most Prescient Today?” ↗Walter Jon Williams' "Hardwired", 1986. Protagonist had billions of dollars on a chip that he had implanted in his body for safekeeping. I thought "that will never work." He also had people jacked in to the stock market, getting 10-second…
on “Digital Currency: ten years before Bitcoin, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon” ↗Not exactly, but Walter Jon Williams keeps switching genres successfully: - Napoleonic sea fighting - early cyberpunk (Hardwired) - middle cyberpunk around the Solar System (Voice of the Whirlwind) - late cyberpunk post-scarcity space opera(Aristoi) - transhuman space opera (Implied Spaces) - New Mexican police procedural /…
on “All possible plots by major authors (2020)” ↗Interesting chain of descent: Walter Jon Williams wrote Hardwired, and R Talsorian Games based their tabletop RPG, Cyberpunk 2020, on it. That's the source material used for the computer RPG, Cyberpunk 2073. Meanwhile, WJW followed up with Voice of the Whirlwind, which…
on “Sci-Fi Short Film "There Is No Antimemetics Division" [video]” ↗