Just wondering what 2020ish or later cyberpunk books/authors you’ve read and would recommend. Every list I find is either the same handful of admittedly quintessential 1970/80s stuff (Gibson, Stephenson, Dick, etc), mega compilations that aren’t deliniated by year/quality (and haven’t been updated in years), or wildly irrelevant bot slop.
Human authors only… nothing AI/LLM-generated, please.
First of all, come join us at [email protected] !
Second, if you’re really asking “how has cyberpunk been updated for the modern era” then I recommend reading William Gibson’s The Peripheral. It’s Gibson’s return to the cyberpunk genre with some updated ideas. It was also turned into a (cancelled) Amazon Prime series.
Otherwise, I think Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan was the best “recent” cyberpunk book (2003). After that, I’d argue the most popular cyberpunk book was Ready Player One in 2012. But let’s say that book is “divisive” at best. It was also turned into a movie directed by Steven Spielberg.
Not every year will receive a masterpiece of the genre. We’d be lucky to get a masterpiece in a decade now that cyberpunk is really no longer part of the zeitgeist and is an aging genre from the 1980s. To be honest, most cyberpunk these days are just pulp novels from indie artists on the Kindle store and aren’t exactly deep or philosophical. I mean, these days, I’m mostly finding books like Jack: Into The Beanstalk or the Cyberpunk City series. They’re fun, but not exactly “literature”.
If you like your cyberpunk with a heavy dose of hard-boiled detectives, Bang Bang Bodhisattva is a cyberpunk novel where the main character is trans. That’s something you wouldn’t find in most older cyberpunk works.
There’s also Titanium Noir, which I haven’t read. I think that one leans more into scifi mystery than cyberpunk though, just from the description.
A trans protagonist definitely has me sold, though detective-wise it depends on whether it’s just functioning as pro-cop propaganda.
Bang Bang Bodhisattva is definitely not pro-cop propaganda. It really does follow the hard-boiled detective mold where they’re basically vigilantes trying to solve a crime because the police force isn’t helpful.
But, if you’re interested in trans characters in cyberpunk novels, I also made this post about a year ago. And while I haven’t read it, I also heard about Hammajang Luck, which I guess is a queer cyberpunk novel that includes a lot of Hawaiian culture.
Always interested in books with trans/enby characters (well… that aren’t the tired serial killer/etc. demonization), will check those out!
“How has cyberpunk been updated for the modern era” is indeed what I’m ultimately asking about. I figured there would be a chance that the genre wasn’t everlasting and that modern takes would either ultimately be throwback fanservice, or something so wildly different that it couldn’t even be considered cyberpunk anymore… but that’s why I asked.
I had Gibson’s and Morgan’s works in my list already, though I’m definitely going to have to bump “Altered Carbon” up given your recommendation. Does Gibson’s style differ in “The Peripheral” compared to “Neuromancer” though? I’m currently reading the latter but not having the best time with his style/flow so far and am unsure if that’s just him, or the book/Sprawl series… or me, for that matter.
Oh and I had originally posted a more long-winded version of the OP in [email protected] but it was with my now-deleted piefed account that was just too buggy to keep using. Given how book-specific the ask was I figured here was probably a better fit.
I think this is where we’re at, yeah. If a novel actually fits the hard definition of “cyberpunk” then it’s most likely using that cliched setting of a retro-futuristic 1980s. And yet if it includes all the aspects of our modern dystopia then it just becomes “near future” and not cyberpunk anymore.
Yes, absolutely. As genre-defining as it was, Neuromancer was actually Gibson’s first novel. He has grown a lot as a writer since then and I think The Peripheral is much more approachable.
Did the post not go through? Did you delete it? I’m sorry you weren’t able to make the post there. I’m definitely open to more book-specific discussions, but the majority of that community is just me shouting into the void and I haven’t had anything to say about books recently. Feel free to post there!
I don’t so much mind if a modern writer is doing a throwback to 1980s retro-futurism so long as it’s still an intriguing story. That’s all part of my curiosity of what cyberpunk would even be nowadays. Though from other posts it seems like if my goal is to find the cyberpunk equivalent (i.e. the reaction to our current situation) something akin to “solar-punk” would be more applicable. But that’s a rabbit hole I’ll dive into later. One obsession at a time!
Glad to hear about Gibson’s later work. I had actually stared with his short story collection “Burning Chrome” but even in the forward he admits it’s basically trash and only kept around for the sake of it. I read through a few stories but got itchy for “Neuromancer”. I’ll keep pushing through… the bones (and historical significance for the genre) of it are intriguing after all, even if some of the proverbial meat is a bit off.
And my post on [email protected] did indeed go through at the time, but I deleted it prior to deleting the account since I wouldn’t have been able to reply (that was part of what was so busted with the piefed side of things). It was more a question about the difficulties I had with “Neuromancer” itself anyways, with the subject of contemporary writers being an aside. I’ll certainly visit in the future since I expect I’ll be in this cyberpunk hole quite awhile yet.