CraigM
1729
Agreed. Snow Crash is still quite a ride. It moves fast and has attitude.
Diamond Age is another interesting one from Stephenson, and has a very different tone.
But I also strongly disagree with those who say things like Neuronancer don’t hold up because technology has changed and evolved in different ways. Does Blade Runner not hold up because Atari went bust? Is Back to the Future now terrible since we don’t have flying cars? How about Star Trek not forseeing cell phones, so having clunky tricorders seems rather quaint?
Nah, a great work is a great work. Even if some of the futurist elements don’t pan out. Accept it on the terms the work sets and don’t bring your modern expectations into it. The problem isn’t that the work doesn’t hold up, its that the reader is not engaging it on fair terms.
I think that’s just a thing that is going to matter to some people and not others. The way our technology has developed did not impact my reading of either Snow Crash or Neuromancer (both of which I read for the first time in the aughts). But that’s just me.
I will also jump on the Neuromancer train. It is still a fantastic book.
I love authors/books that use language as the writer is in that world and you already know what the hell they are talking about. E.g. What the hell is a bene gesserite? Gibson is great at this.
I would also plug his next triology (Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow’s Parties) as cyberpunk-ish. More near future dystopia but still on topic with the descriptions of Tokyo and the Bridge.
The short story book has two of my all time favorite short stories 1) Johnny Mnemonic (on-topic) 2) Hinterlands which is not cyberpunk but just the coolest story.
What’s really interesting to me is that Cyberpunk is now an alternate timeline anachronistic view of the future. It’s a lot of 80’s aesthetics and politics that have little bearing on how 2020 actually turned out. It’s basically Fallout’s faux 50’s sci-fi future but replace Leave it to Beaver with punk rock as the defining sentiment.
I just took Burning Chrome off the shelf behind me for probably the first time in 30 years to see which one Hinterlands was… and I have no recollection of it :)
It’s not just the reading, it’s the remembering :/
2020 has a lot more in common with 80’s politics than it looks at first, unfortunately. And the basic assumption of Cyberpunk - capitalism taken to its extremes, with a handful of corporations in control of nearly everything, minimal (if any) states, and huge social and economical inequality pressuring part of society into chaos and anger, is much more real now than it was back then.
Sure, but the tech and language are way off.
Maybe once 2077 comes we will have something closer in reality, just with Chinese instead of Japanese… ;)
That’s true of most small c cyberpunk too, no? I mean, just look at Blade Runner with its giant Atari and TDK (!) logos.
Excellent choices. I remember reading Hardwired right when it came out and being gobsmacked by how cool it was. Was that the original inspiration for riggers?
Has anyone else read The Peripheral by Gibson (2014). I thought it was an excellent return to more of the style of his first 3 books. It’s another one of those books where you don’t quite understand all of the language for the first 50+ pages, but kind of work it out via immersion.
Not sure. I haven’t read it. I just went looking for 2020-tie in novels and his name jumped out at me because my wife knows him.
Haha, a friend shared this on FB the other day.
Need some yikes, oof and more thrown in there.
Silent
1744
Currently discounted on Amazon. PC version is $49.94.
I haven’t seen fishing mentioned yet, but we can hope!
If the small compression in the 4k YT trailer offended you or something, here you have the better version
Pfft. You could do that in AC: Origins.
