5 Cyberpunk Novels That Could Actually Work Better on TV

Image via Penguin Random House/Del Rey Published Sep 10, 2026, 7:19 AM EDT Chelsea Adelaine Hassler is an award-winning editorial, social, and creative director with two decades of media and entertainment experience and an all-consuming obsession with TV. A native New Yorker, she always completes the Sunday crossword, reads at least 100 books per year, and has Knicks season tickets. Sign in to your Collider account Before algorithms, megacorporations, and smart technology invaded every aspect of modern life, cyberpunk warned it was coming. Born as a catchy short story title by Bruce Bethke and championed as a movement by editor Gardner Dozois, cyberpunk found its anchor as a science fiction subgenre in William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer. But four decades later, reality is virtually indistinguishable from the patented high tech, low life dystopias of cyberpunk, and its tales of gritty countercultures fighting back against the system feel more like raising a mirror to modern anxiety than science fiction, reading like a survival guide for everyday life. It's why Apple TV decided to bring Neuromancer to life as a series more than 40 years after it was written, as the novel once believed to be unfilmable feels more urgent now than ever. But so many other novels deserve the same attention; their intricately crafted stories and imagined universes are primed to become visual masterpieces, and their stories would benefit from the page-to-screen leap. From Snow Crash to Autonomous, these cyberpunk novels are essential reading, but they could be even better after being adapted for TV. 1 'Snow Crash' By Neal Stephenson Image via Penguin Random House/Del Rey Snow Crash is set in a near-future Los Angeles where the crumbling government has ceded control to corporate franchises, leaving its citizens seeking refuge in a shared virtual reality known as the Metaverse. The story centers on Hiro Protagonist, a pizza delivery driver for the now-corporatized Mafia with a dual life as a master hacker and samurai warrior, who encounters a digital virus called Snow Crash that can infect both computers and human brains. After teaming up with skateboard courier Y.T. to investigate, they uncover a wide-ranging conspiracy rooted in ancient mythology that threatens the boundaries of technology, consciousness, and language, and find themselves in a race against time to stop an evil billionaire before he enacts a plan to hijack the entire human race. It's hard to read the opening scene of Snow Crash without imagining it as the cold open of a pilot: a high-stakes, high-speed pizza delivery run that instantly sets the rules and tone of its world and introduces the two main characters. The dual worlds of a fractured corporate wasteland of America and a richly imagined Metaverse are built for episodic storytelling, providing endless visual and narrative material to explore. But it's Neal Stephenson's exquisite blend of sharp satire, over-the-top action, and deep dives into language and culture that would benefit most from an adaptation, giving the story the breathing room for a slow-burn reveal of the complex central mystery while spending more time building out the small details that make his prose so unique. 2 'Void Star' By Zachary Mason Image via Macmillan Publishers/Picador Void Star is primarily set in a near-future San Francisco reshaped by climate change and dominated by AI, where the wealthy live in skyscrapers, and everyone else is crammed into favelas flanked by autonomous drones. The story follows three radically different people – an AI specialist with implant-enhanced memory, a young thief scraping by in the favelas, and the disabled son of an assassinated politician – whose lives intersect after they're pulled into a dangerous conflict between a tech billionaire and the artificial intelligences that have evolved beyond human comprehension. But after uncovering what the AIs are truly capable of, the lines between humans, memories, simulations, and digital copies begin to blur, and the trio goes on a globe-spanning journey in search of the truth. A real-world computer scientist with a PhD in artificial intelligence, Zachary Mason paints a terrifying portrait of a world where we lose control of our most dangerous technology, and it's incredibly necessary for this present moment. The book creates a sweeping, cinematic world that pits futuristic cities and tech against a climate-ravaged planet of ordinary people, and its trio of protagonists provides three separate plot lines that ultimately converge, making the story well-suited to episodic cliffhangers and suspense. But most of all, it's a character-driven mystery with a plot that will leave you questioning everything, and the many, many forms of existence that unfold across its pages would become even more extraordinary if given a visual representation. 3 'Gnomon' By Nick Harkaway Image via Penguin Random House/Vintage Gnomon takes place in a near-future Britain governed by a form of participatory direct democracy known as the System, where its citizens go about their day-to-day lives under constant surveillance by an AI known as the Witness that not only monitors their movements but can access their thoughts and memories, too. A firm believer in both systems, Inspector Mielkki Neith is tasked with investigating the death of a refusenik while in Witness custody, only to discover that the memories extracted from the woman span multiple people with separate lives. As Neith embarks on a mind-bending journey to uncover what's real, she slowly realizes these memories are pieces of a puzzle that add up to something far bigger than she ever imagined, leaving her questioning her loyalty and the nature of her reality. The sprawling 700-page novel written by Nick Harkaway – the pen name of Nicholas Cornwell, the son of John le Carré – is one of the most complexly structured books in recent memory, diving into sub-stories, simulations, and personas that, at times, can leave you gasping for air. It'd provide a massive creative challenge to adapt, but one that would, on the whole, be very, very worth it; the multi-layered, textually intricate ideas and philosophical musings are rooted in a plot that could extend for seasons on end, not to mention spin-offs galore. It's a novel that would truly benefit from the streamlining and structure an adaptation would provide, as its message and its story are timeless and captivating but would become something otherworldly if given the room to breathe off the page. 4 'Jennifer Government' By Max Barry Image via Penguin Random House/Vintage Jennifer Government unfolds in a world run by a United States-dominated global government controlled by corporate entities, where taxes have mostly been eliminated, public services operate as a business, companies quite literally go to war with one another, and last names aren't familial but based on your employer. Former advertising executive Jennifer Government works for an underfunded government to investigate corporate crimes based on whoever is willing to pay the tab, and finds herself investigating Nike for a marketing campaign that led to the murders of 14 teenagers to give a new line of sneakers street cred. But what begins as a localized murder investigation quickly expands to a massive physical war between loyalty programs, in what can only be called a deliberately off-the-wall satire of extreme capitalism – or capitalizm, as the book refers to its economic system. More than two decades ago, there were plans for George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh to make Max Barry's legendary novel into a movie, but plans fell through – and perhaps, that was for the best. Jennifer Government is a story that's ripe with possibilities, its only shortcoming being that the intricately crafted world doesn't exist beyond the pages of a single volume; adapting it for television would enable the incredible foundation of the singular, text-based story to act as a springboard for building out something that tackles other angles and avenues as it dips between comedy and action. The entire premise is based on corporations, and there's no shortage of them in the world, which means it has the legs to (unironically) become a massive franchise, in a genuinely unique and refreshing way. 5 'Autonomous' By Annalee Newitz Image via Tor Books The 22nd-century world of Autonomous is one in which genes can be enhanced and diseases cured, but everything comes at a price. The population is divided into economic zones patrolled by patent-owners hunting intellectual property theft, where robots try to buy their way out of indentured servitude by paying off their creation costs, and humans try to avoid becoming indentured property by incurring debt. The novel centers on Jack Chen, a pharmaceutical pirate who travels by submarine to distribute reverse-engineered drugs, as she races to fix a mistake she made by duping a drug that causes people to, quite literally, work themselves to death, while at the same time evading an agent and his assigned robot who are out to capture her, ultimately leading all three individuals – agent, pirate, and robot – to confront what it means to be free in a society where people, technology, and knowledge are considered property. The many locations, characters, and storylines that unfold across Annalee Newitz's pages are masterfully crafted for the small but mighty book she published; the backstory of the three biggest characters alone could provide episodes' worth of material, if given the room to evolve visually. The high-stakes chase delivers the built-in suspense, the robot perspective on free will and humanity is invaluable, and the corporate rule-meets-biohacking aspect grounds it in a very real, but deeply original place. With a careful hand balancing the darkness of the imposition of ownership and the dark humor needed to keep audiences engaged, it could be one of the most original television shows of all time – and one that asks the important questions that we aren't asking enough right now.