and Burning Chrome, and the Diamond Age, and Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. I've heard good things about Walter Jon Williams's Hardwired, but what else is out there?

Speaking of cyberpunk(ish) novels, I can never remember the names of the elfpunk books that some people referenced back on the old forums.

Anything by Bruce Sterling. I think you'd like Snow Crash too (a lot of people complain about how the hero is named Hiro Protagonist, but I think you'd appreciate that).

A Scanner Darkly
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Lies, Incorporated

And a lot of other stuff by Philip K. Dick.

Edit: also, since you already have Burning Chrome, reread Dogfight. Then, if you don't mind more magic and less cyber, go find The Iron Dragon's Daughter, by Michael Swanwick (who cowrote Dogfight). I'd recommend his other works, though they vary between cyberpunkish and more straight-up science fiction.

~J

I swear he originally listed Snow Crash in his post, because it was the first (and only, other than Hardwired or Gibson) book I would have recommended.

Some reading on the genre, to be taken as you will.

Some more.

~J

What makes you think I actually want to read up on what I want to read?

How about Greg Bear's Slant.

Tricia Sullivan's Someone To Watch Over Me was pretty good. Some of her other works have cyberpunk type elements in them as well.

There's also Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott. Lots of computer/matrix stuff in there. I didn't much like it, but several friends of mine did.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets puts you into the model of old-fashioned crime and grit, with healthy amounts of racism, class warfare, and general criminal behavior.

NOIR, by KW Jeter, is another good book, more cyberpunk (spinal cords as stereo cables!) but less rooted in reality. The other two blade runner books aren't very tied to the movie, but tell some really really bizarre stories at the edge of science fiction.

Slant, Greg Bear: goddamn fantastic, though it seemed more post-cyberpunk than cyberpunk (if you care to make such divisions). neat nanotech stuff, somewhat more realistic than Diamond Age, as well as being a really neat insight into how AIs might work.

Technogenesis, Syne Mitchell: fairly standard plot, but interesting tech and tech techniques.

Heavy Weather, Bruce Sterling: good story, quite useful as an example of how people deal with advances in technology.

Schismatrix Plus, Bruce Sterling: neat ideas about human augmentation, and about augmentation as a path (or paths, really) to human evolution. if you're interested in post-humanity, start here.

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson: if you haven't read this, what in the name of God is wrong with you?

I'd recommend John Courtney Grimwood's Arabesk trilogy - Pashazade, Effendi and Felaheen respectively.

Edit: Uh, guys? Might want to check the thread title before you keep mentioning Snow Crash. Even if it is a cool book.

Altered Carbon is some of the best post-cyberpunk you're going to read. The 2 other books of the trilogy kinda slowly slant away from cyberpunk, but once you've read the first one you'll probably want to read the other 2 because they are teh awesome.

Perdido Street Station is fantasy steampunk rather than cyberpunk, but all the themes and elements are there. A fantastic read.

We've done this a bit before, but...

Anthologies:
The Ultimate Cyberpunk
Mirrorshades

William Gibson:
Burning Chrome
Neuromancer
Count Zero
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Virtual Light
Idoru
All Tomorrow's Parties

John Shirley:
City Come A Walkin
The Exploded Heart
Eclipse
Eclipse Penumbra
Eclipse Corona

Pat Cadigan:
Mind Players
Synners
Patterns
Dervish is Digital (Not her best, I admit)

Bruce Sterling:
Globalhead
A Good, Old-Fashioned Future
Crystal Express
Islands in the Net
Heavy Weather
Distraction
Visionary in Residence (Verging into ribofunk)

Neal Stephenson:
Snowcrash
The Diamond Age

Also recommended:
Interzone (A British sci-fi mag featuring several prominent Cyberpunk authors, colelctions available)
Hip Flask/Elephantmen (Comic series by Active Image, very technonoir. Think Blade Runner)
Transmetropolitan (Comic series by Warren Ellis, firmly postcyberpunk)
Desolation Jones (Comic series by Warren Ellis, firmly slipstream)
Lazarus Churchyard (Comic series by Warren Ellis and D'israeli, very cyberpunk. Also look for their collaborations in the pages of Unlimited 2099)
The Winter Men (Comic series by Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon, firmly slipstream)
Ghostrider 2099 (First couple issues are good, look for the cyberpunk references.)
The Hacker Crackdown (non-fiction by Bruce Sterling, avalable for free)
Ghost in the Shell (Graphic novel/series/manga by Masamune Shirow)
Shatter (Graphic novel by Michael Saenz and Peter Gillis)
Silent Dragon (Graphic novel by Andy Diggle, Leinil Francis Yu, and Gerry Alanguilan)
The Difference Engine (a collaboration 'tween Bruce Sterling and William Gibson)
Achilles Choice (By Larry Niven and Steve Barnes)
Cryptonomicon (By Neal Stephenson, thought by some the beginning transition to Slipstream)
The Baroque Cycle (By Neal Stephenson, 8 books broken into 3 volumes, Slipstream/steampunk)
Pattern Recognition (A new William Gibson novel, firmly Slipstream)

Marc D. Giller's
- Hammerjack
- Prodigal

..and maybe even a Shadowrun novel or 50

How come people like Snow Crash so much? I don't recall it being all that good a story, although I only read it once, in a superficial manner, and a long time ago at that. I'm thinking about reading it again just to see what the hype is all about.

Like with many books, opinion differs. I like it for the characters, the writing style, the plot, and the setting. Others like and dislike it for one or more of the above reasons, among others. <shrug>

• The Long Run ~ Daniel Keys Moran
• Hardwired ~ Walter Jon Williams
• Voice of the Whirlwind ~ Walter Jon Williams
• Kaleidoscope Century ~ John Barnes
• When Gravity Fails ~ George Alec Effinger
• Friday ~ Robert Heinlein
• Battle Angel Alita/Gunnm (Various incarnations and media.) ~ Kishiro Yukito
  • All nine volumes of the original manga, and all seven volumes of Last Order that have been released so far.
• Ghost in the Shell (Various incarnations and media.) ~ Shirow Masamune

I cannot believe that The Long Run and Hardwired have not yet been mentioned.

Friday, while a decent novel, is most definately not cyberpunk.

Yeah, I disliked the satire angle; I would have liked more snippets like Bruce Lee's shirt made of human hair.

See, that's the problem, though. The snippets like Bruce Lee's shirt made of human hair were the satire. It's been a long time since I've read it, but I can't remember anything significant from the book that wasn't satirical. It's just a matter of how obvious it is.

He took everything in the genre and turned it to eleven. The problem was, he did this even with stuff that was already turned to eleven in serious Cyberpunk, so it just ended up sitting out in the stratosphere somewhere.

~J

I don't remember much in Friday that would qualify as "punk", or indeed in Heinlein's writing as a whole, but I do admit it's been at least six years since I read Friday.

~J

I was just excited because someone finally gave me the excuse to give the justification I should have given up front but didn't because something about doling information out in small chunks makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Don't mind me

~J

Yeah, calling the main dude "Hiro Protagonist" and making him arbitrarily the greatest swordfighter was pushing it.

Y'all are avoidin' the issue. I really wanna know 'bout them there 'elf-punk' books.

Friday's problem is not how much or little sex she has. Her problem is that she was written by Heinlein, which makes her a nymphomaniac.

~J

De nada.

To me, the trouble with Snow Crash was that it took parody past the point of sly and to the point of ham-handed camp. He also seemed to be a wee bit too impressed with his own cleverness, and the obnoxious stereotypes didn't help, either. All told, it could have been a lot better.

By the way, if you check out Ghost in the Shell, the manga is way better than the movie.

The first manga collection is awesome. The second manga collection is kinda like watching a grand-master chess tournament, only you don't know chess and no one's explaining what's going on—there's obviously something happening, someone is making brilliant moves or errors, but damned if you can figure out who, what, when, or why. Oh, and this chess is totally fictional, too, so you can't even learn the rules.

Plus, Shirow is definitely giving in to his dream of being an H artist.

~J

Nailed the Discription Kage. I always wanted to capture GitS SAC atmosphere in Shadowrun, but the complete ignorance the story keeps the viewer in, and the lengths it goes too, simply defy capture in a GAME, where PLAYERS want to know the BASIC RULES. Still, I think Gits:SAC and Full Metal Alchemist (which air about the same time in my area) would make great fodder for a campagin if I were only a bit smarter.

As for Snow Crash being a parody of cyberpunk as a whole, who does Hiro Protagonist make fun of? I know the general idea of "LOL HAXXOR AND KATANA WIELDER," but are there any instances of that cliche?

while it's certainly true that Snow Crash (and Diamond Age) used satire, i don't think it's fair to simply label them as just satire. it was also good, interesting science fiction whose basic premises actually make a lot more sense than anything William Gibson's ever put out. using sarcasm to make a point doesn't turn the whole thing into a comedy routine.

I read snow crash, and some of the stuff in it would have seemed ridiculous if the writer wasn't as good i didn't read it thinking 'parody'. When you read it the first time it dosen't come across completely ridiculous, and he was only the greatest matrix swordsman, in the flesh he fucks up several times with his blade.

Oh and yeah and altered carbon etc is great stuff! Market forces should be read by everyone interested in cyberpunk. The genre isn't quite as narrow as a lot of people seem to want it to be. Any and all genres are just pigeonholes to put things in, lets face it if theres one thing everyone should pick up from cyberpunk its that things are rarely neat and tidy in a box on shelf. Things are never black and white, even on a monochrome cctv monitor playing through your imagelink.