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Sci Fi Focus > Encyclopedia > Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a genre of science fiction. It is usually concerned with the plausible elements of science fiction (such as the Internet, computers, *VIRTUAL REALITY*, *CLONING*), set in the near future, against a dark (often lawless or morally dubious) background.
Author William Gibson has been called the father of the Cyberpunk movement. Other influential figures in the movement include Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, Pat Cadigan and John Shirley.
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Cyberpunk
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By Sam Landstrom
AmazonEncore
Released: 2010-11-09
Paperback (422 pages)
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Life is a game, literally. Winners earn immortality, while losers are condemned to aging and death. D_Light, a gifted player, knows this all too well and he’s willing to do anything to win—even kill. It is no wonder then that when given the chance to enter a MetaGame—an exclusive, high-stakes, anything goes contest—he’s quick to jump at the opportunity. The MetaGame starts out well enough for D_Light, the first quest being to hunt down a dangerous fugitive, but through his own ambition, the tables turn and D_Light finds himself the renegade. Now, D_Light pits himself against his world to find the truth behind “The Game” and must decide between winning it and saving what’s left of his humanity.
This 122,000 word (~400 page) novel blends emerging political and cultural trends, such as gaming culture, globalization, and the ever-increasing hegemony of corporations, with technological trends, such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Emerging from this stew is an original world for you to explore through the point of view of its many "players".
Author's Note
I welcome any feedback you have! Here are a few options:
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- email me at snoutholder at yahoo.com |
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By Gary A. Ballard
CreateSpace
Paperback (170 pages)
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Artemis Bridge is the know-who, go-to guy, the amoral fixer in 2028 Los Angeles with the connection for any illicit desire no matter how depraved. You need it, he can get it without questions or judgment. He prides himself on staying detached from the depravity, untouched by the filth, untouchable by the law. When a young hacker is assassinated before his eyes, he is burdened with a scandalous video of the mayor on the eve of the city's most important election of the century. With digital assassins and murderous thugs dogging his every step, he has only days before the corrupt mayor is re-elected, handing the Chronosoft Corporation complete control of the city. Unable to sell the video, he is forced further into a complex conspiracy. This taut futuristic thriller is the debut novel by Gary A. Ballard, a rising new talent in the cyberpunk genre. The trade paperback edition includes the previously unpublished short story "Feeding Autonomy."
"...well written and a joy to read, Ballard paints imaginative scenarios and environments"
"Ballard does a complete and thorough job of world building." |
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By Kevin O. McLaughlin, Amy Rose Davis, NB Kelly, Brian Drake & Gorman K
Released: 2011-04-15
Kindle Edition (236 pages)
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An anthology of short stories by new, independent authors. Author royalties will be donated to Reading is Fundamental, the nation's largest nonprofit children's literacy organization.
Stories include:
By a Whisker by Kevin O. McLaughlin (3500 words): Someone is siphoning magical energy from the powerful ley nexus at Northshield University in this urban fantasy. Ryan goes to investigate, and gets help from an unexpected quarter.
The Accidental Muse by Amy Rose Davis (6200 words): A girl with no memory, a grieving widower, and a sweet-natured boy with strange power live a quiet life in their sheltered Keep until the night a traveling musician arrives at the door. The power of the musician's harp threatens to destroy their family unless one of them can stop it. A tale of gods, muses, mysterious spirits, and the power of love.
The Price of Vengeance by Derek J. Canyon (7400 words): In 22nd century Atlanta, Maggie hunts the genetically-engineered dwarf who killed her entire gang.
Insomnomancer by JE Medrick (3400 words): Witness life through the eyes of a predator. Kyle Hall, barely remarkable in a world of gray faces, is targeted by a very specialized hunter. To the target, it is night after sleepless night. To the Insomnomancer - a game of points and hungry satisfaction.
Thump by NB Kelly (4650 words): When a hitchhiker becomes part of an impromptu road trip, peace is the last thing that two young men will get out of it.
Iron in Shadow by Edward L. Cote (14900 words): The best thief in Rithmoor, the City of Dark Water, goes by the name Slip. He takes on a promising job, but it gets more complicated and dangerous the more he learns about what exactly it is he must do. To avoid certain death at the hands of the Great Magus Dibian, he must risk the wrath of the world's hardest people.
Together They Die by Brian Drake (3220 words): A former cop helps a ghost solve her murder.
Incubators by Manley Peterson (3200 words): Lost in space, three astronauts struggle to accept their fate aboard a crippled ship. Could a last-minute rescue be all they hoped for?
Cube by Coral Russell (4150 words): Luke's family isn't perfect, but they're worth saving. How far would you go to save your family?
The Star-Eater by K Gorman (6000 words): Karin wakes up one day on her starship, realizing her sister has been killed--but not before her sister cursed the murderer. Now she's got a man to kill. And her boss is starting to suspect that she's a little more than human...
Man-Maker by BC Woods (8050 words): A young boy in a society based entirely around defending itself against zombie-like demons refuses a sacred rite of passage.
Daddy Issues by John G. Hartness (4200 words): Vampires, voodoo, zombies and gold-diggers, it's all in a day's work for the boys at Black Knight Investigations. Vampire Private Investigators Jimmy Black and Greg Knightwood are called in to dispose of a zombie in the library, but there's always more than meets the eye where these detectives are concerned. Takes place before the events in Hard Day's Knight.
BONUS STORIES!
Weird and Wondeful by Tony Lavely (6000 words): Mailira and Marelsa together bring an old Scottish folk tale to life for a young musician.
The Light Stream by Jaylin Baer (3060 words): The transition between waking and sleeping, dreaded by some and enjoyed by others, becomes something altogether different for a very select few. Discover one woman's journey into the Light Stream.
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By Kalv Cobalt, Sunny Moraine, Eric Del Carlo & Kelly Kinkaid
Circlet Press, Inc.
Released: 2010-04-27
Kindle Edition (69 pages)
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Five hot stories of love and technology.
Queer sexuality has long defied the conventional standard of sexual expression; intersecting with the tech-driven backdrop of cyberpunk, it has now rewritten the rules completely. Queerpunk, with its collection of stories that revel in a near-futuristic vision of our own time, investigates the evolution of Queer sexuality under the smog-covered umbrella of urban and technological advancement. When the human body becomes a customizable canvas, either through mechanical implants or three-dimensional internet avatars, sexuality is given even more outlets from which to evolve. As the old social order succumbs to cyberspace's commanding hand, Queer identity finds new nooks and crannies in which to root.
The stories that follow--"Rescue Wounds," "Blindwire," "Upload," "The Real Thing," and "Virgin"--craft worlds in which human connection punctures cyberpunk's isolationist veil. In an otherwise impersonal and anonymous world, the bonds the characters forge through sexual expression shine a small bit of light onto the smoke, and a shred of warmth that pokes through the streams and pockets of internet data. Featuring authors Kal Cobalt, Eric Del Carlo, Sunny Moraine, R.E. Bond, and Kannan Feng, Queerpunk confronts this intersection and the question of what it means to be Queer in a world where the matter of identity has been revolutionized completely.
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By Bruce Sterling
40k
Released: 2010-09-08
Kindle Edition
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“We started reading Black Swan and couldn’t put down our Kindle until the last word.”
[Brain Pickings]
2009 Sidewise Award Nominee
Bruce Sterling brings us a tale of espionage, cyber-threats, alternate realities and intrigue in “Black Swan”, a dark and cyberpunk novelette.
Luca is a technology blogger looking for anything newsworthy. ‘Massimo Montaldo’ is the nickname of hacker living on the fringe of society. What can happen when these two very different people meet each other?
Massimo has discovered something, something that could shift the balance of power among the superpowers of the world. A Black Swan.
What is a Black Swan? “A black swan, when it arrives, cannot even be recognized as a black swan. When the black swan assaults us, with the wingbeats of some rapist Jupiter, then we must rewrite history.”
As a journalist, Luca must investigate, learn the truth – or should he? What if this is all beyond him, beyond his ability to fully grasp? Memristors? Euro-Liras? Spies and the possibility of an Alternate Italy?
What if the risk is too high, the danger too great?
Warring between what is safe and what is right, Luca had to decide if reporting the truth is worth the risk…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.
"Black Swan" is a novelette. 9250 words. |
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By Christopher 'Ruz' Hayes-Kossmann
Christopher Ruz
Released: 2011-03-13
Kindle Edition (34 pages)
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In Past the Borders, the first science fiction collection by Christopher Ruz, six pieces of speculative fiction explore the boundaries of space opera, cyberpunk, and far-future body horror.
In Long Way Home, an engineer posted to a distant mining colony watches his friends swallowed up one by one by yawning crevasses and acid storms, and discovers that there might be something terrible and beautiful lurking beneath the planet's crust.
In The Last Broadcast, a starship packed tight with snap-frozen colonists spirals towards Epsilon Eridani. But Barry, the semi-sentient AI set to guard the human cargo, is beginning to question the nature of his thousand-year mission. He's growing bored, and idle hands are the devil's playthings...
And in They Trade In Eyes, electronic retinas are the new upgrade of choice for schoolchildren and businessmen alike. Memories are not only recorded directly into the eye, but hot-swappable, and a street-culture forms around the bootlegging and exchanging of pre-used retinas. The market is growing, and where there's a market, there's a killing to be made...
Past the Borders is also included in its entirety in Future Tides, a $6.99, 18 story collection by Christopher Ruz, comprising of all his work published between 2007 and 2011.
Past the Borders contains:
What You Bring Back
Long Way Home
Eight Ways From Tomorrow
They Trade In Eyes
The Aliens Came Alphabetically
The Last Broadcast
11,000 words |
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By Michael Jasper
UnWrecked Press
Released: 2011-08-30
Kindle Edition (74 pages)
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Five stories of dark and turbulent futures, the best and worst of characters, and a range of science fiction themes and sub-genres, by author Michael Jasper (The Wannoshay Cycle and A Sudden Outbreak of Magic)
In "Working the Game," scrags work outside the wall, dreaming of one day earning enough to go inside to the cocoons and security. Marcus and his girlfriend believe the dream, but reality is more of a nightmare...
"The Death Sentence" tells of a world in which speech is not free, and the right words can be fatal.
In "Unplugged," find out how two recovering cyber-cowboys decide to reboot their lives, if they choose that option at all...
In "Remainders," a man with no taste for history and a future that looks bleaker by the moment finds a kind of redemption on a dying world, surrounding by aliens.
And in "The Deck," a young man faces off against a well-armed parking deck cop, with explosive results. |
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Duke University Press Books
Paperback (405 pages)
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The term “cyberpunk” entered the literary landscape in 1984 to describe William Gibson’s pathbreaking novel Neuromancer. Cyberpunks are now among the shock troops of postmodernism, Larry McCaffery argues in Storming the Reality Studio, marshalling the resources of a fragmentary culture to create a startling new form. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, multinational machinations, frenetic bursts of prose, collisions of style, celebrations of texture: although emerging largely from science fiction, these features of cyberpunk writing are, as this volume makes clear, integrally related to the aims and innovations of the literary avant-garde. By bringing together original fiction by well-known contemporary writers (William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Kathy Acker, J. G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delany), critical commentary by some of the major theorists of postmodern art and culture (Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, Timothy Leary, Jean-François Lyotard), and work by major practitioners of cyberpunk (William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling), Storming the Reality Studio reveals a fascinating ongoing dialog in contemporary culture.
What emerges most strikingly from the colloquy is a shared preoccupation with the force of technology in shaping modern life. It is precisely this concern, according to McCaffery, that has put science fiction, typically the province of technological art, at the forefront of creative explorations of our unique age.
A rich opporunity for reading across genres, this anthology offers a new perspective on the evolution of postmodern culture and ultimately shows how deeply technological developments have influenced our vision and our art. Selected Fiction contributors: Kathy Acker, J. G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Pat Cadigan, Samuel R. Delany, Don DeLillo, William Gibson, Harold Jaffe, Richard Kadrey, Marc Laidlaw, Mark Leyner, Joseph McElroy, Misha, Ted Mooney, Thomas Pynchon, Rudy Rucker, Lucius Shepard, Lewis Shiner, John Shirley, Bruce Sterling, William Vollman Selected Non-Fiction contributors: Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, Fredric Jameson, Arthur Kroker and David Cook, Timothy Leary, Jean-François Lyotard, Larry McCaffery, Brian McHale, Dave Porush, Bruce Sterling, Darko Suvin, Takayuki Tatsumi |
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By Michael Jasper
UnWrecked Press
Released: 2011-06-29
Kindle Edition (28 pages)
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Rehab for cyberpunk hackers.
Mickey's been here before, with a head full of junk, trying to get better so he can go back to his Lia. This is Jonathan's first trip to Rubin’s non-tech health facility, and being away from his tech is making him start to melt down. Find out how two recovering cyber-cowboys decide to reboot their lives, if they choose that option at all...
A near-future SF tale.
Excerpt:
"I’m on the front porch of Rubin’s place, staring across the lawn at the silent cars slashing past, feeling old and empty inside, when the new guy walks out. He’s got the cowboy twitch, the uncontrolled jerk of the head to the right or left, that all of us have when we first arrive here. I suddenly want to scratch the back of my head, down at the base, but I fight the impulse. The new guy sits next to me, sighs, then pulls his head up suddenly. It goes down and up again three times before I look away. Nobody likes watching someone else short circuit."
"Unplugged" was first published in SpaceWays Weekly, January 2000, reprinted at ShadowKeep, September 2000, and then reprinted again in Gunning for the Buddha (also available as an ebook).
"The details are sharp and unsentimental: we see the ex-cowboys jerking and twitching, hear their mumbled, brain-fried conversations, but the view is compassionate, not scornful, and the inward battle is viscerally real." — SF Site
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By Myra Cakan
Myra Çakan
Released: 2011-08-05
Kindle Edition (221 pages)
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DWNTN Blues - NEU - Mit Personenregister
Die Downtown schluckt Leben und spuckt Leichen aus - doch Donovans Partnerin verschwindet spurlos. Kann Donovan das Rätsel lösen, ehe der Fall ihr das Genick bricht?
Downtown Blues ist ein Thriller mit der Poesie des Abgrunds, ein unter die Haut gehender Krimi in dystopisch urbaner Kulisse. Myra Çakans Erzählsprache ist knapp, rasierklingenscharf und sinnlich, sie integriert die Stilelemente des Cyberpunk so beiläufig sicher, wie ein Atemzug dem nächsten folgt. ...
"Lara Croft" ist gegen City-Force-Cop Donovan eine brave Barbie mit Brustimplantat beim Kindergeburtstag." ---- Hessischer Rundfunk
Aus der Amazon.de-Redaktion:
Myra Çakan, Autorin des Amazon.de-Bestsellers When the Music's over, hat ihren zweiten SF-Roman für Erwachsene veröffentlicht. "Downtown ist das Synonym für Abstieg. Lebensmittelkarten für Ersatznahrung, Massenunterkünfte, Wasserrationierungen im Sommer, Smog das ganze Jahr, Terror in den Straßen."
Donovan ist Agentin bei der City Force, einer speziellen Einsatztruppe zur Bekämpfung des scheinbar allgegenwärtigen Verbrechens in der Downtown. Zu Beginn des Romans wird sie die Partnerin der erfahrenen DelMonico, doch als diese unter mysteriösen Umständen verschwindet, bleibt Donovan auf sich allein gestellt. Sie versucht, DelMonico wieder zu finden und obendrein auf die Spur der Drogenbosse zu kommen, die den gefährlichen "Sternenstaub" in Umlauf bringen. Durch Härte und Coolness versucht sie, ihre eigenen Ängste und Unsicherheiten in den Griff zu bekommen, und meist gelingt ihr das auch. Schließlich findet sie in dem straßenschlauen Infodealer Chan einen neuen Partner, der sie durch seine Fähigkeiten voranbringt, und stößt mit ihm auf einen weiteren Fall, der direkt mit ihrer eigenen Vergangenheit verknüpft ist.
Myra Çakans Downtown ist weitaus mehr als ein Konglomerat aus dystopischer Zukunftsvision und einem Albtraum, aus dem ein Städteplaner schreiend erwachen würde. Die Downtown, die eher einem technisierten Dschungel ähnelt als einer Stadt in der Mitte des 21. Jahrhunderts, ist der eigentliche Protagonist des Romans, mit dem die Autorin beweist, dass Cyberpunk durchaus noch neue Dimensionen zu bieten hat.
Downtown Blues hat ein so berauschendes Tempo, dass dem Leser nichts weiter übrig bleibt, als von Zeit zu Zeit abzusetzen, um wieder zu Atem zu kommen. Rasante Szenen jagen einander, und der Leser hört geradezu den Soundtrack zum Text, als würde ein überdrehter Punk-Drummer-Schlagzeuger auf Bassdrum, Snares und Hihats einschlagen. Myra Çakan benutzt bekannte Stilelemente des Cyberpunk, komponiert daraus jedoch mit kompromissloser Härte und poetisch-urbanen Bildern ihren bisher besten Roman, der zweifellos zu den wichtigsten deutschen SF-Titeln dieses Jahres gehört, und der getrost in einem Atemzug mit den herausragendsten Büchern von Gibson, Sterling und Shirley genannt werden kann. --Hardy Kettlitz |
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