Recommend: Cyberpunk novels

Nightslyr

I'm going to be on a long flight next week, and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for cyberpunk novels I could read. I'm new to the genre, but anticipation for the new Deus Ex game has me in the mood.

RadicalTurnip

You may check out <a href="http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/144632/recommend-on-steampunkdieselpunk-booksgamesmovies#Item_27">this</a&gt; thread, it probably has a lot of things your looking for, and isn't very old.

Edit: Does HTML not work?

TychoCelchuuu

Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Snow Crash
Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties


Because you're new to the genre, those are the ones to read first. I'd probably go Neuromancer > Snow Crash > the rest.

spool32

Yes, basically read Neuromancer and Snow Crash. Everything else is secondary to those.

mysticjuicer

spool32 wrote:

Yes, basically read Neuromancer and Snow Crash. Everything else is secondary to those.

This.

noir_blood

Yeah, Snow Crash is awesome. Altered Carbon is slightly cyber punkish with a heavy dose of noir

Wank

When Gravity Fails

Harriet

I'm going to fourth Neuromancer. What better place to start than the beginning? Steppin' Razor, man. She'll stick with you.

Drez

Neuromancer is beautiful literature. So is Snow Crash. And I really liked Idoru, but I would read the Bridge trilogy in order (Virtual Light, then Idoru, then All Tomorrow's Parties). I didn't care too much for Virtual Light, if I'm being honest, but Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties were excellent.

Also..very hard to find but I HIGHLY recommend Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller. It's a novelization of the video game of the same name. It was astoundingly, surprisingly good and almost entirely disregarded by everyone. I'm almost positive it is out of print but it is fairly cheap to find from a third party vendor on Amazon.

Anyway, it's much better than the excessively wordy game. Like...the game had Dennis Hopper (awesome) and Stephanie Seymour (really hot) and Grace Jones and I wanted to jam an ice pick in my eye because it was just so goddamned excessively wordy. The book is so much better. And written by Chet Williamson of all people.

Cormac

Both Rule 34 and Halting State by Charles Stross are excellent. I haven't had a chance to read Rule 34 yet, but it's probably what I read after I finish (and recommend) Theories of Flight by Simon Morden. Morden's trilogy of Equations of Life, Theories of Flight, and Degrees of Freedom are also worth checking out. They aren't as well written as some of the other books mentioned in this thread, but they are a hell of a lot of fun.

dispatch.o

The Diamond Age was a pretty fun read. It's a bit more political and grand scale than Snow Crash.

Nightslyr

Awesome stuff, guys. I ordered Neuromancer and Snow Crash. I'll order some of the others when I get back from my trip.

HeraldS

Also check out Burning Chrome by Gibson. It's a collection of short stories, most set in or around the world of Neuromancer. Pretty good.

Ayulin

I'm a huge fan of Snow Crash, so after I read it a while back I posted this thread asking for suggestions - it might be of some use to you too, as a supplement to the suggestions here.

If you do find that you like Snow Crash, The Diamond Age is a pretty neat read too. I didn't like it as much since I didn't think it was that cyberpunky, though it's set in the same universe as Snow Crash - just a good seventy to eighty years or so later. (As an aside: Cryptonomicon definitely isn't cyberpunk, though it "felt" the same way Snow Crash did - think it's the humour.)

Echo

Diamond Age is post-cyberpunk, fittingly enough.

TychoCelchuuu

Yes, Diamond Age is one of my favorite books, but not only is it not Cyberpunk, the first chapter is all about pointing out how specifically not Cyberpunk it is.

DevoutlyApathetic

Ayulin wrote:

I'm a huge fan of Snow Crash, so after I read it a while back I posted this thread asking for suggestions - it might be of some use to you too, as a supplement to the suggestions here.

If you do find that you like Snow Crash, The Diamond Age is a pretty neat read too. I didn't like it as much since I didn't think it was that cyberpunky, though it's set in the same universe as Snow Crash - just a good seventy to eighty years or so later. (As an aside: Cryptonomicon definitely isn't cyberpunk, though it "felt" the same way Snow Crash did - think it's the humour.)

The issue with Cryptonomicon "feeling like" cyberpunk is because a lot of the stylistic choices that travel with cyberpunk are used in Cryptonomicon, really the same can be said for most all of Stephonson's work.

I also wouldn't point out that Diamond Age is in continuity with Snow Crash, at least not outside spoilers. That is drawn from a single line, most of the way though Diamond Age and is meant to be a "neat thing" for people to discover if they'd read Snow Crash. Let people have their own cool moment.

TehSpectre

The Shadowrun novels are pretty good, if you can track them down.