Anyone read it?

This one.

Or this one.

Gawd, it's chalk and cheese. (In shadowrun terms at least)

I've read the first one Shaidar linked to. I kind of wish I'd never clicked on the link to the second one.
There is a cyberpunk 2020 plugin for the game world called Hardwired oddly enough, written by WJW. Never got a chance to play it but I like the some of the ideas in that world. His version of the smugglers with their mil-spec surplus hovercraft is how I picture the t-bird smugglers of Shadowrun.

Would like to read the first one, but it seems seriously out of print.

Read the first one (Walter Jon William's). It's pretty good. While it's clearly not my favorite, I'd still put it in my list of "must-read" Cyberpunk novels.

I read Hardwired (WJW) before I ready any Gibson (and my signed copy is one of my favorite books). Cowboy and Sarah were my mental image of cyberpunk before Case and Molly Millions ever were.

I still hand over my copy of the WJW Hardwired to folks trying to get their heads around cyberpunk as a whole.

In terms of evocative world-building I still hold that book dear, plus it's the reason SR has riggers. There's also the CP2020 sourcebook for it, which provides some more background on the world.

@hermit: Interestingly, the German edition ("Hardware") is available for next to nothing. I can't tell you if the translation is any good, though.

Definitely an old fave. I really loved some of the concepts in it, such as dance clubs where everybody listens to their own music via earbuds/headware, cybereyes that come with an optional monochrome setting, and the idea that while implants can give anybody the moves and reflexes of a martial-arts master, the real badasses train on top of that and learn to incorporate the implanted skills into their own unique fighting styles.

That was one of the things I always found disappointing about the SR4 rules, that you couldn't use skillwires as a base and improve upon them with additional training.

Walter john Williams. It is actually damn good.

Might have to, yeah. Thanks for the info.

Minus the h

Reading it, and the first impression is ... impressive. Too bad the file DTRPG sells - the CP2020 sourcebook - seems broken.

One of my favorite cyberpunk type books, and one that resonated with me more than did Gibson's novels (although I liked the Johnny Mneumonic novella). I'm about to blatantly steal a bunch of bits from the fixer war for my game.

Unfortunately Williams uses the same character archetypes for lead male and female characters in almost all of his books, so going back to re-read it after having read a lot of his later stuff, the characters that I'd liked the first time around annoyed me due to sheer repetition.

Hardwired has a lot of classic cyberpunk tropes in it, from riggers, to street samurai, to megacorps (the orbitals). His take on wired reflexes was interesting - there wasn't any differentiation between wired reflexes, skillwires, or a vehicle control rig; it was all one augmentation. It also shows that cyberpunk doesn't have to be welded to noir tropes - a lot of cyberpunk books are like this one, and show the characters changing the world, rather than being helpless pawns. Voice of the Whirlwind is also good. Despite the introduction of an alien race, it has a very cyberpunk feel to it.

Ugh. Now you ruined Whirlwind for me. But thanks for the warning.

Just pretend they are shedim/insect spirits/dragons and it will fit in.

Spoilers because apparently some people have not read Hardwired

I couldn't get myself to like Voice of the Whirlwind. Not sure exactly why.