Ten Indie Cyberpunk Novel Recommendations

    Cyberpunk as a genre arguably hit its heyday during the Eighties as a cultural force with Neuromancer and reached its zenith in social acceptance in the Nineties with The Matrix movies. After that, it slowly tapered off and ceased to be something fans got hyped over barring a few high profile video games. This is due to my suspicion that cyberpunk slowly became reality, or at least so similar to our current era of big corporations and hacker criminals that it stopped becoming genre fiction.

    There have been a few major successes since then, literature-speaking, though as well as some genuine artistic achievements. Altered Carbon is one of the strongest entries into this series due to Richard K. Morgan reinventing the darkness and anger of the original works for the Twenty First Century. However, there's not nearly as many peers to it as there should be and the big corporate produced cyberpunk novels are not what I'm here to discuss.

    No, I'm here to discuss indie produced cyberpunk novels that have caught my eye over the past decade and ones that I think are worth recommending. As a cyberpunk author myself with the Agent G and Cyber Dragons trilogies, I thought I'd share ten novels that I really enjoyed set in the cyberpunk genre.

    What is cyberpunk? For the purposes of this list, I'm going to define it as gritty near-future science fiction with an anti-authoritarian bent. For me, you can't claim the title of "punk" unless you have the latter, which is why The Matrix qualifies even if it's in the far future. You're welcome to disagree with the definition but that should let you know what I'm recommending down here.

10. You Can Be a Cyborg When You're Older by Richard Roberts

    I'm already shooting myself in the foot by making  this my first entry but this is a Young Adult novel cyberpunk parody by the author of the Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain series. Vanity Rose is a fourteen year old with dreams of being a street criminal in an orphanage of children being raised by a malfunctioning robot. It's a wild and bizarre world where a good chunk of the population has joined a transhumanist cult where you spend all your money transforming yourself into World of Warcraft characters.

    I really enjoyed this book because it manages to capture the kind of hyper-real, hyper-violent, and hyper-exotic world of cyberpunk but makes it kind of sweet. Vanity is a great character and I'm sad that it didn't go on to become its own continuing series.

9. Ten Sigma by A.W. Wang

    Ten Sigma is an interesting story with the premise of a dying woman signing her consciousness over to the US government to be horrifically brutalized and reprogrammed into becoming a killing machine they will unleash after the imminent collapse of society. 

    This is a fascinating story because it almost entirely takes place in a virtual battlefield and is all about the dehumanizing effect of the training as well as the goal to eliminate every bit of humanity from the woman inside. You know, fun stuff like that. I liked it but it's a harsh read and the opposite of You Can Be a Cyborg When You're Older.

8. The Blind Spot by Michael Robertson

    In the future, the majority of humanity has relocated to city-states in the middle of large wastelands and farms. One city is divided into the corporate-run have's while the have-nots actually have done pretty well for themselves by keeping a monopoly on vice as well as transhumanist technologies. However, the careful truce between the two sides is disrupted when someone starts framing the latter for terrorist activities against the former. Unless it's not a frame job at all. Our badass cyber-heroine and a very bland corporate douche must find out.

7. The Machine Killer by D.L. Young

    A former hacker turned corporate shill works with a professional bodyguard for one last job to clear their debts with a famous computer corporation. No points for guessing that it goes completely sideways. The Machine Killer is a fun and entertaining book with a lighter side of cyberpunk criminal activity as well as likable protagonists. AIs, cybernetic cults, and more. It feels like a very well-written video game.

6. Mercury's Son by Luke Hindmarsh

    The world's environment has been destroyed by a combination of war as well as mismanagement. Unfortunately, this has led to the rise of a brutal eco-friendly anti-technology theocracy that uses slave labor to clean up the environment while living in the cities under their control. Because they're enormous hypocrites, they also employ a cyborg investigator and scientists to keep themselves in power. I very much enjoyed this very interesting one-shot novel about a well-developed dystopian world.

5. To Beat the Devil by MK Gibson

    Cyberpunk and fantasy have been two things combined since Shadow Run. It's something that can work very well if done right and very poorly if done wrong. MK Gibson does it the right way with his oddball premise of the Biblical Armageddon happening and God not showing up. Demons now rule the Earth with humans having only one advantage: technology. Salem is a nanotech cyborg courier who gets caught up in the setting's bizarre politics.

4. Ghosts of Tomorrow by Michael R. Fletcher

    Ghost of Tomorrow is one of my all time favorite cyberpunk novels and is my favorite Michael R. Fletcher novel. In the future, scans are the most important commodity in the world but the only way to make them destroys the brain they're taken from. This has led to a horrific trade in children and other people that our heroes are trying to shut down. There's also a cyborg ninja-cowboy that is hunting them. It is fun, dark, comedic, and weird. I can't wait for the sequel.

3. The Immorality Clause by Brian Parker

    The Immorality Clause is a genre throwback that works exceptionally well. There's plenty of private detective cyberpunk novels out there but few that are actually done well. Here, Zach Forrest is a cop in New Orleans circa 2066. Easytown is what they call the cybernetic Red Light District with its perfectly like-like sex dolls and virtual reality fantasies. A murder gets Zach drawn in but he soon finds himself involved with a machine that is too human to be real. I really enjoyed it and read the entire series in one go.

2. Bubbles in Space: Tropical Punch by S.C. Jensen

    As mentioned, there's a lot of cyberpunk detective novels. However, are there many cyberpunk detective novels where the protagonist is objectively terrible at her job and has an AI sobriety pig named Hammett? Bubbles in Paradise is a ridiculous affectionate parody of cyberpunk tropes that, nevertheless, works as a serious story. Tropical Punch is a great introduction to Bubbles Marlowe and she's an amazing character with a great combination of the ridiculous with the surprisingly poignant (as she's a recovering alcoholic trying to get her life back together).

1. Behind Blue Eyes by Anna Mocikat

    Behind Blue Eyes is one of the best cyberpunk action thrillers I've ever read. Nephilim is a cybernetically enhanced assassin who has a job to execute any person who leaves the Olympias Corporations arcologies. She and her fellow Guardian Angels are all brainwashed but an EMP results in her getting back her free will--but how long can she keep it? And does she really want it when all the choices lead to nothing but death? Really well-written and I'm continuing to follow the story.

Honorable Mentions: The Finder at the Lucky Devil by Megan Mackie (urban fantasy cyberpunk), Neon Leviathan by T.R. Napper (cyberpunk anthology), Prime Suspects: A Clone Detective Story by Jim Bernehimer, and Psychodrome by Simon Hawke (reprinted formerly traditionally published cyberpunk)