Reddit reviews The Shockwave Rider

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner.

This book has always been popular with the techy-geeky crowd, but, since it was first published in the '70s, it missed out on the cyberpunk revolution of the '80s. It's too bad, because this is a compelling story of a future world tied together by a universal data network, a world that could be our tomorrow. It's a tense place filled with information overload and corporate domination, and nearly everything is known about everybody. Except Nickie Haflinger, a prodigy whose talents allow him to switch identities with a phone call. Nickie plans to change the world, if only he can keep from getting caught.

I don't know if you can go by this. But I will say that when I go for reviews - particularly more obscure authors, those readers on Amazon have been close to the mark and helped me discover John Brunner, K. W. Jeter, W.T. Quick and Jack Vance to name a few.

These readers though may choose something totally different (More recent? Specific genre?), because I have never heard of the first three books/authors.

the Shockwave Rider by John Brunner.

[Nine Princes in Amber] (http://www.amazon.com/Nine-Princes-Amber-Chronicles-Book/dp/B008R63HH2), maybe? There are more books in the series, but it stands alone just fine and is a quick read. I also loved [Shockwave Rider] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Shockwave-Rider-John-Brunner/dp/0345467175/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375051918&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=shickwave+rider), which may be dated in some ways, but is also all too relevant in others...

Does the whole WikiLeaks situation remind anyone else of The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner?

For those unfamiliar with the 1976 novel, the main character writes a worm whose job is to sniff out the kind of material WikiLeaks has been publishing, and to send that info directly to citizens.

I think this novel is ripe for the big screen.

And the incredible SF novel that was built on Future Shock, the Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner. Many of the ingredients of cyberpunk -- dystopian vision of government and corporations, the computer-human interface ... a really great read.

These kinds of articles remind me of John Brunner's prophetic 1975 sci-fi novel Shockwave Rider in which people are literally a code that serves as their identity and their credit and their complete personal history and potential future. The main protagonist is so gifted that he is able to change his code, thus changing his identity and his credit, and he does so to evade capture by the very group that educated him.