There has been a huge amount of renewed interest in cyberpunk as a literary form in my collective subconscious. Part of this is the resurgence in the RPG community with the announcement and social media surrounding 2077, but part of it is the time. Several of the most popular Cyberpunk novels were set in the next few years. Likewise Cyberpunk the RPG was set in 2013 and 2020 respectively. So we are now literally living in the future. Several people have asked me lately what are the best examples of the form in my opinion. So rather than answer those inquiries separately I’ve come up with this list.
Now these are my opinions. These are the novels that spoke to me clearly, succinctly and loudly. I understand you might have loved Book X, but it didn’t speak to me. I do not consider this a listing of quality, sales, or anything else. This is just what I liked most of all and what moved me as a writer.
#10 Heavy Weather In retrospect I think this is Bruce Sterling’s best cyberpunk novel. More accessible than Schismatrix, less oblique than The Artificial Kid. Heavy Weather succeeds and works on many levels. Hs other work Islands in the Net was a very close #11.
#9 Gorgon Child Steven Barnes is sometimes underrated as a writer. This novel is important to me for a couple of reasons. One, Aubry Knight is a really flawed character and he grows and develops on many levels. This work very much speaks to the idea of family, sexuality, and gender identity. Neither Streetlethal before it or Firedance afterwards comes close to the creative whole presented here.
#8 The Glass Hammer This is Jeter’s only true cyberpunk novel in my opinion. I think it is also his best novel. His other work is much more late New Wave. The spiritual, technological, and intellectual ideas here are fantastic.
#7 City Come A-Walkin’ So much has been written about John Shirley that even writing a review is daunting. This book sets the prose style and standards for the entire genre. The writer here is musical, literary, and cinematic in his most influential if not most popular work.
#6 HardWired The opposite of When Gravity Fails, HardWired is the quintessential American cyberpunk novel. All wrapped up with the imagery of the American west and the iconic characters of Cowboy, Sarah, the Dodger, and more.
#5 Trouble & Her Friends This book came very late to the party and in a metaphorical sense it arrived with a bottle of whiskey in her hand and her shirt off screaming, “let’s party!” Melissa Scott created not just a great story but a real world that is fully inhabited by her characters. Also for the first time there was a real reason and subculture behind the idea of interface and the developing technology. Why would anyone in their right mind get a plug drilled into their head? Read this book, and you will know.
#4 When Gravity Fails This story not only has a fantastic set of characters it has a fantastic setting. The book is incredibly well constructed and stands the test of time. This is also the book that ripped the idea of cyberpunk literature out of the American experience for me and made it global. Effinger’s voice is sorely missed in the worlds of speculative fiction.
#3 Neuromancer There is no substitute and I doubt a more reviewed novel in Science Fiction. I don’t have a great deal to add, just a few notes. This book is stunning in it’s complexity and subtlety. Furthermore, taken within it’s historical context there is no book more groundbreaking since Stranger In a Strange Land.
#2 The Long Run This is one of the few cyberpunk novels ever written that is both part of a larger body of work, but stands completely alone stylistically. I’ve considered this to be one of the great caper novels and the best chase novel I’ve ever read. The characters are incredibly evocative and memorable, the pace is relentless, and the ending is perfect.
#1 Synners There is a startling symmetry to Pat Cadigan’s incredible story of love, sex, music, and revolution. I cannot describe how deeply this novel affected me. Let me just say that this work still informs and illuminates my internal monolog more than twenty years after I first read it.
Snow Crash doesn’t make the list, and I don’t know why people rave about it so much. I liked the book when I read it, but I’ve never been able to read this a second time. For some reason the ending just falls flat to me. The first half of the book is stunning and then it just fades. As for other books that are commonly included on these lists that I think are not cyberpunk, Shockwave Rider, The Stars My Destination, Tower to the Sky, Dr. Adder. These books are seminal, to be sure. However each of them is firmly rooted in other genres of SF. I think that each of these is much more a part of the New Wave than cyberpunk. The Stars My Destination predates even the New Wave and while it may be the best SF novel ever written, and while cyberpunk might never have happened without it, this is most definitely not cyberpunk.
Ross Winn is a freelance writer, dad, and chauffeur who lives and works in Clearwater Florida. His first novel is Never One to Quit: A Novel About Women and it isn’t cyberpunk either, but it is available on Kindle, iBooks, Nook, and Amazon.
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