Lookin For Cyberpunk Literature

[Sethram]

I'm a fan of the cyberpunk genre. I loved the nitty gritty feel of the Cyberpunk and Shadowrun tabletop RPGs. I loved Blade Runner, The Matrix, and hell I'll even say Johnny Mnemonic. Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost in the Shell also happen to be my favorites from the east. However, I've never read a single cyberpunk book. I know Neuromancer is a required read in the genre, but what other books are good reads?

[Bobby Archer]

Neal Stephenson's a good author to pick up. Snow Crash is a favorite of mine, and - although I haven't had time to read it myself - I've had a few friends recommend Cryptonomicon to me.

[balder]

Neal Stephenson's a good author to pick up. Snow Crash is a favorite of mine, and - although I haven't had time to read it myself - I've had a few friends recommend Cryptonomicon to me.

Love Stephenson, hate William Gibson who more or less invented the genre. Few authors make me want to chuck a book across the room like Gibson. Titans, does he ever suck at exposition.

[Sethram]

Thanks guys. Now it's time to see what the local library has.

[Infidel]

Best cyberpunk book I've seen yet is The Long Run my Daniel Keys Moran jr. It's out of print unfortunately and hard to get a hold of, but worth it. There are e-book versions available though.
Tad Williams's Otherland series was also very good. Most of the characters get caught up online and can't log out and have to adventure through all the virtual worlds to find a way out.
Piers Anthony has a cyberpunk book I read somewhere, can't remember the name though.

Not cyberpunk, but related. John Ringo's There will be Dragons series is essentially about a cyberpunk society, that is forced offline, essentially turning the world from a high-tech to high-fantasy via technology. I find it a good read, but some people don't like it when fantasy and sci-fi start to mingle.
.hack//sign is an anime, the only one of the series of .hacks I watched, is about people playing an MMO, and one of the main characters can't log out.

[Allandaros]

Best cyberpunk book I've seen yet is The Long Run my Daniel Keys Moran jr. It's out of print unfortunately and hard to get a hold of, but worth it. There are e-book versions available though.
Tad Williams's Otherland series was also very good. Most of the characters get caught up online and can't log out and have to adventure through all the virtual worlds to find a way out.
Piers Anthony has a cyberpunk book I read somewhere, can't remember the name though.

Not cyberpunk, but related. John Ringo's There will be Dragons series is essentially about a cyberpunk society, that is forced offline, essentially turning the world from a high-tech to high-fantasy via technology. I find it a good read, but some people don't like it when fantasy and sci-fi start to mingle.
.hack//sign is an anime, the only one of the series of .hacks I watched, is about people playing an MMO, and one of the main characters can't log out.

There Will Be Dragons is a Singularity society, not a cyberpunk. There's no "punk" whatsoever there, and the pre-Fall universe is very much a post-scarcity universe, as opposed to the hardscrabble life of cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is film noir, betrayal and loss and doing whatever you can to make a buck while still keeping to a code while wrestling with these new devices which may make us more human, or less.

I've heard good things about George Alec Efflinger's "When Gravity Fails," but it didn't quite seem my speed. For the proto-punk (aka mindscrew stuff) check out Phillip K. Dick's work. There may also be some suitable Zelazny stories (but really, there's a Zelazny story suitable for just about everything, I wager.)

[Doctari]

Novels:

True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier by Vernor Vinge
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip Dick (Inspired Bladerunner which I noticed wasn't in your list of movies. If you haven't, stop what you're doing and go see it. We'll wait.)
Burning Chrome, Mona Lisa Overdrive and Count Zero by William Gibson
Wetware by Rudy Rucker

Anthologies:

Mirrorshades; a cyberpunk Anthology by Various

[Spot]

Vacuum Flowers.

One of my favorite books ever... and, for those in the know, the "Borg" from Star Trek are a cheapened kiddie-version rip-off of the big villain in Vacuum Flowers.

Of course, in Vacuum Flowers, the big villain wasn't a collective. It was a single entity with one mind (called Earth), and billions of small parts.

Don't be fooled by my description though... Vacuum flowers is definitely Cyberpunk, but taken to a point where it transcends the genre.

[Kallisti]

Try some of Charles Stross's stuff.

Accelerando and Halting State come to mind if you want classic cyberpunk, his other science fiction is neocyberpunk, and lacks the near future feel.