Alright, I need to provide a list of books I'd like for Christmas. I am looking for cyberpunk or as close as it gets. Not Gibson, I have them all. Not something "inspirational" to cyberpunk like Raymond Chandler Noir, that's not what I'm looking for today. I'm looking for dark sci-fi, cyberpunk, gritty stuff. MAYBE steampunk, but I'd rather have sci-fi.

Thanks!

Two of my favorites are:

Cybernetic Jungle and Bad Voltage

Phillip K. Dick is one author you'll want to read if you haven't already. He wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and A Scanner Darkly. I'm not sure how "cyberpunk" the latter one is, but it's pretty gritty. The former, of course, was the inspiration for Bladerunner.

- Effinger's When Gravity Fails and it's sequels.
Cool cyberpunk noir set in an Islamic future.

- The Bladerunner by Alan E. Nourse (Not connected in any way to the movie Bladerunner based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick)
Future earth where, in order to qualify for medical care, one must submit themselves to sterilization. Bladerunners are the docs and other medical workers who perform medicine on the black market for folks not wanting to undergo sterilization. Much cooler story than my synopsis seems.

- If you haven't read it, the Shadowrun novel #4, 2XS by Nigel Findley. To me, the essence of SR and my first real introduction to the game world's universe. Well written noir/cyberpunk-fantasy.

Vlad

Snow Crash is an easy one.

I love Bruce Sterling. He writes a lot of cyberpunk as well as transhumanism. His maker/shaper series is basically cyberpunk vs. transhumanism in space. Mirrorshades, islands on the net, and Globalhead are all good ones to pick up for straight cyberpunk.

Rudy Rucker, the Ware Tetrology

I need to read more of his books...

I've been reading the latest from the NSA and British Intelligence from the newspaper for my Cyberpunk kick.

I recommend "Jennifer Government"

Three by Jay Posey. First book of Legends of the Duskwalker collection. While its not Shadowrun specific the setting is very dark cyberpunk meets post cataclysm. The first fifteen chapters alone provided me with a notebook full of game ideas and had me enthralled to read 'just one more chapter before I go to bed'.

2XS from Nigel Findley

Also, here is a pretty good list:

http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/best-cyberpunk-books.php

Bye
Thanee

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan - hardboiled detective + Cyberpunk and Tanshumanism (technologically it'S closer to Eclipse Phase than classic cyberpunk, what with the sleeves and all)
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - lots of Matrix-like VR action in ... what WoW would be like in Shadowrun. Oh, and the Deliverator.
Barroco Tropicale by José Eduardo Agualusa - moderate cyberpunk in a future Angola that's very shadowrun in it's mix of weird magic and technology (though more the former than the latter).
Labyrinth of Reflections by Segei Lukianenko - better known for his Night/Day/Twilight/Infinity watch series, this book is pretty good cyberpunk. It's about a rather hapless hero's odyssey through a world of madness. Very russian, but also quite nicely cyberpunk. It also has two sequels and a short stories compilation.

As for Steampunk, do you have the Gibson-Sterling cooperative steampunk book, The Difference Engine?
A weird one I have personally not yet read is The Big Kiew Technican by Vladimir Vasilyev. It's a world with sentient machines and elves, and has been recommended to me because I like shadowrun. You could give that a try, but I cannot vouch for it's cyberpunk-ness.

Less cyberpunk and more post-cataclysmic is the Hunger Games trilogy, if you can look past the wholly unnecessary YAL love triangle. The world's actually rather interesting.

Does this book exist in English? Neither Amazon nor Barnes & Noble list it.

You can try Nexus and Crux by Ramez Naam. Deals with nanotech and augmentation on how the world reacts to all it represents. Along the same lines is Amped by Daniel H. Wilson. These are all set in a pretty near future (30-40 years).
For something a little further out time wise, I liked The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, which deals with genetic engineering in all its glory and some of the results of that. Also climate change and post-fossil fuel economies.

Read Hardwired already? It's fairly unknown despite being the book SR got riggers and a lot of other stuff from

Yeah I already read most of these, but got a few new ones I didn't know about. Thanks everyone!

I would also recommend Voice of the Whirlwind, also by Walter Jon Williams. Despite the addition of contact with extraterrestrial life, I consider it very firmly within his cyberpunk phase. And Facets, a collection of his short stories.

For early cyberpunk, there's obviously William Gibson (particularly the Sprawl Trilogy as well as Burning Chrome), Walter Jon Williams (particularly the Hardwired series), George Alex Effinger (particularly the Audran Sequence and Budayeen Tales), and Pat Cadigan (particularly Synners and the Deadpan Allie series). Phillip K. Dick obviously gets a nod, as does Mr. Sterling. Most of those folks already got mentioned upthread, so I'm just affirming them.

A bit later on and you start adding in more recent authors such as Richard Morgan (if the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy is too SF for you, then give Black Man / Th1rte3n a try...that's the same book, but the name differs depending on if you're shopping in America or Europe), Neal Stephenson (can't make a cyberpunk list without Snowcrash), and probably a few others that I've forgotten.

The latest arrivals (and in my opinion, the most uneven in terms of cyberpunkness) would be offerings like Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl (biopunk), Jeff Somer's Avery Cates series (which pushes further and further into dystopian themes as the series goes on), Joel Shepherd's Cassandra Kressnov series (SF, but with overt explorations of what it means to be human in a world of full-body borgs), Max Barry's Jennifer Government, David J. Williams Autumn Rain trilogy (spy / espionage SF), and Richard Paul Russo's Carlucci trilogy (SF crime).

A few notable stand alone's would be Mel Odom's Stalker Analog, Robert Mason's Weapon, and Martin Caiden's Cyborg (which was the inspiration for the Six-Million Dollar Man). Caiden in particular is more of a pre-cursor to cyberpunk than anything else, but you might enjoy it as sort of any early bellweather.

There's also been something of a resurgence of Kindle-only offerings, which tend to be fairly uneven in quality. The only series that comes to mind as being particularly notable would be Gary Ballard's Bridge Chronicles (pick up the first one...if you don't like the direction that the series takes in book two, then you can bail out and pick up the collection of short stories instead...it's more similar to the first novel in terms of tone and subject matter).

Last but not least, if you're looking to pick up a few of the Shadowrun books, Nigel Findley is in my opinion the high-water mark (2XS was already mentioned, and it's difficult to overstate the excellence of that particular novel). I also hesitated for the longest time on Russell Zimmerman's novella Neat, but it turned out to be an absolute gem.

One of the best books I have read in years, The Unincorporated Man, by Dani & Eytan Kollin. It is sold more as sci-fi than cyberpunk, but it has megacorporations ruling the world. It also does a superb job showing how extraterritoriality could work, and how politics between massive corps and the government could work in practice. In effect, although set a bit further in the future, it is a true cyberpunk world, only the view is shown from the top instead.

Since most of my go-tos have already been hit upon, I'll add in the Parrish Plessis trilogy by Marianne de Pierres. Super gritty, and very much in the "street" end of the pool.

Several cyberpunk books I've read recently and would recommend:

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, Aka a Young Ladies' Illustrated Primer. What happens when a street rat accidentally finds an intelligent book programmed to make a young lady subversive?
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. After oil, the next peak crisis is calories; whose value is controlled by the calorie men (aka Monsanto).
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. When a billionaire video game designer dies, he leaves a scavenger hunt of 80s trivia, the winner of which will receive his entire fortune.
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith. An equally funny and interesting novel, where the main character is a private detective who helps people through their dreams in the distant future.

I'm sure I can think of others. I would say in terms of "heart wrenching dystopia", I would say Ready Player One and Only Forward are the most Lighthearted, the Diamond Age is in the Middle, and I had to put the Windup Girl down a few times because of how depressing it was. To note, the Windup Girl involves a Robot Prostitute, so maybe don't buy that one for your younger cousin.

One I'll just add because of how Shadowrun it was would be Reamde by Neal Stephenson. A Russian Mobster travels to China after a hacker encrypts his stolen credit card numbers in a video game and holds it ransom for WoW Gold.

Halting States by Charles Stross is not really too cyberpunk, but a fun hackers tale of a cybercrime that has been committed in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Avalon Four. A robbery of several thousand euros worth of "prestige items" occurs in the game's central bank, led by a band of orcs and a "dragon for fire support." It is later noticed that this seemingly simple incident has deep implications – both financial (Hayek stock price) and logistical (compromised cryptographic keys), which sets the stage for the rest of the novel.

THANK YOU ThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyou !

I have been wracking my brains for the name of this book since I moved house a long time and a long story ago ! and was midway through

I need to get a copy for my e-reader asap

Thankyou did I say that already ?

Snow Crash gets another mention, because you'd be remiss not to include it in any list of Cyberpunk.

The Stars My Destination is a 1956 SF novel by Alfred Bester, which reads much like a proto-cyberpunk/cyberpunk-from-an-earlier-age novel. You've got Megas with massive political power, corporate samurai/prime-runner types, human augmentation, and a general darkness of tone, and it has been noted as William Gibson's favorite work of Science Fiction.

Speaking of Gibson, I know you've mentioned you've got all of his books, but do you truly have all of them? His recent Bigend books (Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History) aren't strictly Cyberpunk, but read rather like Cyberpunk, except in our current era (namely, between 2002 and 2010) which I thought was pretty cool. There's even some drone rigging (using iPhones, no less). Definitely a source I've given friends when trying to get them into Shadowrun.

Crap. I thought it did, but apparently all there is are unauthorized translations from dubious websites. Sorry there. I also noticed there's no translation of Barroco Tropicale, which is quite a shame too.

Something new under the sun.

Peter Watts writes some amazing, black as tar, cyberpunk. Centers on humanity's role as computers render them obsolete. They also contain cyberware, heists, and surprisingly large amounts of marine ecology. Plot centers on inhabitants of an incredibly dangerous power-harvesting aquacology on the mid-Pacific rift.

All the books are free eBooks, so I don't know how well they'll work as Christmas gifts, but they're well worth a look.

Love these threads, I always discover a gem or two that I haven't read yet.

Two that I've read relatively recently (that haven't been mentioned):

Dome City Blues by Jeff Edwards. Kinda dystopian noir; sure I guessed the ending, but it was an enjoyable read non-the-less.

Running Black by Patrick Todoroff. Love the world as presented, Eshu International are basically Shadowrunners getting into the usual frag up.

Edit:

Also, Eternity Falls by Kirk Outerbridge. Enjoyed the first book, the second (10th crusader) lost me and I never got around to finishing it.

Seconded, great series

Looking at my bookshelves last night I realized I'd missed one to recommend: Accidental Creatures by Anne Harris. It's more biopunk than cyberpunk, but it's still very much worth reading.

I just remembered the classic dystopia novel: 1984, by George Orwell.

Oh yeah. My wife required I read it before I was allowed to propose to her.

To know what you were getting into?







I kid, I kid. Stop throwing things at me, I'm married too.

It is not quite cyberpunk but there's the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. They are set in modern Chicago and are written like film noir detective stories about the detective Harry Dresden, who is a wizard, the only one in the yellow pages.

He usually gets called in by the police to look for the little green man cases but his style is more Mike Hammer than Gandalf.

Plus he has Drain

That gives me an idea, soulfire casting. Using essence to augment casting spells <insert evil GM laugh>. Man would my players screw them selves.

"The Star Fraction" by Ken MacLeod.

It took me forever to remember the keywords to find this, but back in 1992, Bruce Sterling answered the question of what he thought the "must have" cyberpunk books were. Given the timing, this is obviously going to be composed almost entirely of early works, although by '92 there were a few notable second-wave books out already as well.

http://www.kitty.org/SterlingReadingList.html

Have to say, I picked up and read The Stars My Destination from reading this thread, and it was amazing.

I'm reading Hammered by Elizabeth Bear right now. Very dystopian, somewhat cyberpunk.

Watershadow Rundown. The story of transbunan existence contrasted with the gritty realities of fugitive life beneath the earth. Is silflay just an archaic ritual when your digestion has been replaced by expert paws and electronic planning, or a poignant reminder of what once was?

Thanks! Glad you dug it. I'm in pretty ridiculously awesome company, in this post, and very much consider myself the last and least of them.

Bear is an awesome author. That series takes a really hard left out of cyberpunk and into more traditional sci-fi after that book, though. Still worth a read, but the transition kinda threw me when I read it.

Yeah, Hammered was my favorite of the series, for just that reason. She does great work, and I still enjoyed the rest, but I'm just not a sci-fi guy nearly as much as cyberpunk.

I did the same and the 75% of the book I've read so far is quite good.