>>C'mon, can't someone give me something that I haven't heard of yet?


Fine, go read Kenji Siratori's BLOOD ELECTRIC. And if you can finish it I'll give you a lollipop.

Well, I generally only buy books that I think I will be rereading pretty frequently (major insomniac). We have the usuals (these guys/books are all up on the Mount in the cyberpunk pantheon, I think):

• Neal Stephenson
  
• Bruce Sterling
  
• Greg Bear -- City of Angels & Slant
  
• Kim Stanley Robinson -- the "Coast" series
  
• Wilhelmina Baird
  
• Pat Cadigan
  
• Vernor Vinge -- True Names and Other Dangers
  

Then we get a little further out (but still cyberpunkish):

• Laura J Mixon -- Glass Houses
  
• David Wolverton -- On My Way to Paradise
  
• Iain Watson -- Out on Blue Six
  
• Robert Reed -- The Hormone Jungle & The Lee Shore
  
• Michael Swanwick -- Schizmatrix
  
• Walter Jon Williams -- HardWired
  
• George Alec Effinger -- When Gravity Fails series
  
• David Brin -- Earth (and lots o' non-CP stuff)
  
• William T Quick -- Dreams of... series
  
• Mick Farren -- Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys, The Long Orbit
  
• Mark Fabi -- Wyrm
  
• John Barnes -- Mother of all Storms
  
• Wil McCarthy -- Bloom
  
• Alexander Jablokov
  
• Steve Barnes -- Streetfighter series (kind of action oriented, but definitely an interesting take on the future)
  

And then we run amok, not necessarily in the CP category but all good scifi and fairly unique:

• Glen Cook -- The Black Company (or the Crack Company, as I like to call it, since you will be forced to read something like 9 or 10 fantasy-based books practically against your will)
  
• Iain Banks -- The Culture series, particularly Player of Games
  
• John Steakley -- Armor & Vampires
  
• CJ Cheryh -- Rim Runner, Heavy Time, etc
  
• Sherry S Tepper -- Grass & others
  
• Connie Wilson -- BellWeather, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Doomsday Book
  
• Barry Hughart -- Eight Skilled Gentlemen, Bridge of Birds, Story of the Stone (fantasy)
  

HTH,
Eric.

[This message was edited by heavyboots on January 14, 2003 at 09:27 PM.]

quote:

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Originally posted by GabrielM:
Fine, go read Kenji Siratori's BLOOD ELECTRIC. And if you can finish it I'll give you a lollipop.

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You think you're clever, don't you Gabe?

Putz.

(It's ok, I know this guy and can give him crap without fear...)

--gabe chouinard
http://hypermode.blogspot.com
http://sfsite.com/singularity

Thanks for all of the suggestions, I'll be picking up some of them the next visit to the bookstore, but I'm a bit shocked that nobody has mentioned Alfred Bester.

He is sort of cyberpunk before Gibson. I wouldn't bother with his last books from the 1970s, but "The Stars My Destination", "The Demolished Man" and any short fiction from the 1950s is well worth your time.

Along with Gibson's first three, these are my favorite science fiction work.

quote:

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Originally posted by GabrielM:Fine, go read Kenji Siratori's BLOOD ELECTRIC. And if you can finish it I'll give you a lollipop.

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http://www.cca-glasgow.com/new_media/new_media_right_info.htm

-this is a web page which was put up to coincide with blood electric, contains some details and an extract.
- i started to read it, but found that on the train on the way to work wasn't the best approach. basically i found it to be entirely unreadable and uninteresting.
-i'm interested in the style/experiment so i do intend to attempt it again under better circumstances, but i can't see it exciting folk, more messing with their head.
ptr

The one everyone should probably read:

Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne. It's a BIG step in the development of the English novel. It's also pretty important to Cyberpunk. (At least I think so. I don't know if anyone else is with me on this one.) As a bonus, if you're used to reading sci-fi that does weird experimental vocabulary, you'll have developed the critical skills you need to read novels from the 1750s. Expect this novel to piss you off for the first fifty pages until you get what's going on, and then expect to laugh the rest of the way through it.

---
Spike
Memes don't exist. Tell your friends.

If you've read all the books, try Cybersphere - a post-apocalyptic text-based world where you can enact all your cyberpunk fantasies.
http://cs.vv.com/

Marshall Smith's work is consistently excellent,
Calder's written a few since Frenzetta, namely The Twist, Impakto and Lord Soho which is a kind of but not really sequel to Malignos in that it charts the lives of several generations of Richard Pikes anscestors / descendents.

Outside of the genre there's a very good comedy alternate present Chandleresque whodunnit by Malcom Pryce called Aberystwyth Mon Amour. Very funny stuff.

Hmmmmmmmmmm, what to read?
how 'bout some:

Robert Anton Wilson
Harlon Ellison
William S Burroughs
Philip K Dick
Spider Robinson
Robert Heinlein (reread if need be)
Pick up a copy of 2600
Michael Moore
or peruse the science or philosophy sections at your locally over-priced book store to see what tweaks yr fancy?

for a start, anyway.

I wonder how can you enjoy Jack Womack or Kadrey's pulp fiction after reading Gibson's stories. (based on the stuff i read circa early 1990s - Metrophage etc. etc.)

My impression was: cheap imitation of a genre...too much cliche. and i found Womack's style of prose wanting.

I love Cyberpunk fiction

However, it is easier to imitate the form than to duplicate the substance. In the example of Metrophage, Kadrey was trying hard to recreate the gritty post industrial landscape...only to end up looking kitschy and cliched.

If you can't get enough of good Cyberpunk fiction, its always safe bet to turn to Philip K, Dick. His fiction embodies the spirit of Cyberpunk.

---------------------------
Where is the Disneyland?

Here's a few titles you may wish to pick up

comics magazine
Heavy Metal
Metal Hurlant

Comics
XXX - by Pander Bros
Channel Zero - Brian Wood



Terminal Drift

Transmetropolitan

---------------------------
Where is the Disneyland?

how can i forget, the Brits were doing this long before the Yanks



---------------------------
Where is the Disneyland?

None of these authors are neccesarily science fiction writers but what they share with B is a preocupation with modern, urban life and an emphasis on writing style: JG Ballard (early apocalyptic novels, later ones about modern society), Baudrillard (only America), Martin Amis (anything by him, in my opinion, but his shorter novels are much sleeker than the long), Haruki Murakami, Camus, Houellebecq, Nabokov's Lolita for one of the greatest examples of exultant writing style, and take a look at Paul Auster's New York Trilogy or Hesse.

Hm, I'm surprised noone has mentioned Jeff Noon - he's one of my favourite authors. Check out Vurt, Automated Alice or the short story collection Pixel Juice.
http://www.jeffnoon.com/

I tried to read "Radon Daughters" by Iain Sinclair because Gibson said he was so good. I got so lost I can't tell you what the book was about or what was happening. He said once in an interview on the scifi web site: "I advise you all to read Iain Sinclair and Cormac McCarthy. Do that and you won't even NEED me." So I gave McCarthy a shot. I thought "all The Pretty Horses" was great. Not sci-fi, but the language was great.

There's always Frank Herbert and Tad Williams. Not exactly the cyperpunk experience, but excellent reading nonetheless.


and Brian Wood is just amazing. (channel zero)

Pushit.

Well, I am *really* enjoying Perdido Street Station by China Mieville at the moment. I suppose it is the fantasy equivalent of 'cyberpunk', a sort of noir, psychedelic steampunk, which has, for me, revitalised the fantasy genre (I can't stand that sword-wielding barbarian crap...)

Similar in tone to Mervyn Peake and M John Harrison.

The city of New Crobuzon is obviously a parallel-world London, which makes it all the more enjoyable as I have recently moved to the grim metropolis.

It is probably rather overwritten for some tastes, but relentlessly inventive and rather cool.

check it out.

Here's one not mentioned: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

It mirrors Gibson's later work, spraw onwards. (Although who's the reflection and who's the original?)

Be warned. It's a beast - close to 1000 pages, oodles of footnotes. You will have to take a break every 20 pages or so - it's also very dense.

Got a similar thread to PRs Footage, although with Wallace it's also a play on a Monty Python sketch - the funniest film ever made. Also dovetails nicely with terrorism - Quebec seperatists want to get hold of the lethally humourous movie and broadcast it.

Infinite Jest covers the adaption of technology, and why certain forms fail (his description of a brief social flirtation with videophones is classic). Also extrapolates trends well - decline of participation in American politics, obsession over younger and younger sports players, and the nature of addiction in contemporary society.

Funny? Yes. Science fiction? Yes. Satire? Yes. One of the most talked about, but least read books ever? Yes.

Read it. I dare you.

Last words are for fools who haven't said enough [while alive]. - Marx

quote:

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C'mon, can't someone give me something that I haven't heard of yet? Dig deep, find me something obscure that'll make me piss my pants with excitement.

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Oliver Sacks. Don't disagree with me on this, I'll put up one hell of a fight. Truth IS stranger than fiction, and if you've ever read any Sacks at all, you will not ask why.

Don't start with Awakenings, though. (The book OR the movie.) The book was Sacks' first, and is fairly dense medicspeak case histories of the patients in the extended care home where Sacks tried the first L-Dopa trials on post-encephalitic fever victims in the 1960s. It lacks a lot of the compelling narrative of Sacks' later work. The movie, of course, was a Robin Williams vehicle. I'm not knocking the movie, put those hacksaws away! It's a good movie. It just failed to capture the essential quirks of Sacks' writing.

The best place to start, for first-time Sacks readers (I haven't read Uncle Tungsten yet, but it's on my to-do list for the weekend..are you listening, Oh Fearless One? You know who you are. Check Your Email!) is Island of the Colour-Blind. It's a novel-length book, and certainly reads like one at times, with compelling narrative so good, you won't believe it's not fiction.

If you are leery of trying new things on a crazy Internet dweller's say-so, start with either of the case collection books, An Anthropologist on Mars or The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (yes, that is the title).I much prefer Anthropologist to Man Who Mistook...most of the Anthropologist case stories were featured in the TV series Sacks did in 1998, The Mind Traveller. I'd sell my soul or other assorted valuables if they had a DVD of this series out.,,,

He also wrote At First Sight, which I never did get out to watch. (What? I was going through a "I'm sick to death of pop culture and it sounds like the movie sucks so why should I bother going?" phase, all right?) I would think that flick bears the same amount of similarity to Sacks' prose work as Awakenings does, considering the fact that it was probably written by fifteen different people. Read the books. If The Mind Travellers is airing on a PBS station near you, watch the show. But for sheer mind-expansion value on a Gibsonian (heh) level, you can't go wrong with Oliver Sacks. In my opinion, that is.

Yelena

Judge Dredd

No NOT the @*!*^ Stallone film! The original comic strip which appears in the British comic "2000 a.D.".

If you haven't seen this you are in for a big surprise! It's a whole cyberpunk continuum that has been developed in weekly doses over the last 26 years.

The star of the strip is not really Judge Dredd, who is both hero and villain, but the surreal futuristic city which he polices.

It's like Gibson at full throttle.

[URL=http://www.2000adonline.com[/URL]