OK. I've been playing SR for 3 or 4 years now. I actually like the Rules to it. I find the world great to. SR4 i'll pretend never happened. I have read through most of the core rule books.
However i have not read any of the fiction books. I plan on going to pick some up soon, and i was wanting some suggestions on what to read first; best authors ect...

I would also like to ask what other non-SR movies and books you all like. I'm not asking the old "SR feel books and movies" question. Just generaly speeking.

O. YES! and i must ask WTF is BABY

Anything by William Gibson.

Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.

Walter Jon Williams - especially "Hardwired" and "Voice of the Whirlwind".

"When Gravity Fails" by George Alec Effinger.

-Siege

Heh.

For twisted cop/crime dramas - "The Usual Suspects", "LA Confidential", "Payback", "Ronin".

War flicks - "Soldier", "Aliens", "Saving Private Ryan", "Blackhawk Down".

There isn't a single movie, in my opinion, that embodies SR, although several come close.

-Siege

There is actually a *HUGE* movie thread somewhere. The only cyberpunk movies that immediately leap to mind as being worth half a moment is Blade Runner (VERY good) and Johnny Mnemonic (NOT very good).

As for authors, Stephenson I enjoyed in Snow Crash and the first three quarters of Diamond Age (although the latter has nothing to do with SR). Bruce Sterling is another author who I generally enjoy immensely in the genre. There is a website, the Cyberpunk Library, with a lot of stuff available for free. I would also recommend Metrophage and the short story Dog Fight (the latter of which is the single best short story I've ever read ever).

I wasn't very impressed with Altered Carbon, but my reccomendations still stand.

Hammered, by Elizabeth Bear, and if you like it, Scardown, the sequel.

Vets, by Stephen Leather.

Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams (don't see if anyone mentioned it yet).

Sharkman Six, by Owen West (himeslf a Marine officer, Force Recon), and the sequel Four Days to Veracruz (both have good action, great characters, and the second had kind of a Shadowrun feel to it).

'2XS' and 'House of the Sun' are wonderfull. 'Lucider Deck' is good.
I just finished reading 'Tails you Lose', which was quite good.

for non-SR stuff... Roger Zelazny's 'Donnerjack' is a wonderfull book, and focuses on an online matrix where the supernatural has become real.

Since no one's spoken to the WTF question yet, in Shadowrun context, BABY stands for Big All-Black Yearbook, a reference to the special limited edition version of the core rulebook that FASA put out for SR3. Since FanPro also put out a black-covered limited edition to SR4, technically, there are 3rd Edition BABYs and 4th Edition BABYs, but I've not seen the term tossed around much in reference to 4th edition.

Breaking down the term into parts, we get:

• Big: The core rulebook of an edition always has a higher page count than any of the supplements. "Big" also shows up in another Shadowrun book acronym, the BBB aka Big Black Book, which is a way of refereing to the core rulebook regardless of limited edition or regular print run status. (Note: in first edition, it was actually the Big Blue Book, but the acronym parses out the same)
• All-Black: The limited editions of both SR3 and SR4 had covers that were done in plain black leatherette, foil stamped with the SR "S-Logo" on the front, book title and information on the spine, and a tagline on the back. Aside from the foil stamping, there is no cover art.
• Yearbook: The limited editions were both first available at Gen-Con. Convention-Goers who picked up copies would often get their books signed by Shadowrun authors, Artists, and friends from the online Shadowrun community. This made the inside covers of the limited editions come to resemble the inside of a typical High-School Yearbook.

Kinda wish they would make more books without the front art cover and such. The all-black look is rather nice looking in my view.

Holy cow!

I can't believe I forgot about Walter Jon William's Hardwired

ultimate rigger book right there. has some cyberspace aspects of it too, but not as much.

definitely gritty, shows a major rift between the orbitals (corporations) and the groundsiders.

EDIT

And while Broken Angels by Richard K Morgan (second book in the series) is interesting, it's not very cyberpunk. more of a dark science fiction.

While The Big U is supposed to be well written, and I suppose Zodiac was as well, I fail to see how either (the former being a humor book about life at University and the latter being a modern setting eco-terrorist book) are really 'shadowrun-esque'. Do I simply need to read them to appreciate it?

IMHO, most of Stephenson's stuff, while not necessarily having anything at all to do with Shadowrun directly, is so full of random tidbits of information (ala Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle) and a general SR-like "style" (tons of cons going on through nearly all his books) that it most certainly can't hurt to read them.
Please note, however, that even if you enjoy the hell out of the Baroque Cycle books, they're huge books and tend to have trouble keeping people like me interested when the hero, a syphilitic vagabond, is not involved in the story.

Not exactly a book per-se, but I can remember reading the first few issues of a Vertigo comic called The Losers a while back that reminded me of Shadowrun somewhat, especially the first issue. Change the Humvee for a car and faked medic alert bracelet transmission and swap out the military Chinook for a DocWagon bird and you'ce got a plan that could be lifted right into a game. Plus the team and different roles just gave off a strong runner vibe to me.

Probably have to see what they did with that some time I actually have some money to spare.

Hell, if comics count, read the shit out've deadpool. And then learn how not to play shadowrun ::grinn::

well just back form the book store. pickins were slim. i got 2xs by Nigel Findley, and Burning Bright by Tom Dowd

opinions?

Run Hard Die Fast by Mel Odom was a fun read. The story was a little hokey, but Odom is realy good at writing fights.

Nearly all the Mel Odom books were good reads, imo. Some of them were particularly extravagant in the Planning the Impossible Department.

More than Human

there's a nonfiction for ya all.