Published in 2007, so may be too old, but I enjoyed Thirteen by Richard Morgan who also wrote Altered Carbon.
I’ve enjoyed everything he’s written. Good suggestion. In a similar, rule-breaking suggestion, Jeff Somers Avery Cates series is also very enjoyable. It also was first published in 2007. T’was a good year. 😏
The Avery Cates series is fantastic! It has a really fun dark humor to it with first-person narration.
Yes!! Another fan. I loved it. Dark, tough guy nonsense and humor. Such a fun series!
I think anything with *-punk is some sort of Sci-fi with the best people could predict of the future at the time.
My go to for finding new books and authors is to check the Sci-fi awards nominees: Nebula, Hugo, Locus, ... There are also two small book-stores nearby where workers put their reviews on the shelves of books they like and recommend.
Also, science fiction is not trademarked. =p
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells https://marthawells.com/murderbot.htm
Easily my favourite contemporary author.
It is a Sci-fi, but fits the Cyberpunk high-tech low-life aspects you seek, like megacorporations dystopias, slave labour, surveillance state, robot conscience, augmented humans, etc…
I also read Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman recently. A recommendation from one of those book-stores.
Some alien corporation is going to mine Earth's rare resources and the surviving humans participate in a dungeon crawl reality show. Kind of Running Man meets Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
It is LitRPG - which I am not a big fan but the writing of the first 2 books are good.
I am not a big fan of the last released couple of books of the series, as it feels more like extended power-trips that permeates the LitRPG genre.
"The Murderbot Diaries" sounds spot-on to what I'm looking for, bonus points for being a series! Added it to my list.
I'll check out "Dungeon Crawler Carl", but I'm not really sure what LitRPG is. Glancing through the wiki entry it seems like I've got plenty of experience with RPG-but-not-LitRPG books (i.e. tabletop supplementals, actual RPG rulebooks/scenarios, in-universe-inspired, "choose your own adventure", etc), but never LitRPG itself. Should at least be a curious stroll... I'm not usually big on aliens so we'll see. Running Man + Hitchhiker's Guide (the later being my all-time favorite series) has me very interested.
I wouldn't bother with DCC it seems like a weird rec to me. Litrpg is a new kind of genre fiction slop that's emergent because video game literacy is at an all-time high but it just amounts to scenes with characters reading menus, achievement toasts, and their stats.
Ah, that's kind of what I gathered it would be but wasn't sure. I may still take a gander out of curiosity, but I've spent too many decades playing games as it is so I'm not sure I'd get much from reading about characters doing the same inane tasks. Barring some outstanding story that just uses it more as flavor/set-dressing, that is.
I wouldn't call DCC cyberpunk.
But it is an entertaining read, and probably the best of what LitRPG has to offer, besides maybe He Fights With Monsters. If you like the genre will depend entirely on how cringy or not you find rpg mechanics in your stories.
To be fair, DCC is not cyberpunk. I've read ... all of the hugo and nebula winners. Plus the top 100 sci fi books. Also every major sci fi major series from the masters (Dune, Foundation, Ringworld, Culture, Heechee, Hyperion... etc etc).
Yeah ... a LOT of sci fi.
Now having said all of that. DCC is an amazing series ... IF AND ONLY IF, you read it as intended as an extremely DARK traumatic post apocalyptic alien invasion series. Yeah it is lit-rpg, but those elements virtually get lost in the amazing storytelling and intricate plot. I'm talking Nabokov plot level here.
Unfortunately, a lot of people read DCC as a fun dungeon crawler book and seem to gloss over the true terror/horror the characters are going through.
So if you are looking for a fun/dark read, its 100% worth it as long as you read past the first level. (and its pretty easy to do so!)
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!
You have Escapeology listed in your linked post and that's the exact novel I was coming into the comments to recommend. I've never seen another person mention that book before.
"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.
and that modern takes would either ultimately be throwback fanservice, or something so wildly different that it couldn’t even be considered cyberpunk anymore
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.
Does Gibson’s style differ in “The Peripheral” compared to “Neuromancer” though?
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.
I had originally posted a more long-winded version of the OP in [email protected] but it was with my now-deleted piefed account
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.
You didn't mention him, so maybe okay that his stuff is older, but check out Bruce Sterling
I'll add the rest of Sterling's novels to my list because hey why not (I already had a "Schismatrix" and "The Artificial Kid" on there), but most are a bit too old for the ask at hand and would be missing the (potential) influences of the last 30ish years that I'm curious about.
Yeah, figured that might be the case but thought I'd mention it just in case. Not sure what "new" cyberpunk is out there - especially since 2020… unless you count non-fiction :)
On the plus side: never gonna say no to more books in my list! I'm not actually sure how I missed the rest of Sterling's work, so it's good you brought him up.
And non-fiction is what I'm trying to escape ;P Or at least by some bizarre sadomasochistic method cope with via the fiction that everything seems far too inspired (predicted?) by.
Totally get that! Probably explains why I played as much Cyberpunk 2077 as I did! Books-wise, haven't been reading much cyberpunk lately other than some re-reads like Snow Crash and Diamond Age - mostly been escaping into Pratchett's Discworld. Comfort food as it were.
Check out Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan.
A downed internet definitely seems like an intriguing direction to explore, added to my queue!
The Cyberpunk 2077 comics from Dark Horse were quite good, and we're also 3 issues in to a new comic series called "The Future is ******".
That series is created by a cyber-security company of all things. They have a plan to run 60 issues... 57 to go!
Currently playing through the game so probably best I wait. The titles of a few seems like spoilers may be possible, though presumably most are unrelated-but-still-in-universe stories like the animated Edgerunners show? Or are some of them actually intended (i.e. prequel supplements) to read before the game?
The Cyberpunk comics are just set in the world, no real spoilers.
cross posted to cyberpunk2077
Chain-Gang All-Stars is really good! It's closer to modern day reality than far future cyberpunk, but still interesting dystopian sci-fi.
The premise centers around televised nation-wide gladiator battles where incarcerated people fight to the death for their freedom. The book has some razor sharp commentary on the US prison system as well as reality TV and profiting off of vulnerable groups.
Added, thanks! "Modern day dystopian sci-fi" may as well be a cyberpunk tagline at this point.
Definitely haha, the book uses footnotes at times to try and distinguish between the cyberpunk fiction & real-world incarceration practices since the two overlap so much
Why do you only want something written in the last five years?
Because I'm curious how our current reality has influenced the genre and how major world events, societal shifts, etc. have been potentially incorporated or reimagined. So much of the classic cyberpunk concepts are based on 40+ year old pre/early-internet ideas and I'd like to see how that has changed as our society and technology has. Maybe the answer to that is "it's niche fiction, so not at all", but that's why I'm curious.
As for the specificity to five: It's a fairly arbitrary choice on my part, though I have been finding that stuff created post-covid often has a very different energy to it even if that isn't part of the fiction itself.
I'm am/was a fan of the cyberpunk genre 15 years ago, but reality is faster moving and more subversive now. I have to watch ads to pump my gas man. I think what you are looking for exists under a different name. The fiction that is a reaction to our current environment is stuff like solar-punk.
I guess I didn't think of solar-punk as a book genre to explore. The context I've always seen it is very much in-life non-fiction (ala the various solar-punk communities on the threadiverse). Somehow it didn't occur to me that there would be literature as well.
I'll have to poke around. Thanks for the info!
Gotcha. I’m the kind of person that lets art percolate for sometimes years or decades before I’ll get interested. Hope you find some quality writing.
I get the feeling that the idea of cyberpunk is more about a time period than it is an ever long genre. I’d liken it to more akin to New Wave in sci-fi. Maybe it has more legs than I’m giving it credit for but I remain unconvinced.
You may very well be right, and it'd make sense if so. Some would probably consider what I'm asking for "post-cyberpunk" (or whatever), but that gets bogged down in semantics that I'm not familiar enough with to navigate.
But that's all part of my curiosity and why the specificity of the ask. What does it even mean to write cyberpunk nowadays? If it's a particular past vision of the future and we're in that future (or some vaguely similar situation), then what is today's vision? Is it even possible for it to resemble classical "cyberpunk" enough to be considered the same genre? Would it just be the same-but-more tropes? More/less grounded in existing tech? Or is it the path to creative entropy? I have no idea. And thus: the ask.
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