What are some good cyberpunk themed books?

What are some good cyberpunk themed books?

I think Cyberpunk is really cool, but I'm not really familiar with the genre. I'd like to run a GURPS game for it eventually, but I want to orient myself with the genre first.

William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy is a good start

True Names by Vinge, but that's a novella

Neuromancer

Can't go wrong with Gibson, though I'd say the short stories Burning Chrome, New Rose Hotel and Johnny Mnemonic do it really well.

Hardwired by Walter John Williams and When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger are both very good

>running gurps
only do that if you want a bland-ass game, try out something tailored for the genre like 'the sprawl' or le shadowruns if you like number-y stuff
so far as fiction
uhh, blade runner?
I got into cyberpunk through Akira and Ghost in the Shell, so give those a shot if you haven't already

>uhh, blade runner?
Film, true.
Book, not so much.

Blade runner is based off "Do androids dream of electric sheep", very loosely. I would recommend that as well, though I am not sure if its the best example of cyberpunk.

Holy guac I can get Neuromancer on kindle AND audible for only $10

Sold

Altered Carbon.
The protagonist is a mild bit of a Mary Sue, but he is EXTREMELY well-written and the whole thing is very traditionally cyberpunk.

Try Snow Crash,

This. It's at the extreme end of the genre, to the point of being somewhat parody. But it nails the themes and concepts almost perfectly.

There's also a page-long tirade against American consumerism early on that is totally worth it.

I thought The Wind-Up Girl was fantastic, and a pretty unique take on near future dystopia.

Set in Thailand after oil runs out. Everythings runs using generators powered by giant genetically modified elephant on treadmills, shits dope.

Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams.

Hardwired came out just 2 years after Neuromancer and was wildly popular in its day but has been largely forgotten now. This is sad because Hardwired was arguably AS influential as Neuromancer in the development of Cyberpunk gaming. All the central ideas of Shadowrun are there. Mr, Jonsons (called Thirdmen in Hardwired), desperate struggling people hired by megacorps to carry out deniable ops. The Smuggler and Nomad subcultures from Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun and pretty much ripped directly from its pages.

Also, the film Elysium totally ripped off the central ideas of its premise: the idea of a future world where an ecologically devastated Earth is subjugated by huge corporations and the super rich who live in paradise in huge, orbiting space colonies.

It's well worth a read, if a little dated.

Read Neuromancer to see how the genre started and then read Snow Crash to see how it ended. Everything else can be picked at by leisure.

Definitely on the parody side. It's fun as long as you aren't expecting Harrison Ford blade runner. I'm actually reading it right now. I think the right word for it is "pulpy."

I wouldn't consider it cyberpunk at all. Worth the read, yes, and well informed (probably, or good at taking) about Thai culture. The whole thing feels very much like a writer who has actually lived in Thailand.

In a previous thread like this, someone suggested River of Gods. I haven't gotten to it yet, but the cover definitely feels like exactly what I want.

I'm perpetually half way through reading River of Gods, it's very cyberpunk and pretty good, though the many POVs/plotlines can be a bit tiresome

Let me go REALLY obscure, but it is probably one of the bleakest pieces of cyberpunk novel ever written.

Bad Voltage, by Jonathan Littell. Good luck finding it, at one point paperback copies were going for forty bucks. I have two, one and a spare.

Drugs, gay sex, more drugs, hetero sex, police massacres, terrorism, a billionaire's snuff party, more drugs, and finally a really spectacular revenge murder, mostly in and around a future Paris.

That said, it is amazingly written and crafted.

When Gravity Fails

>The Smuggler and Nomad subcultures from Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun and pretty much ripped directly from its pages.
Went full circle when CP2013 actually got a Hardwired supplement.

It sure did, apparently written by Walter Jon Williams himself no less.

This is something that we just don't get anymore now that nerd-dom has gone so mainstream. Everything now is about money. You don't get creators as hobbyists doing awesome things like this anymore. Not unless they're paid a small fortune for it.

As for the book itself, I actually own the Hardwired sourcebook and... it's not very good. Williams is a novelist, not a game designer and it shows. The details about the novel's world are extremely threadbare. To make matters worse, it removes entire rafts of player options and what it replaces them with just isn't nearly as fun.

Case in point: Cybernetics. Cybernetic augmentation is not as common in Hardwired, there are a few implants like the Weasel (an extensible boring device that extends from the mouth) but for the most part lost limbs are replaced by cloned replacements.

>for the most part lost limbs are replaced by cloned replacements.
Well, that's generally how it works in CP2020, too.

I would argue that 'The Stars My Destination' by Alfred Bester counts as a sort of proto-cyberpunk novel. Basically it's The Count of Monte Cristo with megacorps, decadent ultrabillionaires, psychic powers, and spaceships.

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Does anyone know where I can find more art like this? This mix of augmented individual and that casual feeling of them just being a normal person who is still annoyed when they have to get up early in the morning.

>What are some good cyberpunk themed books?
I liked the Electric Church.

But quick'n'easy? Movies will probably get you a better taste of the genre.

Try most character art threads.

Ghost in the Shell. The manga obviously.

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