The Ecstasy Club

Rushkoff's debut novel, set in the rave and psychedelic underground of early-1990s San Francisco, follows a group of young people who become convinced that their collective consciousness-expansion experiments are being monitored — and perhaps guided — by forces they don't fully understand.

Part techno-thriller, part philosophical novel, The Ecstasy Club captures the genuine utopian energy of the early rave and hacker scenes — and the paranoia that inevitably follows when you start to believe you're on to something important.

The book draws heavily on Rushkoff's own experience of the Bay Area counterculture, and anticipates many of the themes he would develop in his non-fiction work: the relationship between consciousness and technology, the vulnerability of genuine community to co-optation, and the fine line between collective liberation and cult dynamics.