Finish line

[fay_e]

I may have finished a novel and it may have been before Chinese New Year. O_O

Of course this isn't quite the end of the month, but it's good to have a milestone to look at. Just over two months to write over 52k words, which are in 13 chapters now. Of course what it will look like after editing, I have no idea. But that is AFTER Chinese New Year. I need a break from writing.

Now to do genre research. I'm regretting reading Neuromancer because OMG so white guy, but since it's a ebook I don't really want to throw my phone across the room. I'll take recommendations of any other book that makes people think of the Matrix or Inception, if anyone knows any.

Comments

[melannen]

A novel! congrats!

Stuff I would suggest from my days of trying to do a cyberpunk genre review, in order of increasing white-guy-ness:

Catspaw by Joan D. Vinge
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Transmetropolitan (comic) by Warren Ellis
Permutation City by Greg Egan
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick

Honorable Mention:
The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem (not usually classed as cyberpunk but wonderfully mind-and-reality-twisty)
Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (this is a sort of cyberpunk precursor and I read it so long ago I don't really remember what it's about, but I remember liking it more than I expected to, given what it is?)
Otherland by Tad Williams: Have not read, but it got put on my list after someone on DW reviewed it in a way that sounded very Matrix-y and surprisingly un-white-guy.

[fay_e]

Thank you! Sadly the only ones that I've heard via media and are available through my ebook library are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Snow Crash =O We'll see if the brick and mortar library catalogue gives me better stuff.

Are any of the books in your list stuff you'd personally reread?

[melannen]

I don't do much re-reading these days (because my to-read list is so out of control) but Catspaw has already had many, many rereads; it's one of my favorites ever (as well as the other two books set in its world, Psion and Dreamfall, which are less outright cyberpunk-y, but also some of that post-human layers-of-reality feel - you can read any of them without needing the other two.) ...It's also by a female author and was originally marketed as YA so it doesn't get on the 'classics of the genre' lists like the others.

I would re-read Snow Crash because it's fun and compelling but I will give the caveat that I like it more for its cheap thrills than its inherent virtue; it's got a lot of id-tastic payouts and really interesting worldbuilding, but a sometimes paper-thin plot and emotional arc.

Transmet's actually currently on my to re-read list. If science-fiction-y comics are a thing you can enjoy you should definitely read it (and there was a recent re-release of the trades so there's a fairly good chance your brick & mortar will have it in trades.)

I read Permutation City once, all in one go, and it screwed with my head so much that I was too scared to go back to it. IDK if that's a rec or not. But if you want Inception-y stuff it should definitely be on your list somewhere, it's all about people trying to dig through layers of what reality is after they build their own technological dreamworlds too deep.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was fine and it's definitely a foundational classic of the type (and quite short for a novel!) so it's probably worth it if you can get it easily but it's not really a re-read, no. It's the book that was adapted into Blade Runner, which I have never seen, but I understand the movie's very different from the book.

Cyberiad is so odd and intricate that it never feels like a re-read because I find all sorts of new stuff in it.

I can't really say for the other two.

(There's also a lot out here in this line that I haven't read at all, especially if you diverge farther from the core of classic 'cyberpunk' genre and more toward other ways of messing with reality, or if you start looking at newer stuff which I'm way behind on, but those are a pretty good starter kit based on the better stuff from the lists I had about ten years ago. ...I left off all the ones that I liked less than Neuromancer.)

[fay_e]

Thanks for the detailed reply! Just to explain I was asking cos I was wondering what books were worth buying if the library didn't have them. Honestly the best thing would be to throw money at every author, but that's also not possible even for ebooks and so I usually try to whittle down the list via reading from the library (plus hey it supports the library!) It's just annoying when even the library doesn't have the books too and then I have to use (something else, like kindly recs from you!) other than reading it myself and deciding if I want to reread =\

But this is a really great list to start with, and hopefully I can find good stuff via "people who read this book also read" or something like =)))