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Good contemporary cyberpunk?
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Alice, Founder - in absentia
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Jan 09, 2008 07:36AM

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The only negative comment I will make is the sex scenes make you picture Morgan sitting in his parents basement for months on end without so much as a glimpse of a woman.
James - Did you end up liking Electric Church? I thought it started very good ... but trailed away into some cliches of plotting and characters. I ended up being disappointed. It came off as a pastiche of the genre to me. It's one of those things where I would have been more foregiving it was written in the late-80s/early-90s, but as a 2007 book I was less forgiving.
In other words, if I had read it in high school, I would have loved it. As an adult, it was only OK.
In other words, if I had read it in high school, I would have loved it. As an adult, it was only OK.

I've yet to start reading it but Charles Stross' Accelerando deals with Singularity ideas and is held in high regard. It's available as an e-book here: http://www.accelerando.org/
~Piotr
~Piotr


Same thing happened to me when I saw "postcyberpunk".
Another good one that bridges the gap between Cyberpunk and Singularity fiction is Alastair Reynold's Century Rain, which also throws in quite a bit of mid-20th-century tech/ideas into the mix as well, in a quite ingenious way.

On the other hand, Charles Stross is god.


I use swaptree.com to trade the books I have read. Saves a lot of money.

I gave him Halting State but that didn't seem to impress. Maybe the Redeption Ark series? Or Peter Hamilton (whom I note no one is considering as cyberpunk). Am inclined to go with Vernor Vinge and the 2009 Hugo winner. Geriatropunk?

Neal Asher's Cormac books - If you are okay with space opera, giant killer robot, A.I. and mayhem, Gridlinked is worth checking out.
I'm curious about LAuren Beukes'Moxyland.

Very true!
Thank you for phrasing the way I felt when reading these books :)
I've really only read Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy, and some Philip K. Dick like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" which I would say is kind of proto-cyberpunk. It definitely lays a bit of the foundation.

For example, Altered Carbon, one of my personal favorites of all time, does not classify (to me) as cyberpunk. I categorize it as far future high tech.
If we're going to be more liberal about our definitions, and include AI based writing, I'm a huge fan of Neal Asher, both the Agent Cormac and Spatterjay collections.
I'll also suggest Gideon's Fall: When You Dont Have a Prayer, Only a Miracle Will Do and Street: Empathy and Recursion (with the 2 following books). These all seem to be very "cyberpunk".
I agree with the above suggestion of Counting Heads and it's sequel Mind Over Ship

What is Cyberpunk?
http://www.cyberpunked.org/cyberpunk/
http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/what-i...
http://www.cyberpunkwiki.org/wiki/ind...

Has anyone picked these up. Some of the blurb's compare him to writers mentioned here, so I'm curious about the books, if they hold up. Pretty sure I'll be buying them regardless, but wondering what opinions are from readers in this group.
Also, looking forward to The Quantum Thief, and Lauren Beukes, Zoo City, which I believe just won the Clarke award.




I really enjoyed Richard Morgan's 'Takeshi Kovacs' trilogy. Also love love Wilhelmina Baird's Crashcourse and Clipjoint, and if you're into manga, pretty much anything by Tsutomu Nihei is a winner.
Ian McDonald's 'River of Gods', Paolo Bacigalupi's 'The Windup Girl', Richard Calder's 'Cythera' and Warren Hammond's 'Kop' all have cyberpunk elements (depending on your definition which I won't argue about!)
Looking forward to reading Morden, Somers and Rajaniemi.
P.S. 'Allo :)
Ian McDonald's 'River of Gods', Paolo Bacigalupi's 'The Windup Girl', Richard Calder's 'Cythera' and Warren Hammond's 'Kop' all have cyberpunk elements (depending on your definition which I won't argue about!)
Looking forward to reading Morden, Somers and Rajaniemi.
P.S. 'Allo :)









I loved River of Gods--fantastic book, and completely sold me on the talents of Ian McDonald. And Calder, man, that guy is a treasure. Couldn't have been more excited to finally discover his Dead Girl trilogy this past year. Cythera is definitely on my list of must reads. Still have yet to get to The Windup Girl either, but the rep on that book precedes itself.
The Somers books are a good lot of fun. The ideas of the Electric Church, with the Mulquer Codex present a potential for something that could have been far richer, but it doesn't disappoint as fun, dystopic future-noir.

It's all like that. I find it a little off-putting, too :(



Disclosure: I'm a contributing author and music producer for the soundtrack. So maybe I'm biased. But you should probably check it out anyway. :)


http://amzn.to/19LvL79
http://amzn.to/17ots41


River of Gods (India 2047 #1) [novel]
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Cyberabad Days (India 2047 #2) [short stories and one novella]
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

Paolo Bacigalupi is a great author start with the cyberpunk The People of Sand and Slag and ease Into the bio punk world :) a pocket full of dharma is a freaking gem or A short cyberpunk story
Greg Egan's Permutation City ain't bad
I can also bump diamond age and

I checked out Untold Damage.
I was into dtective fiction for a long time too.
Oh also, Wind Up Girl as well. Depressing book though.

It's pretty famous actually. Also, it's a game.
I'm sure people being trapped in a computer, mind or otherwise has been done before and the author, Harlan Ellison, writes in every genre but that might be the closest to the primordial ooze of Cyberpunk I can find.
Please let me know if anyone can find something closer, I'd like to read it.

Books mentioned in this topic
Blame!, Vol. 1 (other topics)Altered Carbon (other topics)
River of Gods (other topics)
Counting Heads (other topics)
Recursion (other topics)
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