anyone read these books that heavily inspired the story of bioshock?

logan's run, 1984, or atlas shrugged? What are your thoughts on them?

I read 1984 and Atlas Shrugged

Definitely read 1984

I found Atlas Shrugged really well written but the ideology off

I've read Nineteen Eighty Four, a couple times but neither Atlas Shrugged nor the other one. If anything, the story in BioShock was based mostly off of System Shock 2 and only drew its themes from those novels. Even then it really didn't do a good job at all. It could have been so much better.foxhound_fox

System Shock 2 draws a lot of themes from Rand's novels as well, though like Bioshock, it isn't completely based on Rand entirely. I read a small Q&A that described the themes borrowed from Rand's writing that fed into System Shock 2. You can read about those in a fan-based Q&A that Levine replied to here, but to summarize, The Many in System Shock 2 is a clear reference to a union of altruists, who see a need for sacrifice of the individual and his achievements to the needs of the many. SHODAN on the other hand is an opposite evil, but still an evil in the world of Objectivist ethics -- namely, she is a psychological vampire: she expects and needs the recognition of others, i.e. their worship, in order to feed her self-esteem and gain her power, and she doesn't respect the greatness in others in converse, but rather seems to resent it as a threat to her own position. She is also, as Levine puts it in the Q&A, more than willing to use initiatory force to her own ends. She is basically sacrificing many to her own self. The subtle theme in System Shock 2 is that you reject both of these for a "third way". That isn't directly specified, but it is very subtle given that most ethical systems are built on one or the other. This third theme is a critical conclusion to every one of Rand's novels.