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Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986)
- theshrike79 1y agoThis book and the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG ignited my love for Cyberpunk in general when I was a kid and it hasn't waned since :)
- loudmax 1y agoI must be a few years older than you are. It was the original Cyberpunk (set in 2013, published in 1988) that did it for me. One of the things I remember about the game was that it came with a suggested book and film list. Reading all those books, and tracking down the recommended films was something of a quest for me and my friends. That last part sounds trivial, but if your local video rental store didn't happen to have a copy of 1982's art-house weirdo indie film Liquid Sky, it was a real challenge.
- programd 1y agoLiquid Sky soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UxwohjhHw&list=PL9F0ACA6019B4F227 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UxwohjhHw&list=PL9F0ACA601... Synth genius. I actually have it on vinyl.
- Lio 1y agoTo my shame I'd never heard of that film before but the whole thing is availble on YouTube for free https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyIhqT5bkEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyIhqT5bkEM
- grantmuller 1y agoYes! and Shadowrun! I remember just binging William Gibson after that, until Johnny Mnemonic, Hackers (the movie), and Strange Days, came out. What a great decade.
- theshrike79 1y agoShadowrun's world is in my top5 favourite RPG worlds ever But the system... A Physical Adept rolling like 42 d6's is just redonkulous :D
- antod 1y agoWhen The Matrix came out and before I saw it, I thought it was a Shadowrun aware reference to cyberspace rather than the twist of it being 'reality'.
- Michelangelo11 1y ago> Each story is Copyright (C) 2022 to its original authors, and all rights are reserved. The book is not public domain, nor is it Creative Commons. How is this "free online edition" distinct from piracy, in that case?
- michaelbuckbee 1y agoIt'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".
- wat10000 1y agoIt’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.
- mindcrime 1y agoI think it's normal for the publisher to hold those rights (perhaps shared with the original authors, depending on the details of their agreements), so possibly all that would have been required here would be for the publisher to approve doing this. Or maybe Rucker and all of the other authors are friends, and keep in touch, and he just literally called all of the up and said "Hey, can I post Mirrorshades online for posterity?" and they all agreed. Who knows?
- Filligree 1y agoBut it’s a published work. I wouldn’t expect the author to have rights to post it.
- mindcrime 1y agoNot by default, no. But it seems entirely reasonable that he may have approached the original publisher, requested permission to post this, and received said permission. Considering that the print book has been out of print for some time, and given that the linked page does emphasize the copyright status of the works, this feels like the most likely scenario to me.
- aphrax 1y agoRudy Rucker - that's a name I've not heard in a while. I still have a copy of White Light kicking about, not sure I understood it mind you...
- mwexler 1y agoThis 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.
- benji-york 1y agoThe Information Society song "Mirrorshades" would pair well with this.
- hungryhobbit 1y agoAbsolutely brilliant collection of stories from some really great authors!
- celticninja 1y agoIf you are looking for a recent anthology of cyberpunk you could do worse than rewired Rewired: The Post-cyberpunk Anthology Some great stories in there and no bad ones at all. IMO
- patrickscoleman 1y agoI recently picked up Mirrorshades and The Big Book of Cyberpunk (edited by Jared Shurin) [1] Will check this one out too! [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700576/the-big-book-of-cyberpunk-by-jared-shurin/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700576/the-big-book...
- celticninja 1y agoThanks, picked up the big book, but I got it as 2 volumes. So not quite so big perhaps
- mindcrime 1y agoThanks for the recommendation. I just ordered a copy of "The Big Book of Cyberpunk".
- staticman2 1y agoDoes 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?
- throwawayoldie 1y agoUnfortunately for all of us, it turns out that cyberpunk dystopias are a lot more fun to read about than to live in.
- rtkwe 1y agoAll the corporate take over and impunity, none of the advanced cybernetics.
- shortrounddev2 1y ago* Dense, walkable cities * No red tape stopping people from opening small businesses * Cheap medical procedures available on demand * Lax immigration rules allowing the free flow of the labor market Idk just sounds like Bangkok to me
- throwawayoldie 1y ago...note to self, move to Bangkok.
- ljf 1y agoA friend of mine works in Bangkok pretty regularly, so it ended up cheaper to rent an apartment than get hotels (plus he can leave clothes etc behind.) A nicely sizes 2 double bed apt is £450 a month all in including utilities - plus a pool and huge roof terrace shared with the other people there - looks great. If you can get a visa to work there, and have the cash, you can have an amazing life out there for sure.
- lordhumphrey 1y agoI was curious so had a quick look at the average monthly salary in Thailand, which apparently comes to ~350 GBP. Your friend's rental price is humongous. Thai HN users - what do you all think of this behaviour? What's the price of a nice apartment which doesn't have a pool and huge roof terrace, I wonder?
- perilunar 1y ago400 Boys by Marc Laidlaw was turned into an episode of Love, Death & Robots (volume 4) — released this year on Netflix.
- DoneWithAllThat 1y agoAnd is perhaps best known as the writer behind the Half-Life story.
- sukhavati 1y agoI got the UK version with foil cover to make the “mirrorshades” shiny and I love it so much. One of the definitive anthologies of the genre
- Lio 1y agoYep me too. Great to see it freely availible online. IMHO by far the stangest, most mind bending story in it isn't really cybperpunk though but it's still flipping brilliant. Petra by Greg Bear. It's about what happens when God dies... https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/HTML/#calibre_link-28 https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/HTML/#calibre_link-2...
- OhMeadhbh 1y agoYeah... Petra haunts me still, 40 years after reading it.
- keepamovin 1y agoYes! I had that one too. Remembering it and the cover was what prompted me to post.
- OhMeadhbh 1y agoGernsback 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.
- vessenes 1y agoI 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.
- OhMeadhbh 1y agoYup. 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.
- vessenes 1y agoI mean you could just click "bulk inference rates" and wait for cheap inference time to reify your avatar message to your kids.. I like going back to the 60s where a lot of futuristic scenarios come complete with magnetic tape storage.
- PortableCode 1y agoalso available in mobi and epub formats (for Kindle and other ebook readers): https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/mirrorshades.epub https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/mirrorshades.epub https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/mirrorshades.mobi https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/mirrorshades.mobi
- solomonb 1y agoI just checked for my copy of this and its missing. : ( Great book. I like seeing how expansive the original cyberpunk was. I love William Gibson (and Bladerunner) but modern cyberpunk is but a hollow shell of Gibson's aesthetic.
- grantmuller 1y agoI still have my faded paperback copy of this book, from 1986. I pulled it down off the shelf and got a jolt of nostalgia, thinking about reading it when I was kid and just being blown away by such a weird vision of the future. The cover was neat, the shades on were actually mirrored.
- lemonberry 1y agoCan'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.
- shmerl 1y agoCheck the Neuromancer trilogy.
- ahazred8ta 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives - the genre has had its ups and downs since its high point. Note Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End.
- oliyoung 1y agoTo 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.
- 4ggr0 1y agojust ordered a physical copy from 1994, excited to read the stories :) what are y'alls recommendations for cyberpunk-y books? mine are, • Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash • Daniel Suarez - Daemon • Daniel Suarez - Delta-V • Shamus Young - Free Radical niche tip for german-understanding people is 'Reda El Arbi - [empfindungsfæhig]'. didn't finish Neuromancer yet, but i gotta start over because it's been too long.
- kpgraham 1y agoThe first cyberpunk novel I read was True Names by Rudy Rucker. John Shirley has been called 'patient zero of cyberpunk' for his novel Eclipse. (I published a collection of Cyberpunk stories called Error Message Eyes Release 3.0 and it will be a free download on Kindle on August 24th. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5CCRRSB https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5CCRRSB I apologize for the blatant self promotion.)
- KineticLensman 1y agoThe True Names I remember was by Vernor Vinge [0]. Cory Doctorow riffed on it in 2008. But not Rudy R, as far as I know. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names
- riffraff 1y agoI didn't particularly enjoy neuromancer. I love the world building and the subject but I realized after a few books I just don't like Gibson's style, I struggle to get through the reading. But! If you like it, the rest of the sprawl trilogy is just as good, and the bridge trilogy is probably better.
- vessenes 1y agoAnd Blue Ant is required reading for modern marketing. Also its awesome
- zem 1y ago* alec effinger: when gravity fails * pat cadigan: synners * neal stephenson: the diamond age and two books that bring cyberpunk elements into a larger sphere * greg egan: zendegi. a dying engineer wants to make an AI version of himself to raise his son * c s friedman: this alien shore (beautiful meld of far future space based sf and cyberpunk)
- pessimizer 1y agoThis is from back when it was intellectual, and not a bunch of annoying people stapling circuit boards to their jackets and trying to be some sort of electrogoth. Content before the hollowing out. Another great one is the Semiotext(e) SF anthology. I can't believe I was such a sucker to think cyberpunk was going somewhere interesting. It peaked 5 minutes in. edit: in retrospect, I always felt that cyberpunk was just New Worlds going out with a (mostly American) bang.
- rudytheelder 1y agoI'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.
- joshka 1y agoThanks 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.
- nullc 1y agooh man, flashbacks to feeling slightly squicked at the sentient plastic sex toys. lol
- contingencies 1y agoThanks for your contributions to generations of thinkers.
- kragen 1y agoI 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?
- kragen 1y agoThe port, goddammit.
- mindcrime 1y agoOh 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.
- Mistletoe 1y agoWhat's the best way to read this? On my wide desktop it is obviously insane.
- slow_typist 1y agoMake your browser window narrower. Or try a tablet or an ebook reader, most of them should display html just fine. Or buy the printed book.
- zem 1y agoI have find memories of this anthology! got into cyberpunk via gibson's "burning chrome" and sterling's "a good old-fashioned future", and I still think short stories were the best of the genre. I remember them a lot more vividly than I do the novels.
- protocolture 1y agoNot strictly targeting Cyberpunk, but overlapping quite nicely is the "Armoured" anthology.
- spiritplumber 1y agoFormative for me. I read it in 1994ish when I was a smol.
- timonofathens 1y ago[dead]
- PeterStuer 1y agoHave the original 86 on my bookshelf, close to some of your 'ware' books. Thx for writing!
- mindcrime 1y agoSince 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. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider
- BizarroLand 1y agoDialta had said that the Future had come to America first, but had finally passed it by. Love the vague randomly applicable prophetic lines in Gibson's work.