Help me pick a good cyberpunk novel

My awesome brother recently gave me a kindle, and I was overjoyed to find that there is a seemingly endless supply of science fiction available.

However, now that I have read all of Charles Stross, I’m not sure what to read next. I love him, (especially the Laundry Series) and Gibson, and Neal Stephensen, and Cory Doctorow. I don’t like stuff with Medieval themes, I don’t like vampire-detective-type books. I prefer things that aren’t too bleak, nihilistic, or postmodern. Just good old-fashioned cyberpunk. Wait, is that an oxymoron?

Help?

If you want to read the creme de la creme of Cyberpunk, one that is dying to be translated into film, look no other than George Alec Effinger’s “When Gravity Fails”.
Contrary to a lot of cyberpunk books, this one is a real novel. That is there is a writer behind it, one whose talent isnt limited to cranking out cool sounding names…

I’m on it!

Walter Jon Williams might be your speed - Aristoi or Angel Station

Read it with either the Blade Runner OST in the background or some moody oriental-like music (Tangerine Dream maybe). It’s got two sequels, the first one is quite good, but a few notches below the original. The third one is pretty shitty. There wont be a fourth cause the author died in the early 2000s. But, as an ex Cyberpunk fan myself, I consider “When Gravity Fails” to be the best of the original Cyberpunk novels, and also the most original.
Kind of a “Blade Runner in Arab Land”.

I would second When Gravity Fails, which was cyberpunk before cyberpunk was cool.

Andy L : What about “This Is Not A Game”? It looks interesting.
Turns out I’ve read “When Gravity Fails.” It was excellent! But I didn’t know there were sequels.

Plenty of Roger Zelazny’s stuff can be seen as proto-cuberpunk: *This Immortal, The Dream Master, Damnation Alley, Today We Choose Faces, Doorways in the Sand, My Name is Legion, Eye of Cat *and any number of his short stories, which are where he really shines. He’s very good, so long as you avoid the Amber novels (massively overrated, and fantasy to boot) and any of his collaborations other than perhaps Coils.

Just bought for my Kindle based on this. Hmm, cool; hadn’t heard of this one…

Oh, yeah - forgot about that one - I liked it a lot.

Aristoi, though awesome, wasn’t cyberpunk at all. Hardwired and Voice of the Whirlwind, on the other hand . . .

Lets check with the experts. According to R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk 2020 RPG, the true judge of all things cyberpunk, the cyberpunk bibliography consists of:

William Gibson: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome (Big shock he’s here, I know)

Norman Spinrad: Little Heroes (Never managed to find this one)

John G. Batancourt: Johnny Zed (I remember reading this, but can not remember a single detail about it. Not a good sign)

Joan D. Vinge: Psion, Catspaw (These were good. The latter more so than the former)

Mick Farren: Vickers (Don’t remember this one either. Don’t think I read it)

Walter Jon Williams: Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind,* Angel Station* (Staggeringly awesome. Actually, I’ve found pretty much everything he’s ever read awesome, including his short stories. Except that one ‘alternate past’ short story where Lord Byron gets his leg shot off, inspiring Shelly to write a different Frankenstein)

Bruce Sterling: The Artificial Kid, Mirrorshades: the Cyberpunk Anthology, Islands in the Net (Good, not amazing)

John Brunner: Shockwave Rider (Never found)

George Alec Effinger: When Gravity Fails,* A Fire in the Sun * (As mentioned by others, awesome. The third one hadn’t been written yet. Effinger also wrote a Zork novelization, which was also awesome)

Steve Barnes: Streetlethal, Gorgan Child (Haven’t read these, but they sound awful)

John Shirley: Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra (Think I read them, or one of them. Can’t remember, don’t care)

Rudy Rucker: Software, Wetware (No.)


Walter Jon Williams actually wrote the Hardwired expansion to CP2020 himself. Sadly, his writeups of his own characters all have super-humanly high stats. It had better drug rules than the ‘don’t do drugs’ main book. I’m still kicking myself for not having bought the super-rare When Gravity Fails expansion, which would, in addition to setting info, presumably have better bio-sculpting rules.

This is not Cyberpunk, but… Peter F. Hamilton.

Read it. Is ok. But not excellent.

Anybody read the Vorkosigan series, by Lois McMaster Bujold? I read one; I really liked it. Are the others worthwhile?
(Alessan: Absolutely! I love Zelazny – “Lord of Light” is one of my favorite books evar!)

One of my favorite series - I’ve read them all and enjoyed them very much.

Agreed, but I never though of him as cyberpunk. The Corwin Amber books are very good.

Wow, looks good. I will check out “the Reality Dysfunction,” I think.

Mel Odom’s Stalker Analog was okay.

I recommend Bruce Sterling, but he’s not to everyone’s taste. Try Heavy Weather.

Currently reading “The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigualpi (sp?). Future Earth when hydrocarbon fuels are largely gone, genetically modified foods have gone off the rails and global societies have shrunk to smaller, more protectionist enclaves. Lots of texture, not bad at all.

Do the Altered Carbon novels count as cyberpunk? Probably not, hrm.