Fiction

I promise I'll arrange this better later. As you can see, my reading leaned heavily toward classic cyberpunk and its antecedents

ENTERTAINMENT

AYLETT, STEVE - tales of Beerlight, the mythical (yeah, right) most violent metropolis of Seceded States of America. As they said at the Snipers' Convention, "a sniper is like a genius. It's not enough just to be one; you have to be one *at* something." Funny as hell, and your only hope now that the Post Brothers are gone. BIERCE, AMBROSE. THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY (Cynical bastard, wasn't he?)

BURROUGHS, WILLIAM

CHESTERTON, G. K. -- Catholic author of Father Brown mysteries. These early novels are essentially parables, and they're beautiful even if you're not Catholic. CONDON, RICHARD. DELACORTA (Daniel Odier - he also interviewed WSB in THE JOB) DE LAUTREAMONT, COMTE (ISIDORE DUCASSE). LES CHANTS DE MALDOROR and POEMS. (Violent imagery from turn-of-the-century France. Source of the saying "Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it." Inspired Tacky Souvenirs of Prerevolutionary America by Houston's own Culturcide, which took Top 40 songs from the 1980s and recorded their own lyrics over the vocal tracks. A laff riot.)

ECO, UMBERTO. Italian semiotician, essayist and author

JARRY, ALFRED. MAUPIN, ARMISTEAD PYNCHON, THOMAS ROBBINS, TOM STONE, ROBERT. DOG SOLDIERS. (Vietnam reporter tries to smuggle heroin into the states. An inspiration for cyberpunk writer William Gibson. Movie version was "Who Will Stop the Rain?")

TWAIN, MARK

WALLIS, DAVE - ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (Pan, UK 1964) Smashing!

SCIENCE FICTION

___________. CYBERPUNK READING LIST. WHOLE EARTH REVIEW #64, FALL 1989

ALDISS, BRIAN W. BAREFOOT IN THE HEAD. Life after a war in which everyone was dosed with LSD.

BALLARD, J.G.

BESTER, ALFRED BRUNNER, JOHN CADIGAN, PAT DICK, PHILLIP K. DISCH, THOMAS. CAMP CONCENTRATION. Government injects malcontents with super-syphilis to turn them into doomed geniuses.

DUNN,KATHERINE. GEEK LOVE. A couple living near a toxic waste dump raises a brood of deformed children and start their own carnival freakshow.

GIBSON, WILLIAM - he's right about the coming Internet secession

EFFINGER, GEORGE ALEC. WHEN GRAVITY FAILS.

JETER, K.W.

LUNDWALL, SAM J. BERNHARD THE CONQUEROR. Candide in space!

MOORCOCK, MICHAEL

MOORE, ALAN MORRISON, GRANT RUCKER, RUDY SHINER, LEWIS SHIRLEY, JOHN SPINRAD, NORMAN STERLING, BRUCE STEPHENSON, NEAL SEMIOTEXT(E) - SF. A collection of bizarre SF. Beyond cyberpunk. Includes VISIT PORT WATSON, a fictitious tourist brochure for a South Seas pirate colony/anarcho- libertarian paradise located on the real island of Sonsorol, near Palau.

WILLIAMS, WALTER JON

WILSON, ROBERT ANTON NEW PATHWAYS IN SCIENCE FICTION. Great magazine of short stories and articles; published in Philadelphia. Defunct as of 1993, but worth finding back issues. Matt Howarth, of Those Annoying Post Brothers infamy, illustrated some of them.

RELIGION

(If pranksters, hackers, ontological terrorists, and scato-teratologists have a religion, it is probably one of these)

THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS

Repent! Slack off! Quit Your Job! and send $1 to PO BOX 140306, DALLAS TEXAS 75214. PRAISE "BOB" OR KILL ME!! (2000 note: if you're online, you'd have to lead a sheltered life not to have heard of the Church. Your tastes may vary.

DISCORDIAN

Kerry Wendell Thornley & Greg Hill. PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA. LOOMPANICS UNLIMITED. (Worship of Eris, the Greek goddess of discord, who was more or less responsible for the Trojan war. Founded in the 1960s. Almost as funny as the CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS. Subgenii and Discordians beat each other up a lot online, but it's criminal that Thornley ended his days washing dishes.

OTHER

COSMIC SUICIDE by Forrest Jackson & Rodney Perkins (Pentaradial Press, 1997). The Heaven's Gate cult was closer to mainstream belief than many would care to admit.

Back

More snakes