There are several different themes running through NM: paranoia, loss of identity, conspiracy, mental instability and madness, the power of computers, the power of other technology such as advanced neurological scanners . . .
Many of these themes show up in the subgenre of literature known as cyberpunk. Examples of this category (in my opinion) include books like:
Others have their own opinions on what constitutes cyberpunk. For me personally, however, nothing can really touch the cyperpunk campaign run by a friend of mine named Jeff Lassahn for real "you are there" grittiness, and the awful feeling that some of his predictions about the future are really coming true all around us, even as we speak.
By the mid-twenty-first century, his campaign predicts: corporate genetic
engineering of animals; new
designer
drugs that can articially boost someone's memory or creativity, or are many
times more addictive than crack, etc.; advanced work in correlation and
analogy-making in AIs; use of holography as a special effect by rock bands; and
much much more . . .
Doorway
(Last updated 7/16/96)