Rewired
The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Cyberpunk is dead. The revolution has been co-opted by half-assed heroes, overclocked CGI, and tricked-out shades. Once radical, cyberpunk is now nothing more than a brand.
Time to stop flipping the channel.
These sixteen extreme stories reveal a government ninja routed by a bicycle repairman, the inventor of digitized paper hijacked by his college crush, a dead boy trapped in a warped storybook paradise, and the queen of England attacked with the deadliest of forbidden technology: a working modem. You'll meet Manfred Macx, renegade meme-broker, Red Sonja, virtual reality sex-goddess, and Felix, humble sys-admin and post-apocalyptic hero.
Editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel (Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology) have united cyberpunk visionaries William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan with the new post-cyberpunk vanguard, including Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, and Jonathan Lethem. Including a canon-establishing introduction and excerpts from a hotly contested online debate, Rewired is the first anthology to define and capture the crackling excitement of the post-cyberpunks.
From the grittiness of Mirrorshades to the Singularity and beyond, it's time to revive the revolution.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Arranged loosely in order of publication, the 16 diverse selections in this decade-spanning anthology add up to a plausible snapshot of cyberpunk's short-form evolution. Kelly and Kessel (Feeling Very Strange) clearly describe cyberpunk counterculture in a cogent introduction, yet draw only one story from a nongenre source (Greg Egan's "Yeyuka") and greatly undervalue the subgenre's ability, at its most popular, to reach beyond SF's core audience. While some entries (Charles Stross's "Lobsters"; Cory Doctorow's "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth") focus strongly on techno-geek culture, others apply high-tech ideas in more down-to-earth contexts . The critical matter is too scant for academic readers and too intrusive for genre fans; discussion of specific stories is extremely sparse, and excerpts from correspondence between Kessel and Bruce Sterling distract rather than enlighten. Readers seeking a thorough critical study should look elsewhere, but those looking for well-told stories will be satisfied.
