Cyberpunk Books

Tsutomu Nihei’s BLAME! is a manga composed of 65 chapters, also called Logs. The series was a revolutionary step in the cyberpunk manga genre, challenging accepted concepts and forms with its sweeping, illustrated landscapes and inspired use of negative space.

Although published in 1991, the world of Pat Cadigan’s Synners and L.A in the late 1980’s still feels relevant today. In fact, it’s more relevant than a lot of cyberpunk, especially among fellow first-wave texts.  Unlike many of the books’ peers, it doesn’t feel archaic after thirty years, perhaps because it’s a hard, purposeful look at nostalgia itself.

Diving deep into Bell Labs’ history, Jon Gertner’s book, The Idea Factory, explores the origins of some of the twentieth century’s most important inventions and inventors, telling a story of a small group of career engineers who overcame challenges with innovative solutions. Here was the cradle of communication.

Matt Hawkins is a familiar name in the annals of independent comic book history. Having been with Image Comics almost since its initial launch in 1992, Hawkins famously asked for a job from Rob Liefeld while in line at an Extreme Studios event in the summer of 1993. Now president and COO of Top Cow comics, he has also written several books that explore the relationship between humanity and technology. 

Walkaway is a book about many things, but fundamentally this is what it wants you to think about, the rest is a thought experiment viewed from a few different characters’ eyes. On paper, this book has everything I want from a post-cyberpunk book, including callbacks to the first-wave cyberpunk books.

If all this tech-noir, computer-babble sounds interesting to you, the cyberpunk books listed below are what we’d consider the definitive crash course in cyberpunk reading. Please note that the selections do not fully represent the diverse landscape of cyberpunk writers and texts that can be encountered in the genre; with that in mind, CyberPunks.com is proud to tell you about FIVE CYBERPUNK BOOKS YOU’VE GOTTA READ.

Steven Kotler’s Last Tango in Cyberspace makes culture a character to be explored in equal measure as the main character. Lion, an empathy-tracker, or em-tracker for short, uses his unique talent to consume curated content provided by clients and extrapolate a future. Not at an individual level, mind you, rather as a glimpse at the cultural significance regarding the content in the future.

I think I’m a writer of social literature – I like to explore a world, top to bottom, side to side,…

Developing a better future together isn’t, something that will happen automatically, whether we develop technology further or just write a lot…

Technology is a mixed blessing. It can help us to connect, to communicate with people from all over the world, but we can lose ourselves in our machines and ignore the people sat beside us. We have all this wealth, all these gadgets, but they’re no good if we destroy the environment, work ourselves to death or forget to live. We need balance.