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Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Revolution, and Evolution
Before email,
before the world wide web,
before hackers,
Before sexting,
before always-on GPS,
before titanium implants,
before Alexa, Cortana, and Siri,
before the computer in your pocket was more powerful than the one that sent astronauts to the moon,
there was cyberpunk.
And science fiction was never the same.
Cyberpunk writers—serious, smart, and courageous in the face of change—exposed the naiveté of a society rushing headlong into technological unknowns. Technology could not save us, they argued, and it might in fact ruin us.
Now, thirty years after The Movement party-crashed the scene, the cyberpunk reality has largely come to be.
The future they imagined is here.
With an introduction by Victoria Blake and stories by: William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Jonathan Lethem, Kim Stanley Robinson, David Marusek, Benjamin Parzybok, Cat Rambo, Paul Tremblay, Pat Cadigan, Gwyneth Jones, Mark Teppo, Greg Bear, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker, James Patrick Kelly, John Shirley, Daniel H. Wilson, Paul Di Filippo, and Cory Doctorow.
Welcome to your cyberpunk world.
466 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 13, 2012
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630 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
April 22, 2013
The world does not need another cyberpunk anthology. The editor of this one, Victoria Blake, even makes that point in her Introduction, while name-checking Bruce Sterling's definitive anthology Mirrorshades. However, despite its title and some of its contents, Cyberpunk isn't actually a cyberpunk anthology anyway. What Blake has done here is use the concept of cyberpunk—and a few canonical examples—in order to bring together sf stories she likes. And that turns out to be a rather good thing.
Blake leads off with a couple stories that are cyberpunk by anyone's definition—William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic," and Bruce Sterling's "Mozart in Mirrorshades," but then veers into other territory. The third tale, Jonathan Lethem's "Interview with the Crab," seems to me to be punk enough, but with no detectable cyber. And the story that ends the anthology, Cory Doctorow's "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" (if you can call it an ending—as Bruce Sterling says in "User-Centric" (p.154), "There are no happy endings. Because there are no endings. There are only ways to cope.") is all cyber, no punk at all.
From these names you can perhaps see another issue with this anthology, which is that Blake relies heavily on stories which have already been widely anthologized, stories which are already part of whatever canon there is. I'd already encountered four of the five titles mentioned above myself, more than once, and if you've been paying any attention to the field at all in the past twenty or thirty years, then you will already have read many of these too.
Still, though, it can be nice to encounter old friends in new settings, and many of the stories Blake chooses to round out this book aren't quite as familiar. Take "El Pepenador," by Benjamin Parzybok, a story new to this anthology and from an author I'd never heard of, which to my mind plausibly extends some very cyberpunk tropes into the stratum of victims—themselves by no means leading a wired existence—which seems all too likely to develop in the corporate world of all-against-all which is such a hallmark of this subgenre.
Parzybok's is the only story which is entirely original to this book, but several of the others have appeared only in relatively obscure venues. "The Nostalgist," by Daniel H. Wilson, is another example of this type—stories set in a cyberpunk universe but seen from underneath—and it is credited only to an online appearance in 2009.
Cyberpunk is also an historically testosterone-heavy subgenre, but a few stories by women did manage to sneak into this book—old favorites like Pat Cadigan's "Rock On," and newer authors such as Cat Rambo, whose "Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars" fits right into the underdog aesthetic that I'm starting to think is the real theme of this anthology. One of the strongest and most memorable tales in this book, in fact, is Gwyneth Jones' under-collected 1992 story "Blue Clay Blues," with its pointed conflict between the haves and have-nots on opposite sides of the digital divide, and its post-apocalyptic feel.
Cyberpunk is an unabashed mixture of old and new—but it's that very willingness to combine perspectives that made the book as a whole work for me. That, and the fact that the overall level of the writing is very high. Victoria Blake shows herself to be a very good editor, a curator of stories, and I'm looking forward to seeing more volumes from her, perhaps something which doesn't feel constrained to announce itself by a misleading but marketing-friendly title.
The world does not need another cyberpunk anthology, that much is true—but I'm glad we got this one anyway.
Blake leads off with a couple stories that are cyberpunk by anyone's definition—William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic," and Bruce Sterling's "Mozart in Mirrorshades," but then veers into other territory. The third tale, Jonathan Lethem's "Interview with the Crab," seems to me to be punk enough, but with no detectable cyber. And the story that ends the anthology, Cory Doctorow's "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" (if you can call it an ending—as Bruce Sterling says in "User-Centric" (p.154), "There are no happy endings. Because there are no endings. There are only ways to cope.") is all cyber, no punk at all.
From these names you can perhaps see another issue with this anthology, which is that Blake relies heavily on stories which have already been widely anthologized, stories which are already part of whatever canon there is. I'd already encountered four of the five titles mentioned above myself, more than once, and if you've been paying any attention to the field at all in the past twenty or thirty years, then you will already have read many of these too.
Still, though, it can be nice to encounter old friends in new settings, and many of the stories Blake chooses to round out this book aren't quite as familiar. Take "El Pepenador," by Benjamin Parzybok, a story new to this anthology and from an author I'd never heard of, which to my mind plausibly extends some very cyberpunk tropes into the stratum of victims—themselves by no means leading a wired existence—which seems all too likely to develop in the corporate world of all-against-all which is such a hallmark of this subgenre.
Parzybok's is the only story which is entirely original to this book, but several of the others have appeared only in relatively obscure venues. "The Nostalgist," by Daniel H. Wilson, is another example of this type—stories set in a cyberpunk universe but seen from underneath—and it is credited only to an online appearance in 2009.
Cyberpunk is also an historically testosterone-heavy subgenre, but a few stories by women did manage to sneak into this book—old favorites like Pat Cadigan's "Rock On," and newer authors such as Cat Rambo, whose "Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars" fits right into the underdog aesthetic that I'm starting to think is the real theme of this anthology. One of the strongest and most memorable tales in this book, in fact, is Gwyneth Jones' under-collected 1992 story "Blue Clay Blues," with its pointed conflict between the haves and have-nots on opposite sides of the digital divide, and its post-apocalyptic feel.
Cyberpunk is an unabashed mixture of old and new—but it's that very willingness to combine perspectives that made the book as a whole work for me. That, and the fact that the overall level of the writing is very high. Victoria Blake shows herself to be a very good editor, a curator of stories, and I'm looking forward to seeing more volumes from her, perhaps something which doesn't feel constrained to announce itself by a misleading but marketing-friendly title.
The world does not need another cyberpunk anthology, that much is true—but I'm glad we got this one anyway.
February 26, 2013
As is the case with most anthologies, Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Evolution and Revolution has something for everyone. The cyberpunk genre has been often overlooked, despite the amazing narrative capabilities of the genre's authors. This is a great collection, with a largely varied collection of stories from some of the best writers of cyberpunk. I found all of the stories to be well written, and extremely detailed. It's slightly disconcerting how close to some of these worlds we are with our current technology.
I did run into two things that irritated me. The fist was that while I enjoyed the majority of the short stories in this collection, there was one that I just couldn't get into due to the extreme use of acronyms and the lack of context in story to allow me to figure out what the character was talking about (This completely my opinion here. Again, not every story is for everyone which is why anthologies are awesome). The second problem I had was the running header along the top only said "Cyberpunk" on both sides of the page. This was not helpful because I had no idea whose story I was reading or what story I was on at any given time. Keep in mind that I was reading an ARC, so this may be changed in the final printed edition.
Thought provoking in the extreme, and a great sampling of short stories, anyone who is interested in smart science fiction or cyberpunk should give this a read.
I did run into two things that irritated me. The fist was that while I enjoyed the majority of the short stories in this collection, there was one that I just couldn't get into due to the extreme use of acronyms and the lack of context in story to allow me to figure out what the character was talking about (This completely my opinion here. Again, not every story is for everyone which is why anthologies are awesome). The second problem I had was the running header along the top only said "Cyberpunk" on both sides of the page. This was not helpful because I had no idea whose story I was reading or what story I was on at any given time. Keep in mind that I was reading an ARC, so this may be changed in the final printed edition.
Thought provoking in the extreme, and a great sampling of short stories, anyone who is interested in smart science fiction or cyberpunk should give this a read.
June 19, 2019
nothing like a cyberpunk anthology I'd compile. I like a broad definition of cyberpunk, and am a bigger fan of the looser-defined post-cyberpunk, but much of this caused me to shake my head wonder why it's here if it has no cyber and no punk? Some stories felt like they were from an amateur who took 1 creative writing class 10 years ago.
highlights were the stories by Benjamin Parzybok, Cat Rambo, and Gwenyth Jones. Also good was Kim Stanley Robinson's story about a drug dealer with a current net worth of around $1.75 that had his marijuana plants stolen, although not sure why it was in this anthology
highlights were the stories by Benjamin Parzybok, Cat Rambo, and Gwenyth Jones. Also good was Kim Stanley Robinson's story about a drug dealer with a current net worth of around $1.75 that had his marijuana plants stolen, although not sure why it was in this anthology
February 18, 2016
This was a good selection of short stories, if you like cyberpunk and its conventions. One thing that kept it from being very good was its focus on the "regular" guy and what his everyday life might be like in a cyberpunk setting. Those got tiring after a while. They would have been more refreshing if they'd been sprinkled among more of the traditional "giant corporations are keeping you down, time to fight back in the gutter"-type stories. Or at least stories with more at stake than whether someone has a bad day or loses their robot valet. With short stories, the quality of the ideas are at least as important as the story, though, and the ideas here are good.
(A list of story summaries so I can remember what I read, and I starred the ones I liked more)
*Johnny Mnemonic: this is the traditional one, but I'd already read it. A courier who transports data in his brain discovers a corporate conspiracy to make money from treating but not curing an illness it created, plus there's a cool intelligence-enhanced dolphin.
*Mozart in Mirrorshades: Corporate rapine of the past using time portal technology, and an examination of how the past might adapt. This was more traditional too, which led me to hope more about the collection than I should have.
Interview with the Crab: An intelligence-enhanced crab who was a child actor is now washed up, but has a plan for a different comback.
El Pepenador: scavengers in a city-size garbage dump fend off scuttling robots and discover that being a cyborg ain't what it used to be.
Down and Out in the Year 2000: A kid gets by in near-future D.C. by hustling and finding anything he can do to make money to feed himself and his sick sister.
*Getting to Know You: An experimental computer assistant goes above and beyond, doing things for you that you would have done yourself if only you weren't so inhibited.
User-centric: A short story with emails between members of a corporate team trying to figure out a new product?
The Blog at the End of the World: A fake blog, in reverse chronological order, about some regular person's experience of a pandemic wiping out most of humanity. Ends/begins with them shut into their home and wondering when they'll have to emerge. Blog entries have fake comments too.
Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars: Two kids' one shot at a better life through exposure to advanced technology (memory) is of course tainted.
Rock On: A washed-up rock band lady is dragged back into the life, sort of against her will but not really.
Blue Clay Blues: A spy for large corporations in dome collectives roams the countryside and reports rural groups who... develop sufficient levels of technology? So they can be squashed?
The Lost Technique of Blackmail: A corporate agent investigates a series of packages that are attempting to sort-of-blackmail the company's CEO in a strange way until he finally figures out the big reveal of who the blackmailers are.
Fall of the House of Escher: A resurrected intelligence has to entertain a family of undying people in this poor retread of a Poe classic.
Soldier, Sailor: Even after skimming back through it and rereading passages, I cannot remember anything about this story to save my life.
The Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics: An exploration of what it might be like if you could take a snide, vulgar & uncooperative personality from the past and loose them all over again in your life.
Mr. Boy: A son who receives surgery to repeatedly stay a kid hates his rich playboy life and his mother who turned herself into a giant living statue and risks losing his loyal robot valet.
Wolves of the Plateau: Some guys with brain enhancements join together to break out of prison. The connection to the title term is tenuous and not what the story's really about.
The Nostalgist: An old man deals with a half-living simulacrum of his beloved grandson, which is apparently repulsive to everyone including himself unless he has special Eyes & Ears to see a heavily filtered version of reality.
Life in the Anthropocene: Everyone lives in one of several resource-controlled cities in habitable areas of post-climate-change Earth, and a guy has to go out into the wilds to figure out why a power farm isn't delivering as much power to the city as it should.
*When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth: A worldwide insta-plague pandemic sweeps through the world, and IT guys are most of those who are spared when they happened to be fixing computers in air-controlled data centers at the time.
(A list of story summaries so I can remember what I read, and I starred the ones I liked more)
*Johnny Mnemonic: this is the traditional one, but I'd already read it. A courier who transports data in his brain discovers a corporate conspiracy to make money from treating but not curing an illness it created, plus there's a cool intelligence-enhanced dolphin.
*Mozart in Mirrorshades: Corporate rapine of the past using time portal technology, and an examination of how the past might adapt. This was more traditional too, which led me to hope more about the collection than I should have.
Interview with the Crab: An intelligence-enhanced crab who was a child actor is now washed up, but has a plan for a different comback.
El Pepenador: scavengers in a city-size garbage dump fend off scuttling robots and discover that being a cyborg ain't what it used to be.
Down and Out in the Year 2000: A kid gets by in near-future D.C. by hustling and finding anything he can do to make money to feed himself and his sick sister.
*Getting to Know You: An experimental computer assistant goes above and beyond, doing things for you that you would have done yourself if only you weren't so inhibited.
User-centric: A short story with emails between members of a corporate team trying to figure out a new product?
The Blog at the End of the World: A fake blog, in reverse chronological order, about some regular person's experience of a pandemic wiping out most of humanity. Ends/begins with them shut into their home and wondering when they'll have to emerge. Blog entries have fake comments too.
Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars: Two kids' one shot at a better life through exposure to advanced technology (memory) is of course tainted.
Rock On: A washed-up rock band lady is dragged back into the life, sort of against her will but not really.
Blue Clay Blues: A spy for large corporations in dome collectives roams the countryside and reports rural groups who... develop sufficient levels of technology? So they can be squashed?
The Lost Technique of Blackmail: A corporate agent investigates a series of packages that are attempting to sort-of-blackmail the company's CEO in a strange way until he finally figures out the big reveal of who the blackmailers are.
Fall of the House of Escher: A resurrected intelligence has to entertain a family of undying people in this poor retread of a Poe classic.
Soldier, Sailor: Even after skimming back through it and rereading passages, I cannot remember anything about this story to save my life.
The Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics: An exploration of what it might be like if you could take a snide, vulgar & uncooperative personality from the past and loose them all over again in your life.
Mr. Boy: A son who receives surgery to repeatedly stay a kid hates his rich playboy life and his mother who turned herself into a giant living statue and risks losing his loyal robot valet.
Wolves of the Plateau: Some guys with brain enhancements join together to break out of prison. The connection to the title term is tenuous and not what the story's really about.
The Nostalgist: An old man deals with a half-living simulacrum of his beloved grandson, which is apparently repulsive to everyone including himself unless he has special Eyes & Ears to see a heavily filtered version of reality.
Life in the Anthropocene: Everyone lives in one of several resource-controlled cities in habitable areas of post-climate-change Earth, and a guy has to go out into the wilds to figure out why a power farm isn't delivering as much power to the city as it should.
*When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth: A worldwide insta-plague pandemic sweeps through the world, and IT guys are most of those who are spared when they happened to be fixing computers in air-controlled data centers at the time.
April 26, 2021
Overall a fairly forgettable collection of quite the stretch to call it cyberpunk stories.
November 30, 2016
An excellent survey of the subgenre. I've lost track of how many anthologies I own with Johnny Mnemonic and Mozart in Mirrorshades in them, but they kind of have to be there. Great to finally get a chance to read Shirley's Wolves of the Plateau and Bear's Down and Out in the Year 2000, and recent additions to the canon Mr. Boy and Life in the Anthropocene are great. Highly recommended.
September 10, 2014
Lethem's "Interview with the Crab" and Doctorow's "When Sysadmins Ruled the World" definitely add excitement to this noteworthy collection. From the origins of the genre to the evolution of cybergenerated story lines -- this is punk at its most interesting.
October 9, 2023
Some of the short stories were ok - others not so much. The introduction was very interesting
January 12, 2019
Nice collection of short stories, good diversity of writing styles, subject matter, etc.
My (first?) edition has a major fault in typesetting though in Johnny Mnemonic. There's some ASCII art which is not rendered at all properly. Luckily I'd read that one before (and found it online to check). You can kinda figure it out from context but it's not ideal, would recommend using another source if it's your first time for that story. There were a few formatting quirks elsewhere in the book that I'm not sure were supposed to be there, but they didn't impact readability.
Other than that, it was a great way for me to catch up on some of the iconic shorts that I'd never gotten around to reading. Solid introduction by the editor too.
Oh, and there's no way you'll convince me that Bojack Horseman is not based on "Interview with the Crab"
My (first?) edition has a major fault in typesetting though in Johnny Mnemonic. There's some ASCII art which is not rendered at all properly. Luckily I'd read that one before (and found it online to check). You can kinda figure it out from context but it's not ideal, would recommend using another source if it's your first time for that story. There were a few formatting quirks elsewhere in the book that I'm not sure were supposed to be there, but they didn't impact readability.
Other than that, it was a great way for me to catch up on some of the iconic shorts that I'd never gotten around to reading. Solid introduction by the editor too.
Oh, and there's no way you'll convince me that Bojack Horseman is not based on "Interview with the Crab"
July 4, 2019
I bought this book accidentally on Amazon with one click when I just wanted to read a sample. I decided to go for it instead of going through the hassle of getting a refund.
This is a short story collection from different authors, so both the topics and the writing style differs significantly between the stories. I find it therefore hard to give this book an overall rating or review.
In my opinion, most of the stories make for interesting thought experiments, which I absolutely like in this genre. Some of the stories were a bit light on high tech, which kind of surprised me, others were right on the mark.
If you are into sci-fi shorts, you will probably enjoy several of the contributions in this bundle.
This is a short story collection from different authors, so both the topics and the writing style differs significantly between the stories. I find it therefore hard to give this book an overall rating or review.
In my opinion, most of the stories make for interesting thought experiments, which I absolutely like in this genre. Some of the stories were a bit light on high tech, which kind of surprised me, others were right on the mark.
If you are into sci-fi shorts, you will probably enjoy several of the contributions in this bundle.
August 13, 2020
I'll keep this short, since most of the other reviews on here for this book cover the same territory. This is not a good collection of Cyberpunk stories. I'm no expert, but I'd say that maybe three of these fall into what you would classically define as that genre. So if you are looking for more Matrix-style stories, hacking, gunfights, etc, you should probably look elsewhere.
However, despite not being a good Cyberpunk anthology, it IS a great fiction and sci-fi anthology. Almost every story in here is quality, even if the threads that link them together are a bit thin. The subheader "stories of hardware, software, wetware, revolution and evolution" is spot on. There was not a single story in here that I would not recommend.
However, despite not being a good Cyberpunk anthology, it IS a great fiction and sci-fi anthology. Almost every story in here is quality, even if the threads that link them together are a bit thin. The subheader "stories of hardware, software, wetware, revolution and evolution" is spot on. There was not a single story in here that I would not recommend.
August 18, 2023
This collection, wonderfully gathered by Victoria Blake, contains excellent, highly imaginative stories that have boosted (or, perhaps, rekindled) my life-long attraction to fantastic fiction. I was pleased not to see those barf-bag stories where 20-somethings run around saying "these kids these days" or "so I gave him a karate chop"...sorry, had to resist gagging just then... I am refreshed with short stories that show the trilogy (or more) is not the only way to experience the rich recipe of science fiction. Herein, the reader will witness strange scenes and dark futures painted in vivid expressions. As with any collection of stories by different authors, there are tradeoffs where the clever imagery overshadows meaningful stories. Overall, it is a delightful read.
May 9, 2017
A couple of stand-out pieces sandwiched in between middling, forgettable, and/or depressingly patriarchal tales. For a collection that bills itself as bleeding edge and diverse, this book is anything but. It's always sad to me, as a reader, when the same paternalistic or rote stories are dollied up with technobabble and billed as "next gen." A perfectly serviceable anthology otherwise, studded with classics like "Johnny Mnemonic" and surprising gems like the touching and fresh "Mr. Boy," the hilarious and shocking "Interview with the Crab," and a surprisingly moving take on the end of the world, "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth."
July 24, 2017
A neat collection of cyberpunk and cyberpunk-adjacent stories. Some stories sloggy, one or two don't even really feel like they belong, but for the most part the stories have something interesting to explore.
Favorite stories were Mr. Boy, Blue Clay Blues, and The Blog at the End of the World.
Favorite stories were Mr. Boy, Blue Clay Blues, and The Blog at the End of the World.
December 23, 2020
A terrible, terrible collection. One or two good stories, but that's it. Worse, the idiot editor thinks that if it's a dystopia and you mention a computer, it must be cyberpunk. More than half, at a rough estimate, of these stories aren't cyberpunk, and even more are pretentiously bad. Avoid this.
May 12, 2023
I wanted to give this the "cyberpunk" tag but couldn't quite do that as I'm not sure that these stories really fit the sub-genre. Sometimes post-apocalyptic, always science fiction, the stories were alright...but it's just not quite the classic I thought it would be.
May 15, 2023
A wonderful collection, with some personal favorites and several new-to-me. A couple that were out at the fringes of what I'd call cyberpunk, but still enjoyable.
If you're a fan of the genre, just read it!
If you're a fan of the genre, just read it!
October 17, 2017
Cyberpunk
Short stories of hardware evolution wetware many futuristic stuff. Some of them were far fetched, seemed hard to visualise. Quite comical. But not.
Short stories of hardware evolution wetware many futuristic stuff. Some of them were far fetched, seemed hard to visualise. Quite comical. But not.
December 24, 2017
Nice and different
Liked it. nice beat to the stories.. Different mood to a lot of cyberpunk ..made a change...well worth the time.
Liked it. nice beat to the stories.. Different mood to a lot of cyberpunk ..made a change...well worth the time.
June 7, 2019
Good mid of stories
The later stories got really in depth and I enjoyed them a lot. Quite a mix of stories. Have fun
The later stories got really in depth and I enjoyed them a lot. Quite a mix of stories. Have fun
May 29, 2020
Livro de contos (em inglês) de ficção científica bastante variados, porém todos de medianos para baixo.
June 21, 2020
Many good and interesting stories sprinkled with some I didn't care for.
As another comment said - I would have enjoyed some intro to each piece, discussing the reasoning for its inclusion.
As another comment said - I would have enjoyed some intro to each piece, discussing the reasoning for its inclusion.
June 22, 2020
A pretty nice collection, overall.
September 17, 2021
After 30 years of Cyberpunk Sci-FI The Future Is Now Here !!!
April 7, 2022
Seemed an odd selection to me, not sure I'd call a lot of it cyberpunk. Some good stuff and some okay pieces.
June 9, 2022
contains some real gems
November 21, 2022
I'm giving up. Life is too short. I want to like this book, I love short stories and there are some interesting ones here. Not enough to keep my attention or to get me to finish tho.
November 23, 2023
Some good stories, some great stories, some eh stories.
June 9, 2024
Each story got more and more bland. Dnf
May 24, 2025
A range of really interesting sf stories, enjoyed them as a casual read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews