The Well-Appointed Cyberpunk Library · Additional Notes

Standalone digressions and tangents added for context — not part of Bruce Sterling’s list, and linked to from the annotations.

Additional Author Notes

Authors not otherwise discussed in the annotations.

Paul Di Filippo

Paul Di Filippo (born 1954) has published more than fifty books. Di Filippo is also an incredibly prolific book reviewer.

His story "Stone Lives" is featured in Mirrorshades.

Di Filippo (Locus Mag: Paul Di Filippo: A La Modes):

"“I find a number of science-fictional styles very attractive and bounce around between them. When I was starting to seriously apply myself to SF back in '82, the cyberpunk movement was bubbling under. John Shirley was doing some interesting work and Rudy Rucker had been published pretty extensively. So there was this nascent undercurrent that was appealing to me. I started thinking in cyberpunk terms, though I didn't even have a word for what I was doing at the time. Near-future scenarios, getting more to the street level of things, maybe looking at how capitalism was affecting society. I got shanghaied into the whole cyberpunk movement — very willingly, because it was a movement after my heart. I did a few stories in that vein, like 'Kid Charlemagne' before I read Neuromancer: that crystallized everything, and I wrote 'Stone Lives'."

Di Filippo (InterGalactic Interview With Paul Di Filippo):

"I was affiliated with the Cyberpunks, to whatever degree. I wrote The Steampunk Trilogy, so I dipped my toe into that movement. I've even done some stuff which could be classified as New Weird, which of course is a fairly recent phenomenon and quasi-movement, although it is leaderless and diffuse. Personally, I don't like to follow any one pattern of writing or school of writing for very long before lighting out for the territories and looking out for something new; but I think it can hurt a writer's career to be too much identified with one movement. Eventually Steampunk is going to jump the shark and seem passé, and then what do you do if that's all you're known for writing? You can't really conceive of writing anything else."

Links and sources5
Richard Kadrey

Richard Kadrey (born 1957) often appears on cyberpunk reading lists due to his 1988 novel Metrophage. Kadrey also compiled one of the reading lists mentioned on this page. Kadrey is best known for his thirteen Sandman Slim novels.

Metrophage is available online for free.

Comments regarding Metrophage from "Queen Victoria's Personal Spook, Psychic Legbreakers, Snakes and Catfood: An Interview with William Gibson and Tom Maddox by Darren Wershler-Henry":

Tom Maddox:

"Yeah. he's a good guy, a smart guy. Richard's the only one I know who's really, Metrophage is really and truly a Gibson hommage. He's not derivative at all."

William Gibson:

"Yeah, it's really good. This guy published his book and everybody's saying, "God, this really a rip-off of you. You should be offended!" I thought that it was a dynamite book and that it really stands out. What he'd gotten in there and done was he'd gone in there and played riffs on the instrument that I'd never dreamed of. And he's one of the hipper people in the field, that's for sure. He knows about drugs, too. (laughter)"

See also William Gibson's comments about Kadrey's first short story, "The Fire Catcher."

Links and sources11
Marc Laidlaw

Marc Laidlaw (born 1960) has published eight novels. He is most well-known for his time at Valve Software where he worked on the Half-Life series of videogames. Laidlaw retired from Valve in 2016, he still writes fiction and writes and records music.

His story "400 Boys" is featured in Mirrorshades. His novel that is closest to cyberpunk is the excellent dark comedy Dad's Nuke.

At one point, Laidlaw was the script writer for an unrealized film adaptation of Gibson's Virtual Light, and he wrote a short article about that experience for the zine bOING bOING.

Laidlaw (in Author's Note for "400 Boys"):

"A lot has probably been said, or could be said, about this story. Because it was in Omni, and got picked up for Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, it has probably been read by more people than anything else I’ve written, except perhaps for Dota 2 seasonal ad copy. The coolest thing to come out of it was a collection of concept art for an abandoned Kevin Eastman/David Fincher animated feature, Heavy Metal 3D. Created by Raymond Swanland for Blur Studio, I hope that someone will allow Swanland’s art to appear publicly someday, because it’s fantastic. He pulled images straight out of my mind."

Laidlaw (in Afterthought Overkill):

"I was loosely associated with the cyberpunks: I have a story in Bruce Sterling’s MIRRORSHADES, which remains the seminal cyberpunk anthology. My first novel, DAD’S NUKE, was written somewhat in satiric reaction to the wired, gritty urban visions of NEUROMANCER and its cousins. But I was not a very cyber writer, and not a very punk one either."

Links and sources9
Michael Swanwick

Michael Swanwick (born 1950) has published more than ten novels and numerous short stories. Swanwick's fiction is not generally regarded as cyberpunk though some would apply that label to his second novel Vacuum Flowers (1987). Lewis Shiner disagrees.

Swanwick is also the author of a legendary 1986 essay "A User's Guide to the Postmoderns" which discussed the new wave of sci-fi writers in the 1980s, calling them "Postmoderns" and dividing them into two camps: "humanists" and "cyberpunks". The essay was controversial.

Swanwick to Locus Magazine in 2009:

"My generation came in all at once with a lot of really good writers: Connie Willis, Stan Robinson, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, James Patrick Kelly... (I'm leaving out a half dozen people, but we all know who they are). But with the exception of William Gibson, nobody was talking about any of them in the early 1980s. People were writing articles about other writers who were not as good. So I basically wrote my essay 'A User's Guide to the Postmoderns' as a way of bringing attention to writers I felt were important, who knocked me out. In some ways, it was unfortunate there was the whole Cyberpunk thing. The Cyberpunks were one half of a generation that properly belonged together. I think Sterling and Kelly and Robinson all belong in the same camp. These differences were really intra-family differences, and they're very artificial. When I wrote the essay, I came up with the term 'Humanists' because (I think enough time has gone by that I can tell this story!) Gardner Dozois was going around talking about the Cyberpunks referring to 'you guys' (meaning us) as BOFFOS: Boring Old Farts. Jim Kelly found this amusing, and he made up BOFFO buttons and gave them to all of us. I still have mine -- I keep it with my Hugos. And I said, 'Oh my god, I need to come up with a name, fast, before this catches on!' So I invented the whole Humanist thing."

Sterling would later write the introduction to Swanwick's short story collection Tales of Old Earth (2000), saying:

"Swanwick’s “User’s Guide to the Postmoderns” is the most important critical document about Cyberpunks and Humanists that ever came from a guy who was neither a cyberpunk nor a humanist. That article is, in fact, The Mythos: Swanwick definitively coined the Common Wisdom there. I very much doubt that a better assessment will ever be written." [...] "But time has richly rewarded his courage and foresight. He did the field a genuine critical service. Science fiction is a better place for his efforts." [...] "Not that I concur with everything Swanwick says, especially his painfully accurate assessment of my own motives. Agreement, maybe not. Respect, very definitely."

Links and sources5
Writings About Cyberpunk Literature

At the time there was a lot of back and forth trying to define "cyberpunk" and who was a "cyberpunk writer" and who wasn't, and a fair amount of different groups trying to label each other.

  • "Science Fiction in the Eighties" by Gardner Dozois, December 1984, Washington Post Book World
    • In which Dozois popularized the term "cyberpunk" in reference to certain science-fiction writers
    • "About the closest thing here to a self-willed aesthetic “school” would be that group of writers, purveyors of bizarre hard-edged high-tech stuff, who have on occasion been referred to as “cyberpunks”—Sterling, Gibson, Shiner, Cadigan, Bear."
    • Portions of the article appear in the introduction "Summation: 1984" to The Year's Best Science Fiction, Second Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois
  • "The New Science Fiction" by Vincent Omniaveritas (Bruce Sterling), 1985, Interzone No. 14, pp. 39-40
    • "We must create the native literature of a post-industrial society."
  • "What is Cyberpunk?" by Rudy Rucker, 1986, REM #3
    • "The essence of cyberpunk fiction, as I see it, is that it is concerned with information. The concern exists on several levels. On the objective level, a cyberpunk work will often talk about computers, software, chips, information, etc. And on the higher level which I was talking about above, a cyberpunk work will try to reach a high level of information-theoretic complexity."
  • Preface to Burning Chrome by Bruce Sterling, 1986
    • "In Gibson we hear the sound of a decade that has finally found its own voice. He is not a table-pounding revolutionary, but a practical, hands-on retrofitter."
    • "SF has survived a long winter on its stored body fat. Gibson, along with a broad wave of inventive, ambitious new writers, has prodded the genre awake and sent it out on recce for a fresh diet."
  • Preface to Mirrorshades by Bruce Sterling, 1986
    • "This movement was quickly recognized and given many labels: Radical Hard SF, the Outlaw Technologists, the Eighties Wave, the Neuromantics, the Mirrorshades Group. But of all the labels pasted on and peeled throughout the early Eighties, one has stuck: cyberpunk."
    • "Before the era of labels, cyberpunk was simply "the Movement"—a loose generational nexus of ambitious young writers, who swapped letters, manuscripts, ideas, glowing praise, and blistering criticism. These writers—Gibson, Rucker Shiner, Shirley, Sterling—found a friendly unity in their common outlook, common themes, even in certain oddly common symbols, which seemed to crop up in their work with a life of their own. Mirrorshades, for instance."
  • "A User's Guide to the Postmoderns" by Michael Swanwick, 1986
    • "The generation I want to talk about hasn't been named yet. In this essay I'll call them the postmoderns, because it's a nonjudgmental term, and because it fairly reflects their unspoken belief that all science fiction leading up to and culminating in their generation is--let's face it--dead."
    • "The first group, the humanists, produce literate, often consciously literary fiction, focusing on human characters who are generally seen as frail and fallible, and using the genre to explore large philosophical questions, sometimes religious in nature. A short list of names would have to include Connie Willis, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Kessel, Scott Russell Sanders, Carter Scholz, and James Patrick Kelly."
    • "The other group has been tagged the cyberpunks (a story in itself; see the postscript for details and controversy). Their fiction is stereotypically characterized by a fully-realized high-tech future, "crammed" prose, punk attitudes including antagonism to authority, and bright inventive details. They would have to include William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, Greg Bear, possibly Rudy Rucker, and sometimes Pat Cadigan."
    • "I've listed Shirley as a literary ancestor where others would include him as a cyberpunk proper because he made his mark on the field years before any of the writers discussed here. His footprints are all over the cyberpunks' turf. It could be said that he serves as their John the Baptist figure."
  • "The Neuromantics" ("The Neuromantic Cyberpunks") by Norman Spinrad, 1986
    • "While certain hard science fiction writers have complained that Gibson's computer science is somewhat less than expertly rendered, what really upsets the hard science types about the book, aside from the scientific quibbles, is that stylistically and characterologically Neuromancer is unlike any previous novel to poach on their territory. Yes, by any contentual criterion, Gibson writes hard science fiction."
    • "Neuromancer is that seeming contradiction in terms, a New Wave hard science fiction novel. Neuromantic, you might say. Neuro-romantic. But also new romantic."
    • "Nevertheless, the Neuromantics are writing hard science fiction by every positive definition of the term, just as they are also writing stories of character."
  • "Looking Back on Cyberpunk Through Mirrorshades" by James Patrick Kelly, 1987, Short Form (Winter)
    • "But about one thing there can be no question; cyberpunk has already begun to fade."
  • "Yet all their stories are necessarily frozen in time. Despite all their research and hard work, someday much of Mirrorshades is going to seem as quaint as Buck Rogers."
    • "It is, in fact, possible to conceive of a sequel, Mirrorshades II, composed entirely of works by writers the cyberpunks profess to loathe."
    • "As cyberpunk cools, the writers identified with it will either find new modes of expression or be fossilized."
  • "Cyberpunk Revisited" by Norman Spinrad, March 1989, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
  • "Confessions of an Ex-Cyberpunk" by Lewis Shiner, 1991
    • "But by 1987, cyberpunk had become a cliché. Other writers had turned the form into formula: implant wetware (biological computer chips), government by multinational corporations, street-wise, leather-jacketed, amphetamine-loving protagonists and decayed orbital colonies."
  • "Cyberpunk in the Nineties" by Bruce Sterling, June 1991, Interzone No. 48, pp. 39-41
    • "Rucker, Shiner, Sterling, Shirley and Gibson -- the Movement's most fearsome "gurus," ear-tagged yet again in Shiner's worthy article, in front of the N. Y. TIMES' bemused millions -- are "cyberpunks" for good and all. Other cyberpunks, such as the six other worthy contributors to MIRRORSHADES THE CYBERPUNK ANTHOLOGY, may be able to come to their own terms with the beast, more or less. But the dreaded C-Word will surely be chiselled into our five tombstones."
    • "Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes. This is cyberpunk."
    • "But the Nineties will not belong to the cyberpunks. We will be there working, but we are not the Movement, we are not even "us" any more. The Nineties will belong to the coming generation, those who grew up in the Eighties."
  • "Inside the Movement: Past, Present, and Future" by Lewis Shiner, 1992, Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative
    • "The problem is that the term has become "commodified" - to use the postmodern catchword. [...] Within science fiction it evokes a very restricted formula: to wit, novels about monolithic corporations opposed by violent, leather-clad drug users with wetware implants. The term sci-fiberpunk arose at Milford, a writer's conference in britain, to describe this formula. Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers is a classic example, replete with a protagonist named Rebel and rampant misuse of the term wetware."
    • "I've seen lists of 'core cyberpunk' writers that contain the most improbable names: Lucius Shepard, Michael Swanwick, Greg Benford, even Kim Stanely Robinson."
    • "I take credit for the term 'mirrorshades movement'; at the time it was the only thing I could pin down as common to all three writers' work [Shirley, Gibson, Sterling]."
  • "After the Deluge: Cyberpunk in the '80s and '90s" by Tom Maddox, 1992
    • "Marketing aside, however, cyberpunk had a genuine spokesman and proselytizer, Bruce Sterling, waiting in the wings. He picked up the label so casually attached by Dozois and used it as the focal point for his own concerns, which at times seem to include the outlandish project of remaking sf from within. In interviews, columns in various magazines and newspapers, and in introductions to Gibson's collection of short stories, Burning Chrome, and Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, Bruce staked out what he saw as cyberpunk and both implicitly and explicitly challenged others to contest it. If Gibson's success provided the motor, Sterling's polemical intensity provided the driving wheel."
  • "Cyberpunk Lives" by Rudy Rucker, 1998
  • "Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto" by Lawrence Person, 1999
    • "The best of cyberpunk conveyed huge cognitive loads about the future by depicting (in best "show, don't tell" fashion) the interaction of its characters with the quotidian minutia of their environment. In the way they interacted with their clothes, their furniture, their decks and spex, cyberpunk characters told you more about the society they lived in than "classic" SF stories did through their interaction with robots and rocketships. Postcyberpunk uses the same immersive world-building technique, but features different characters, settings, and, most importantly, makes fundamentally different assumptions about the future."
    • "Of all the mutant strains currently percolating through the science fiction body politic, postcyberpunk is the one best suited to explore themes related to world of accelerating technological innovation and ever-increasing complexity in ways relevant to our everyday lives without losing the "sense of wonder" that characterizes science fiction at its best."
Cyberpunk Anthologies

Following in the footsteps of Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology.

Hackers edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois (1996)

Contents:

  • "Burning Chrome" by William Gibson (1982)
  • "Spirit of the Night" by Tom Maddox (1987)
  • "Blood Sisters" by Greg Egan (1991)
  • "Rock On" by Pat Cadigan (1984)
  • "The Pardoner's Tale" by Robert Silverberg (1987)
  • "Living Will" by Alexander Jablokov (1991)
  • "Dogfight" by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson (1985)
  • "Our Neural Chernobyl" by Bruce Sterling (1988)
  • "(Learning About) Machine Sex" by Candas Jane Dorsey (1988)
  • "Conversations with Michael" by Daniel Marcus (1994)
  • "Gene Wars" by Paul J. McAuley (1991)
  • "Spew" by Neal Stephenson (1994)
  • "Tangents" by Greg Bear (1986)
Cyber-Killers edited by Ric Alexander (1997)

Not strictly cyberpunk, but very much cyberpunk adjacent with a number of the usual authors and stories. Some cover images online incorrectly state that the introduction is by Bruce Sterling.

Contents:

  • "Introduction" (essay) by Peter F. Hamilton (1997)
  • "# ifdefDEBUG + "world/enough" + "time" •• short story by Terry Pratchett (1990)
  • "Blood Music" by Greg Bear (1983)
  • "Sam Hall" by Poul Anderson (1953)
  • "Blood Sisters" Joe Haldeman (1979)
  • "Crime on Mars" by Arthur C. Clarke (1960)
  • "The Pardoner's Tale" by Robert Silverberg (1987)
  • "A Gift from the Culture" by Iain M. Banks (1987)
  • "Murder Will In" by Frank Herbert (1970)
  • "The Undercity" by Dean R. Koontz (1973)
  • "Imposter" by Philip K. Dick (1986)
  • "Fondly Fahrenheit" by Alfred Bester (1954)
  • "Comfort Me, My Robot" by Robert Bloch (1955)
  • "Home Is the Hangman" by Roger Zelazny (1975)
  • "Watchbird" by Robert Sheckley (1953)
  • "From Fanaticism, or for Reward" by Harry Harrison (1969)
  • "Adventure of the Metal Murderer" by Fred Saberhagen (1980)
  • "A Kind of Murder" by Larry Niven (1974)
  • "Zone of Terror" by J. G. Ballard (1960)
  • "Tricentennial" by John Shirley (1976)
  • "Johnny Mnemonic" by William Gibson (1981)
  • "Angel" by Pat Cadigan (1987)
  • "Dreamers" by Kim Newman (1984)
  • "Virtually Lucid Lucy" by Ian Watson (1992)
  • "Virtually Alive" by Peter James (1995)
The Ultimate Cyberpunk edited by Pat Cadigan (2002)

The Ultimate Cyberpunk is a 2002 anthology edited by Pat Cadigan. Includes a number of the same folks from Mirrorshades (Bear, Cadigan herself, Gibson, Rucker, Shiner, Shirley, and Sterling) as well as a number of historical influences (Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, James Tiptree, Jr., Cordwainer Smith). Adds one new author to the pantheon: Paul J. McAuley. McAuley's story was the newest in the collection, dating from 1993.

The book is also notable as the only publication of twelve pages from the unpublished second volume of the Neuromancer graphic novel adaptation. Of special interest for the inclusion of the original "Blood Music" short story and the most recent known version of Sterling's Well-Appointed Cyberpunk Library. Also includes two stories previously featured in Mirrorshades.

Contents:

  • "Introduction: Not A Manifesto" by Pat Cadigan (2002)
  • "Fondly Fahrenheit" by Alfred Bester (1954)
  • "The Game of Rat and Dragon" by Cordwainer Smith (1955)
  • "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick (1966)
  • "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree, Jr. (1973)
  • "The 57th Franz Kafka" by Rudy Rucker (1983)
  • "Burning Chrome" by William Gibson (1982)
  • "Blood Music" - Greg Bear (1983)
  • "Till Human Voices Wake Us" - Lewis Shiner (1984)
  • "Freezone" - John Shirley (1984)
  • Neuromancer Graphic Novel excerpt by Frank Henkel and Givens Long (1989)
    • Twelve pages from the unpublished second volume of the adaptation
  • "Dogfight" - William Gibson and Michael Swanwick (1985)
  • "Green Days In Brunei" - Bruce Sterling (1985)
  • "Patterns" - Pat Cadigan (1987)
  • "Dr. Luther's Assistant" - Paul J. McAuley (1993)
  • "Bruce Sterling's Idea of What Every Well-Appointed 'Cyberpunk SF' Library Collection Should Possess" - Bruce Sterling (2002)[sic, more likely 1998]

Pat Cadigan (from "Introduction: Not A Manifesto"):

"Elsewhere you will find Bruce Sterling's reading list, which I cribbed off the net so that you can expand your horizons. It's certainly a good place to start any serious reading."

"There is no point, after all, in simply reprinting most of Mirrorshades. Of course, Mirrorshades does get it right (and of course, I'm biased), but Mirrorshades is not all there is. Not any more."

"The original Mirrorshades is still The Daddy, as it were. Many readers will find it valuable historically, but it remains a damned fine anthology of fiction. When I re-read it, I don't feel nostalgic - instead, I'm reminded of how important it is to stay alert to the milieu, to keep asking what Theodore Sturgeon called The Next Question."

Rewired: The Post Cyberpunk Anthology edited by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel (2007)

Rewired: The Post Cyberpunk Anthology is a 2007 anthology edited by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel (both historically on the "humanist" side in opposition to the "cyberpunks") which attempts to define "post-cyberpunk" fiction. It should perhaps come as no surprise to find inclusion of seven of the eleven authors from Mirrorshades plus Walter Jon Williams and Michael Swanwick. By this point, Stross and Doctorow are commonly showing up in lists of 'new' or 'post' cyberpunks.

Contents:

  • "INTRODUCTION: Hacking Cyberpunk" by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel (2007)
  • "Sterling-Kessel Correspondence" by John Kessel & Bruce Sterling (2007)
  • "Bicycle Repairman" by Bruce Sterling (1996)
  • "Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland" by Gwyneth Jones (1996)
  • "How We Got in Town and out Again" by Jonathan Lethem (1996)
  • "Yeyuka" by Greg Egan (1997)
  • "The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry with a Completely Remastered Soundtrack and the Original Audience" by Pat Cadigan (1997)
  • "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City" by William Gibson (1997)
  • "The Wedding Album" by David Marusek (1999)
  • "Daddy’s World" by Walter Jon Williams (1999)
  • "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" by Michael Swanwick (2001)
  • "Lobsters" - Charles Stross (2001)
  • "What’s Up, Tiger Lily?" by Paul Di Filippo (2003)
  • "The Voluntary State" by Christopher Rowe (2004)
  • "Two Dreams on Trains" by Elizabeth Bear (2005)
  • "The Calorie Man" by Paolo Bacigalupi (2005)
  • "Search Engine" by Mary Rosenblum (2005)
  • "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" by Cory Doctorow (2006)

From "INTRODUCTION: Hacking Cyberpunk":

"Because we have limited ourselves to the short form, we were forced to leave out novelists like Melissa Scott and Richard K. Morgan and Chris Moriarty and — most difficult of all — Neal Stephenson."

Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Revolution and Evolution edited by Victoria Blake (2013)

Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Revolution and Evolution is a 2013 anthology edited by Victoria Blake. Includes nine of the eleven authors from Mirrorshades, with two of the stories also appearing there. Of additional interest for the inclusion of Shiner's "Soldier, Sailor".

Contents:

  • "Introduction" by Victoria Blake
  • "Johnny Mnemonic" by William Gibson (1981)
  • "Mozart in Mirrorshades" by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner (1985)
  • "Interview with the Crab" by Jonathan Lethem (2004)
  • "El Pepenador" by Benjamin Parzybok (2012)
  • "Down and Out in the Year 2000" by Kim Stanley Robinson (1986)
  • "Getting to Know You" by David Marusek (1997)
  • "User-Centric" by Bruce Sterling (1999)
  • "The Blog at the End of the World" by Paul Tremblay (2008)
  • "Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars" by Cat Rambo (2007)
  • "Rock On" by Pat Cadigan (1984)
  • "Blue Clay Blues" by Gwyneth Jones (1992)
  • "The Lost Technique of Blackmail" by Mark Teppo (2009)
  • "Fall of the House of Escher" by Greg Bear (1996)
  • "Soldier, Sailor" by Lewis Shiner (1990)
  • "The Nostalgist" by Daniel H. Wilson (2009)
  • "The Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics" by Rudy Rucker (1982)
  • "Mr. Boy" by James Patrick Kelly (1990)
    • one of the short stories that became the novel Wildlife
  • "Wolves of the Plateau" by John Shirley (1989)
  • "Life in the Anthropocene" by Paul Di Filippo (2010)
  • "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" by Cory Doctorow (2006)
The Big Book of Cyberpunk edited by Jared Shurin (2023)

The Big Book of Cyberpunk (2023) edited by Jared Shurin is an absolute doorstop of an anthology featuring more than one hundred stories. Nine of the eleven Mirrorshades authors are included, as well as a few of the usual predecessors (Samuel R. Delany, Philip K. Dick, Fritz Leiber, James Tiptree, Jr.). Only duplicates two stories from Mirrorshades.

Items worth noting: Bruce Bethke's "Cyberpunk", Lisa Mason's "Arachne"

Contents:

  • "Editor's Note" (essay) by Jared Shurin (2023)
  • "Introduction: The Day of Two Thousand Pigs" (essay) by Jared Shurin (2023)
  • "The Gernsback Continuum" by William Gibson (1981)
  • "Self" (essay) by Jared Shurin (2023)
  • "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree, Jr. (1973)
  • "Pretty Boy Crossover" by Pat Cadigan (1986)
  • "Wolves of the Plateau" by John Shirley (1988)
  • "An Old-Fashioned Story" by Phillip Mann (1989)
  • "The World As We Know It" by George Alec Effinger (1992)
  • "Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland" by Gwyneth Jones (1996)
  • "Lobsters" by Charles Stross (2001)
  • "Surfing the Khumbu" by Richard Kadrey (2002)
  • "Memories of Moments, Bright As Falling Stars" by Cat Rambo (2006)
  • "The Girl Hero's Mirror Says He's Not the One" by Justina Robson (2007)
  • "The Completely Rechargeable Man" by Karen Heuler (2008)
  • "File: The Death of Designer D." by Christian Kirtchev (2009)
  • "Better Than" by Jean Rabe (2010)
  • "Ghost Codes of Sparkletown (New Mix)" by Jeff Noon (2011)
  • "Choosing Faces" by Lavie Tidhar (2012)
  • "I Tell Thee All, I Can No More" by Sunny Moraine (2013)
  • "Four Tons Too Late" by K. C. Alexander (2014)
  • "Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points" by Neon Yang (2014)
  • "RealLife 3.0" by Jean-Marc Ligny (2014)
  • "wysiomg" by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (2016)
  • "The Infinite Eye" by J. P. Smythe (2017)
  • "The Real You™?" by Molly Tanzer (2018)
  • "A Life of Its Own" by Aleš Kot (2019)
  • "Helicopter Story" by Isabel Fall (2020)
  • "Lena" by qntm (2021)
  • "Society" (essay) by Jared Shurin (2023)
  • "Time Considered As a Helix of Semiprecious Stones" (1968) by Samuel R. Delany
  • "Cyberpunk" by Bruce Bethke (1983)
  • "Hostile Takeover" by Craig Padawer (1995)
  • "Rat" by James Patrick Kelly (1986)
  • "Arachne" by Lisa Mason (1987)
    • short story that evolved into the novel Arachne
  • "Axiomatic" by Greg Egan (1990)
  • "Consumimur Igni" by Harry Polkinhorn (1993)
  • "Gene Wars" by Paul J. McAuley (1991)
  • "Britworld™" by James Lovegrove (1992)
  • "Ripped Images, Rusted Dreams" by Gerardo Horacio Porcayo (1993)
  • "The Great Simoleon Caper" by Neal Stephenson (1995)
  • "Immolation" by Jeffrey Thomas (2000)
  • "0wnz0red" by Cory Doctorow (2002)
  • "Time of Day" by Nick Mamatas (2002)
  • "Branded" by Lauren Beukes (2003)
  • "P" by Yun Ko-Eun (2011)
  • "I Can Transform You" by Maurice Broaddus (2013)
  • "Be Seeing You" Madeline Ashby (2015)
  • "Keeping Up with Mr. Johnson" by Steven S. Long (2016)
  • "Flyover Country" by Tim Maughan (2016)
  • "Darkout" by E. Lily Yu (2016)
  • "2045 Dystopia" by Ryuko Azuma (2018)
  • "Thoughts and Prayers" by Ken Liu (2019)
  • "Somatosensory Cortex Dog Mess You Up Big Time, You Sick Sack of S**t" by Minister Faust (2021)
  • "The Life Cycle of a Cyber Bar" by Arthur Liu (2020)
  • "Culture" (essay) by Jared Shurin (2023)
  • "Coming Attraction" by Fritz Leiber (1950)
  • "With the Original Cast" by Nancy Kress (1982)
  • "Dogfight" by William Gibson and Michael Swanwick (1985)
  • "Glass Reptile Breakout" by Russell Blackford (1985)
  • "[Learning About] Machine Sex" by Candas Jane Dorsey (1996)
  • "A Short Course in Art Appreciation" by Paul Di Filippo (1988)
  • "D.GO" by Nicholas Royle (1990)
  • "SQPR" by Kim Newman (1992)
  • "Gray Noise" by Pepe Rojo (1996)
  • "Retoxicity" by Steve Beard (1998)
  • "Younis in the Belly of the Whale" by Yasser Abdellatif (2018)
  • "Synch Me, Kiss Me, Drop" by Suzanne Church (2012)
  • "The White Mask" by Zedeck Siew (2015)
  • "Degrees of Beauty" by Cassandra Khaw (2016)
  • "Alligator Heap" by E. J. Swift (2016)
  • "Glitterati" by Oliver Langmead (2017)
  • "Rain, Streaming" by Omar Robert Hamilton (2019)
  • "Found Earworms" by M. Lopes da Silva (2019)
  • "Electric Tea" by Marie Vibbert (2019)
  • "Exopunk's Not Dead" by Corey J. White (2019)
  • "Études" by Lavanya Lakshminarayan (2020)
  • "Apocalypse Playlist" by Beth Cato (2020)
  • "Act of Providence" by Erica Satifka (2021)
  • "Feral Arcade Children of the American Northeast" by Sam J. Miller (2021)
  • "Challenge" (essay) by Jared Shurin (2023)
  • "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966) by Philip K. Dick
  • "Speed" by Misha (1988)
  • "Computer Friendly" by Eileen Gunn (1989)
  • "I Was a Teenage Genetic Engineer" by Nisi Shawl (1989)
  • "The Gene Drain" by Lewis Shiner (1989)
  • "Deep Eddy" by Bruce Sterling (1993)
  • "The Yuletide Cyberpunk Yarn, or Christmas_Eve-117.DIR" by Victor Pelevin
  • "Wonderama" by Bef (1998)
  • "comp.basilisk.faq" by David Langford (1999)
  • "Spider's Nest" by Myra Çakan (2014)
  • "The Last American" by John Kessel (2007)
  • "Earth Hour" by Ken MacLeod (2011)
  • "Violation of the TrueNet Security Act" by Taiyo Fujii (2015)
  • "Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang" by T. R. Napper (2015)
  • "Operation Daniel" by Khalid Kaki (2016)
  • "fallenangel.dll" by Brandon O'Brien (2016)
  • "CRISPR Than You" by Ganzeer (2018)
  • "Wi-Fi Dreams" by Fábio Fernandes (2019)
  • "Juicy Ghost" by Rudy Rucker (2019)
  • "Aboukela52" by Wole Talabi (2019)
  • "Keep Portland Wired" by Michael Moss (2020)
  • "Do Androids Dream of Capitalism and Slavery?" by Mandisi Nkomo (2020)
  • "The State Machine" by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne (2020)
  • "The Tin Pilot" by K. A. Teryna (2022)
  • "The Memory Librarian" by Alaya Dawn Johnson and Janelle Monáe (2022)
  • "Post-Cyberpunk" (essay) by Jared Shurin (2023)
  • "Petra" by Greg Bear (1982)
  • "The Scab's Progress" by Paul Di Filippo and Bruce Sterling (2001)
  • "Salvaging Gods" by Jacques Barcia (2010)
  • "Los Piratas del Mar de Plastico" by Paul Graham Raven (2014)
  • "Cat Pictures Please" by Naomi Kritzer (2015)
  • "The Day a Computer Wrote a Novel" by Yurei Raita (2019)
  • "The Endless" by Saad Hossain (2020)
  • "Ghosts" (essay) by Vauhini Vara (2021)
Cyberpunk Reading Lists
Cyberpunk 101 by Pat Murphy (1988, Signal: Communication Tools for the Information Age (A Whole Earth Catalog))

"Cyberpunk 101" by Pat Murphy as published in Signal: Communication Tools for the Information Age (A Whole Earth Catalog).

  • Mirrorshades edited by Bruce Sterling
  • Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
  • Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan
  • When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger
  • Metrophage by Richard Kadrey
  • Wetware by Rudy Rucker
  • Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, Total Eclipse [sic] by John Shirley
  • Islands In The Net by Bruce Sterling
Cyberpunk 101 Reading List by Richard Kadrey (1989, Whole Earth Review Summer 1989)

"Cyberpunk 101 Reading List" by Richard Kadrey as published in Whole Earth Review Summer 1989. Very likely an updated version of Pat Murphy's "Cyberpunk 101" from the previous year.

  • Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
  • The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
  • The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
  • Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
  • Nova by Samuel Delany
  • The Cornelius Chronicles, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 by Michael Moorcock
  • Future Shock by Alvin Toffler
  • The Atrocity Exhibition by J. G. Ballard
  • Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
  • Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
  • Shockwave Rider by John Brunner
  • Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker
  • Frontera by Lewis Shiner
  • Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
  • Mirrorshades edited by Bruce Sterling
  • Blood Music by Greg Bear
  • Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan
  • When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger
  • Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, Total Eclipse [sic] by John Shirley
  • Islands In The Net by Bruce Sterling
  • Metrophage by Richard Kadrey
  • Wetware by Rudy Rucker

William Gibson's and Tom Maddox's reactions to this list can be found in an interview with Virus 23: "Queen Victoria's Personal Spook, Psychic Legbreakers, Snakes and Catfood: An Interview with William Gibson and Tom Maddox by Darren Wershler-Henry".

The list of fiction books that Kadrey highlights in his book Covert Culture Sourcebook (1993) also includes a bunch of familiar names. The list is positioned as largely "slipstream" fiction:

  • Portrait of an Eye by Kathy Acker
  • The Atrocity Exhibition by J. G. Ballard
  • Waiting for the End of the World by Madison Smart Bell
  • Herotica edited by Susie Bright
  • The Terrible Girls by Rebecca Brown
  • Fools by Pat Cadigan
  • Cigarette Boy by Darick Chamberlin
  • Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller
  • Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler
  • Virtual Light by William Gibson
  • Gojiro by Marc Jacobson
  • Kalifornia by Marc Laidlaw
  • Easy Travel to Other Planets by Ted Mooney
  • The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers
  • Transreal! by Rudy Rucker
  • Glimpses by Lewis Shiner
  • New Noir by John Shirley
  • Globalhead by Bruce Sterling
  • The Tangerine Tango Equation by Barray Targan
  • Elvissey by Jack Womack