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 August 1996)

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 and WETWARE Rudy Rucker
	Best-known novels of deranged math-professor/hacker/cyberpunk.
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.
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.
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

MONDO 2000.
	"Cyberpunk" as glossy West Coast fashion magazine.
	It Had To Happen.
bOING bOING  
	Ultra-happening cyberslacker antizine from the heart of
	digitized desktop bohemia.
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.
SCIENCE FICTION EYE
	More-or-less official lit-crit organ of cyberpunk SF and assorted 
	fellow-travellers.  Very sporadic.
SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES
	Dull gray academic rag seized in startling coup by wacky post-
	modernists.  Now almost readable!
WIRED  
	The first magazine of the 1990s that actually looks and acts
	as if it belongs in this decade.  Now in its fourth year!
21*C
 	Australian cyberculture weighs in with a big glossy artzine.

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 by 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.
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.