The first novel in the series introduces a number of recurring characters-Cardigan’s wisecracking partner Sid Gomez, Cardigan’s former wife Kate and their son Daniel-and its high-tech setting is packed with gleaming robot assistants and computerized homes. RELATED: 12 Cyberpunk Books for Console Cowboys Everywhere

His quest sends him deep into the underbelly of a futuristic Los Angeles and into a Tek cartel criminal underworld that stretches across the globe.

Freshly resurrected from his deep sleep, Cardigan returns to the world he left behind and sets out to track down the shadowy players who set him up. But someone has arranged for an early release. He lost his badge and his freedom when he was forced into cryobiotic slumber and filed away in a plastic cubicle on a penal colony orbiting Earth. Four years ago, he was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit: dealing Tek. Into this world steps Jake Cardigan, the troubled protagonist of the series.Ĭardigan is a former-lawman-turned-private-eye from Greater Los Angeles. Needless to say, Tek’s mind-altering trip tempts many a user to plug in, turn on, and drop out. Inserting the chip into a Brainbox and connecting to this device via a headset allows an individual to tap into a digitized blissfield and momentarily escape the crushing realities of everyday life. “Tek” is an illegal electronic brain stimulant that comes in the form of a silicon chip. TekWar imagines a 22nd-century future world where our drug problems have fused with our computer problems. RELATED: Star Trek Gifts for the Trekkie in Your Life The entire franchise stems from a premise dreamed up by William Shatner and first established in 1989’s TekWar-with ghostwriting duties handled by Edgar Award-nominee Ron Goulart. The series also spawned a comic book series (Marvel’s TekWorld) a first-person shooter video game ( William Shatner’s TekWar) and screen adaptations in the form of made-for-TV movies and the TekWar TV series that aired from 1994 to 1996. The TekWar series is comprised of nine novels, beginning with 1989’s TekWar and concluding with 1997’s Tek Net. Let’s buckle up and take a ride, shall we? And while it doesn’t journey into the same deep space explored by the authors mentioned above, it does ask a number of questions about our relationship with technology that echo through to this day. Similarly, the first mission of Shatner’s TekWar series is to entertain.

TekWar by William Shatner