So You Want to Read Cyberpunk: Here’s Where to Start

Science-fiction is a predictive genre, with a sometimes wary eye always cast toward the future and what it may bring, both good and bad. Cyberpunk is perhaps one of the most cynical of the bunch. Having risen in the eighties, cyberpunk’s message is more relevant than ever: Our technology is more than a tool, cyberpunk says, in time it will define us, control us, and enable the worst of our impulses. One thing every reader should consider is that as technology has changed, so has our definition of cyberpunk. Bitcoin cyberthefts, and the Arab Spring’s use of Twitter to organize and launch a rebellion are both fairly cyberpunk, for example. Here are a few books suggestions for the new cyberpunk reader, old and new. Some of them are canonical works. Others are cyberpunk-inspired or related as they play with similar themes: technology’s effect on humanity and society, creeping corporate power, and techno-noir criminal schemes.