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Please post a list of good cyberpunk novels you have read. I think it would be valuable to have a thread dedicated to the genre. So far I have read: Gibson, William - Neuromancer Gibson, William - Count Zero Gibson, William - Mona Lisa Overdrive Stephenson, Neal - Snow Crash Suarez, Daniel - Daemon Suarez, Daniel - Freedom Swallow, James - Deus Ex: Icarus Effect Try to limit any recommendations to cyberpunk specifically and exclude other Sci-Fi subgenres.
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# ? Apr 17, 2016 09:52 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 05:47 |
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I quite enjoyed City Come A Walkin' and the A Song Called Youth trilogy, both by John Shirley.
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# ? Apr 17, 2016 22:13 |
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Grab Charles Stoss' Accellerando and Glasshouse. They're pretty good reads. Vernor Vinge's True Names is a strong read as well.
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# ? Apr 17, 2016 23:24 |
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The Takeshi Kovacs series by Richard K Morgan: Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies. Definitely worth a read.
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# ? Apr 18, 2016 00:24 |
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The Rat posted:The Takeshi Kovacs series by Richard K Morgan: Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies. Definitely worth a read. Especially Altered Carbon. It's what came to mind almost immediately.
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# ? Apr 18, 2016 04:59 |
Does Ian McDonald count? River of Gods and Brasyl both have strong cyberpunk elements.
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# ? Apr 18, 2016 13:36 |
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You could add Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson, its very short but it packs a lot of crazy, and it has Molly from Neuromancer. Oh and if you saw the film its worth reading just to see what crazy stuff was in the source and what was added to bump up the screen play.
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# ? Apr 18, 2016 21:10 |
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Surprised no one has mentioned Philip K. Dick yet. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is obvious, but I'd argue that A Scanner Darkly is light cyberpunk, and my preferred of the two. Other than that I don't have a whole lot to mention that wasn't already brought up. The Detective's Tale in Hyperion was a dope cyberpunk section of a novel, if that counts. I'll be watching this tread closely - I've been meaning to get into more of this stuff.
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# ? Apr 19, 2016 16:14 |
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Most likely not what you are looking for but Ready Player One fits the genre.
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# ? Apr 19, 2016 16:34 |
No it doesn't.
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# ? Apr 19, 2016 16:48 |
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DoctorG0nzo posted:Surprised no one has mentioned Philip K. Dick yet. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is obvious, but I'd argue that A Scanner Darkly is light cyberpunk, and my preferred of the two. Aye Philip is usually reliable. I've read Flow my Tears the Policeman Said, and its very interesting though a bit light on the cyber aspects though there are flying cars and a corrupt world police state is the setting. Oh and you might like The Running Man (no the film really isn't representative of the book) by
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# ? Apr 19, 2016 17:44 |
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Baka-nin posted:Aye Philip is usually reliable. I've read Flow my Tears the Policeman Said, and its very interesting though a bit light on the cyber aspects though there are flying cars and a corrupt world police state is the setting. I'm a fan of King but I've never read the Bachman stuff - been meaning to get around to The Running Man for a while. Didn't realize that it had those elements to be honest, I didn't really know much about it aside from the game show aspect. Framing it in the light you did though, it seems obvious, and makes me more interested.
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# ? Apr 19, 2016 17:51 |
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Joel Shepherds "Cassandra Kresnov" novels are about a artificial human who escaped her country where she was a slave and move to the worlds of the people she was fighting to hide but try and be free for the first time in her life.
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# ? Apr 19, 2016 18:06 |
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DoctorG0nzo posted:I'm a fan of King but I've never read the Bachman stuff - been meaning to get around to The Running Man for a while. Didn't realize that it had those elements to be honest, I didn't really know much about it aside from the game show aspect. Framing it in the light you did though, it seems obvious, and makes me more interested. Yea the Running Man is something very different. To expand on it without giving much a way the setup is that the media runs various brutal game shows and all contestants willingly volunteer due to crippling unemployment and poverty, hell its gotten so bad that the television company had to setup a rigorous screening process to make sure they get some candidates capable of putting on a good show, out of the thousands whom apply. They all die eventually and the contestants all know this but the longer they last and the better show they put on the more money they raise for their dependents. While the protagonist is on the run he finds out bits and pieces of just how hosed up and rotten the country's gotten in addition to the blood sports.
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# ? Apr 19, 2016 19:22 |
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The Girl Who Was Plugged In - by James Tiptree Jr. Novella, but a great example of early cyberpunk.
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# ? Apr 19, 2016 22:03 |
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anilEhilated posted:No it doesn't. It absolutely doesn't, and is a poo poo book to boot.
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# ? Apr 20, 2016 00:22 |
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Does "Quarantine" by Greg Egan fits?
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# ? Apr 20, 2016 00:51 |
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Walter Jon Williams' "Hardwired" and "Voice of the Whirlwind" are a decent two-book series. Hardwired is classic '80s cyberpunk - it even includes that weird fascination with ground effect aircraft that for some reason shows up in a lot of Cyberpunk. I'd argue that Paolo Bacigalupi writes 21st century cyberpunk. Both The Windup Girl and The Water Knife deal with the same basic themes of dystopian corporate futures as the cyberpunks in the 80s did, but he's a lot more focused on climate change and its impacts so they have a much heavier focus on biotech and climate change than network computers.
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# ? Apr 20, 2016 19:31 |
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Notahippie posted:Walter Jon Williams' "Hardwired" and "Voice of the Whirlwind" are a decent two-book series. Hardwired is classic '80s cyberpunk - it even includes that weird fascination with ground effect aircraft that for some reason shows up in a lot of Cyberpunk. Hell if you think about it The Water Knife is basically Chinatown but a hundred years later.
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# ? Apr 23, 2016 10:29 |
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Has anyone read any Chinese cyberpunk? Does it exist?
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# ? Apr 24, 2016 05:06 |
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This doesn't quite count as full on cyberpunk (though Goodreads does classify it as one) as more "distant future with body/brain augmentations, that kind of sucks, and somewhat opressive government" but the Nexus series by Ramez Naam was pretty drat fun read. It's a thriller about a drug that people ingest and turns their brain into a computer with HUDs and such, and can network with other people/internet and even stream live consciousness and stuff and goes into the political opposition and moral issues (both good and bad) about the technology. And it's pretty well researched without falling into the pitfalls of Crichton-technology stuff or "internet is a series of tubes" misinformation. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13642710-nexus Just to quote goodreads: quote:In the near future, the experimental nano-drug Nexus can link humans together, mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who just want to exploit it. Xaris fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Apr 24, 2016 |
# ? Apr 24, 2016 06:30 |
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When Gravity Fails, George Alec Effinger.Talas posted:Does "Quarantine" by Greg Egan fits?
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# ? Apr 26, 2016 06:58 |
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bombora posted:Has anyone read any Chinese cyberpunk? I also would like to know if we can get a bibliography started for cyberpunk from other nations (hopefully in their own styles).
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# ? Apr 26, 2016 06:58 |
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well a story i wrote is in Cyberpunk Malaysia
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# ? Apr 27, 2016 07:27 |
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The Saddest Rhino posted:well a story i wrote is in Cyberpunk Malaysia Would you be so kind as to tell us which piece you authored?
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# ? Apr 27, 2016 13:16 |
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bombora posted:Would you be so kind as to tell us which piece you authored? oh welp i thought i edited it in but the forums must have been having a fart it's DMZine #13 (Jan 2115) which is also the last story. Adiwijaya Iskander's Twins and Zedeck Siew's The White Mask are what i view as standouts in the collection.
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# ? Apr 28, 2016 04:28 |
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Oh man do I like me some cyberpunk. anilEhilated earlier in the thread mentioned Ian MacDonald, and while I've only read Necroville (aka Terminal Cafe) I'd say it definitely counts as cyberpunk. Societal oppression, transhumanism, Gibsonesque spacefaring, musings on the true value and definition of humanity/life. Also it has nanomachine-infused, corporate-branded dinosaurs. It's rad. Another I want to recommend is K.W. Jeter's Dr. Adder. Arguably one of the first (proto?)cyberpunk novels, originally written back in 1972 but in publishing hell for twelve years. (Philip K Dick personally vouched for its release!) It's not hard to see why - Jeter doesn't pull any punches with sex or violence. It centres around the titular Dr. Adder, a crackpot surgeon (who custom-alters prostitutes' bodies) and sort of folk hero for the Interface, an ultra-scuzzy red light district in the near-future ruins of LA. It also features a cult televangelist, genetically-modified sex chickens, the Midwestern Liberation Front, and a cybernetic death glove. Gertrude Perkins fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Apr 28, 2016 |
# ? Apr 28, 2016 10:18 |
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The Saddest Rhino posted:oh welp i thought i edited it in but the forums must have been having a fart Bought an epub copy off Smashwords. Thanks mate
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# ? Apr 28, 2016 10:55 |
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And You Shall Know Her By The Trail Of The Dead is a pretty good short story.
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# ? Apr 28, 2016 11:13 |
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Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott is pretty good.Amazon posted:Less than a hundred years from now, the forces of law and order crack down on the world of the computer nets. The hip, noir adventurers who get by on wit, bravado, and drugs, and haunt the virtual worlds of the Shadows of cyberspace, are up against the encroachments of civilization. It's time to adapt or die.
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# ? Apr 28, 2016 19:58 |
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While not cyberpunk in the strictest sense, Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space stories pick up the themes from the genre and run with them into the spacefaring noir-ish future. The setting doesn't have FTL travel, so every inhabited star system is like a semi-isolated island, giving rise to the fragmentation of humanity into transhuman factions. Also check out the biggest stylistic influence on Reynolds , Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix. Some of it is 80's-dated (Japanese megacorps in space) but its a foundational work of New Space Opera.
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# ? Apr 28, 2016 23:35 |
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Nice, a book barn thread that doesn't even pretend to have discussion and is just pyf crap for babies right from the start (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Apr 29, 2016 00:12 |
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A human heart posted:Nice, a book barn thread that doesn't even pretend to have discussion and is just pyf crap for babies right from the start Lol, Anyway if anyones on a William Gibson trip I you should probably also check out Idoru, Major characters include, a teenage fangirl, a boyband star, some programmer nerd, an Otaku ala the 1990's (anime is also used as an adjective) and key plot points happen in a love hotel and a wacky nightclub. Its a bit like one of those novels based on the authors holiday from hell, only you know in the future.
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# ? May 4, 2016 12:57 |
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Helical Nightmares posted:I also would like to know if we can get a bibliography started for cyberpunk from other nations (hopefully in their own styles). Sergei Lukyanenko (same author as the Night-Watch books) had a really great Russian cyberpunk-ish novel called Labirynth of Reflections. The sequels weren't as good, but by then he had gotten famous for the Night-Watch books and he kind of abandoned the series anyways. Anyways, if you like Lukyanenko's style this is one of his earlier works before he got formulaic. Very enjoyable read if you know Russian or can find a decent translation (the English fan-translation is pretty meh). Mr.48 fucked around with this message at 13:48 on May 4, 2016 |
# ? May 4, 2016 13:41 |
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Helical Nightmares posted:I also would like to know if we can get a bibliography started for cyberpunk from other nations (hopefully in their own styles). Moxyland by Beukes is South African cyberpunk.
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# ? May 4, 2016 17:07 |
Mr.48 posted:Sergei Lukyanenko (same author as the Night-Watch books) had a really great Russian cyberpunk-ish novel called Labirynth of Reflections. The sequels weren't as good, but by then he had gotten famous for the Night-Watch books and he kind of abandoned the series anyways. Anyways, if you like Lukyanenko's style this is one of his earlier works before he got formulaic. Very enjoyable read if you know Russian or can find a decent translation (the English fan-translation is pretty meh). Pretty meh as a book but good for unintentional laughs.
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# ? May 4, 2016 21:57 |
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anilEhilated posted:It's actually hilarious because he's extrapolating the technology of early nineties, so it's got stuff like 986 computers. Thats part of the charm though. He imagined a framework for seamless virtual reality to be possible on weak computer hardware by offloading the graphical heavy lifting to the user's own brain through the Deep hypnotic induction program.
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# ? May 5, 2016 16:05 |
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Mr.48 posted:Thats part of the charm though. He imagined a framework for seamless virtual reality to be possible on weak computer hardware by offloading the graphical heavy lifting to the user's own brain through the Deep hypnotic induction program. Definitely agree that it is part of the charm for me. I loved reading about Case attempting to sell the 3MB of stolen RAM from the Hitachi pocket computer in the Cheap Hotel.
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# ? May 7, 2016 02:47 |
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I've only read Ambient, but Jack Womack's work seems to fit pretty comfortably at least next to the genre. Ambient follows the adventures a bodyguard of a high ranking CEO after economic, environmental, and political catastrophes destroy much of America. The biggest difficulty I had with the book is the poetic argot a religious body modification cult in the book uses, but I generally got the gist of it. The dynasty that rules America in the book are basically the Trumps, which sort of freaks me out now.
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# ? May 9, 2016 05:25 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 05:47 |
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Cash Crash Jubilee had a pretty fun premise, but the main character is an insufferably dumb rear end in a top hat who only toward the very end of the book shows signs of not being an insufferably dumb rear end in a top hat. Still, it's enough that I'd read the sequel when it comes out.
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# ? May 9, 2016 20:56 |