Welcome to Postmarked From the Stars Top 100 Cyberpunk Books Checklist!
10 down, let's keep our list going! As we continue our deep dive into the neon-lit alleys and virtual realms of our curated list, we invite you to explore ten more captivating titles that define and expand the boundaries of cyberpunk literature. Whether you're here to rediscover beloved classics or uncover new narratives, this next set of books includes some of the best cyberpunk ever!
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Here's the 11-20 of our 100 books on the list!
1980 - Web of Angels - John M. Ford
Blurb: “Condemned to death at the age of nine for his ability to manipulate the Web, which links the many worlds of humanity, Grailer must go underground, hiding his skills and testing his powers.”
Product Link: Here’s a link to a new paperback edition.
1980 - City Come A Walkin’ - John Shirley
Blurb: “Stu Cole is struggling to keep his nightclub, Club Anesthesia, afloat in the face of mob harassment when he's visited by a manifestation of the city of San Francisco, crystallized into a single enigmatic being. This amoral superhero leads him on a terrifying journey through the rock and roll demimonde as they struggle to save the city.”
Product Link: Here’s a link to buy a used paperback edition.
1982 - Software - Rudy Rucker
Blurb: “Cobb Anderson created the "boppers," sentient robots that overthrew their human overlords. But now Cobb is just an aging alcoholic waiting to die, and the big boppers are threatening to absorb all of the little boppers--and eventually every human--into a giant, melded consciousness. Some of the little boppers aren't too keen on the idea, and a full-scale robot revolt is underway on the moon (where the boppers live). Meanwhile, bopper Ralph Numbers wants to give Cobb immortality by letting a big bopper slice up his brain and tape his "software." It seems like a good idea to Cobb.”
Product Link: Here’s a link to buy a used paperback edition.
1983 - Streetlethal - Steven Barnes
Blurb: “Disgusted with his life as enforcer for the Ortegas and their bloody empire of drugs, prostitution, and black market body parts, null-boxer Aubrey Knight realizes that he will have to become a hero if he is to walk away and still survive.”
Product Link: Here’s a link to buy a new paperback edition.
1984 - Dr. Adder - K.W. Jeter
Blurb: “Set in a future where the United States has largely broken down into reluctantly cooperating enclaves run by a wide variety of strongmen and warlords, with a veneer of government control that seems largely interested in controlling technology. Dr. Adder is an artist-surgeon, who modifies sexual organs of his patients to satisfy the weirdest of perversion; he is clearly depicted as a partly criminal, partly countercultural figure in a future Los Angeles.”
Product Link: We don’t have a Dr. Adder link at this time.
1984 - Frontera - Lewis Shiner
Blurb: “Ten years ago the world's governments collapsed, and now the corporations are in control. Houston's Pulsystems has sent an expedition to the lost Martian colony of Frontera to search for survivors. Reese, aging hero of the US space program, knows better. The colonists are not only alive, they have discovered a secret so devastating that the new rulers of Earth will stop at nothing to own it. Reese is equally desperate to use it for his own very personal agenda. But none of them have reckoned with Kane, tortured veteran of the corporate wars, whose hallucinatory voices are urging him to complete an ancient cycle of heroism and alter the destiny of the human race.”
Product Link: Here’s a link to a new paperback edition.
1984 - Neuromancer - William Gibson
Blurb: “Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer is a science fiction masterpiece--a classic that ranks as one of the twentieth century's most potent visions of the future.
Case was the sharpest data-thief in the matrix--until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace. Now a mysterious new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run at an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, a mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case is ready for the adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind's digital future--a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.”
Product Link: Here’s a link to buy a new paperback edition. Here’s a rare 1990 Grafton used edition. Here’s a Richard Berry cover edition.
1984 - Schismatrix - Bruce Sterling
Blurb: “Schismatrix Plus, is Bruce Sterling's new trade paperback. For the first time in one volume: every word Bruce Sterling has ever written on the Shapers-Mechanists Universe.
In the last decade, Sterling has emerged a pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction. Now Ace Books is proud to offer Sterling's stunning world of the Schismatrix--where Shaper revolutionaries struggle against aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of man's destiny. This volume includes the classic full-length novel, Schismatrix, plus thousands of words of mind-bending short fiction.”
Product Link: Here’s a link to buy a new Schismatrix Plus paperback edition.
1985 - Eclipse - John Shirley
Blurb: “In a near-future dystopia, a limited nuclear strike has destroyed portions of Europe, bringing the remaining nation-cities under control of the Second Alliance, a frighteningly fundamentalist international security corporation with designs on world domination. The only defense against the Alliance's creeping totalitarianism is the New Resistance, a polyglot team of rebels that includes Rick Rickenharp, a retro-rocker whose artistic and political sensibilities intertwine, and John Swenson, a mole who has infiltrated the Alliance.
As the fight continues and years progress, so does the technology and brutality of the Alliance... but ordinary people like the damaged visionary Smoke, Claire Rimpler on FirStep, and Dance Torrence and his fellow urban warriors on Earth are bound together by the truth and a single purpose: to keep the darkness from becoming humankind's Total Eclipse -- or die trying!
John Shirley was cyberpunk's patient zero, first locus of the virus, certifiably virulent."-William Gibson. An omnibus of all three novels-revised by the author-of the prophetic, still frighteningly relevant cyberpunk masterpieces: Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, and Eclipse Corona. With an introduction by Richard Kadrey and biographical note by Bruce Sterling.
Product Link: Here’s a link to buy a new paperback edition.