What are the defining books of the cyberpunk genre? If I wanted a genuine cyberpunk experience...

These are the primary texts:

Mirrorshades: the Cyberpunk Anthology - ed. Bruce Sterling
Neuromancer - Wm Gibson
Islands in the Net - Bruce Sterling
Eclipse - John Shirley
Software - Rudy Rucker
Synners - Pat Cadigan
Snowcrash - Neal Stephenson

this this this
absolutely love this book, happy to see other people on lit have read it.
havent read since i was kid, really tempted to read it again now

cyberpunk isn't really defined in literature, most of the answers you'll get here will just be gritty pulp sci-fi. True cyberpunk works better in movie form.

>True cyberpunk works better in movie form.
Leave this place, ne'er to return

cyberpunk is about sticking up a bleak, based and disgusting middle-finger towards everything that is decent and conventional, with no hope for the future or the human race, not generic sci-fi action where the currency is 'credits' and the villain is a corporation.

Where's the subversion? Where's the anarchy? Where's the fuck you and all you stand for attitude of not just the characters, but also the creators?

t. Actually Retarded

you're trying too hard to be edgy.

Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams.

>The Orbital Corporations now control the world. In the ruins of an America ravaged by the Rock War, ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, who can be "hardwired" via skull sockets directly to his ride, has become a panzerboy, a hi-tech smuggler riding armored hovertanks through the balkanized countryside.

>He teams up with Sarah, another tough-as-nails gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at independence from the rapacious Orbitals. They gather an unlikely gang of misfits for a ride that will take them to the edge of the atmosphere.

1986 was a good year.

Fucking love this guy
Diamond Age best age

However i should mention that it's not exactly cyberpunk. Snowcrash is more appropriate.

Richard K Morgan - Altered Carbon

I would say the nova trilogy more so than naked lunch

He is mostly right though. A lot of so called cyberpunk stories are missing the punk part.

If you don't like the Korn or the Insane Clown Posse, don't listen to these morons.

Snow Crash is awful. It's worse than reddit. It's funnyjunk.

I read neuromancer and enjoyed it, so i picked up snow crash because morons like these recommended it. It's the worst book I've read in my adult life.

It was so bad that I lost all interest in cyber punk as a genre.

If you've ever read a good book in your life, you'll hate snow crash. If you're not the embodiment of a jean-shorts-wearing-juggalo who believes himself to have a "totally sarcastic" sense of humor, you'll hate it.

If you like it, you probably thought people in highschool didn't like you because they didn't "get" you. The reality is you fucking stink because you don't shower, you fucking morons.

You haven't said why cyberpunk works better in movie form.

People seem to forget that Neuromancer is the first of a trilogy that includes Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, both of which should be read immediately after Neuromancer.

The news. America in 2016 is like the lamest conceivable cyberpunk dystopia

It's easier to be subversive through an audio-visual medium. Or maybe not easier, but more people are willing to do it.

Cyberpunk movies don't just tell stories that go against the grain, even the way that they're told and presented is outrageous. In 'Death Powder' there's a sudden cut from dreary underground stuff to a bright green park with scientists celebrating their newest creation, an android which may be linked to the rest of the movie. At this point one of them says something along the lines of 'I don't have a clue what's happening either, let's just go with it.' Or '964 Pinocchio,' that movie has a sequence in it which goes for several minutes in which a woman wanders through a subway into sewers becoming more and more sick and disturbed until she starts repeatedly throwing up and then eating her own sick as the camera sways around disorientation and the music pounds nonsensically.

You could get similar sensations across through writing, but how often does anybody try? Most of what's considered 'cyberpunk' by the masses is just more or less straightforward pulp sci-fi with only vague trends in plot elements uniting them.

Sure, but Neuromancer is even worse. The guy can't write.

all of you are retarded.

vurt by jeff noon is the answer

...

what are the best cyberpunk films?

I liked his stories in Burning Chrome better than Neuromancer. It's actually a good story collection.

So how are we even defining the label in this case, bc it sounds like you're using criteria for avante-garde arthouse work and ascribing it to cyberpunk, which is a very specific categorization that basically started with Gibson's Neuromancer, whether it's a good book or not.

You actually don't hear much identification of cinema as "punk" of any sort, outside of adaptations or works inspired by cyberpunk originating with Gibson, or films about actual punk culture.

So did you just decide to start calling racy foreign avante garde scifi films cyberpunk for no good reason?

When I think 'cyberpunk' I emphasize the 'punk' part. This stuff should be outrageous and unconventional in every way possible. As for the 'cyber' bit, well I think that that means science-fiction but with punk elements. And by that I mean stories about humanities future viewed through a Sex Pistols lens. Fascist regimes, the government making you a moron, no hope, the death of culture and human dignity, the escalation of dehumanization due to industrialisation and capitalism. That stuff. Maybe my examples will help make my thinking clear.

Burst City
Death Powder
Jubilee
Brazil
Tetsuo the Iron Man
964 Pinocchio
The Red Spectacles
Genocyber [TRIGGER WARNING: ANIME]

You might notice a trend there, they're all English or Japanese. I think that they're the only two cultures that really 100% 'got' punk. I know that American had great stuff like The Dead Kennedys and The Flesh Eaters but American punk doesn't quite feel right to me.

well i find that many of my favorite punk bands are american, and perhaps my favorite punk band, nomeansno, are canadian, but i appreciate the recommendations nonetheless.

>964 Pinocchio
This movie is shit, stop recommending it.
Red Specs is great though.

>964 Pinocchio
>shit
But if you're trying to be shit and people think you're shit, that makes you successful. If people didn't think it was shit what would it be good for?

And Red Spectacles is so cool, it's probably Mamoru Oshii's best surreal philosophical type movie and I think that that's probably because it's all anchored to one character. Angel's Egg and Ghost in the Shell are nice but they lack focus due to not enough tangible stuff going on in the former and too much pulpy clutter in the latter. I really liked Ghost in the Shell 2 and the two other Kerberos movies as well though, it's a shame he didn't get to direct Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade.

>But if you're trying to be shit and people think you're shit, that makes you successful.
But ironic shit posting is still shit posting!

I think RS and SD are pretty underrated. I liked the way Jin-Roh turned even if Oshii was only on writing, I felt the director shift helped it have more of its own identity while still feeling in line with Oshii's other movies.

Have you seen Talking Head by any chance? I've yet to see it, but I'd like to edge out my live action Oshii experience.

I haven't actually seen Talking Head yet either. I know that somewhere out there there's a box set with RS, SD and TH all together bit it's really damn expensive. I think I'll get that one day if I have money to burn.

but you should also include Burning Chrome

Vurt is excellent. So are Nymphomation, Pixel Juice, and Cobralingus.

I have to agree with the other user. Your definition of cyberpunk is yours alone. You might as well call it something else since your criteria is a subset of what anyone else considers cyberpunk.

Whoah flashback. What a book.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is the world's most retarded form of nostalgia.

Permutation City was pretty decent.

Is Snow Crash actually any good? I started reading it and thought it was absolutely insufferable like three pages in. I like some scifi like Lem, Tiptree and Strugatsky.

it's an utter trash

it's trash but it has it's moments
it's trying too hard to be quirky and self aware and the core of the intrigue is too retarded to overlook

I find it curious how nobody brought up this series en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_of_Reflections
it's like neuromancer except in tracksuit and slav. It's also bretty gud as a standalone universe.

I've never read Snowcrash, but Diamond Age was pretty good, and Reamde and Cryptonomicon both sound interesting. Is it worth checking out Stephenson's other stuff?

I agree, Neuromancer is almost unreadable in how badly many sentences are structured.
The characters suck and the plot is stupid too.
But it's still better than Snow Crash, because the novel is reddit in human form, not even a meme. The protagonist is a Japanese American katana wielding hacker with a teenager rollers slut... And the problem is that the novel isn't even funny. Starts as a strong comedy, but it decides it wants to deal with linguistics for some reason and tires to have a serious story with Hiro Protagonist.

incapable of having fun
mostly incapable of having fun

snow crash is good if you want popcorn to snack on

it's not some meaty tome but it's not trying to be that. It's fun. Lighten up, cunts

>but it decides it wants to deal with linguistics for some reason and tires to have a serious story with Hiro Protagonist.

which is hi-larious tb8ch

Stephenson got a lot better in his later books: Anathem, Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon.

Genre studies are fucking interesting. A cyberpunk reading of Taipei could be really provocative.

I have nothing against fun, but there is fun, clever fun and pants-on-head retarded fun

snow crash did most of the last kind and that's the kind that gets old the quickest

It's not fun at all, it's pure cringe. I love pulp, but this wasn't even honest fun.
I'm burned by this. And the novels are way too long to give him another chance, honestly.

my favorite artbook
Like some other user said, there's something extremely and grotesquely nostalgic about cyberpunk, which that image there (and the rest of Nihei's catalogue for that matter) exemplifies.

I felt the same way after the snow crash
I read it and it made me never want to read any of his other books

nihei is great

That's because it was tacked on halfway through the movement and doesn't really mean much

well I wouldn't insist on clinging to some literal interpretation of what the term should stand for
like how punk steampunk or dieselpunk are? I don't think this has that much significance other than that in the olden days we usually followed the character who was a lowlife or an underdog and might have had some rebellious attitude - but I wouldn't bother reading too much into that angle, he or she was just a cool kid.

Being hung up on the punk aspect of cyberpunk usually doesn't work for japanese works either, in my opinion.

Akira and GitS.

From Egan's works I only read the quarantine. IT was great and I can't wait to read some more of his work.

I haven't read anything else by him. Permutation City had some great ideas executed well but went on about 100 pages too long. The last part should have been in a sequel if written at all.

his best is imo 'disapora' and shot stories

Alright, I thought maybe it's just the internet's fault I can't appreciate katana wielding wise cracking protagonist anymore.

there's nothing particularly wrong with that archetype, it's just that Hiro is not a very good character in a somewhat dumb story.
There were ideas in there and some clever design but it was all in the service of cringe.

>I am 12 and what is taste?

there's nothing wrong with either of those, although I don't think I would call akira cyberpunk as much as it is a decent piece of sci-fi
GITS movies are ok, manga is great, tv shows are best in my opinion as they emulated the character of manga the best. Feature movies were too dreary and devoid of Shirow's humour.

Never read the manga but 2nd movie is one of Oshii's best. First one felt weighed down by convention.

Snow Crash is not trying to be a serious story you moron

It is you moron

no it isn't you goddam idiot

Yes it is you braindead polfag

it's worth reading the manga just to see how different it is tonally. I like the movies but compared to manga it's like they're set in different universe almost. Shirow likes to communicate his ideas in more light hearted fashion.

I think you mean Shirow likes to communicate in info-dumps in between typical 90s manga comedy.
I like GitS as a franchise, but as far as manga goes Appleseed is a much stronger work for Shirow.

oh yeah I do agree on that
I still like GITS as well though, I like it that he has never taken his own work too seriously

I remember reading through these with a friend of mine as a kid. We fucking loved these books and they're great. I'm kinda upset now because reading is nowhere near as enjoyable now as it was back then )-:

What's wrong with nostalgia?

I'd rather ask how was it nostalgia when it actually was 80s
and there is a decent amount of not at all nostalgic cyberpunk

The Diamond Age was fucking shit, I want all of the time back that I wasted on that.

It was the most autistic feminist purple-prose neckbeard cowboy programmer power fantasy I've ever experienced.

FUCK Neal Stephenson.

you may be right, in truth i haven't read that many books
point me to some quality cyberpunk and i'll change my ways

The Diamond Age was great. You don't even understand that he's a very technical writer, which is the opposite of purple prose.

>The Diamond Age was great
the diamond age was an utter shit

The bottom line is, cyberpunk is a shit subgenre.

;_;

i tend to agree

well I would not condemn the whole genre, it just so happens that there are more shit entries than the good ones.
What pisses me off the most are those people who think cyberpunk is all about lel so retro cosplaying or even worse shit like wachowski's matrix

>wachowski
iirc one of them is an aged tranny

iirc both of them are now aged trannies

>A Scanner Darkly lacks the cyberspace element
Depends how you define cyberspace.

omg, really

Blade Runner.

Was Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days a good movie?