Punking Fiction Part 2: Cyberpunk Reading List

This post-apocalyptic saga, set in the remains of Neo-Tokyo, charts the coming of the creature known only as Akira, a power both feared and prized for its potential to shake the recovering world. Caught in a power play between factions of a brutal military organisation, Kaneda – young, restless, committed to defying authority – and Ryu, the leader of an underground movement, are pulled into an escalating nightmare, built around a group of psychically powered children.

In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold.

When Doc Ido, a talented cyberphysician, finds Alita’s head in a junk heap, she has lost all memory of her past life. But when he reconstructs her, she discovers her body still instinctively remembers the Panzer Kunst, the most powerful cyborg fighting technique ever known. In the postapocalyptic world of the Scrapyard, as the secrets of Alita’s past unfold, each day is a struggle for survival.

In a future world rife with decay and destruction, Killy is a man of few words who packs one very powerful gun. He wanders an endless labyrinth of cyberdungeons filled with concrete and steel, fighting off cyborgs and other bizarre silicate creatures. Everyone is searching for the Net Terminal Genes, but no one is quite certain what kind of power they contain. The answer may lie hidden among the scattered human settlements of this vast and desolate future world.

In the near future, virtual reality has pervaded all lives until there are no limits but the imagination. The most elite and powerful of the world have joined together to form the Grail Brotherhood, a group dedicated to founding and expanding a virtual world called Otherland, a utopian computer simulation where they could essentially be immortal and omnipotent. With the birth of Otherland, the Brotherhood is prepared to sacrifice their physical place on Earth as well as the lives of others.

Turner, corporate mercenary, wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him for a mission more dangerous than the one he’s recovering from: Maas-Neotek’s chief of R&D is defecting. Turner is the one assigned to get him out intact, along with the biochip he’s perfected. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties–some of whom aren’t remotely human.

Bobby Newmark is entirely human: a rustbelt data-hustler totally unprepared for what comes his way when the defection triggers war in cyberspace. With voodoo on the Net and a price on his head, Newmark thinks he’s only trying to get out alive.

A gang of unruly teenagers cut school and go joy-riding around “the Net” on their hopped-up portable computers, committing casual acts of vandalism and just generally being a$holes. Our hero is a good kid who’s fallen in with a bad crowd; his parents eventually realize something is wrong and try to suppress the relationship. This results in the kid finally using his technical skills for deliberate purpose, to rebel against his parents — and to win, because the paradigm shift is completely in his favor.

Collects three novels. This extraordinary trilogy depicts a future gender war that crosses the boundaries of software, wetware, time, and reality itself in its imaginative leaps and bounds. Only love holds the future together in this tale of star-crossed teens whose transformations defy description or imagination.

It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill.
Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Decakard’s assignment – find them and then…”retire” them. Trouble was, the androids all looked and acted exactly like humans, and they didn’t want to be found

Set in a future where the United States has largely broken down into reluctantly cooperating enclaves run by a wide variety of strongmen and warlords, with a veneer of government control that seems largely interested in controlling technology. Dr. Adder is an artist-surgeon, who modifies sexual organs of his patients to satisfy the weirdest of perversion; he is clearly depicted as a partly criminal, partly counter-cultural figure in a future Los Angeles.

An epic, dystopian tale of politics, covert actions, and cyborgs with too much attitude. This tale is set in a future society where computer/brain interface technology has gone so far that one’s brain can be “hacked”. Major Motoko Kusanagi’s half-organic, half-cyborg body renders her almost superhuman, but has she really left her humanity behind? Ghost in the Shell is bursting with 352 pages, featuring the story that inspired the hit animated film!

A hilarious and totally engrossing tale of electronic pestilence and conspiracy. Protagonist Jerzy Rugby is trying to create truly intelligent robots. While his actual life crumbles, Rugby toils in his virtual office, testing the robots online. Then, something goes wrong and zillions of computer virus ants invade the net. Rugby is the man wanted for the crime. He’s been set up to take a fall for a giant cyberconspiracy and he needs to figure out who–or what–is sabotaging the system in order to clear his name. Plunging deep into the virtual worlds of Antland of Fnoor to find some answers, Rugby confronts both electronic and all-too-real perils, facing death itself in a battle for his freedom.

Ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, “hardwired” via skull sockets directly to his lethal electronic hardware, teams up with Sarah, an equally cyborized gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at independence from the rapacious Orbitals.

When Jack Burroughs, a brilliant young computer programmer, is given his pink slip, he is offered the opportunity to use his skills for a little industrial espionage. Donning the guise of his online alter ego, Max Kool, Burroughs transforms himself into one of the hippest cybernetic surfers on the InfoBahn.

Forty years from now, Earth’s climate has been drastically changed by the greenhouse effect. Tornadoes of almost unimaginable force roam the open spaces of Texas. And on their trail are the Storm Troupers: a ragtag band of computer experts and atmospheric scientists who live to hack heavy weather — to document it and spread the information as far as the digital networks will stretch, using virtual reality to explore the eye of the storm.

Although it’s incredibly addictive, this is no game. The Troupers’ computer models suggest that soon an “F-6″ will strike — a tornado of an intensity that exceeds any existing scale; a storm so devastating that it may never stop. And they’re going to be there when all hell breaks loose.

Idoru takes us to 21st century Tokyo where both the promises of technology and the disasters of cyber-industrialism stand in stark contrast, where the haves and the have-nots find themselves walled apart, and where information and fame are the most valuable and dangerous currencies.

When Rez, the lead singer for the rock band Lo/Rez, is rumored to be engaged to an “idoru” or “idol singer”–an artificial celebrity creation of information software agents–14-year-old Chia Pet McKenzie is sent by the band’s fan club to Tokyo to uncover the facts. At the same time, Colin Laney, a data specialist for Slitscan television, uncovers and publicizes a network scandal. He flees to Tokyo to escape the network’s wrath. As Chia struggles to find the truth, Colin struggles to preserve it, in a futuristic society so media-saturated that only computers hold the promise for imagination, hope and spirituality.

In the high-tech twenty-first century, a family of “corporate associates” descends into an underworld of data pirates and bootleg biogenetics to discover the identity of new-order terrorists.

For Allie, putting on the madcap that Jerry borrowed was a very big mistake. The psychosis itself was quite conventional, but it didn’t go away when she took the madcap off. So the Brain Police took over, leaving her with a choice – go to jail as a mind criminal or become a mindplayer.

In the 22nd century, the first wonder of a brave new world is the Phoenix Space Elevator, designed to give mankind greater access to the frontier beyond Earth. Cooperatively built by the United States and the Eurasian Coalition, the Elevator is also a grand symbol of superpower alliance following a second cold war. And it?s just been destroyed.

Enter Claire Haskell and Jason Marlowe, U.S. counterintelligence agents and former lovers?though their memories may only be constructs implanted by their spymaster. Now their agenda is to trust no one.

With their hard-edged, street-wise prose, they created frighteningly probable futures of high-tech societies and low-life hustlers. Fans and critics call their world cyberpunk. Here is the definitive “cyberpunk” short fiction collection.

The year is 2050. Sam Verner is a star researcher for Renraku Computer Systems at the corporate headquarters in Tokyo, but when his sister goblinizes into an Ork, he is transferred to the Seattle arcology in disgrace. His life takes another turn for the worse when the commuter flight from the airport is hijacked by shadowrunners (Sally Tsung, Ghost, Kham, Dodger).

Sam’s cooperation with the runners earns him the enmity of another passenger, security specialist Alice Crenshaw. When Sam discovers that the runners were manipulated into releasing a lethal virus inside the arcology, he is able to convince them to undo the damage. They insist he accompany them, however, and though they are successful, Sam is forced to shoot a security guard in self-defense. Though the runners advise against it, Sam decides to stay with Renraku.

Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway–jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way–and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance–and a cure–for a price….

Niko, the Steampunk Samurai, is in her Majesty?s service. But is he a faithful royal bodyguard, or a for-hire yojimbo? A perfect warrior, or a soulless weapon? Follow Niko on his journey of self-discovery with Uri Bronski and Cherokee Geisha, as the Three Yojimbo discover a world populated by silent samurai, fast talking geisha, deadly mechabetsushikime, digital djihits and morphing butterflies.

In this nightmare society, air pollution is so bad that gas masks are commonplace. Infant mortality is up, and everyone seems to suffer from some form of ailment. The water is polluted, and only the poor drink from the tap. The government is ineffectual, and corporate interests scramble to make a profit from water purifiers, gas masks, and organic foods. Environmentalist Austin Train is on the run. The Trainites, environmental activists and sometime terrorists, want him to lead their movement. The government wants him in jail, or preferably, executed. The media wants a circus. Everyone has a plan for Train, but Train has a plan of his own.

One man has made it his mission to liberate the mental prisoners. to restore their freedom in a world run mad. Nickie Halflinger, the only person to escape from Tarnover- where they raise hyper-intelligent children to maintain the political dominance of the USA in the 21st century ? is on the run, dodging from loophole to crevice to crack in the computerised data-net that binds the continent like chains. After years of flight and constant changes of identity, at the strange small town called Precipice he discovers he is not alone in his quest. But can his new allies save him when he falls again into the sinister grasp of Tarnover…?

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosaNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about the Infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous…you’ll recognize it immediately.

The year is 2054, and life is reduced to a data feed. The fusing of virtual reality and cybernetics has ushered in the era of the personal surrogate, android substitutes that let users interact with the world without ever leaving their homes. It’s a perfect world, and it’s up to Detectives Harvey Greer and Pete Ford of the Metro Police Department to keep it that way. But to do so they?ll need to stop a techno-terrorist bent on returning society to a time when people lived their lives instead of merely experiencing them.

The line between technology and humanity is hopelessly slim. A constant stream of new technology spawns crime before it hits the streets; the human mind and the external landscape have fused to the point where any encounter with reality is incidental.

Two-time Arthur C. Clarke Award winner for Best Novel, Pat Cadigan is the Queen of Cyberpunk.

“How can you drink tea from an empty cup?” That ancient Zen riddle holds the key to a baffling mystery: a young man found with his throat slashed while locked alone in a virtual reality parlor. The secret of this enigmatic death lies in an apocalyptic cyberspace shadow-world where nothing is certain, and even one’s own identity can change in an instant.

Disaffected computer wizard “Mr. Slippery” (True Name Roger Pollack) is an early adopter of a new full-immersion virtual reality technology called the Other Plane. He and the other wizards form a cabal to keep their true identities ? their True Names ? secret to avoid prosecution by their “Great Adversary” ? the government of the United States.

The lines that define us are not always black and white, though. There’s a new wizard in the Other Plan and they’re recruiting for a scheme to translate cyberspace domination into real world power. But the “wizard” isn’t human – it’s a neglected artificial intelligence from a terminated government program. And “Mr. Slippery” finds hims forced to ally with the Great Adversay.

Editor Pat Cadigan takes readers through the evolution of this influential science fiction genre. This special collection presents the cyberpunk world, in which reality and virtual reality intersect. The growing impact of the Internet on our sense of community, the seduction of a world behind the screen, and the inherent dangers of a society in which any information can be hacked, stolen, and sold are some of the topics explored by our best cyberpunk writers.

Artemis Bridge is the know-to, go-to guy, the amoral fixer in 2028 Los Angeles with the connection for any illicit desire no matter how depraved. He prides himself on remaining above it all, but when an associate dies in his arms, he is burdened with a damaging video of the current mayor he can’t sell or trade. With assassins dogging his every step, he has only days before the corrupt mayor is re-elected, handing Chronosoft corporation complete control

Humans created the sentient robot “boppers,” but now it’s the boppers who have started creating humans. Clones and DNA-splicing have spawned the meatbop, a human body infused with the software (the mind and personality) of a bopper. The meatbops are interested in propagating down on Earth, but that might not be so good for humanity (the boppers have a nasty habit of enslaving humans, actually). When a couple of (reasonably) innocent humans get tangled up in the bopper’s machinations on the moon, it’s time to drag out the stored mind of bopper-creator Cobb Anderson and see if he can help.

In a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death, Marid Audrian has kept his independence the hard way. Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he’s available….for a price. For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the Arab ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audrian has been made an offer he cant refuse. The two hundred-year-old godfather of the Budayeens underworld has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to confront a killer who carries the power of every psychopath since the beginning of time.