Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.com

Literary Freeware --- Not For Commercial Use


Bruce Sterling's Idea of What Every Well-Appointed "Cyberpunk SF"
Library Collection Should Possess (circa August 1996)


The Canon:

BURNING CHROME  William Gibson
    Gibson's short stories.
NEUROMANCER, COUNT ZERO, MONA LISA OVERDRIVE  William Gibson
    The "Cyberspace Trilogy."
MIRRORSHADES THE CYBERPUNK ANTHOLOGY Bruce Sterling ed.
    Useful pointer to actual no-kidding Movement Cyberpunks.
MINDPLAYERS Pat Cadigan
    Her best novel.  An absolute must-have.
HEATSEEKER John Shirley
    Shirley's short-stories.  His most significant and influential work.
DESERTED CITIES OF THE HEART Lewis Shiner
    Shiner's best SF novel.
SLAM Lewis Shiner
    Intriguing cyberpunk mainstream non-genre novel.
SOFTWARE and WETWARE Rudy Rucker
    Best-known novels of deranged math-professor/hacker/cyberpunk.
TRANSREAL Rudy Rucker
    Every short piece Rucker ever wrote.  Enormous.  Like being hit 
    in the head with a bowling ball.
BLOOD MUSIC  Greg Bear
    Bear's most c-wordish book.
CRYSTAL EXPRESS Bruce Sterling
    Sterling's short work.
SCHISMATRIX Bruce Sterling
    Posthuman space opera.
ISLANDS IN THE NET Bruce Sterling
    21st-century global information politics.
THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
    19th-century cyberpunk by subgenre's foremost critics'-darlings.  


Other Useful Fiction:

VIRTUAL LIGHT William Gibson
    A new, more intimate view of the future by the gomi-no-sensei.
IDORU William Gibson
    Light, graceful and brilliantly inventive.
HALO Tom Maddox
    Remarkable SF treatment of robots and artificial intelligence.  
    Now  available online in its entirety at no charge.
GLOBALHEAD Bruce Sterling
    Sterling's second story collection.
THE EXPLODED HEART  John Shirley
    Shirley's second story collection.
PATTERNS Pat Cadigan
    Cadigan's short work.   Great range of topics and treatments.
SYNNERS Pat Cadigan
    Cadigan's well-received second novel.
FOOLS Pat Cadigan
    The logical extreme.
FRONTERA Lewis Shiner
    Shiner's first novel, about mission to Mars.
LOOK INTO THE SUN James Patrick Kelly
    Interesting novel by peripheral cyberpunk.
WILDLIFE James Patrick Kelly
    This highly bizarre short-story fixup novel is a catalog of cyberpunk
    ontological riffs.
ARACHNE Lisa Mason
    Cyberspace robots vs drug-addict San Francisco lawyer-careerists.  
    Weirdissimo.
SNOW CRASH Neal Stephenson
    Fine example of second-generation cyberpunk by Seattle hacker.
THE DIAMOND AGE  Neal Stephenson
    This guy may be the first native-born cyberpunk writer.
HARDWIRED Walter Jon Williams
    Williams' most successful effort.
SPACETIME DONUTS, WHITE LIGHT Rudy Rucker
    Rucker's early novels.  Brilliantly deranged.
LIVE ROBOTS Rudy Rucker
    Paperback double reissue of Rucker's novels SOFTWARE and WETWARE.
HACKER AND THE ANTS
    The indefatigable Rucker tackles artificial life issues.
INVOLUTION OCEAN, THE ARTIFICIAL KID  Bruce Sterling
    Sterling's first two novels.  SF adventures.
HEAVY WEATHER Bruce Sterling
    Cyberpunk eco-disaster novel.  Sterling's darkest work.
HOLY FIRE  Bruce Sterling
    The European art scene in the late 21st century.
SEMIOTEXT(E) SF  Rudy Rucker, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Robert Anton Wilson, eds.
    Story anthology of bad craziness.  Quite likely to cause
    protests from scandalized parents and censors. 



Magazines

MONDO 2000.
    "Cyberpunk" as glossy West Coast fashion magazine.  It Had To Happen.
bOING bOING  
    Ultra-happening cyberslacker antizine from the heart of digitized
    desktop bohemia.
ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION.  
    Least reactionary of the standard American SF magazines.
INTERZONE
    Foremost British SF magazine.  Libraries should carry this worthy zine
    as a public service, since individual US subscriptions are costly.
SCIENCE FICTION EYE
    More-or-less official lit-crit organ of cyberpunk SF and assorted 
    fellow-travellers.  Very sporadic.
SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES
    Dull gray academic rag seized in startling coup by wacky post-
    modernists.  Now almost readable!
WIRED  
    The first magazine of the 1990s that actually looks and acts as if
    it belongs in this decade.  Now in its fourth year!
21*C
    Australian cyberculture weighs in with a big glossy artzine.



Non-Fiction, Critical Studies

STORMING THE REALITY STUDIO Larry McCaffery ed.
    Cyberpunk's man-in-academe gives his highly postmodern take on 
    matters in this bug-crusher anthology.
CYBERPUNK:  OUTLAWS AND HACKERS ON THE COMPUTER FRONTIER
  Katie Hafner and John Markoff.
    The best book to date on the outlaw "computer underground."
ACROSS THE WOUNDED GALAXIES Larry McCaffery ed.
    McCaffery interviews various weirdo leading-lights of pomo SF, 
    including Gibson and Sterling.
THE HACKER CRACKDOWN, LAW AND DISORDER ON THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER
  Bruce Sterling.  
    It's not just for breakfast any more.
TERMINAL IDENTITY by Scott Bukatman
    Headlong foray across the wild terrain of postmodern technology 
    theory.
THE HAPPY MUTANT HANDBOOK
  Mark Frauenfelder, Carla Sinclair, Gareth Branwyn,  Will Kreth, eds.
    The first Boing Boing book.  More weird fun per micron than
    normals will ever imagine.
ESCAPE VELOCITY by Mark Dery
    Cyberculture: threat or menace?  Round up the usual suspects:
    Stelarc, Moravec, Pauline, Sirius, Mu, Frauenfelder, Haraway, 
    Orlan, Cronenberg, Dibell, Reznor, Leary, Lanier, Laurel, Barlow,
    Sobchack, Ross, Milhon, Kelly, Gibson, Cadigan, Shirley, etc etc -- 
    Good Lord, there's just no end to them.