From: Vaguely Radio (vradio_at_maine.rr.com)
Date: Thu Mar 25 2004 - 15:41:46 PST
On Thursday, March 25, 2004, at 11:25 AM, josh musket wrote:
> range. Speaking of the cyberpunk genre, does anyone have any authors to
> suggest? (excluding Sterling, whose work is more of
> post-cyberpunk/near-posthuman.)
If you like style, I strongly recommend the british author Steve Aylett
(www.steveaylett.com). His stories tend to meander a lot (one of them,
Shamanspace, actually does have a pretty great concept, but it's so
buried in prose-poetry that it's hard to decipher) but he's mastered
the art of great eponyms ("A sniper is like a genius - you have to be
one at something.") He's got a caustic wit, a dizzying darkly-poetic
style, and he's just all around cool. If you get a chance to check out
his website, be sure and read his article on The Matrix movie series,
"The Mattress Has You" - brilliant and in my opinion spot-on. Not all
of his stuff is cyberpunk; the most cyberpunky stuff he's written is
the stuff in the "Beerlight" series, of which I think "Slaughtermatic"
is the cream of the crop and the one I most recommend. If you want
more, go right to "Bigot Hall" which is probably my favourite though
not very cyberpunky at all, or if you prefer bite-sized pieces you can
do no better than his short-story collection "Toxicology".
If you like style, but want a more linear plot-line - and still want to
be shattered by genius - check out just about anything by Jonathan
Lethem. Again, some of his stuff isn't cyberpunk ("Motherless
Brooklyn" is very noteworthy, about a detective with Tourette's
Syndrome), but of his more sci-fi stuff I would recommend either "Gun,
With Occasional Music" - a kind of Blade-Runner detective story, a very
Philip K. Dick sort of feel to it - or "As She Climbed Across the
Table", about a university professor whose particle-physicist
girlfriend discovers a voidlike entity that appears to have some form
of rudimentary intelligence, and promptly falls in love with it.
-Dan
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