I'm the one who put MIRROR SHADES online for free. All the others agreed. And why would we go asking for permission? We're cyberpunks! You might like to check out out my story anthology with Bruce Sterling, TRANSREAL CYBERPUNK. Existing in audio as well. And my recent JUICY GHOSTS novel, about toppling an evil US president.
Thanks for this Rudy. I remember enjoying reading the Ware Tetralogy as a teen in the 90s. I wonder how well it holds up today. Might have to put that on my re-read list.
I appreciate it. Are you thinking about applying a Creative Commons license to it so other people can keep it online for free after you're as dead as a TV channel that's the color of the sky over the harbor?
Rudy, thanks for putting this up! I have a paper copy in my library, but digital is great, and now the panopticon AIs can admit in public they've read it, rather than secretly torrented it in their training data. Immortality of a sort.
Question - is Bruce still writing? Or at least theorizing / predicting / critiquing anywhere? If I think about his near term spec fiction from the 90s through 2000s, it was truly excellent. I'd be interested to hear what he's thinking about now.
So cool! I pasted this discussion thread into Grok 4 Heavy and asked it to markdown a table of all recommends made here, their years, detail and who suggested. Hope this gist is useful for all here looking to read:
Oh man, assuming this is really Rudy, how fucking cool is that?!?? Rudy Rucker posting on HN! Totally gnarly.
Mr. Rucker, if that really is you, I hope you decide to hang around and participate in this little community a bit. It's a cool place (most of the time) and cyberpunk is perpetually a favored topic.
This one wasn't the one that converted me (Gibson ftw) but Mirrorshades expanded what I thought the genre could be.
Not every story is a winner, but enough try to stretch a bit that it's worth the read.
Helps to put your mind in the time, just before the 90s, before The Matrix but after Blade Runner, before "the metaverse" but after "the net" and "going online" were starting to enter conversations.
Does the "post-cyberpunk" in the title imply it's not about low-life people in a high tech environment but instead about the less criminally inclined, or do it mean something else?
Gernsback Continuum is still my favorite story since Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Physical reality seems pretty solid, but social reality is certainly "flexible." And all the tech I work with is a continuum of different ages smushed together; javascript client apps embedding COBOL apps complied to wasm bytecodes. SQL databases whose schemas predate some of the developers working on the apps that use them. Instruction Set Architectures that were invented when we still thought Raymond Lowey-esque fins and gills were the height of material design.
In a bit of synchronicity, I found my copy of Islands in the Net last week and am re-reading it after 35 years. It's pretty interesting to see which bits Bruce Sterling accurately predicted and which were a bit off the mark.
I think he was generally just excellent at getting near term predictions right and interesting. To pick a small one of many there's a moment in Heavy Weather where they have trouble with their PBX, and he mentions that it's basically a shrunk-to-digital 20th century phone company in a box, and so it requires negotiation, rebooting, kicking, etc. Love that take on modern software layers.
Yup. I noticed a line in Islands in the Net where one of the characters waits until evening to make a phone call when the rates are low. I had a chuckle, but it didn't detract from the rest of the story that was definitely good. Though I should talk to my offspring about making sure they only call me in the evenings so the long distance fees aren't exorbitant, just to see if they try to take away my car keys.
Can't believe I'm a reader and didn't realize this was a book genre. For some reason I always associated it with comic books, graphic novels, and movies. Not that there's anything wrong with those mediums. I'm just more of a book guy.
All of this is to say, these and some of other recommendations in this thread are recommendations I didn't know I needed.
HN isn't perfect, but neither am I. I really appreciate the breadth of topics and interests. Big shoutout to PG for starting it, to Dang and all of the other moderators, and to everyone that contributes. I've learned a lot over the years.
They say to never be the smartest person in the room. I'm not even in the top 100 here and totally fine with it.
To be honest, I'm a little envious of you. The tradition of cyberpunk in books is deep and extensive, and you'll start seeing how the books written in the late 70s and 80s are still SO influential today.
Since we're talking Cyberpunk here, I'll throw in a recommendation for a novel that isn't widely recognized as "Cyberpunk" per-se, but is probably "proto-Cyberpunk" at least. That novel being The Shockwave Rider[1] by John Brunner.
It has some elements in common with Cyberpunk and is just a plain fun read regardless of what genre label you apply.
It's hosted on one of the author's sites. The collection itself is (as far as I can tell) out of print. It's falling through the cracks of "too complicated for a publisher to figure the rights out of" and "not lucrative enough for anyone to care".
It’s possible that it’s being distributed with permission of the copyright holders. Given the number of different people involved that seems kind of unlikely, but “free” doesn’t have to imply a permissive license.
He drew hard on his cigarette. Annoyance flickered across his face, like an artefact in the poorly-compressed bootleg movies he sold to his fellow low-lifes at The Pig and Drum.
Some Corpo-type, no doubt. Can't help seeing something good scroll across their feed tube without calling Legal.
He'd worked with a few in the past. Not bad all-in-all, at least they paid on time. That said, he could think of few he'd drink with.
He toyed with the idea of leaving a bitchy comment. Probably get downvoted to oblivion.
The dogs in the yard barked at a passing vehicle.
Irritated by the animal noise and the corpo whining, he thrashed something out. Pulling another cigarette from his pack, he hit "reply".
It's free to read, not free to use. As it's from one of the involved authors, they probably got permission for this release. The problem with piracy is lack of permission/consent, not the act itself.
People are making books freely available all the time, even those they sell on other platforms. Nothing wrong with this.
Consider the popular cliche, "free as in beer vs free as in speech".
The rights copyright gives you, briefly, includes: copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work. What suggests there is piracy is going on?
In 1986, it was unlikely that the original contract for the book mentioned anything about electronic rights. As it was a reprint anthology, the rights purchased would have only covered the use in the anthology as long as it was in print. Which means that to post the book online, Rucker would have to contact the individual contributors and get new permissions. Did he do that? I make a guess that he did not. It is not clear from what is stated here.
Readit News
Question - is Bruce still writing? Or at least theorizing / predicting / critiquing anywhere? If I think about his near term spec fiction from the 90s through 2000s, it was truly excellent. I'd be interested to hear what he's thinking about now.
https://gist.github.com/o0101/a40d09dab60f69a5f37cbcb751fdfd...
Mr. Rucker, if that really is you, I hope you decide to hang around and participate in this little community a bit. It's a cool place (most of the time) and cyberpunk is perpetually a favored topic.
Not every story is a winner, but enough try to stretch a bit that it's worth the read.
Helps to put your mind in the time, just before the 90s, before The Matrix but after Blade Runner, before "the metaverse" but after "the net" and "going online" were starting to enter conversations.
Rewired: The Post-cyberpunk Anthology
Some great stories in there and no bad ones at all. IMO
Will check this one out too!
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700576/the-big-book...
In a bit of synchronicity, I found my copy of Islands in the Net last week and am re-reading it after 35 years. It's pretty interesting to see which bits Bruce Sterling accurately predicted and which were a bit off the mark.
All of this is to say, these and some of other recommendations in this thread are recommendations I didn't know I needed.
HN isn't perfect, but neither am I. I really appreciate the breadth of topics and interests. Big shoutout to PG for starting it, to Dang and all of the other moderators, and to everyone that contributes. I've learned a lot over the years.
They say to never be the smartest person in the room. I'm not even in the top 100 here and totally fine with it.
It has some elements in common with Cyberpunk and is just a plain fun read regardless of what genre label you apply.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider
How is this "free online edition" distinct from piracy, in that case?
Some Corpo-type, no doubt. Can't help seeing something good scroll across their feed tube without calling Legal.
He'd worked with a few in the past. Not bad all-in-all, at least they paid on time. That said, he could think of few he'd drink with.
He toyed with the idea of leaving a bitchy comment. Probably get downvoted to oblivion.
The dogs in the yard barked at a passing vehicle.
Irritated by the animal noise and the corpo whining, he thrashed something out. Pulling another cigarette from his pack, he hit "reply".
The opposite. Consider Harlan Ellison's views on piracy: "If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump."
Please tell me that is a real place! :=)
People are making books freely available all the time, even those they sell on other platforms. Nothing wrong with this.
The rights copyright gives you, briefly, includes: copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work. What suggests there is piracy is going on?