Mac’s Recommended “Cyberpunk” Fiction
The following is a concise list of “cyberpunk” science-fiction, inspired by Bruce Sterling’s online cyberpunk canon (circa 1996). Since I’ve limited myself to titles that I’ve actually read, the following categories are subject to mutation and growth. For more, see my Book Reviews.
“Classic” cyberpunk fiction:
Mirrorshades (Sterling, ed.)
Burning Chrome (Gibson)
Neuromancer (Gibson)
Count Zero (Gibson)
Mona Lisa Overdrive (Gibson)
Crystal Express (Sterling)
The Artificial Kid (Sterling)
Schismatrix (Sterling)
Islands in the Net (Sterling)
City Come A-Walkin’ (Shirley)
Eclipse (Shirley)
The Exploded Heart (Shirley)
Frontera (Shiner)
Deserted Cities of the Heart (Shiner)
White Light (Rucker)
Master of Space and Time (Rucker)
Software (Rucker)
Wetware (Rucker)
Metrophage (Kadrey)
The Glass Hammer (Jeter)
Blood Music (Bear)
Hardwired (Williams)
In the Drift (Swanwick)
Vacuum Flowers (Swanwick)
Wildlife (Kelly)
Contemporary cyberpunk:
The Difference Engine (Gibson, Sterling)
Virtual Light (Gibson)
Idoru (Gibson)
All Tomorrow’s Parties (Gibson)
Pattern Recognition (Gibson)
Kamikazi L’amour (Kadrey)
Ribofunk (Di Filippo)
Globalhead (Sterling)
A Good Old-Fashioned Future (Sterling)
Heavy Weather (Sterling)
Holy Fire (Sterling)
Distraction (Sterling)
Noir (Jeter)
Silicon Embrace (Shirley)
…And the Angel with Television Eyes (Shirley)
The Hacker and the Ants (Rucker)
Gnarl! (Rucker)
Freeware (Rucker)
Realware (Rucker)
Saucer Wisdom (Rucker)
Frek and the Elixir (Rucker)
The Hollow Earth (Rucker)
Snow Crash (Stephenson)
The Diamond Age (Stephenson)
Cryptonomicon (Stephenson)
Dead Girls (Calder)
Dead Boys (Calder)
Cythera (Calder)
Vurt (Noon)
Tea From an Empty Cup (Cadigan)
Only Forward (Smith)
Spares (Smith)
One of Us (Smith)
Stations of the Tide (Swanwick)
The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (Swanwick)
Quarantine (Egan)
Permutation City (Egan)
Distress (Egan)
The Cassini Division (MacLeod)
The Stone Canal (MacLeod)
Cosmonaut Keep (MacLeod)
Starfish (Watts)
Maelstrom (Watts)
Dark Light (MacLeod)
Demons (Shirley)
Crawlers (Shirley)
Spaceland (Rucker)
Perdido Street Station (Mieville)
Neverwhere (Gaiman)
Engine City (MacLeod)
Altered Carbon (Morgan)
Neurolink (Buckner)
Teranesia (Egan)
Hammered (Bear)
Mathematicians in Love (Rucker)
Peripheral cyberpunk:
The Hormone Jungle (Reed)
Farewell Horizontal (Jeter)
Infernal Devices (Jeter)
The Meaning of Life (Rucker)
Good News from Outer Space (Kessel)
The Silicon Man (Platt)
Free Zone (Platt)
Ambient (Womack)
Heathern (Womack)
Terraplane (Womack)
Elvissey (Womack)
Random Acts of Senseless Violence (Womack)
Going, Going, Gone (Womack)
Amnesiascope (Erickson)
Days Between Stations (Erickson)
The Sea Came in at Midnight (Erickson)
White Noise (DeLillo)
Gun, With Occasional Music (Lethem)
Amnesia Moon (Lethem)
Revelation Space (Reynolds)
Darwinia (Wilson)
The Chronoliths (Wilson)
Mother of Storms (Barnes)
Earth (Brin)
Protocyberpunk:
A Scanner Darkly (Dick)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Dick)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (Dick)
We Can Build You (Dick)
VALIS (Dick)
Nova Express (Burroughs)
The Ticket That Exploded (Burroughs)
The Wild Boys (Burroughs)
Blade Runner: A Movie (Burroughs)
Dhalgren (Delany)
The Demolished Man (Bester)
Bug Jack Barron (Spinrad)
Songs From the Stars (Spinrad)
The Shockwave Rider (Brunner)
Damnation Alley (Zelazny)
Crash (Ballard)
Concrete Island (Ballard)
High-Rise (Ballard)
Memories of the Space Age (Ballard)
The Atrocity Exhibition (Ballard)
The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard
Nonfiction:
Seek! (Rucker)
The Hacker Crackdown (Sterling)
Tomorrow Now (Sterling)
Escape Velocity (Dery)
Across the Wounded Galaxies (McCaffery, ed.)