Is it any good? I don't normally read sci-fi, but cyberpunk

>>7742208
I don't know. Why do you ask me?

>>7742208
No idea.

>>7742215
>>7742218

Thanks

>>7742208

Do you like detective noir style stories with a fresh coat of bleak gray future? It's alright.

>>7742241

If it's just alright, is there any legit good cyberpunk /lit/ would recommend over Neuromancer? I've never read detective stories, just very into the cyberpunk atmosphere as seen in film and vidya.

>>7742267
No its objectively the best given how it's short, fast and slick.

>>7742267
phillip k dick works I suppose.

I read it recently, it's awful.

Characters are boring, the plot is non-existent and somehow the verbose descriptions leave you understanding nothing.

It's a really short book yet it took me ages to get through due to being concentrated awful.

>>7742267
Altered Carbon or Black Man (Known as 13 in the USA) by Richard Morgan. Available at your local retailer or preferred online merchant.

>>7742284
>the verbose descriptions leave you understanding nothing

This is the worst thing of the book. Even Phillip K. Dick is better. Characters are okay, nothing remarkable I can remember though.

>>7742294
13 sucked balls.

>>7742208
Snow Crash is better. It's the self aware version that is happy to take the piss out of the dumbest parts of the genera.

>>7742572
hello plebbit!

Neuromancer's okay, Gibson's short stories are pretty good.

>>7742572
Snow Crash is garbage unless you're in middle school. The Diamond Age makes decent listening but I still probably wouldn't try reading it.

>>7742267
The Stars My Destination, written a while before cyberpunk was a thing but has much of the same atmosphere.

Dont listen to the other anons, anon. I read it a couple of years ago and thought it was really really good.

>>7742208
It's pretty good. The scene transitions and plot direction can be a bit jarring, but viewed from the perspective of the protagonist, it somewhat makes sense considering how messed up his life is.

Mind you, I borrowed the book from the library where the previous reader went to great lengths to mark out any blasphemous words with a black marker. So I could have missed something

>>7742208
thought it was excellent. complaints about the cardboard characterization and non-existent plot aren't inaccurate, but i feel they miss the point of the novel. for me it was a wonderful exercise in style. if the idea of a techno-noir atmosphere interests you at all, neuromancer is an essential read.

>>7742851
just keep in mind gibson uses prose in the service of establishing said atmosphere, rather than to progress the plot in an entirely coherent way.

Nigger read vurt by Jeff noon if you want a good cyber punk novel. Shit is fucking awesome. I need some feathers.

>>7742208
read a couple of chapters and lost interest

>>7742851
>>7742864

These posts are kinda convincing me. Definitely favour style and atmosphere over plot, so it sounds good.

>>7742208
Read it like you would watch a very old shlock movie. Historical value if nothing else.

Keep in mind that its author is one of the worst SJW's you will ever know.

>>7742208
It's a complete mess, but the atmosphere is really good - well, if you like dystopic junky futures, i guess.

William Gibson is one of my favorite authors.
I know Neuromancer is more pulp fiction than literature, but I'm a cyberpunk addict and his shit really does it for me.
If you want old-school cyberpunk, read Neuromancer.
I also recommend reading the whole sprawl trilogy if you like it, I think I liked Count Zero more than Neuromancer.

>>7742669
Finished Diamond Age recently and loved it too. The pacing and plot were pretty wacky and it's not the classic 'hacker' / 'dystopia' book, but the world-building is amazing.

>>7742784
>I borrowed the book from the library where the previous reader went to great lengths to mark out any blasphemous words with a black marker


what

>>7742572

Snow Crash is the worst book I've ever read.

It's so bad I now drop books before reading them if there's a Stephenson blurb on the first few pages about how much he loves it.

Snow Crash is so bad that I lost all interest in cyber punk as a genre.

Fuck Neal Stephenson, and fuck you for recommending it.

>muh subversive self-awareness

I bet you think the new Deadpool film is great, you fucking moron.

I bet you were real into Rage Against the Machine at one point.

I bet you think Chomsky is anything other than a pseud, you fucking moron.

You probably skimmed the Prince because you heard that Tupac read it., and it totally changed your life.

You fucking moron.

>>7743209

Is there cyberpunk that is more "literature" than pulp?

It's pretty much style over substance, but it's a quick, very funny and stylish read.

You'll hardly WIN anything, but you won't lose anything either

>>7743195
social justice is a bad thing?

>>7743218
All I can think is >>7742278

You'd have to find the works that evade the 'noir' style that Gibson popularized.

>>7743227
Actually, what am I thinking, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is noir too. There's no escape.

>>7743217
I felt the same way when I tried to read Snow Crash, but I enjoyed The Diamond Age so you might not want to write Stephenson off completely.

>>7743211
All the other vulgarity was left untouched. But it was rather immersion breaking to see a fat black stripe as you read a page

Mind you, this is a university library situated in a conservative Christian town, so you get people zealous enough like that

>>7743221
Yes.

>>7743217
Haven't seen the Deadpool film but the comics are pretty entertaining. Regardless of content Rage against the Machine sounds terrible.
Don't give a shit about Chomsky. Never payed any attention to Tupac.
Snow crash is a criticism (or a celebration depending on your tastes) of the genera so if it turned you off of it then you likely would have been frustrated with cyberpunk and its anime influence anyway.

>>7743221
social justice is when ugly impotent obese women who enjoy online slacktivism somehow manage to infiltrate just about every government in the world to realise their vicious plan: genociding every single white man ever
source: some pol jpeg search the archive lol

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>>7742208
Neuromancer is often praised not only because popularized (but not created) what we know today as cyberpunk, but because it's definitely not genre fiction, but rather, it is literary fiction. Unlike most sci-fi writers, William Gibson is an English major, and not a STEM fag who decided to write a book to fulfill his fantasies or whatever. Because of this, you definitely should not dive into Neuromancer expecting it to be like any other sci-fi book, only this time in a cyberpunk setting. First off, it's a hard book, at least when you compare it to other sci-fi books. If you are careless and just want to read it as an exercise in escapism (not judging you for that), you'll get lost in William Gibson's convoluted prose. Second thing, forget that, you'll get lost anyway. And that's because William Gibson is an English major, and he legit knows /nothing/ about technology. His descriptions of Case hacking into stuff is ludicrous, and though they are good in their own way, I can only assume it would turn fellow /g/entlemen and sympathizers off. Don't expect any accuracy regarding technology, Gibson does not care about that, all he cares about is complex characters, complex plot, and introducing the readers to his vision of a world dominated by technology, even if his vision is absolutely bizarre.

If you really appreciate literature like most of us do, I'm sure I have only sparked your interest in the book. I think you should read it anyway, and there are definitely cyberpunk elements to be found there (body mods, street life, night life, gratuitous Japanese), just remember it is not the definitive cyberpunk book and it might leave you wishing for more. For actual cyberpunk, I would recommend Philip K. Dick (best book: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) or Neal Stephenson (best book: Snow Crash).

>>7743536

>recommending snow crash

Stop

>>7743547
Fuck off you meme-spouting faggot, no one cares.

>>7742208
Gene Wolfe is better, he incorporates fantasy and sci-fi into an amalgam of brilliance.

>>7743536
>it is literary fiction
>most sci-fi writers are STEM fags
>it's a hard book
These are just flat-out lies.
>William Gibson ... legit knows /nothing/ about technology
I'll give you that.
>/g/entlemen
Fuck off back there.
>cyberpunk elements ... (body mods, street life, night life, gratuitous Japanese)
Just like in Vurt and True Names, huh? Further fuck off, you don't know what you're talking about.
>actual cyberpunk: Philip K. Dick
Hoooooly shit you're retarded.

>>7743569
>These are just flat-out lies.
That's a nice argument.

>Philip K. Dick
>not cyberpunk
Confirmed bait, back the fuck off.

>>7743590
>>7743569
guys, guys, let's not fight. let's talk about Gene Wolfe instead!

>>7743553

How many times a week do you listen to Korn?

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>>7743590
It's not an argument, it's a statement of fact.

PKD is science fiction, cyberpunk didn't even get off the ground until he was dead. Everything about your post screams "I just came here from /g/ and am making ignorant shit up about a genre as I don't actually read".

>>7742267
I would recommend checking out some of the genre thematic twists. Give Vurt by Jeff Noon a go... I guess I'd call it narcopunk. Think: Trainspotting meets Gibson. also enjoyed The Windup Girl by Paulo Bacigalupi, which is biopunk according to some.

>>7743658
>also enjoyed The Windup Girl by Paulo Bacigalupi, which is biopunk according to some.

I got a book of his short stories (Pump Six) via a humble bundle, and was extremely disappointed to see most of the short stories "reused", almost self-plagiarised in Windup Girl, put me off.

That and the uninformed "hurdur GM is bad" bullshit.

>>7743629
I am not that poster but it is literally undeniable that PKD is at least proto-cyberpunk, and you're just being a pedantic shiteater, to be honest. His novels show a direct influence of noir, and his settings futuristic but with a mix of 1950s. There isn't the same cyberpunk aesthetic, but he's got the same influences, he deals with the same themes and he exists as a direct influence on them. It's possible cyberpunk wouldn't exist as it does without PKD. Stop being a faggot.

>>7743691
I'm happy to agree that PKD inspired a lot of what cyberpunk is about, but it's not actually cyberpunk, and if you'll read the other poster's original post, you'll see that he's retarded.

>>7743629
>PKD is science fiction
Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, this is not helping you brah. Philip K. Dick may not have been a part of the 80's/early-90's cyberpunk wave, however "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said", "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" are all filled with cyberpunk elements, the last one being its very epitome. I've been browsing /lit/ for much longer than /g/, and I'm not really sure why you're so butthurt over me making a reference to another board, but since you're going to attack the man instead of the argument, I'm going to stop feeding you the attention you crave.

>>7743687
>uninformed hurdur GM is bad bullshit
I didn't get that vibe at all. It's distopian, as all ___punk genres go, but that doesn't mean the featured techs are inherently bad. It would make more sense to me if someone came away from TWG thinking it's of the position that all tech outside of biotech is bad, since biotech essentially kept the human race going long after other technical exploitation led to ecological ruin. I read Windup Girl before I read any of his other stuff, so none of his other stories were in my head. I read a few of his other novels after, which I didn't enjoy as much as TWG, but they didn't feel stale. I never read any of his short stories, though.

>>7743710
>Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, this is not helping you brah.
>I can't tell the difference between a set and a subset of that set
>All marigolds are flowers therefore all flowers are marigolds

> cyberpunk elements
You seem to be stuck on the superficial aesthetics of cyberpunk that aren't related to all of them. Japanese stuff? Body modifications? No. That does not make a work cyberpunk, and that coupled with the fact that you think Neuromancer is hard, literary fiction belie the obvious truth that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Sweedack?

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>>7743720
>coupled with the fact that you think Neuromancer is hard
I don't. I think it is a harder read when compared to other sci-fi books, given the fact that most sci-fi books are an extremely easy since a bigger emphasis is put on the story and making sure it fits the sci-fi criteria, and not much of an emphasis is put on how the story is told. You're basically taking sentences out of context and truncating them so that the original meaning is completely lost. Stop being an autistic fuck, anon.

>>7743777
>I don't. I think it is a harder read when compared to other sci-fi books
Now you're just moving the goalposts, you quite clearly said it was hard and literary fiction. Fact is, it's not much harder to read than any given YA novel. What you're doing now is what you're accusing me of doing.
... aaand you're using a reaction face image. You really shouldn't do that if you're accusing other people of being autistic, it makes the hypocrisy a little *too* obvious.

What is it about cyberpunk that makes people get pedantic about what is and isn't cyberpunk and what sub-genre of cyberpunk a cyberpunk work is?

As long as something has noir + technology or is rooted in hacker culture just let it go.

>>7744535
I think a lot of people just get caught up in the style. It's one thing to try to describe a style or categorize a theme and compare or contrast it to others, but it's another thing to argue it as a matter of concrete definition. I also would say that threads on 4chan, especially one on /lit/ (a lot of disdain towards all scifi here) where it's mainly a couple people arguing, aren't really representative of an entire fan base.
On a bright note, the thread did indirectly lead me into finding some pretty entertaining criticisms of The Windup Girl by butthurt wymns.

>>7742208
its amazing. read it right now

>>7744610
not as good as Gene Wolfe, desu famalam