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 1998)

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, WETWARE, FREEWARE Rudy Rucker
        Best-known novels of deranged math-professor/hacker/cyberpunk.
        This would be the inimitable Rucker's idea of a trilogy if not for
        the threatened appearance of "Limpware".
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.
TEA FROM AN EMPTY CUP Pat Cadigan
        Cadigan drinks tea and lives in Britain.
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.
CRYPTONOMICON Neal Stephenson
        Awe-inspiring creative power.
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:

ARTBYTE
        Cyberculture without the dotcoms.
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.
WIRED
        The first magazine of the 1990s that actually looked and acted
        as if it belonged in that decade.

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 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.
TRANSIT LOUNGE: WAKE-UP CALLS AND TRAVELERS' TALES FROM THE FUTURE Ashley Crawford and Ray Edgar, eds
        Compilation of the oddest articles from the Australian cyber-arts magazine
        21*C. Introduction by William Gibson.
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.