>>312Short Review of the cyberpunk books I've read so far:
>Neuromancer (William Gibson)A foundational work that does the rare thing of not feeling old hat. It does a very good job of immersing you in the near-future dystopia that has become a familiar setting to this subgenre, and builds on the classic heist movie format to showcase it's really cool ideas around the second half. Gibson's prose can make reading it a bit obtuse but I'd say it works for this sort of style, and it gives the book a drug-fuelled ranting identity of its own.
>Count Zero (William Gibson)Good but suffers a bit from the split-narrative; the plot jumps between protagonists every chapter, and that makes the story a bit difficult to follow, not really helped by the characteristic rambling tone of Neuromancer, which in this case goes a step too far. The story really should have just focused on Bobby, who's interesting enough to carry the story on his own, like Case was. The depictions of cyberspace and the climax of Bobby's story where they're under siege are very gripping.
>Mona Lisa Overdrive (William Gibson)I don't think I can do a proper review of this book since I could barely understand what was happening in it. It takes the problems Count Zero has with a split perspective narrative combined with the rambling tone and amplifies it by having four protagonists. I'm going to need to go over it in detail with a notebook some time in the future, but for now, I'd say it's worth your time only if you liked Count Zero.
>Virtual Light (William Gibson)Probably my favourite Gibson work; foundational for 90's cyberpunk in the same way Neuromancer was foundational for 80's cyberpunk, and shows a definite improvement in prose and his writing style. It feels sharper, more defined, and generally like Gibson has just become more practiced over the years. The Bay Bridge having become Kowloon Walled City, USA (not to be confused with it's virtualized counterpart in Idoru) is one of my favourite parts of it, and the showcase of how hackers and hacker culture had changed between the decades; this is more explicitly spelled out in the post-script interview some editions have, but Rydell's hacker allies stand in contrast with people like Case and Bobby in that they're more like a criminal secret society, trying to stay hidden rather than being loud punk rockers. The two leads, Rydell and Chevette, I do like; they're more down to Earth, they've got some good chemistry, and again, showcase the progression of the subgenre and hacker culture by being more down to Earth, rather than the ace hackers and elite mercs from the Sprawl Trilogy.
>Idoru (William Gibson)Rei Toei is an oddly prophetic character in alot of different ways. Both in the obvious things like Vocaloids and Vtubers, as well as in the way big data algorithms profile people to better get to them, and the question of if and how a program can be self-aware and self-actualizing. Virtual Kowloon is also just really cool, and reminds me alot of more closed-off net communities today, like most altchans and BBS' that survive off obscurity and function as a refuge from the outside world. Colin is also one of my favourite protagonists, especially for the sheer gap appeal of some weird nerd stuck in the middle of all this rock and roll flappery and gangster shit and sentient computer programs. The part where
Colin can't look directly at Rei because he keeps seeing, for want of a better term, the trees for the forest, was very chilling and very gripping
The Lo/Rez fangirl's story was honestly kind of ancillary-feeling and if it weren't for Virtual Kowloon, and the plot twist, would be kinda forgettable - which just goes to show, even if he's gotten better at it since Count Zero, the problems with a split-narrative.
>All Tomorrow's Parties (William Gibson)I honestly was pretty mixed on this. It definitely has it's moments, like when
the bridge is on fire
, but I found it weak overall, suffers, again, from the constant shifts in perspective keeping the plot away from developing a single, cohesive whole, and it feels like the ending was kind of anticlimactic. Like MLO, I'd only recommend this if you liked the prior two books and want to see how the story ends.
>Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)Another foundational work, like Neuromancer, despite the fact that it seems to be taking the piss a lot. (The main character is literally named "Hiro Protagonist" and feels like someone stacking templates) Shows a very cool picture of virtual space (it coined the term "Metaverse") and how it works, and the way the plot eventually shifts into
something quite literally Babylonian
Pulls off the protagonist switching better than Gibson did, with Whitey's section not feeling ancillary and giving us a closer look at the near-future physical world after the decline of centralized control. Definitely an all-time classic.
>The Hacker Crackdown (Bruce Sterling)Not a story, but definitely worth looking for the history lesson, both on the culture and the events of the real virtual world that inspired cyberpunk as a subculture, as well as movies like Hacker and War Games. Bruce Sterling does an amazing job at making you feel like you were there, seeing the hacker subculture progress from dudes who figured out how to break the phone line to get free long distance, to courtroom battles over issues of national security. A must-read for anyone doing their homework on the genre.
Electric Sheep and UBIK (Phillip K. Dick), I, Robot (Isaac Asimov), and Logan's Run (W. F. Nolan & G.C. Johnson) are also really good, but due to their timing I'd say that whether or not they could be characterized as "cyberpunk" is up for debate. Dick definitely had his influence on the genre, though: Ubik is as proto-cyberpunk as it gets, and Electric Sheep was adapted into probably the most visually inspirational cyberpunk movie ever.