Indie Cyberpunk Novel Recommendations

Cyberpunk, like all genres, has gone through a variety of stages in its life cycle. The Western, for example, went through a period which celebrated the Black and White morality of heroic cowboys against savage natives before revising itself to realize it was a time of murderous outlaws stealing the land of locals before becoming the home of many fantastical stories which paper over any semblance of history.

In cyberpunk's case, it first started in the 1980s as the successor of the dystopian science fiction genre that predicted the computer revolution as well as conservative economic model would lead to a highly-technological future where the gap between the rich as well as the poor was hyper-exaggerated. Works like Blade Runner and the Sprawl trilogy set the ground work.

My first cyberpunk novel.

The 1990s saw cyberpunk co-opted to an extent with big commercial projects with the Matrix and animated series like Ghost in the Shell were accompanied by the idea transhumanism would combine with spirituality to make a new humanity. The hackers of sci-fi became protagonists as everyone got their own personal computer and many took to fighting for "justice" in their own way.

The 21st century has become a sort of real life cyberpunk era (see The Top Signs We're Living in a Cyberpunk Future) with games like Watch_Dogs and television series like Mr. Robot or Person of Interest showing cyberpunk stories in the present day. It has also shown a decentralizing of fiction due to the creation of Ebooks and mass publishing houses that mean anyone can become a hyper-successful cyberpunk author. You just aren't likely to be.
   
Speaking as the author of Neo-Cyberpunk (see my AGENT G novels), I've decided to share a list of books which have come out in the past few years and have shown how the cyberpunk genre has changed for the New Teens. These are the books which Gibson, Scott, Stephenson, and the Wachowskis have laid the groundwork for.

Some of these books I've loved, some of these books I just enjoyed, but I think all of them brought something interesting to the genre. They're the third generation of writers who have tried their hand at rainy technologically enhanced dystopias and are all worth checking out. Here are thirteen of the ones I recommend for those who want to see what the genre is producing this time.

Exploded View by Sam McPheeters

Exploded View by Sam McPheeters is one of the best novels on this list. It is the story of a jaded television-obsessed future where advances in photo-optics means everything is recorded. Furthermore, CGI is available to the public who constantly alter and distort footage of their programs to do whatever they want (mostly porn). The protagonist is an LAPD police officer and single mother who is struggling to find meaning in her life. I found it quirky, socially relevant, and very authentic feeling from beginning to end. I also felt the protagonist was a great character to get a feel for the dystopian but (barely) functional world.

Ghosts of Tomorrow by Michael R. Fletcher

This is, without a doubt, the best novel in my recommendations. Ghosts of Tomorrow is a high octane cyberpunk story about how "scans" (human brain copies) have become an integral part of the economy but can only be done once as well as killing the subject. This has resulted in a despicable human trafficking industry where unwanted children are marketed to the depraved or transhumanist. The protagonists believe they can do some good in the world by stopping a super-rich customer and a powerful trafficking ring. Michael R. Fletcher did an amazing job with this book and I'm anxious to see a sequel. What else can you say about a book which includes a fourteen year old cyborg gunslinger who thinks he's a samurai yet it is played for horror rather than laughs?

Drones by Rob Hayes

In the future, it is possible to buy emotions but you can't just do chemicals like alcohol or drugs to get them anymore. No, in the future if you want authentic human experience then you have to harvest emotions straight from the source. Drones are those fools who decide to make a little money on the side (or their primary income) by tapping their emotions for sale. It leaves them numb, cold, and barely able to function--which is the point for a lot of them. For one Drone running from his past, he's about to discover what it's like to care again. A fate he'd do anything to avoid. 

Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy (Hard Luck Hank #1) by Steve Campbell

Hard Luck Hank is something of a borderline example but something I can't leave off the list anyway. On a space station in the far future, Hank is a loutish mutant who lives in a place that makes Mos Eisley look positively cuddly. The future is ugly, grim, and full of people looking out for number one. The series gets a bit repetitive after the third or fourth book but I still think of it as a great source of humor. This is a short little novel that mostly depends on Hank's low stakes, low effort view of the world. He couldn't care less about the world, its people, or doing the right thing. All he wants to do is get his job done and get paid. The fact the world continues to move around him is part of the books charm as this attitude proves justified time and time again.

The Immorality Clause (Easytown #1) by Brian Parker

The Easytown novels by Brian Parker, starting with this volume, are some of the best cyberpunk books out there. In the 2070s, the world has become a much more conservative place but more sleazy behind closed doors. Sex bots have replaced prostitutes, cybernetics have become fashionable, and A.I. are programmed to love being enslaved. Zach Forrest is one of the last honest cops in the city and he's one of the most violent and crude as well--which makes him the perfect man to walk Easytown's beat. There's only one thing which can ruin him and that's having a relationship with a machine. The Easytown novels are currently three novels out and an anthology which I gleefully admit to writing in. I even wrote the Foreword. The Easytown novels take a different view of the future where the punks have decidedly lost to the social conservatives but that just means there's no future in a different way.

Mercury's Son by Luke Hindmarsh

Mercury's Son is set after humanity has destroyed the environment completely and now lives in sealed off arcologies. Rather than corporations, humanity has turned to the totalitarian religion of the Great Mother. Its a religion without God as it worships Mother Nature instead, directing all of its ire at humanity and science instead. The protagonist doesn't give a crap about any of this, though, as the cyborg super-soldier leftover from the Bad Old DaysTM just wants to live as comfortable a life as possible--even if it means working for people who hate him. I've read the book twice so you can guess what I think of it. Mind you, I also appreciate the author liked my review enough to put a quote from it on the cover. Remember authors, flattery gets you everywhere with critics.

The Finder of the Lucky Devil by Megan Mackie

The Finder of the Lucky Devil is a cyberpunk urban fantasy novel that isn't particularly edgy but it is a lot of fun. In the future, the corporations have managed to purchase all of the world and you have to deal with them if you want to do anything. However, magic exists and is the one way the people on the ground can survive. Rune is a former executive's housewife who had to find a new identity after being tortured and abused by her husband's former employers. When a corporate secret agent (called a "Saint") comes into her life, she has to make a choice whether to cooperate or die. I also recommend the side story Saint Code: Lost, which is a story from the perspective of one of those agents.

Prime Suspects: A Clone Detective Mystery by Jim Bernheimer

Free admission that Jim Bernheimer is the publisher of my Supervillainy Saga and Agent G novels so if you feel my opinion of his work is irreversibly tainted, go ahead and ignore it. For those who still want to know what I think of this book, I think this is a short but awesome little work. What's the premise? In the future clones have become the predominant labor force with each taken from the best at their profession. Which is great for the Prime of any line as they get 10% of all their clones' salaries but sucks for the rest of them. Dave Bagini-42 is the latest in his line and has a hell of a mission with his birth: someone has murdered his Prime and the suspect is one of the other 41 clones who all have a motive to kill their creator. It's less than 200 pages but a really effective little bit of fiction with a lot of heart. I also found the resolution to be entirely believable and wanted to see more adventures with the character.

Soda Pop Soldier by Nick Cole

 

There's something just so elegant about the idea of a video game where real world people die. Soda Pop Soldier is a delightful universe where E-Sports have become a big business, violence is at its most disconnected from society, and your ability to differentiate between the two is at its most fuzzy.  It's a bloody, digitized or otherwise, affair for the fate of free-advertising in the world. Can anyone stop it?

Technomancer: To Beat the Devil (Technomancer #1) by Michael Gibson

Another cheat in the fact that I wrote the Foreword for this one. So let the reader beware about my objectivity (I have none--I'm just a cyberpunk fan with a blog). Michael Gibson came to me to ask if I'd read his novel and whether or not I thought it was worth publishing. Being a huge Shadowrun fan, I absolutely loved his combination of fantasy, mythology, and net-running in a post-apocalypse setting. In this case, the Biblical apocalypse has occurred and the good guys forgot to show up. Hell has taken over the world and humanity lives at the bottom of the gutter, surviving in an ultra-high tech world of decadence and sin. Salem is a nano-tech enhanced human mercenary for the demons and doesn't give a crap about who is in charge so long as he's paid. That changes when he's hired by a mysterious stranger to take down one of the largest demon bosses in the world. Basically, the Dresden Files meets Shadowrun in terms of tone.

Kill Switch by Sean E. Britten

Kill Switch by Sean E. Britten is a work that benefits strongly from the fact that it remembers cyberpunk is fundamentally social satire. It's a deliberate grotesque blood bowl of ridiculous mass murderers, psycho-killers, and nutjobs gathered together to slaughter each other on national TV. But between the chapters there's a nonstop assault of insane products that remind me of the best of the cut-short-too-soon Max Headroom series. The Sex Pistols said we had no future and here we are.