From:	Blackadder blkadder@****.net
Subject:	OT: Cyberpunk Authors [Was Re: Interesting...]
Date:	Thu, 11 Feb 1999 15:09:20 -0500

|> You'll get over it. Gibson's a horrible writer from this side of
the table,
|> and I've yet to figure out why so many people think he's the Second
Coming.
|> You want *good* cyberpunk, read Neal Stephenson or Bruce Bethke or
Raphael
|> Carter.
|
| I have to disagree about Neal Stephenson's works. He may be
|one of my favorite authors, but that doesn't mean he writes good
|cyberpunk. He writes wonderful fiction/sci-fi, but if you're going
to
|be critiquing it on its cp merits, I'd have to call it average at
|best. His characters always seemed a bit too heroic, and the setting
|is a bit off to be properly cp. Has he written anything since
Diamond
|Age (my least favorite of his books)?



-----BlackAdder Adds-----
Well, here's an argument as old as time [or at least as the
1980's]. What actually constitutes a 'true' cyberpunk novel. There's
alot of novels out there I think should be included under the
cuberpunk umbrella, and some [like Ender's Game which a local sci fi
book store owner swears by, but hasn't read anything else but space
opera] I don't think fit the bill.
Personally I'm a BIG fan of Gibson and Stephenson, but I think
the very changing nature of the genre dictates that it divide,
fragment, and change. To not do so automatically limits it, setting it
more into 'mainstream' science fiction. These are all just labels,
once that tend to divide rather than define. Such as when the
bookseller near where I live propunds the glories of mainstream
science, and sneers [yes, sneers] at anything smacking of cyberpunk as
'childish, immature, and dying, if not dead' genre'.
Cyberpunk found it's roots in the intergration of the realm of
high tech and the modern pop underground] I agree with Bruce Sterling;
the genre hasn't died out [as players of such games as Shadowrun can
attest], but undergone changes, adapted to changing times. To me, it's
a genre where a variety of authors can use a variety of styles to tell
interesting stories about burdgeoning technology [magic can fall under
this as another form of 'technology], societal problems [and sometimes
satire of same], and man's place within it all, as he tried to adapt
and cope with things rapidly growing beyone his control.

Here's a few items that are my favorites in the 'genre'


Bruce Sterling
The Artificial Kid

William Gibson
Neuromancer
Idoru

Pat Cadigan
Synners
Tea From An Empty Cup

Richard Calder [author of Dead Boys, Dead GIrls, Dead Things]
Cythera

Alexander Besher
Rim

John Shirley
The Eclipse Trilogy [I can't recommend these enough! Written
before the fall of the Berlin Wall, they offer a highly prophetic,
very scary, and highly probable view of the times we live in now.]

George Alec Effinger
When Gravity Fails
Fire In The Sun
The Exile Kiss
[Cyberpunk from a totally different point of view, set in
the 23rd century Middle East.]

K.W. Jeter [almost anything by this guy]

Walter Jon Williams
Hardwired

The Bordertown Series [edited by Terri Windling Et All...]
[Magic more replaces hard tech here, but an great bunch of
societal pieces of elves and humans living together in a gritty urban
fantasy landscape, trying to survive together


Maybe other people can post some of the books they've read, but
other of us haven't, so we can continue to find neat things out there.
Well, there's my two pence.....

The BlackAdder !!!