What are the defining books of the cyberpunk genre? If I wanted a genuine cyberpunk experience, what is the best the genre has to offer?
Is this a joke question?neuromancer
>>8035497
Neal Stephenson
>>8035507
wasnt supposed to be a response dafug
>>8035488
Neuromancer, Snowcrash
A Scanner Darkly lacks the cyberspace element which is kind of critical to cyberpunk, but drugs, crime, and the culture of oppressive surveillance (and the resulting paranoia) are all there
>>8035488
read this. I've posted it on lit before and no one ever seems to have read it, despite it being the best dytopic/cyberpunk/sci-fi book series ever
No mention of Naked Lunch? Gibson even thinks so. Come on, /lit/
>>8035526
'Altered Carbon' by Richard K. Morgan.
Also gonna throw in A clockwork orange.
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
>>8036007
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
>>8035488
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.
>>8036058
>True cyberpunk works better in movie form.
Leave this place, ne'er to return
>>8036063
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?
>>8036058
t. Actually Retarded
>>8036064
you're trying too hard to be edgy.
>>8036022
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.
>>8035507
Fucking love this guy
Diamond Age best age
>>8037682
However i should mention that it's not exactly cyberpunk. Snowcrash is more appropriate.
>>8035488Richard K Morgan - Altered Carbon
>>8036013
I would say the nova trilogy more so than naked lunch
>>8036070
He is mostly right though. A lot of so called cyberpunk stories are missing the punk part.
>>8035512
>>8036022
>>8037693
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.
>>8036064
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.
>>8035488
The news. America in 2016 is like the lamest conceivable cyberpunk dystopia
>>8039123
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.
>>8038116
Sure, but Neuromancer is even worse. The guy can't write.
all of you are retarded.
vurt by jeff noon is the answer
>>8035488
>>8039494
what are the best cyberpunk films?
>>8039525
I liked his stories in Burning Chrome better than Neuromancer. It's actually a good story collection.
>>8039494
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?
>>8039618
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.
>>8039573
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.
>>8039663
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.
>>8039494
>964 Pinocchio
This movie is shit, stop recommending it.Red Specs is great though.
>>8039841
>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.
>>8039847
>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.
>>8039850
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.
>>8039288
but you should also include Burning Chrome
>>8039533
Vurt is excellent. So are Nymphomation, Pixel Juice, and Cobralingus.
>>8039663
I have to agree with the other anon. 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.
>>8036007
Whoah flashback. What a book.
>>8039893
https://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.
>>8040052
it's an utter trash
>>8040052
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 https://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.
>>8040472
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?
>>8039525
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.
>>8040552
>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
>>8040552
Stephenson got a lot better in his later books: Anathem, Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon.
>>8039554
Genre studies are fucking interesting. A cyberpunk reading of Taipei could be really provocative.
>>8040052
my favorite artbook
Like some other anon 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.
>>8040682
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
>>8040723
nihei is great
>>8038057
That's because it was tacked on halfway through the movement and doesn't really mean much
>>8038057
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.
>>8039573
Akira and GitS.
>>8039959
From Egan's works I only read the quarantine. IT was great and I can't wait to read some more of his work.
>>8044694
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.
>>8044756
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.
>>8042682
>I am 12 and what is taste?
>>8045186
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.
>>8045213
Never read the manga but 2nd movie is one of Oshii's best. First one felt weighed down by convention.
>>8040552
Snow Crash is not trying to be a serious story you moron
>>8045219
It is you moron
>>8045360
no it isn't you goddam idiot
>>8045401
Yes it is you braindead polfag
>>8045215
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.
>>8046401
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.
>>8046549
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
>>8036007
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 )-:
>>8039915
What's wrong with nostalgia?
>>8047299
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
>>8037682
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.
>>8047461
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
>>8048486
>The Diamond Age was great
the diamond age was an utter shit
The bottom line is, cyberpunk is a shit subgenre.
>>8048506
;_;
>>8048506
i tend to agree
>>8048506
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
>>8049181
>wachowski
iirc one of them is an aged tranny
>>8049182
iirc both of them are now aged trannies
>>8035512
>A Scanner Darkly lacks the cyberspace element
Depends how you define cyberspace.
>>8049185
omg, really
>>8039573Blade Runner.
Was Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days a good movie?
