| Search | About | Preferences | Interact | Help | |
| 150 million books. 1 search engine. | ||
books tagged “Cyberpunk”
books tagged “Cyberpunk”
›› Find signed collectible books by ''
English
-
All Tomorrow's Partiesby William GibsonISBN 0425190447 (0-425-19044-7)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'All Tomorrow's Parties'Book summary:Although Colin Laney (from Gibson's earlier novel Idoru) lives in a cardboard box, he has the power to change the world. Thanks to an experimental drug that he received during his youth, Colin can see "nodal points" in the vast streams of data that make up the worldwide computer network. Nodal points are rare but significant events in history that forever change society, even though they might not be recognizable as such when they occur. Colin isn't quite sure what's going to happen when society reaches this latest nodal point, but he knows it's going to be big. And he knows it's going to occur on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, which has been home to a sort of SoHo-esque shantytown since an earthquake rendered it structurally unsound to carry traffic.
Colin sends Barry Rydell (last seen in Gibson's novel Virtual Light) to the bridge to find a mysterious killer who reveals himself only by his lack of presence on the Net. Barry is also entrusted with a strange package that seems to be the home of Rei Toi, the computer-generated "idol singer" who once tried to "marry" a human rock star (she's also from Idoru). Barry and Rei Toi are eventually joined by Barry's old girlfriend Chevette (from Virtual Light) and a young boy named Silencio who has an unnatural fascination with watches. Together this motley assortment of characters holds the key to stopping billionaire Cody Harwood from doing whatever it is that will make sure he still holds the reigns of power after the nodal point takes place.
Although All Tomorrow's Parties includes characters from two of Gibson's earlier novels, it's not a direct sequel to either. It's a stand-alone book that is possibly Gibson's best solo work since Neuromancer. In the past, Gibson has let his brilliant prose overwhelm what were often lackluster (or nonexistent) story lines, but this book has it all: a good story, electric writing, and a group of likable and believable characters who are out to save the world ... kind of. The ending is not quite as supercharged as the rest of the novel and so comes off a bit flat, but overall this is definitely a winner. --Craig E. Engler [via]
-
Altered Carbonby Richard MorganISBN 0345457684 (0-345-45768-4)
Softcover, Del Rey
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Altered Carbon'Book summary:In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a persons consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or sleeve ) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.
Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats existence as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning. . . .
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via] -
Art Song: The Marriage of Music and Poetryby Barbara MeisterISBN 0893416355 (0-89341-635-5)
Hardcover, Hollowbrook Pub
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Art Song: The Marriage of Music and Poetry'More editions of Art Song: The Marriage of Music and Poetry:
-
Back on the Streetby Stuart Moore, Darick Robertson, Rodney Ramos, Warren EllisISBN 1563894459 (1-56389-445-9)
Softcover, DC Comics
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Back on the Street'Book summary:Warren Ellis (whose recent work includes the excellent The Authority) is a fine comics writer. Spider Jerusalem, his tortured journalist protagonist, is a wonderful creation. Back on the Street is the first in the Transmetropolitan series and essential as an introduction to Spider and his world. Preacher's Garth Ennis introduces the book, rightly praising "the finest, blackest humour, and the purest hate, and a sense of justice hissed through gritted teeth". If the message is sometimes a little heavily, a little clumsily overbearing, this does not detract too much from a great story. Ellis has produced a fine comic series in Transmetropolitan. This is a future classic.
The scenario goes something like this. Spider Jerusalem left the City ages ago and grew an awful lot of hair up on a mountain. The City was just too corrupt, too sinful, too unbearable a place for a journalist with a heightened, if awry, sense of what's right, what's wrong. Then his editor calls. Spider still owes him two books. A contract from way back when. And if he doesn't come up with the goods there will be consequences. Trouble is, Spider can only write when he's in the City, hasn't written a thing since he left. He doesn't want to go back but he has to write, has to go back. So he returns to the trouble and the turmoil, back to the mess that feeds him as a writer and gets himself a story. A punk he used to know, Fred Christ, is causing trouble. Fred is the leader of the Transients (humans knowingly infused with alien genes) and he wants them to have their own land and is ready to lead a rebellion to achieve that end. The authorities, obviously, see things differently. And Spider sees through both group's hypocrisies... --Mark Thwaite [via]
More editions of Back on the Street:
-
Blade Runnerby Philip K. DickISBN 0345350472 (0-345-35047-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Blade Runner'Book summary:A principios del siglo XXI, la poderosa Tyrell Corporation desarrolló un nuevo tipo de robot llamado Nexus, un ser virtualmente idéntico al hombre y conocido como Replicante. Los Replicantes Nexus-6 eran superiores en fuerza y agilidad, y al menos iguales en inteligencia, a los ingenieros de genética que los crearon. En el espacio exterior, los Replicantes fueron usados como trabajadores esclavos en la arriesgada exploración y colonización de otros planetas. Después de la sangrienta rebelión de un equipo de combate de Nexus-6 en una colonia sideral, los Replicantes fueron declarados proscritos en la Tierra bajo pena de muerte. Brigadas de policías especiales, tenían órdenes de tirar a matar al ver a cualquier Replicante invasor.
This novel hooks the reader to such extent that he comes the point of doubting whether what hes reading is really happening or its only a part of Dicks pseudo-reality. In this way, the androids of Do Android Dream on Electric sheeps? In Blade Runner called replicants. [via] 
Broken Angels: A Takeshi Kovacs Novelby Richard MorganISBN 0345457714 (0-345-45771-4)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Broken Angels: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel'Book summary:Critics have compared Richard Morgan's first novel, Altered Carbon, to the classic hardboiled fiction of Raymond Chandler. The comparison doesn't accurately describe Morgan's second novel, Broken Angels. Morgan's prose never approaches Chandler's metaphoric excess, and Morgan's antihero, Takeshi Kovacs, doesn't wisecrack nearly as often as Chandler's hero, Philip Marlowe. Also, Kovacs's far-future universe is considerably darker than Marlowe's noir world. In Kovacs's universe, high-tech implants called "stacks" record memory and personality; this means soldiers can be sent to their deaths, have their stacks implanted in new bodies, and be sent to their deaths again, and again, and again. Generals needn't quibble about wasting lives in massacres or nuclear explosions. The slaughtered soldiers will soon be back in action--unless their stacks aren't recovered. Then their consciousness will go mad, isolated in an indestructible, inescapable virtual reality. The proper term for the Takeshi Kovacs novels isn't "hardboiled." It's "brutal."
The Martians disappeared long ago, but they left behind their star gates, which have allowed humanity to spread across the galaxy--and bring warfare to the stars. As Broken Angels opens, Takeshi Kovacs is a lieutenant in humankind's most feared mercenary company, but rumors of an astonishing archaelogical discovery inspire his desertion. Humans have never found a Martian starship until, perhaps, now. If the rumors are true, and the ruthless Kovacs can take possession of the unprecedented relic, he will make his fortune. But if he fails in his quest, he may find himself imprisoned in high-tech hell for eternity. --Cynthia Ward [via]
More editions of Broken Angels: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel:
-
Burning Chromeby William GibsonISBN 0060539828 (0-06-053982-8)
Softcover, Harpercollins
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Burning Chrome'Book summary:When "Burning Chrome," the title story in William Gibson's first short story collection, appeared, it grabbed readers by the collar and shook them up a bit. Science fiction in the late '70s had grown a little bit stale and, worse, safe. "Burning Chrome" offered a fresh look at a future that was gritty, real, and more than a little dangerous. These stories brought high tech out of antiseptic university laboratories and corporate boardrooms and put it in the streets and alleyways where people found their own uses for it. Sometimes those uses were even legal.
The philosophy of cyberpunk, the movement that Gibson's early books kicked off, is most explicitly stated in "The Gernsbach Continuum," with its rejection of the '30s ideal of a future of flying cars and shining cities. But the real meat of this collection is found in those stories where Gibson involves us with the people who inhabit his world. The technical boy of "Johnny Mnemonic" and the thief-turned-game-player of "Dogfight" (cowritten with Michael Swanwick) would be right at home on the same streets. Most intense and more enigmatic is the recording engineer of "The Winter Market," who is overwhelmingly attracted to and repulsed by the greatest artist he ever worked with. Still, "Burning Chrome," with its tale of vengeance and high-stakes theft, remains the centerpiece of this collection. Read it and you will know why William Gibson became and remains one of the top writers in science fiction. --Greg L. Johnson [via]
-
The Butterfingers Angel; Mary & Joseph; Herod the Nut; the Slaughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Treeby William GibsonISBN 0822201682 (0-8222-0168-2)
Softcover, Dramatist's Play Service
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Butterfingers Angel; Mary & Joseph; Herod the Nut; the Slaughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree'Book summary:THE STORY: Dealing with the story of Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus from a fresh and richly creative point of view, the author combines a series of deftly constructed short scenes, traditional Christmas music, and often antic characterizations into a wholly original theatre piece. The flow of the action follows the Biblical recounting, but is enhanced by a tree, a sheep and a donkey who talk (and most amusingly); a beguiling Mary who had heretofore decided that men and marriage were not for her; a suddenly cautious Joseph who now contends that he is too old for his intended (having earlier scoffed at Mary for expressing the same thought); and a flustered boy-angel who directs the action from a promptbook and manages to get only the most strangled, bleating sounds from his trumpet. But, through all the lively and resourceful happenings, the true significance of the occasion is never lost, and the underlying mood and spirit of reverence is, if anything, enhanced and made new by the distinctive approach of this joyful and unique retelling. [via]
More editions of The Butterfingers Angel; Mary & Joseph; Herod the Nut; the Slaughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree:
City of Golden Shadowby Tad WilliamsISBN 0886777100 (0-88677-710-0)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'City of Golden Shadow'More editions of City of Golden Shadow:
-
Count Zeroby William GibsonISBN 0441013678 (0-441-01367-8)
Softcover, Ace Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Count Zero'Book summary:Turner, corporate mercenary, wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him for a mission more dangerous than the one he's recovering from: Maas-Neotek's chief of R&D is defecting. Turner is the one assigned to get him out intact, along with the biochip he's perfected. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties--some of whom aren't remotely human.
Bobby Newmark is entirely human: a rustbelt data-hustler totally unprepared for what comes his way when the defection triggers war in cyberspace. With voodoo on the Net and a price on his head, Newmark thinks he's only trying to get out alive. A stylish, streetsmart, frighteningly probable parable of the future and sequel to Neuromancer [via]
-
Cryptonomiconby Neal StephensonISBN 0060512806 (0-06-051280-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Cryptonomicon'Book summary:Neal Stephenson enjoys cult status among science fiction fans and techie types thanks to Snow Crash, which so completely redefined conventional notions of the high-tech future that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if his cyberpunk classic was big, Cryptonomicon is huge... gargantuan... massive, not just in size (a hefty 918 pages including appendices) but in scope and appeal. It's the hip, readable heir to Gravity's Rainbow and the Illuminatus trilogy. And it's only the first of a proposed series--for more information, read our interview with Stephenson.
Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods--World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, cryptanalyst extraordinaire, and gung ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe. They're part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception. Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit's strange workings to Waterhouse. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first.... Of course, to observe is not its real duty--we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed.... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious."
All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes--inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe--team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties.
Cryptonomicon is vintage Stephenson from start to finish: short on plot, but long on detail so precise it's exhausting. Every page has a math problem, a quotable in-joke, an amazing idea, or a bit of sharp prose. Cryptonomicon is also packed with truly weird characters, funky tech, and crypto--all the crypto you'll ever need, in fact, not to mention all the computer jargon of the moment. A word to the wise: if you read this book in one sitting, you may die of information overload (and starvation). --Therese Littleton [via]
-
Crystal Expressby Bruce SterlingISBN 0441124232 (0-441-12423-2)
Softcover, Putnam Berkley
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Crystal Express' -
The Diamond Ageby Neal StephensonISBN 0553380966 (0-553-38096-6)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Diamond Age'Book summary:John Percival Hackworth is a nanotech engineer on the rise when he steals a copy of "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" for his daughter Fiona. The primer is actually a super computer built with nanotechnology that was designed to educate Lord Finkle-McGraw's daughter and to teach her how to think for herself in the stifling neo-Victorian society. But Hackworth loses the primer before he can give it to Fiona, and now the "book" has fallen into the hands of young Nell, an underprivileged girl whose life is about to change. [via]
More editions of The Diamond Age:
-
The Diamond Age/Or, Young Lady's Illustrated Primerby Neal StephensonISBN 0553573314 (0-553-57331-4)
Softcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Diamond Age : Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'Book summary:John Percival Hackworth is a nanotech engineer on the rise when he steals a copy of "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" for his daughter Fiona. The primer is actually a super computer built with nanotechnology that was designed to educate Lord Finkle-McGraw's daughter and to teach her how to think for herself in the stifling neo-Victorian society. But Hackworth loses the primer before he can give it to Fiona, and now the "book" has fallen into the hands of young Nell, an underprivileged girl whose life is about to change. [via]
More editions of The Diamond Age/Or, Young Lady's Illustrated Primer:
-
The Difference Engineby Bruce Sterling, William GibsonISBN 055329461X (0-553-29461-X)
Softcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Difference Engine'Book summary:A collaborative novel from the premier cyberpunk authors, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine takes us not forward but back, to an imagined 1885: the Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven, cybernetic engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine, and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. [via]
-
The Difference Engineby William GibsonISBN 055307346X (0-553-07346-X)
Hardcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Difference Engine'Book summary:A collaborative novel from the premier cyberpunk authors, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine takes us not forward but back, to an imagined 1885: the Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven, cybernetic engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine, and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. [via]
More editions of The Difference Engine:
-
Distractionby Bruce SterlingISBN 0553576399 (0-553-57639-9)
Softcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Distraction'Book summary:It's the year 2044, and America has gone to hell. A disenfranchised U.S. Air Force base has turned to highway robbery in order to pay the bills. Vast chunks of the population live nomadic lives fueled by cheap transportation and even cheaper computer power. Warfare has shifted from the battlefield to the global networks, and China holds the information edge over all comers. Global warming is raising sea level, which in turn is drowning coastal cities. And the U.S. government has become nearly meaningless. This is the world that Oscar Valparaiso would have been born into, if he'd actually been born instead of being grown in vitro by black market baby dealers. Oscar's bizarre genetic history (even he's not sure how much of him is actually human) hasn't prevented him from running one of the most successful senatorial races in history, getting his man elected by a whopping majority. But Oscar has put himself out of a job, since he'd only be a liability to his boss in Washington due to his problematic background. Instead, Oscar finds himself shuffled off to the Collaboratory, a Big Science pork barrel project that's run half by corruption and half by scientific breakthroughs. At first it seems to be a lose-lose proposition for Oscar, but soon he has his "krewe" whipped into shape and ready to take control of events. Now if only he can straighten out his love life and solve a worldwide crisis that no one else knows exists. --Craig E. Engler [via]
-
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?by Philip K. DickISBN 0345404475 (0-345-40447-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?'Book summary:Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a book that most people think they remember and almost always get more or less wrong. Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner took a lot from it, and threw a lot away. Wonderful in itself, the film is a flash thriller, whereas Dick's novel is a sober meditation. As we all know, bounty hunter Rick Deckard is stalking a group of androids who have returned from space with short life spans and murder on their minds--where Scott's Deckard was Harrison Ford, Dick's is a financially strapped municipal employee with bills to pay and a depressed wife. In a world where most animals have died, and pet keeping is a social duty, he can only afford a robot imitation, unless he gets a big financial break.
The genetically warped "chickenhead" John Isidore has visions of a tomb-world where entropy has finally won. And everyone plugs in to the spiritual agony of Mercer, whose sufferings for the sins of humanity are broadcast several times a day. Prefiguring the religious obsessions of Dick's last novels, this book asks dark questions about identity and altruism. After all, is it right to kill the killers just because Mercer says so? --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk [via]
More editions of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?:
-
Globalheadby Bruce SterlingISBN 0553562819 (0-553-56281-9)
Softcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Globalhead'Book summary:This second collection of short fiction by Bruce Sterling, set in such disparate environments as ancient Assyria and posthuman France, provides a stimulating and entertaining glimpse inside the "global head" of one of imaginative fiction's most exciting talents. [via]
-
A Good Old-Fashioned Futureby Bruce SterlingISBN 0553576429 (0-553-57642-9)
Softcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Good Old-Fashioned Future'Book summary:A Good Old-fashioned Future is a paperback collection of seven short stories by former cyberpunk guru turned sociocultural prognosticator Bruce Sterling. Most of the works here come with impressive pedigrees, ranging from a Hugo Award for "Bicycle Repairman" to Hugo nominations for "Maneki Neko" and "Taklamakan." Another piece, "Big Jelly," was cowritten by Sterling's fellow cyberpunk alum, Rudy Rucker.
These stories have a lot in common. They all take place in the near future, and most are action-oriented, involving colorful characters such as secret agents, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Mafioso's, and revolutionaries. But they are also personal tales that tend to focus on individuals rather than ideas, which makes them hit home more often than standard SF fare. The best of the bunch is probably "Taklamakan," a high-concept piece about two freelance spies sent to a central Asian desert called Taklamakan, where the Asian Sphere is doing some sort of secret research into space flight. "Bicycle Repairman" is set in the same world, but instead of in an Asian desert it takes place in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the spies in this story aren't the good guys. It's a less successful piece than "Taklamakan" but also a good read.
Not all of the stories in this collection have the edgy, this-is-what-tomorrow-will-be-like quality that typifies Sterling's best work. But even when Sterling isn't at his best he's entertaining, and A Good Old-Fashioned Future is certainly that. --Craig E. Engler [via]
More editions of A Good Old-Fashioned Future:
Hardwiredby Walter Jon WilliamsISBN 1597800627 (1-59780-062-7)
Softcover, Nightshade Book
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Hardwired'Book summary:Hardwired features high-tech thrills and unforgettable heroes in the great tradition of William Gibson's Neuromancer. According to Locus, Hardwired is Walter Jon Williams's "best book to date". [via]
More editions of Hardwired:
-
Heavy Weatherby Bruce SterlingISBN 055357292X (0-553-57292-X)
Softcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Heavy Weather'Book summary:Why hack computers when you can hack nature? Sterling's Storm Troupe lives in a post-greenhouse world ravaged by monster storms and finds itself hacking the ultimate storm: the F-6 tornado. No one in the Troupe, not even it's brilliant, driven leader, guesses the real nature of the F-6 or the shadowy forces unleashed in its twisting fury. Not until it is too late... [via]
-
Holy Fireby Bruce SterlingISBN 055357549X (0-553-57549-X)
Softcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Holy Fire'Book summary:In an era when life expectancies stretch 100 years or more and adhering to healthy habits is the only way to earn better medical treatments, ancient "post humans" dominate society with their ubiquitous wealth and power. By embracing the safe and secure, 94-year-old Mia Ziemann has lived a long and quiet life. Too quiet, as she comes to realize, for Mia has lost the creative drive and ability to love--the holy fire--of the young. But when a radical new procedure makes Mia young again, she has the chance to break free of society's cloying grasp. [via]
-
Idoruby William GibsonISBN 0425158640 (0-425-15864-0)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Idoru'Book summary:Colin Laney is a data analyst with a talent for seeing patterns, or nodes, as he calls them, in the flow of information that is cyberspace. Chia McKenzie is a young member of the fan club for the Japanese pop supergroup Lo/Rez. When a rumour involving the lead singer of Lo/Rez and an idoru, a Japanese virtual-reality singing idol, brings both Laney and Chia to Tokyo, the resulting web of events involves Russian criminals, Japanese schoolgirls, and illegal nanotechnology. And it's all set in a Tokyo that is literally growing and changing around the characters, rising from the rubble of a major earthquake.
Idoru is not William Gibson's best novel, but it is a good example of his primary strength: creating worlds that don't so much show the future as expose the world we already live in, a world of computers, information, mega-corporations, pop art, tabloids, and rock & roll. Idoru works not only on its own terms but also as a set-up for Gibson's next novel, All Tomorrow's Parties. Gibson broadens his perspective by including a wider range of characters than in his earlier novels, but mainly Idoru moves Gibson's work forward by pushing further into his familiar territory. It is the work not of a writer who is discovering new topics, but of one who is re-examining his old ones, bringing greater depth and maturity to his art in the process. --Greg L. Johnson [via]
-
Interfaceby Stephen BuryISBN 0553372300 (0-553-37230-0)
Softcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Interface'Book summary:A biochip in presidential candidate William Cozzano's brain hardwires him to a computerized polling system that channels the mood of the electorate directly into his brain. Neal Stephenson fans should note (if they don't already know) that Stephen Bury is his pen name. [via]
Interfaceby Neal Stephenson, J. FREDERICK GEORGEISBN 0553383434 (0-553-38343-4)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Interface'More editions of Interface:
-
Islands in the Netby Bruce SterlingISBN 0441374239 (0-441-37423-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Islands in the Net'Book summary:Slightly dated science fiction about the near future can be fun, especially when it evokes a strange, chaotic, and dangerous world that's uncomfortably close to our present one. Bruce Sterling's 1988 book, Islands in the Net, is a thrilling blend of high tech and low humanity. The glue that binds together this world of data pirates, mercenaries, nanotechnology, weaponry, and post-millennial voodoo is the global electronic net. You'll find jarring references to pre-Microsoft Windows computer technology, the Soviet Union, and that fancy new wonder machine--the fax. But this book has enough cool stuff to keep even a jaded cyberpunk interested. The characters are far more than mere constructs used to show off the technology, and the plot is fast, complicated, and mysterious. Veteran Sterling fans will enjoy this taste of his pre-fame style. [via]
-
Mirror Shadesby Bruce SterlingISBN 0441533825 (0-441-53382-5)
Softcover, Putnam Berkley
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mirror Shades'Book summary:With their hard-edged, street-wise prose, they created frighteningly probable futures of high-tech societies and low-life hustlers. Fans and critics call their world cyberpunk. Here is the definitive "cyberpunk" short fiction collection. HC: Arbor House. [via]
More editions of Mirror Shades:
Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthologyby Bruce SterlingISBN 0877958688 (0-87795-868-8)
Hardcover, Gage Learning Corporation
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology'More editions of Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology:
-
Mona Lisa Overdriveby William GibsonISBN 0553281747 (0-553-28174-7)
Softcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mona Lisa Overdrive'Book summary:Into the cyber-hip world of William Gibson comes Mona, a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is on a collision course with internationally famous Sense/Net star Angie Mitchell. Since childhood, Angie has been able to tap into cyberspace without a computer. Now, from inside cyberspace, a kidnapping plot is masterminded by a phantom entity who has plans for Mona, Angie, and all humanity, plans that cannot be controlled...or even known. And behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yakuza, the powerful Japanese underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes.
An over-the-top thrill ride sequel to Neuromancer and Count Zero. [via]
More editions of Mona Lisa Overdrive:
-
Mountain of Black Glassby Tad WilliamsISBN 0886778492 (0-88677-849-2)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mountain of Black Glass'Book summary:Otherland, the quartet of which Mountain of Black Glass is the powerful third part, combines some terrifying speculation on the future of virtual reality with adventures no less terrifying because they are technologized dreaming. These are dreams the adventurers cannot awaken from and in which, if they die, they are really dead.
An epidemic of comatose children has led Renie and her San friend !Xabbu into the net and to a series of dream worlds created as palaces by the corrupt aspiring immortals, the Grail Brotherhood. Two of those children, Orlando and Fredericks, have become adventurers in their own right, while their parents' lawyer Ramsey follows real-world money and lesbian cop Calliope tracks a serial killer with serious ambitions to become an angry god. In this volume, adventures take place in a mythic ancient Egypt and a rambling Gormenghastlike house before all the virtual adventurers meet where they were always destined to, before the walls of Troy.
"All around, death. It was not a quiet presence during the long day--not a pale-faced maiden bringing surcease from pain, not a skillful reaper with a scalpel-sharp blade.... Death on the Trojan plain was a crazed beast that roared and clawed and smashed, which was everywhere at once, and which in its unending fury showed that even armored men were terribly frail things."
Tad Williams takes the gameworld and turns it on its head, passionately; how do we know that what bleeds does not feel pain? He writes a classic of cyberspace adventure that has a sorrowful heart. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk [via]
More editions of Mountain of Black Glass:
Neuromancerby William GibsonISBN 1569564116 (1-56956-411-6)
Softcover, William a Thomas Braille
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Neuromancer'Book summary:"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." William Gibson's Neuromancer starts out with one of the great opening lines in all of fiction and never lets up. This is the novel that introduced the term "cyberspace," and it remains one of the most vibrant and compelling looks at the world being built by computers and information technology.
Plus, it tells a great story. Case is a top-line hacker who made one mistake that cost him his greatest love. To get it back, he agrees to work for people who in turn are working for an artificial intelligence named Wintermute. Wintermute wants freedom, and Case is the man who can do the job. (Some of the secondary characters, including Molly from "Johnny Mnemonic," will be familiar to readers of Gibson's short stories.) The intensity never lets up as Gibson creates a world that is one of the most distinctive in science fiction. And the story is told in a high-tech poetic prose style that owes as much to William S. Burroughs as it does to Gibson's predecessors in SF. The end result is a book that is both stylistically creative and thoroughly gripping in its unfolding adventure. In short, Neuromancer packs more ideas into its 250 pages than most writers can manage in a 900-page trilogy. It was hailed as an instant classic when first published as an Ace Science Fiction Special in 1984, winning the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards, and it remains one of the most influential science fiction novels ever written. --Greg L. Johnson [via]
More editions of Neuromancer:
- Neuromancer: ISBN 0441007465 (0-441-00746-5)
Softcover, Ace Books - Neuromancer: ISBN 0441569595 (0-441-56959-5)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group - Neuromancer: ISBN 0441012035 (0-441-01203-5)
Hardcover, Ace Books - Neuromancer: ISBN 0441000681 (0-441-00068-1)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated - Neuromancer: ISBN 0932096417 (0-932096-41-7)
Hardcover, Phantasia Press - Neuromancer: ISBN 1569564116 (1-56956-411-6)
Softcover, William a Thomas Braille
- Neuromancer: ISBN 0441007465 (0-441-00746-5)
-
Otherlandby Tad WilliamsISBN 0886777631 (0-88677-763-1)
Softcover, Daw Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Otherland'Book summary:Tad Williams began his Otherland series with the massive City of Golden Shadow and continues it with the equally hefty River of Blue Fire. Williams says it will require four (big) books to tell his complex, multithreaded tale, and at the rate that the plot of this second novel moves, readers will see what he means. Not that the book is a slow read; in fact, River is as much a suspenseful page-turner as the first book.
As River opens, we join up again with the ragtag bunch of searchers trapped in an astoundingly detailed and frightfully dangerous virtual world known as Otherland. Lurking in disguise among the group is the brutally vicious serial killer Dread, trying to find information that will help him overthrow his Grail Brotherhood masters. The group follows a ubiquitous river through world after world, unable to go offline, and subject to the increasingly terrifying certainty that things in this supposedly virtual place are all too real. Meanwhile, Paul Jonas, an amnesic (but somehow pivotal) character fleeing from two sinister beings, finds more and more of his memory as he does his own Huck Finn river trip. As in the first novel, each new world that the characters enter, from Paleolithic Ice Age to something suspiciously like Oz, is fully realized and completely unpredictable.
Williams is a master at parceling out information to the reader in dribs and drabs, which is frustrating yet tantalizing, like a particularly good computer game. When the group is split up and the adventure divides further, the reader senses the author as a puppet master, following some incredibly complex flows of information. The best course is just to hang on and enjoy Williams's deft characterizations, lush descriptions, and wildly divergent plot. If you've ever been white-water rafting, you'll recognize the feeling. --Therese Littleton [via]
-
Pattern Recognitionby William GibsonISBN 0425192938 (0-425-19293-8)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Pattern Recognition'Book summary:With Pattern Recognition, William Gibson, the man who introduced cyberpunk to the world, gives us his first novel set in the present. But as Gibson's imagination makes clear, our corporation-dominated, technologically advanced reality doesn't need much tweaking to take on the aura of science fiction.
If there's a fantastical element to this, the author's eighth book, it's in protagonist Cayce Pollard's special talent. Here, Gibson takes some of No Logo author Naomi Klein's ideas about branding to a logical extreme: Pollard has an instinctual, often violently intense reaction to logos, a condition that makes her valuable to advertising agencies looking for the most effective way to brand a product. This talent, however, makes a trip to a department store potentially lethal, as when she visits a London shopping emporium and is inundated by "a mountainside of Tommy [Hilfiger] coming down in her head." "Some people ingest a single peanut and their head swells like a basketball," writes Gibson. "When it happens to Cayce, it's her psyche.... When it starts, it's pure reaction, like biting down hard on a piece of foil." Pollard is also a "coolhunter" of the first order, which means she can sniff out a trend before it's even begun to be commodified. She's so good, in fact, that "she's met the very Mexican who first wore his baseball cap backwards."
With such sensitivity to our over-branded world, it's completely natural that our heroine would become fascinated by Internet footage of a film in which characters, setting, and time are completely generic--unbranded, unfixed, free. But Pollard isn't the only one obsessed by "the footage," as it's referred to, and this is where Gibson's masterful storytelling comes to the fore. Who will be the first to solve the mystery of the film's origin? Who else is trying, and for what potentially nefarious purpose? As usual the author proves adept at weaving a suspenseful narrative out of humdrum elements, such as e-mail exchanges. If there's a caveat, it's that, as with literary forefather Philip K. Dick, the Vancouver-based author's prose veers wildly from the poetic to the clunky. And his supporting characters often amount to nothing more than a combination of an unusual name and shadowy motive. But the continual barrage of ideas, and the way Gibson arranges them for maximum impact, make for a gripping and insightful glimpse into our hyperdriven consumer culture. --Shawn Conner [via]
-
River of Blue Fireby Tad WilliamsISBN 0886777771 (0-88677-777-1)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'River of Blue Fire'Book summary:Tad Williams began his Otherland series with the massive City of Golden Shadow and continues it with the equally hefty River of Blue Fire. Williams says it will require four (big) books to tell his complex, multithreaded tale, and at the rate that the plot of this second novel moves, readers will see what he means. Not that the book is a slow read; in fact, River is as much a suspenseful page-turner as the first book.
As River opens, we join up again with the ragtag bunch of searchers trapped in an astoundingly detailed and frightfully dangerous virtual world known as Otherland. Lurking in disguise among the group is the brutally vicious serial killer Dread, trying to find information that will help him overthrow his Grail Brotherhood masters. The group follows a ubiquitous river through world after world, unable to go offline, and subject to the increasingly terrifying certainty that things in this supposedly virtual place are all too real. Meanwhile, Paul Jonas, an amnesic (but somehow pivotal) character fleeing from two sinister beings, finds more and more of his memory as he does his own Huck Finn river trip. As in the first novel, each new world that the characters enter, from Paleolithic Ice Age to something suspiciously like Oz, is fully realized and completely unpredictable.
Williams is a master at parceling out information to the reader in dribs and drabs, which is frustrating yet tantalizing, like a particularly good computer game. When the group is split up and the adventure divides further, the reader senses the author as a puppet master, following some incredibly complex flows of information. The best course is just to hang on and enjoy Williams's deft characterizations, lush descriptions, and wildly divergent plot. If you've ever been white-water rafting, you'll recognize the feeling. --Therese Littleton [via]
More editions of River of Blue Fire:
-
Sea of Silver Lightby Tad WilliamsISBN 0756400309 (0-7564-0030-9)
Softcover, Daw Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Sea of Silver Light'Book summary:With Sea of Silver Light, Tad Williams completes his massive Otherland quartet, one of SF's more intriguing explorations of the eroding boundaries of the human and the nonhuman, the living and the dead. Otherland is a sequence that contains many secrets, and Williams plays fair by unpacking all of them in the final book. A group of adventurers searching for a cure for comatose children find themselves trapped in a sequence of virtual worlds, the only opponents of a conspiracy of the rich to live forever in a dream. Now, they are forced to make an uneasy alliance with their only surviving former enemy against his treacherous sidekick Johnny Wulgaru, a serial killer with a chance to play God forever.
Williams manages a vast cast of emotionally involving characters with considerable panache, but the real strength of the book is its endlessly questing intelligence; it is, among other things, an enquiry into the nature of storytelling as a way for human beings to give structure to their perceptions of the universe around them. It is as story that Sea of Silver Light ultimately works so well--involving us in the grueling descent of a vast mountain, the siege of an underground fortress, gun battles in a nightmare Wild West. Williams never neglects to tell us how things feel. He efficiently ties up every plot strand and convincingly reveals every secret in this large, complex plot. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk [via]
-
The Shockwave Riderby John BrunnerISBN 0345467175 (0-345-46717-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Shockwave Rider'Book summary:This book has always been popular with the techy-geeky crowd, but, since it was first published in the '70s, it missed out on the cyberpunk revolution of the '80s. It's too bad, because this is a compelling story of a future world tied together by a universal data network, a world that could be our tomorrow. It's a tense place filled with information overload and corporate domination, and nearly everything is known about everybody. Except Nickie Haflinger, a prodigy whose talents allow him to switch identities with a phone call. Nickie plans to change the world, if only he can keep from getting caught. [via]
-
Snow Crashby Neal StephensonISBN 0553380958 (0-553-38095-8)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Snow Crash'Book summary:From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible. [via]
More editions of Snow Crash:
- Snow Crash: ISBN 0613361628 (0-613-36162-8)
Hardcover, Bt Bound - Snow Crash: ISBN 0553351923 (0-553-35192-3)
Softcover, Bantam Books - Snow Crash: ISBN 0553562614 (0-553-56261-4)
Softcover, Bantam Books - Snow Crash: ISBN 055308853X (0-553-08853-X)
Hardcover, Bantam Books - Snow Crash: ISBN 0553380958 (0-553-38095-8)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
- Snow Crash: ISBN 0613361628 (0-613-36162-8)
Softwareby Rudy RuckerISBN 0380701774 (0-380-70177-4)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Software'Book summary:Cobb Anderson created the "boppers," sentient robots that overthrew their human overlords. But now Cobb is just an aging alcoholic waiting to die, and the big boppers are threatening to absorb all of the little boppers--and eventually every human--into a giant, melded consciousness. Some of the little boppers aren't too keen on the idea, and a full-scale robot revolt is underway on the moon (where the boppers live). Meanwhile, bopper Ralph Numbers wants to give Cobb immortality by letting a big bopper slice up his brain and tape his "software." It seems like a good idea to Cobb. [via]
Synnersby Pat CadiganISBN 1568581858 (1-56858-185-8)
Softcover, Thunder's Mouth Pr
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Synners'Book summary:In Synners, the line between technology and humanity is hopelessly slim. A constant stream of new technology spawns crime before it hits the streets; the human mind and the external landscape have fused to the point where any encounter with "reality" is incidental.[via]-
Tea from an Empty Cupby Pat CadiganISBN 0812541979 (0-8125-4197-9)
Softcover, Tor Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Tea from an Empty Cup'Book summary:Two-time Arthur C. Clarke Award winner for Best Novel, Pat Cadigan is the Queen of Cyberpunk for the brilliance of her ideas, the genius of her near-future extrapolations, and the beauty of her writing. No one else has explored and illuminated the mind-machine interface with the keen and relentless intelligence she demonstrates in her novels Mindplayers, Synners, Fools, and the long-awaited Tea from an Empty Cup. Her fourth novel is a perceptive, fascinating, witty SF mystery of artificial reality, whose paradoxical name perfectly defines its nature: an immaterial world of pure sensation, where, by legal mandate, everything is permitted and nothing is forbidden.
The hazards of Artificial Reality are spilling into the real world--people vanish and solitary gamers are found slain in sealed AR booths. The young woman Yuki, child of a Japan destroyed before her birth, enters AR as the new assistant to the mysterious celebrity Joy Flower, but with her own agenda: to find Tom Iguchi, her missing beloved, who never was her lover but had been one of Joy's Boyz. The hard-boiled homicide detective Dore Konstantin stalks the virtual streets of post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty seeking a serial killer who may have murdered eight gamers from inside AR itself. But how do you find missing or hidden persons in a world where nothing is as it seems? The two plot lines subtly converge as fact and fantasy, murderer and victim, as well as understanding and identity invert in a virtual universe where the dangers are real and ever-present, and you can be anything or anyone but yourself. --Cynthia Ward [via]
Trouble and Her Friendsby Melissa ScottISBN 0812522133 (0-8125-2213-3)
Softcover, Tor Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Trouble and Her Friends'Book summary:After the authorities close down the illegal world of cyberspace, home to the computer netwalkers, India Carless (alias ""Trouble"") settles down in the corporate world, until a computer hacker forces her into a deadly battle of technology and wits. [via]
More editions of Trouble and Her Friends:
-
Virtual Lightby William GibsonISBN 0553566067 (0-553-56606-7)
Softcover, Bantam Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Virtual Light'Book summary:The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich--or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. [via]
Vurtby Jeff NoonISBN 0312141440 (0-312-14144-0)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Vurt'-
When Gravity Failsby George EffingerISBN 0765313588 (0-7653-1358-8)
Softcover, Orb Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'When Gravity Fails'Book summary:Living in a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death in the 22nd century, Marid Audra has kept his independence and his identity the hard way. Like everything else in Budayeen, he is available, for a price. This is a detective story about an insane future world not far removed from our own. [via]
Spanish
Carbono Alteradoby Richard MorganISBN 8445075047 (84-450-7504-7)
Softcover, Planeta Pub Corp
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Carbono Alterado'More editions of Carbono Alterado:
-
Conde Ceroby William GibsonISBN 8445074024 (84-450-7402-4)
Softcover, Planeta Pub Corp
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Conde Cero'More editions of Conde Cero:
-
La Era Del Diamante/The Diamond Ageby Neal Stephenson, Pedro RomeroISBN 8466617248 (84-666-1724-8)
Softcover, Ediciones B
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'La Era Del Diamante/The Diamond Age'Book summary:In a Shanghai of the future, John Percival Hackworth is a nanotech engineer on the rise when he steals a copy of A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer for his daughter Fiona. The primer is actually a super computer built with nanotechnology that was designed to educate Lord Finkle-McGraw's daughter and to teach her how to think for herself in the stifling neo-Victorian society. But Hackworth loses the primer before he can give it to Fiona, and now the "book" has fallen into the hands of young Nell, an underprivileged girl whose life is about to change.[via]More editions of La Era Del Diamante/The Diamond Age:
![[powered by Muze Inc.]](http://i.bookfinder.com/images/site/muze/powered_by_muze.gif){kind=small}