Ron Perlman and that guy in the wheelchair from Aliens just played in another movie together. A French Sci-Fi flick called "City of Lost Children". Definatley has a SR/Cyberpunk feel to it.

Check out the Flea Circus Owner in it for the absolute coolest way to kill someone ever. I got down on my hands and knees and begged my GM for a pet flea after I saw it.

Books:

"Svaha", by Charles deLint. It's quite far from his usual urban fantasy stuff, and since he wrote it as a speculative fiction piece in 1989 some of his predictions are wildly off. Nonetheless, good for capturing the Shadowrun feel.

"Nightside City", by Lawrence Watt-Evans. The setting and grittiness of the story definitely mirrored the dark urban setting in SR.

An interesting alternative take on the whole "evil corporations-dark future" thing can be found in Matthew Woodring Stover's duology "Heroes Die" and "Blade of Tyshalle". Not to mention that it actually does have a good measure of magic and metaraces, though with an unusual twist.

mens , the whole Gibson's book : fragment of a hologram rose , virtual light (why it's bad to steal sunglasses), idoru , Neuromancer (Street Sam side) , Mona Lisa Overdrive , count Zero (Decker side)

Dunno the authors:
On the shockwave
Hardwired

Minority Report would have been a great movie if they ended it with Cruise being halo'd. But no, Spielberg had to fuck up what until then had been a really good movie, and a good SR influence. The ending pissed me off so much I will never watch that piece of crap again.

Brother was okay. I don't know if it's really a useful reference for anything though.

Altered Carbon, by Richard K Morgan. He's a new brit cyberpunk author and this book totally got the feel of the whole universe. Too many recent books seem to be focusing on the cyber and ignoiring the punk that's the whole point of it - the drugs and violence and sex and general dehumanization, the antihero as main character, and the lack of any "good guy" anywhere. Morgan gets it pretty well, I blew through this book in an evening or two and was very impressed.

I'd second Neuromancer and Hardwired as well. And of course there's always Snow Crash, if you're feeling a bit lighthearted.

I'm not going to bother posting movies 'cause it's all been done.

Snow Crash really was great. I might get some flak for this, but I personally enjoyed it more than Neuromancer (it didn't take itself as seriously, for one).

To save people the work of listing every cyberpunk novel and some trips to the library, there's an excellent cyberpunk library online:
http://project.cyberpunk.ru/lib/
These are all in English and you can just download the HTML file. (This does include Johnny Mnemonic, Mona Lisa Overdrive and Neuromancer.)

Anyone ever read Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney? The entire mood of it seems very shadowrunnish to me.

I also have to toss a coin in for the Anita Blake vampire hunter series by Laurel K Hammilton. The books are an excellent popcorn read and are interesting and well researched. I could see the world of AB and the world of shadowrun going hand in hand.

As for movies, I can't name anything that hasn't already been covered by someone else.

Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams.
Voice of the Whirlwind by WJ Williams
When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger

I posted this to another thread as well, so I apologize for the seeming double-post.

-Siege

Oh right, When Gravity Fails. Really interesting, since just about every other cyberpunk book I've ever read has been very America-or-Western-Europe-centric, and Gravity is set in an islamic cyberpunk world. The sequels A Fire in the Sun and The Exile Kiss also rule, though not as much. Apparently there's more short stories set in this world in Budayeen Nights which I haven't read.

Joan D Vinge's Cat series: Psion, Catspaw, and Dreamfall are set quite a bit further forward than the 2060s but have a great gritty street-level feel to them, and the main character (a telepath half-breed) faces a lot of what I imagine the Awakened have to go through when dealing with mundanes. Also highly recommended, though Catspaw is the best of the three. Psion was her first book, written at 16 or something, and it shows.

Also I forgot to mention John Shirley's magnificent Eclipse trilogy: Eclipse, Eclipse Corona, and Eclipse Penumbra. A wonderful near-future series with some very interesting looks at globalization. My current campaign is called Six Kinds of Darkness, in homage to Shirley.

Gravity also deals with p-fix chips and skill chips (without skillwires). Although they're called "addies" or "moddies".

There was actually a CP2020 sourcebook written by Effinger based on the Gravity novel.

-Siege

Logan's Run (William F. Nolan)...

'nuff said.

I am referring to the novel. I have never seen the movie but am told is vastly different.

Uh, yeah, that movie SUCKS.

"Kelp! Sea greens! Plankton! Protein from the sea!"

Robocop's gun was called the OCP Auto-9, because (I think) It was a 9mm automatic

The gun in of itself was a Beretta 93, which is burst fire capable, with a ported and extended barrel, for the impressive muzzle flash.

The gun was then copied down and appeared as the Ares Predator in the original shadowrun book. Also featured was the 2019 Detective Special/PK-D Blaser (Take your pick of name) from Blade Runner, starring as the Holdout Pistol, If I remember correctly.

NeO ZeN:

If you're interested, Nolan wrote two sequels to "Logan's Run"--"Logan's World" and "Logan's Search". You should be able to find the books at any on-line bookstore, such as www.amazon.com or www.bn.com.

I'm not certain if the film version of "Logan's Run" was an attempt to eventually adapt the entire trilogy to the screen, but you're right about one thing--the novel was much better, although I personally feel that the technology showcased in the film was more in keeping with the era they were attempting to portray.

(I mean, the novel would have you believe that the "New You" shops could perform surgery almost at the genetic or molecular level [I think--I read "Logan's Run" a LONG time ago--while I was in junior high school, IIRC--and I don't remember it all that well], yet they wanted us to believe that the Sandmen essentially used revolvers--albeit highly advanced ones-- firing cartridges loaded with special projectiles. IIRC, they were conventional except that they, essentially, fired caseless (or at least, electrically-primed) ammunition. I find that a little hard to swallow.

--Foreigner

Well, that, and even though Gibson is widely considered the father of modern Cyberpunk, he was building on a large body of earlier work from the assorted authors who called themselves the Mirrorshades Group. Work that came out before Neuromancer is now thought of as being cyberpunk, even though Gibson popularized the term (which was introduced in the writing of yet another pre-Gibson sci-fi author...)

I mean, even if Isaac Asimov was alive, he's not about to sue Fox 'cause there's a robot in Futurama...

The Asimov point is valid but Gibson was ripped off. Street samurai, monowhips, Intrusion countermeasures called ICE (shadowrun calls 'em IC but it's pronounced ice), heck even the new yen was stolen. SR calls it nuyen, but its the same. If Asimov wrote about a robot designed to bend things and said "bite my shiny metal ass," then your analogy would have been better.

Elves, Dwarves, Orks, Immortal Elves with vast conspiracies, dragons, magic... where have I seen these things before?
Still no case. For there to be a case FASA'd've had to have stolen plots, I think.

~J

I know there was a reference somewhere to it being in Hong Kong. Not that that isn't contradicted several places, or that it isn't obviously false, but I'm sure it's there somewhere.

~J

But if you steal the design and change it *enough*, you can't get sued.

Besides, half of us would never have heard of cyberpunk if it were not for Shadowrun; he should actually thank it.

But if I steal your idea and put new rims on it, and then change the drive shaft a little, maybe tweak the brakes and add a little bell on top, it's no longer your idea, it's my idea.

~J

The only thing similar between Gibsons world and Shadowrun is that:

They both have a computer world. In Neuromancer it's called Cyberspace. In SR it's called the Matrix.

They both have evil corporation bent on dominating the world.

They both have a type of Cyberware.

That's kind of where the similarities end.

Neuromancer (and therefore cyberpunk) is set in the 2020's.

SR is set in the 2050's +.

Cyberpunk is based on the novels written by William Gibson

SR is based on the idea that the 4th world is ending and the 5th is about to begin.

Neuromancer is Science Fiction set in the conceivable future (in other words it could happen)

SR is Science Fantasy set in the remote future (in other words, it ain't ever going to happen).

Are there similarities of course. Every writer, artist, and musician builds his or her work on the foundation of all those who came before. Is SR a rip off of William Gibson? Not even close. (Unless Mona Lisa Overdrive had Orcs...)

Read the Gibson novels there great, but after reading them you will realize that Shadowrun is completely different.

Not to mention that if you look long enough, you can find common threads and parallels in almost every literary genre.

-Siege

Yes, my internal editor is too hard at work.
Fairly obvious what he meant, though. At least I hope it's what he meant...

~J

Sorry for the double-post. Was trying to edit the last one.

It's Ron Perlman. And IMDb be damned, in the 20 odd times I've watched that movie, I never heard him referred to as Dieter. Just Reinhardt.

This is totally out of my butt, however...

Whether or not Gibson COULD sue SR is rather irrelevant. From what I've seen, Gibson, like Neil Stephenson and other classic cyberpunk authors, tend to be very supportive of individuals doing good work and not getting squashed by the overdog. This is WHY cyberpunk came up in the first place (and you can see it illustrated in essays some of the authors have written). If Gibson did have a case, I can't imagine him actually taking FASA to court because he's a nice guy who wants to support little companies in doing something cool. (Just an FYI, he wasn't really big on the SR idea itself because of the tolkien parts, but I'd see this as 'I don't support what you say, but I support your right to say it'.)

just like with free speech, its not there to protect what you like but to protect what you dont like...