Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986)
(rudyrucker.com)182 points by keepamovin 4 days ago
182 points by keepamovin 4 days ago
Rudy, thanks for putting this up! I have a paper copy in my library, but digital is great, and now the panopticon AIs can admit in public they've read it, rather than secretly torrented it in their training data. Immortality of a sort.
Question - is Bruce still writing? Or at least theorizing / predicting / critiquing anywhere? If I think about his near term spec fiction from the 90s through 2000s, it was truly excellent. I'd be interested to hear what he's thinking about now.
So cool! I pasted this discussion thread into Grok 4 Heavy and asked it to markdown a table of all recommends made here, their years, detail and who suggested. Hope this gist is useful for all here looking to read:
https://gist.github.com/o0101/a40d09dab60f69a5f37cbcb751fdfd...
Oh man, assuming this is really Rudy, how fucking cool is that?!?? Rudy Rucker posting on HN! Totally gnarly.
Mr. Rucker, if that really is you, I hope you decide to hang around and participate in this little community a bit. It's a cool place (most of the time) and cyberpunk is perpetually a favored topic.
Thanks for your contributions to generations of thinkers.
This one wasn't the one that converted me (Gibson ftw) but Mirrorshades expanded what I thought the genre could be.
Not every story is a winner, but enough try to stretch a bit that it's worth the read.
Helps to put your mind in the time, just before the 90s, before The Matrix but after Blade Runner, before "the metaverse" but after "the net" and "going online" were starting to enter conversations.
If you are looking for a recent anthology of cyberpunk you could do worse than rewired
Rewired: The Post-cyberpunk Anthology
Some great stories in there and no bad ones at all. IMO
I recently picked up Mirrorshades and The Big Book of Cyberpunk (edited by Jared Shurin) [1]
Will check this one out too!
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700576/the-big-book...
Does the "post-cyberpunk" in the title imply it's not about low-life people in a high tech environment but instead about the less criminally inclined, or do it mean something else?
Can't believe I'm a reader and didn't realize this was a book genre. For some reason I always associated it with comic books, graphic novels, and movies. Not that there's anything wrong with those mediums. I'm just more of a book guy.
All of this is to say, these and some of other recommendations in this thread are recommendations I didn't know I needed.
HN isn't perfect, but neither am I. I really appreciate the breadth of topics and interests. Big shoutout to PG for starting it, to Dang and all of the other moderators, and to everyone that contributes. I've learned a lot over the years.
They say to never be the smartest person in the room. I'm not even in the top 100 here and totally fine with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives - the genre has had its ups and downs since its high point. Note Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End.
Since we're talking Cyberpunk here, I'll throw in a recommendation for a novel that isn't widely recognized as "Cyberpunk" per-se, but is probably "proto-Cyberpunk" at least. That novel being The Shockwave Rider[1] by John Brunner.
It has some elements in common with Cyberpunk and is just a plain fun read regardless of what genre label you apply.
And is perhaps best known as the writer behind the Half-Life story.
Gernsback Continuum is still my favorite story since Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Physical reality seems pretty solid, but social reality is certainly "flexible." And all the tech I work with is a continuum of different ages smushed together; javascript client apps embedding COBOL apps complied to wasm bytecodes. SQL databases whose schemas predate some of the developers working on the apps that use them. Instruction Set Architectures that were invented when we still thought Raymond Lowey-esque fins and gills were the height of material design.
In a bit of synchronicity, I found my copy of Islands in the Net last week and am re-reading it after 35 years. It's pretty interesting to see which bits Bruce Sterling accurately predicted and which were a bit off the mark.
I think he was generally just excellent at getting near term predictions right and interesting. To pick a small one of many there's a moment in Heavy Weather where they have trouble with their PBX, and he mentions that it's basically a shrunk-to-digital 20th century phone company in a box, and so it requires negotiation, rebooting, kicking, etc. Love that take on modern software layers.
Yup. I noticed a line in Islands in the Net where one of the characters waits until evening to make a phone call when the rates are low. I had a chuckle, but it didn't detract from the rest of the story that was definitely good. Though I should talk to my offspring about making sure they only call me in the evenings so the long distance fees aren't exorbitant, just to see if they try to take away my car keys.
> Each story is Copyright (C) 2022 to its original authors, and all rights are reserved. The book is not public domain, nor is it Creative Commons.
How is this "free online edition" distinct from piracy, in that case?
It's hosted on one of the author's sites. The collection itself is (as far as I can tell) out of print. It's falling through the cracks of "too complicated for a publisher to figure the rights out of" and "not lucrative enough for anyone to care".
I think it's normal for the publisher to hold those rights (perhaps shared with the original authors, depending on the details of their agreements), so possibly all that would have been required here would be for the publisher to approve doing this.
Or maybe Rucker and all of the other authors are friends, and keep in touch, and he just literally called all of the up and said "Hey, can I post Mirrorshades online for posterity?" and they all agreed. Who knows?
Not by default, no. But it seems entirely reasonable that he may have approached the original publisher, requested permission to post this, and received said permission. Considering that the print book has been out of print for some time, and given that the linked page does emphasize the copyright status of the works, this feels like the most likely scenario to me.
He drew hard on his cigarette. Annoyance flickered across his face, like an artefact in the poorly-compressed bootleg movies he sold to his fellow low-lifes at The Pig and Drum.
Some Corpo-type, no doubt. Can't help seeing something good scroll across their feed tube without calling Legal.
He'd worked with a few in the past. Not bad all-in-all, at least they paid on time. That said, he could think of few he'd drink with.
He toyed with the idea of leaving a bitchy comment. Probably get downvoted to oblivion.
The dogs in the yard barked at a passing vehicle.
Irritated by the animal noise and the corpo whining, he thrashed something out. Pulling another cigarette from his pack, he hit "reply".
> Some Corpo-type, no doubt.
The opposite. Consider Harlan Ellison's views on piracy: "If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump."
It's free to read, not free to use. As it's from one of the involved authors, they probably got permission for this release. The problem with piracy is lack of permission/consent, not the act itself.
People are making books freely available all the time, even those they sell on other platforms. Nothing wrong with this.
In 1986, it was unlikely that the original contract for the book mentioned anything about electronic rights. As it was a reprint anthology, the rights purchased would have only covered the use in the anthology as long as it was in print. Which means that to post the book online, Rucker would have to contact the individual contributors and get new permissions. Did he do that? I make a guess that he did not. It is not clear from what is stated here.
This is from back when it was intellectual, and not a bunch of annoying people stapling circuit boards to their jackets and trying to be some sort of electrogoth. Content before the hollowing out.
Another great one is the Semiotext(e) SF anthology. I can't believe I was such a sucker to think cyberpunk was going somewhere interesting. It peaked 5 minutes in.
edit: in retrospect, I always felt that cyberpunk was just New Worlds going out with a (mostly American) bang.
The Information Society song "Mirrorshades" would pair well with this.
also available in mobi and epub formats (for Kindle and other ebook readers):
https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/mirrorshades.epub https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/mirrorshades.mobi
This book and the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG ignited my love for Cyberpunk in general when I was a kid and it hasn't waned since :)
I must be a few years older than you are. It was the original Cyberpunk (set in 2013, published in 1988) that did it for me.
One of the things I remember about the game was that it came with a suggested book and film list. Reading all those books, and tracking down the recommended films was something of a quest for me and my friends. That last part sounds trivial, but if your local video rental store didn't happen to have a copy of 1982's art-house weirdo indie film Liquid Sky, it was a real challenge.
Liquid Sky soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UxwohjhHw&list=PL9F0ACA601...
Synth genius. I actually have it on vinyl.
To my shame I'd never heard of that film before but the whole thing is availble on YouTube for free https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyIhqT5bkEM
Yes! and Shadowrun! I remember just binging William Gibson after that, until Johnny Mnemonic, Hackers (the movie), and Strange Days, came out. What a great decade.
Shadowrun's world is in my top5 favourite RPG worlds ever
But the system... A Physical Adept rolling like 42 d6's is just redonkulous :D
Unfortunately for all of us, it turns out that cyberpunk dystopias are a lot more fun to read about than to live in.
* Dense, walkable cities
* No red tape stopping people from opening small businesses
* Cheap medical procedures available on demand
* Lax immigration rules allowing the free flow of the labor market
Idk just sounds like Bangkok to me
As cool as that would be, most cyberpunk settings don't include a military government ruling the cities.
A friend of mine works in Bangkok pretty regularly, so it ended up cheaper to rent an apartment than get hotels (plus he can leave clothes etc behind.)
A nicely sizes 2 double bed apt is £450 a month all in including utilities - plus a pool and huge roof terrace shared with the other people there - looks great.
If you can get a visa to work there, and have the cash, you can have an amazing life out there for sure.
An interesting point, I'll see if I can think up any counterexamples.
just ordered a physical copy from 1994, excited to read the stories :)
what are y'alls recommendations for cyberpunk-y books?
mine are,
• Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
• Daniel Suarez - Daemon
• Daniel Suarez - Delta-V
• Shamus Young - Free Radical
niche tip for german-understanding people is 'Reda El Arbi - [empfindungsfæhig]'.
didn't finish Neuromancer yet, but i gotta start over because it's been too long.
The first cyberpunk novel I read was True Names by Rudy Rucker. John Shirley has been called 'patient zero of cyberpunk' for his novel Eclipse. (I published a collection of Cyberpunk stories called Error Message Eyes Release 3.0 and it will be a free download on Kindle on August 24th. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5CCRRSB I apologize for the blatant self promotion.)
The True Names I remember was by Vernor Vinge [0]. Cory Doctorow riffed on it in 2008. But not Rudy R, as far as I know.
I didn't particularly enjoy neuromancer. I love the world building and the subject but I realized after a few books I just don't like Gibson's style, I struggle to get through the reading.
But! If you like it, the rest of the sprawl trilogy is just as good, and the bridge trilogy is probably better.
* alec effinger: when gravity fails
* pat cadigan: synners
* neal stephenson: the diamond age
and two books that bring cyberpunk elements into a larger sphere
* greg egan: zendegi. a dying engineer wants to make an AI version of himself to raise his son
* c s friedman: this alien shore (beautiful meld of far future space based sf and cyberpunk)
I still have my faded paperback copy of this book, from 1986. I pulled it down off the shelf and got a jolt of nostalgia, thinking about reading it when I was kid and just being blown away by such a weird vision of the future. The cover was neat, the shades on were actually mirrored.
Dialta had said that the Future had come to America first, but had finally passed it by.
Love the vague randomly applicable prophetic lines in Gibson's work.
Have the original 86 on my bookshelf, close to some of your 'ware' books. Thx for writing!
Yep me too. Great to see it freely availible online.
IMHO by far the stangest, most mind bending story in it isn't really cybperpunk though but it's still flipping brilliant.
Petra by Greg Bear. It's about what happens when God dies...
https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/HTML/#calibre_link-2...
Yes! I had that one too. Remembering it and the cover was what prompted me to post.
Not strictly targeting Cyberpunk, but overlapping quite nicely is the "Armoured" anthology.
Make your browser window narrower. Or try a tablet or an ebook reader, most of them should display html just fine. Or buy the printed book.
Absolutely brilliant collection of stories from some really great authors!
Formative for me. I read it in 1994ish when I was a smol.
I'm the one who put MIRROR SHADES online for free. All the others agreed. And why would we go asking for permission? We're cyberpunks! You might like to check out out my story anthology with Bruce Sterling, TRANSREAL CYBERPUNK. Existing in audio as well. And my recent JUICY GHOSTS novel, about toppling an evil US president.