"Cyberpunk" Novels

[perplexis]

Jeff Noon's stuff is pretty good, focus on the early stuff: Vurt and Pollen are v. cyberpunk IMO.

 

[G. Fieendish]

That's an odd little piece tbh, not as virulently paranoiac as Three Stigmata or others.

It's a "Alternative Universe" novel, that diverges from "our" universe, in that the Axis powers won World War II, & is set in a Japanese- occupied California...
( Incedentally, it was during the writing of said novel, that Mr.Dick read the diary of a SS officer who was stationed near of one of the Ghettos, that was preserved in UCLA's literary archives, & a entry by said officer complaining that his wife could'nt sleep, due to the wailings of the victims nearby, that lead him to concive, & later write "Do Androids...").

 

[Stigmata]

I really don't like cyberpunk in general. If A Scanner Darkly and The Stars My Destination (I know it's old, but a lot of the tropes are there) count then i'd nominate them.

 

[newbie]

much as I liked Neuromancer etc, this was the best...

 

[water lily]

Matrix trilogy can be classed as Cyberpunk. Definitely William Gibson; he is the master. Neal Stephenson, Michael Marshall Smith (Spares, Only Forward, One of Us), Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, the film Hackers (less tangible), Rudy Rucker, Greg Bear, Lewis Shiner, Bladerunner. Films like Minority Report, AI, et al could edge in there too - depends how pure you define Cyberpunk.

Non Fiction -
Armitt 'Where no man has gone before'
Bukatman 'Terminal Identity'
Edward 'Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century'
McCaffery 'Storming the reality studio'
Featherstone 'cyberspace, cyberbodies, cyberpunk'
Stuff by Donna Haraway
Scholes and Rabkin 'Science fiction'
Slusser and Shippey 'Fiction 2000'
Kevin Kelley 'Out of control' (have i remembered that correctly - the one about robotics and stuff)

I think that's all I can remember!

 

[Fruitloop]

I couldn't sit through the film. Keanu Reeves seriously needs to GTFO cyberpunk.

I just read that last night and was struck by the massive difference between the short story and the film. In the book there are no good guys, the dolphin thing is covered in sores and hooked on smack, and Johnny doesn't conquer his enemies but just blackmails them into leaving him alone, while he lives in some feral permanently-dark hellhole (with implanted dog-canines) making money by ripping off all his former clients.

Gibson FTW.

 

[Awesome Wells]

I couldn't sit through the film. Keanu Reeves seriously needs to GTFO cyberpunk.

he wrote the film though.

 

[DotCommunist]

That film was well worth it for the improbable laser-whip finger that cus a man in three.

 

[elevendayempire]

much as I liked Neuromancer etc, this was the best...

Though Idoru is actually the second part of the Virtual Light/Idoru/All Tomorrow's Parties trilogy.

Personally, I think Virtual Light shat all over Neuromancer, but that's just me.

 

[Awesome Wells]

Hard Wired by Walter Jon Williams.

A lot of this stuff is quaintly out of date. But i loved the genre.

 

[kyser_soze]

John Coutnay-Grimwood's first quadrilogy:

neoAddix
Lucifer's Dragon
reMix
redRobe

are all fucking cracking, and set within the same reality, and act as a developing timeline (altho each one can be read completely independently)

Some proper cool hardware in them too...

 

[kyser_soze]

Hard Wired by Walter Jon Williams.

A lot of this stuff is quaintly out of date. But i loved the genre.

Did you know he wrote 2 sequels to Hardwired before writing the Praxis trilogy? Solip:System and Voice of the Whirlwind...

I love Hardwired - it's one of my fave trashy shoot 'em up bits of scifi and I go back to it regularly

 

[kyser_soze]

That film was well worth it for the improbable laser-whip finger that cus a man in three.

Not laser, glowing monofilamnet innit?

 

[kabbes]

Virtual Light was great.

I had a problem with Gibson's trilogies, though, in that by the time I read book 2 of a trilogy, I'd always long forgotten everything about book 1.

 

[DotCommunist]

Not laser, glowing monofilamnet innit?

aha!


youd want to be fucking careful waving that around

 

[Fruitloop]

While we're SF geeking.... has anyone read 'Light' by M. John Harrison? Or 'Broken Angels' by Richard Morgan? These are the latest two that I haven't really made my mind up about.

 

[DotCommunist]

While we're SF geeking.... has anyone read 'Light' by M. John Harrison? Or 'Broken Angels' by Richard Morgan? These are the latest two that I haven't really made my mind up about.

really enjoyed that. Morgan is very balls-out military sci fi- not so much a concepts man (although Envoy Training and Re-Sleeving are interesting ideas)

 

[Fruitloop]

Yeah, he seems to be less of an SF ideas man and more about a particularly bleak form of political/philosophical pragmatism. The acknowledgement of the influence of Robin Morgan's The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism is interesting I think.

The description of the torture of the Wedge traitor is particularly hard to read.