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For a long time I thought I really loved the cyberpunk genre. But I kept reading story after story by different cyberpunk authors and found them mediocre and cl
by keiferski 1y ago
For a long time I thought I really loved the cyberpunk genre. But I kept reading story after story by different cyberpunk authors and found them mediocre and cliche at best. The closest and best I could find was J. G. Ballard, who doesn’t really qualify as cyberpunk in a strict sense.
It was at that point that I realized: I’m mostly just interested in Gibson, not in whatever self-labels as in the genre.
- Apocryphon 1y agoI always wondered if Ballard is the British Philip K. Dick / Dick is the American Ballard.
- keiferski 1y agoBallard is much, much more grounded in his stories, and I wouldn’t describe even his most outlandish ones as sci-fi. I actually think a lot of his writing is a bit dry and much prefer Gibson in that sense. PKD on the other hand has much more experimentation and crazy hallucinogenic stuff going on. Both are great and worth reading though, for sure.