Cyberpunk Fiction: Search and Destroy

I will try this "Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep" that you speak of.

Speaking of Gibson, I saw a copy of 'Virtual Light' for £1.49 in Oxfam at lunchtime, but it was very mistreated and my mum's got a copy which I can steal anyway. Anyone else want me to go back and get it for them?

In other news: read anything you can find of Neal Stephenson's (start with 'Snow Crash'), as he is entirely grebt and knows more about actual computers than Luddite (_he_ says) Gibson. Not that this is necessarily good ipso facto, but it's interesting if you're into all that. You can find his excellent essay about the evolution of operating systems, 'In The Beginning Was The Command Line', all over the web as well.

I hated Snow Crash. Stephenson was trying way too hard to be cool. And the technological explanations with the tower of Babel etc. was some of the worst techno-bullshit I ever read.

Destroy: Anything set in a virtual reality world.

agree with liz re: snow crash though. first couple of chapters, where he's a pizza driver, were great. cryptonomicon was also good but more about the war / enigma machines than cyberpunk. spoilt somewhat (for me) by a couple of passages as terrifying as the 'weirdstone of brisingamen(?)' section that martin mentioned in the phobias thread. yikes!

was also recommended jeff noon's 'vurt' but it wasn't what i was expecting, too much manchester drug scene albeit the cyberpunk version of manchester drug scene. actually, thinking back, i did kinda enjoy it.

enjoyed the other two books in same (loose) trilogy as neuromancer but was disappointed in lack of space rastafarians in the second and third. virtual light / idoru / all tomorrows parties are also very readable. as are the short stories (burning chrome)

slashdot did this a couple of weeks ago (or was that hard sci-fi?) anyway: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=49662&cid=5012132

andy

Haruki Murakami's "Hard-boiled Wonderland..." is awesome.

Pass on Jeff Noon, you can hardly parse the sentences in Vurt and it's really not worth trying.

Snow Crash is quite humourous.

(Subsequent reads have shown what genius that first chapter actually is, but MAN did I hate it at the time.)

I like Stevenson's other stuff, too, particularly Diamond Age and...well...everything but Zodiac, which I just didn't get (The Big U made me laugh out loud).

I managed to pick up a copy of ubik by phillip k. dick on the way home today because it was cheapness cheapified, it looks pretty good too but i'm only about 14 pages into it so far.

Maybe you have to be here or something -- the description of everything, from the pizza delivery to the nature of the burbs to all that -- is SO GODDAMN LA and Orange County especially. My laughter was the laughter of recognition. Last year I spoke to an English class taught by an old teacher of mine who was using _Snow Crash_ as a key text (she was the one who actually got me reading the book in the first place) and in rereading that first chapter all I could think of was the 55 freeway and Newport Beach.

Cross-posting: Ballard has next to nothing to do with cyberpunk. Best: I like High-Rise.

Its funny, but other than The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike and Humpty Dumpty In Oakland, "Do Androids Dream..." is the only PKD I haven't read yet. Blade Runner is one of my fave flicks, although to me, Tetsuo: Iron Man is THE cyberpunk movie.

Bruce Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown"

TOTBC is on my much-desired list, but the last time I checked Amazon, it wasn't in print, and the ex who introduced me to Erickson lost her copy when she moved.

I don't think Noon and Erickson have much in common. I'm not going to be too informative on Noon, as I read one a couple of years ago. I didn't think much of his prose, and I thought he was a youngster trying to write 'cool' modern SF, full of subcultures and drugs. Nothing of substance there that I could see, and nothing to excite me either. I consider Steve Erickson more in the Auster, Pynchon, Coover, Barthelme bracket, one of the great PoMo novelists, several leagues above Gibson or Sterling, let alone Noon.

I know what you mean about the ... artificial cool of Noon, I guess, although I don't think it's much more noticeable in him than Gibson -- just that the subcultures have changed. If you fold his style into that complaint, though, that's definitely a love it or hate it kind of thing. (He seems to be aware of the complaint, too, and has said that he's more interested in "just telling stories" in the future.)

The Erickson/Auster comparison is a good one -- I'm going to point that out to get more friends to read Auster, which I've been trying to do for years now.

Has anyone read his new book? (Pattern Recognition, just came out last week.) I'm probably going to wait until I can get a used paperback copy of it, but it sounds kind of interesting...

Dude.

I remember when they were NEW.

Cor.

Er - All Tomorrows Parties is alright. I've not read Snow Crash but Cryptonomicon roxx0r.

Also any Jack Womack. Elvessey for starters, but any of his will do.

Okay, I've seen that title -- what's the deal, is it some sort of tribute to Elvis and Morrissey?

You might like Gibson's later books better -- Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties.

Womack's books are all generally batshit crazy. Terraplane and Ambient are also worth checking out.

I'll definitely give one of them a read sometime, as I think the only reason why I thought Neuromancer was only ok was that I read it right after Snow Crash, and it paled in comparison.

1. Appalling attention to detail (though I only have an uncorrected proof so maybe this will change), eg Bow Road changes into Bow Street mid-story
2. Set in London and Gibson clearly has no grasp of how the city works - he refers to Camden as Camden Town throughout (surely no-one really does this?!), but gives street names without the suffix, eg, "down Parkway and over to Aberdeen, the market street that runs it's single block into Camden." Has a bigwig character supposedly rolling in it living in Bow Quarter, oh dear.
3. Technological details are hamfisted - endless references to googling which come across very badly. On the plus side, the story revolves around an ILX-style online community which is pretty well observed.
4. The main character is supposedly fixated with logos to the extent that she has the buttons on her 501s filed down to remove branding - why the fuck doesn't she just buy them from George at Asda then?? no problems with evil logos then. Her motivations appeared to have no internal logic.

The whole thing just has the feel of something that your dad would write which you would roll your eyeballs at - a shame because the central premise (no spoilers) is fascinating, but I just can't get beyond the clunky prose.

Oh well, just my tuppenceworth. I just got a copy of "The Last Party" by John Harris so maybe I'll read that instead.

Isn't Crypto the first of a trilogy? And does anyone know when the next one is due?

still trying to find a copy of KW Jeter's "Dr Adder", which sounds amazing.

If you liked "Snow Crash" because it was off the wall and fun, I would recommend trying out one of Mick Farren's science fiction novels like The Feelies, The DNA Cowboys Trilogy or Necrom.

Shakey I have two or three copies of it (also three or four of Jeter's The Glass Hammer which is if anything even better.)

Melissa Scott can be spotty, but I really like TROUBLE AND HER FRIENDS. It's still one of my favorite portrayals of virtual reality, might be a little dated now but I can forgive that -- it pubbed in 1994. And her BURNING BRIGHT is okay, not great as I recall (although I think I'll re-read it now), but specifically involves a circle of celebrity RPGers/game designers and it's kind of fun to see where RPGs might go when augmented by VR.

And I have a weird one-off mass market I must have bought used, called ARCHANGEL PROTOCOL by Lyda Morehouse. It's sort of post-nuclear New York assuming the US is ruled by religious factions. It's not terrifically subtle, not at the top of the genre, but I've enjoyed it.

Not long after Neuromancer, Walter Jon Williams wrote some cyberpunk novel that was average, but had a really fascinating several-page account of this wacky new cyberspace's money-laundering applications. Neuromancer sort of followed Clarke's Law for me in that it's events were indistinguishable from magic, but the Williams book was a better clue about how all this stuff was going to affect day to day living in a few years.

Gibson- I really liked Virtual light, held together as a story better than the other 2 or so early novels I read, which had great promise but just lost me. Far above those- I prefer the Burning Chrome short stories, they are his best stuff I think.

Proto-cyberpunk- search John Brunner "stand on Zanzibar" and "the sheep look up" in fact some of the best sci fi ever written I think.

Emma Bull "Bone Dance" looks good and has been recommended a lot but I haven't read it.

That all said, McHugh's emphasis on society and human interaction *rather* than that of tech is actually probably very wise, emphasizing the continuity using different media instead of immediate radical difference. These days I tend to envision cyberpunk of twenty years back and thereabouts as a reflexive 'ooo, the scary future' reaction to the ever more concrete hints of the computerized world when the modern cell phone (especially as multimedia/Internet device) completely turns that idea on its head and makes everything portable, cuddly and cool. A generation of kids now grows up with cell phones, iPods, etc. as given, much like mine did with color TV, and the dystopia of the Cold War-informed Sprawl transmogrifies into something much less threatening -- though other threats exist (has Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast been mentioned yet?)

also di filipo is only occasionally cyberpunk (he's done some terif "steampunk" tho) but always hilarious and sometimes fulla great music gags such as in "Ciphers". a quick google reveals to me that the guy is absurdly prolific. my fav. thing he did was a near-future story about a lester-bangs-alike churning out music reviews in a postapocalyptic world, all done in the voice of Richard Hell's "go now."

the funny thing of course is while popsongs have done ok there has yet to be any non-genre author i've noticed who's managed to do even email and cellphones without an out-of-touch dorkiness factor bringing the whole thing squealing down. while, meanwhile, the cyberpunk, tho feeling dated, holds up ok on that end -- i mean, of course they "get" the tech in their novels, they invented it.

and meanwhile fiction of all sorts was seldom grandiose enough to imagine an entire energy company running "fat boy" scams to defraud a fucking state! (tho gaddis anticipated it, which is why reading on Enron inspired me to go back to JR).

Just ordered this, before reading your post of course.

Also reading Burning Chrome stories at the moment, not overly impressed though.

I'd have to assume that current looming future-shock fear in sf is either biological or energy-based.

I read "Dr Adder" again a few years ago. I enjoyed it, but it was kind of a bit clunky, I thought. I do remember some kw jeter title that was really awesome, but I can't rememeber which one it was.

Revisited Neuromancer last night after having just reread the Burning Chrome short stories. Really enjoying it, especially after not having anything to read since Crypto' (can't believe it's been 3 years)

and so just ordered "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World"

I gave that to my dad once for Christmas - don't know what the hell I was thinking

It's not really cyberpunk at all though from what I remember (very little)

I think my favorite thing William Gibson ever wrote was "The Winter Market"

Alfred Bester - The Stars my Destination.

The great grandfather of cyberpunk.

I read the Stars My Destination recently. Way ahead of its time, agreed. Also quite odd.

Yeah breaking ground in a few ways, yet still of it's time.

There has been talk of a film, on and off, for years.

Blish's cities in space. socio-thematically a predecessor too I think.

How are there no mentions of Tiptree's "The Girl Who Plugged In" on this thread?!?! Hmmph.

I'm fairly surprised that noone's mentioned John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider; I mean, Stand on Zanzibar has the atmosphere, but that's the real deal.

Sheep Look Up is my favorite Brunner, followed by the decidedly non-Cyberpunk Squares of the City.

haven't been able to find a copy of Shockwave Rider, unfortunately

lolz Royal Trux songtitles

Shakey have you ever read Jack Womack? I'm really digging Random Acts of Senseless Violence.

nah. I think I thumbed through a friend's copy of Elvissey once

and hey I thought you were done with sci-fi, post-80s!

My wife was reading it for a class and said it was good. I thought the plot outline reminded a lot of Parable of the Sower actually.

I don't tend to read anything written post-80s, true, but I don't think anyone would argue that the sci-fi's golden age was long over by then.

It just me or have we been living in cyberpunk reality a while now?

we now have:

1) hackers across the planet attacking gov't and corporate systems to force democratic/social change
2) working optical and cochlear implants
3) megabanks "donating" millions to the cops to have them beat up on protestors
4) a hitchhiker's guide that fits in my pocket giving me 24/7 access anywhere within signal range to any flavor of porn or lolcat

Also, I just finished reading this on the plane ride home, which I describe as "1986 in book form":

http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/images_books/hardwired.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Inp2a8e7_-o/R1RU-B9wSEI/AAAAAAAAA9g/NbyTtQ_LpTk/s400/1cherr8.jpg

Ok, kids, I need me recommendations for worthwhile cyberpunk/transhumanist fiction from 2012 to read. Any suggestions?

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/WebofAngels.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99qJGrPNLs

(Cyberpunk 2077 video game teaser trailer)

just realized the girl in that is prob a tribute to molly millions

popped a molly now i'm bleedin

this revive is kinda timely because i am in the middle of my yearly reread of the sprawl trilogy

the third one is kinda trippy and weird

just picked up virtual light hope it's good

popped a molly now i'm bleedin

― let's go do some crimes (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Friday, January 11, 2013 8:36 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha this is what molly kinda does at the end of neuromancer

virtual light is...okay.

like all the world-building stuff is amazing. and the opening chapter about the rent-a-cop would have made a pretty amazing short story. but the actual plot is just kinda standard caper shit.

"like every william gibson book ever."

fenced some RAM from a hitachi iirc

lol

you know i bet until he pointed it out himself i never would have noticed the lack of cell phones in neuromancer

maybe because every time i read the word "phone" i just imagine a cell now

i guess a couple of scenes involve payphones, which probably date it even more than people plugging things into their necks

the scene where wintermute rings each row of payphone only once as case walks down the hallway would have been much less dramatic if wintermute could have just texted him

xp!

yeah that's one of my favorite scenes in the book

which also totally takes me out of its world

the bad thing about talking about neuromancer is it makes me want to drop everything else I'm reading to go read neuromancer and once I do that I can't stop until I've finished neuromancer

i stopped fronting that it wasn't my favorite novel ever a few years back and i'm a much better person for it

the pathos of the hard-bought immortality of dixie flatline, or of spending an eternity on a virtual beach living with a dead girl from your past in ersatz happiness, oh my heart~~~

haha I listed neuromancer as my only favorite book on my OKC profile, NO BITES

haha i still love all the details in gibson that i never could have picked up on when i was 12

"he showed you the ropes, huh? him and quine. i know quine, by the way. real asshole."

or the fact that the shantytown in "fragments of a hologram rose" is named after

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3mrcxek67A

hahah ohmigod my worlds are colliding The bar's name comes from the track "Midnite Cruiser" on the 1972 Steely Dan album Can't Buy a Thrill.

a gibson interview is actually what got me to check out steely dan all those years ago!

previously they'd be filed under "dumb shit my dad likes"

hahah amazing

this is me irl, also my desktop background

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e1/Burning_chrome.JPG/250px-Burning_chrome.JPG

haha the man's never had a good book cover, it's true

whoa

William Gibson
Any 'Mount Of World

Visionary William Gibson takes a trip to the grocery store and winds up in the middle of the frozen foods aisle experiencing a series of revelations about Steely Dan.

Addicted To Noise 6.03 - March 2000

Artistic collaboration is a profoundly strange business. Do it right up to the hilt, as it were, and you and your partner will generate a third party, some thoroughly Other, and often one capable of things neither you nor the very reasonable gentleman seated opposite would even begin to consider. "Who," asks one of those disembodied voices in Mr. Burroughs' multilevel scrapbooks, "is the Third who walks beside us?"

My theory, such as it is, about Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, is that their Third, their Other, Mistah Steely Dan hisself, proved so problematic an entity for the both of them, so seductive and determined a swirl of ectoplasm, that they opted to stay the hell away from him for 20 years.

He continues on, of course, in the atemporal reaches of electronic popular culture, and I have often raised an eyebrow at hearing him sing, as I push a cart down some Safeway aisle, of the spiritual complexities induced by the admixture of Cuervo Gold, cocaine and nineteen-year-old girls (in the hands of a man of, shall we say, a certain age). At which point I look around Frozen Foods and wonder: "Is anyone else hearing this?" Do the people who program these supermarket background tapes have any idea what this song is actually about? On this basis alone I have always maintained that Steely Dan's music was, has been and remains among the most genuinely subversive ouevres in late-20th-century pop.

There's a story about some hapless mook, down under the stadium there in Chicago where they did the hands-on prep for the first atomic bomb, who finds himself in the deeply unenviable position of having to shove together two halves of some grapefruit-sized mass of critically radioactive material. It ends, as they say, in tears, and that is what I've always imagined happened to Becker and Fagen; why they opted offshore and waited a couple of decades for the Geiger counters to stop clicking. Buried the two halves of that graphite core under their respective beds, maybe never to be reassembled.

Now whatever Mistah Dan might be — and I myself am inclined to think of him as a literary, or perhaps paraliterary, as much as a purely musical figure — Becker and Fagen are musos of the first water. Hence their respective solo output in the absence of Steely Dan. Which I've enjoyed, but in rather an oblique way, never quite able to stop glancing over my shoulder else that Third might loom suddenly into view, which he never did.

Now comes, as surely every Dan fan knows, Two Against Nature. The immediate and embarrassingly looming question being: is He back? Have they resurrected His Bad Self?

Yes.

They have. The Stranger has signed in, his toe-cleavage ostrich loafers flaking red Maui clay on the studio broadloom.

Two Against Nature is actually a rather eerie experience in that regard, like being present for the arrival of a time-machine. But not one from any particular past, or future; this music manages (as it always has) to transcend the duller registers of the cultural calendar. It's as though it was composed in the time-machine, in its own little pocket of temporality. I suspect that this is somehow the result of an encyclopedic sense of American music, an effortlessly graceful facility at collage and that patented Steely Dan studio wax, as though one were listening down through a hundred coats of hand-rubbed sonic carnauba, each glossy layer somehow highlighting a different aspect of the composition. But best ignore that, as I am anything but a musician. Suffice it to say: it sure sounds like Steely Dan to me, and the more so the longer I listen to it.

The DNA match is perfect. The real question, I think, is how close together have Becker and Fagen been willing to bring the two halves of the graphite core? Well, sometimes very close, it feels to me, and sometimes not so. My Dan counter starts to sizzle most seriously with "Jack of Speed" and "Cousin Dupree," two very different pieces. "Jack of Speed" is an instant classic in the Dan Archive of Loping Psychedelic Naturalism, one of those luminously unfocused mug shots they're so good at: someone you once knew all too well, shuffled back, via the Dan magic, to stand in your doorway for a moment with Orphan Annie eyes. "Cousin Dupree" is Steely Dan at the very peak of droll American pop narrative, deeply comic and quietly merciless.

I'd say more about the other songs, but I'm starting to feel like a reviewer, which makes me intensely uncomfortable. I'm not a reviewer: I just want to say I like this record a lot, OK?

And I can only hope that Becker and Fagen decide that they can afford to let their Third out of the box a little more often, as there's nobody else remotely like him, and we need him. I know I do.

oh wait, it wasn't an interview, it was actually that article. i remember that now.

now I'm on a thread on a william gibson message board about steely dan references in gibsons books, at 9:30 on a friday night, is there any wonder why I have a OKC profile

^^ plot for next william gibson novel

let's face it, we were promised a future where we'd all be robbing japanese corporations thanks to the software plugs in our necks, and instead we got white text on a black background and people sniping at each other over some cowboy breakup

"A Steely Dan concert is akin to witnessing the passage of a single multiplex vehicle the size of a motorcade or convoy, its various segments comprising limousines, ice-cream wagons, hearses, lunch-carts, ambulances, black marias, and motorcycle outriders, all of it Rolls-grade and lacquered like a tropical beetle. The horns glint, as it rolls majestically past, splendid, a thing of legend, and utterly peculiar unto itself." - WG

I think WG acknowledges as much from the 10 pages I read of pattern recognition from which I remember only that the protagonist was really into buying dark clothing with no labels xp

i actually don't dislike his 21st-century novels as much as i did at first, but jesus, i don't need a mimetic description of life lived in the actual world the internet has given us, i'm living it, and it's horrible, and i want existential artificial intelligences and sexy cyborg assassins dammit

I am tweeting at WG today :/

@williamgibson will you be my grandpa?

Jeez I think his kids are my age? If extant?

started reading 'virtual light' and it seems like willie read 'snow crash' right before writing this

Just belatedly finished Ian McDonald's River of Gods (2004), and it was worthy of its contemporaneous praise (BSFA winner, Hugo & Clarke nominee). Its cyberdrama set in 2070s Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh, India), with cogent speculations (climate change droughts, splintering of India, US drone interventions, religious strife, post-singularity AIs) and a lot of local color. There's an ill-fated hitman or two, but its low on the "punk" side of the equation as most/all of the protagonists are high-placed politicians or academics.

damnit william why can't you just write the whole book from the courier's perspective

Holy crap that two against nature review is amaaazing. As is Strongo's subsequent post starting with 'let's face it...'

I think I may have been willfully blind to wg. Will remedy this.

haha I listed neuromancer as my only favorite book on my OKC profile, NO BITES

― 乒乓, Friday, January 11, 2013 8:11 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

stealing this okc pro tip

http://www.acceler8or.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/cyberpunk-mondo-2000.jpg

me irl

The functionality of all that equipment exists in the average smartphone today. Except the stun-gun. I guess you could try whacking assailants over the head with your iPhone to achieve the same effect.

Also lol at "PGP key exchanges , etc."

The Pattern Recognition trilogy isn't bad, if you can accept the novels as simple thrillers with some interesting characters and the thinnest veneer of cyberpunk/technology.

the Elastica stand-in band involved with the second and third is pretty lol

music video director in the first is Chris Cunningham crossed with someone I'm not sure of

i actually kinda liked the blue ant trilogy a lot more when i went back and reread pattern rec and spook country when zero history came out. i mean, yeah, they're basically very well-written airport thrillers, and i do miss the crazy go-for-broke visionary thing you got in the best parts of the sprawl and bridge trilogies, but as pop pulp books go, they're pretty good.

it's kinda heartening to hear that his next book will be a return to actual sf, though.

just realized that the bridge is a stand-in for the kowloon walled city

lol have you read the other books in the trilogy yet?

no!!

it's kinda funny to see him wear his influences on his sleeve, of that time - AIDS, the walled city having just been torn down a few years before, snow crash

the kowloon stuff gets much more overt with the next book, so you are a psychic friend

haha, I'm just mildly obsessed with the KWC irl. also funny that the real KWC was also the subject of treatment by japanese anthropologists, check out this awesome cross section map they did: http://www.deconcrete.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Kowloon-Cross-section-low.jpg

pretty much the awesomest image ever

so rad

i want like a giant print of that for the giant wall i don't have

that is fantastic

There's an original that was done on glass

Hmm, that appears to be a enlargement of the Japanese drawing at a yamen that serves as a museum on the site of now torn down Kowloon.

goddamnit I never went to that yamen

brb

that's p fuckin rad

OK so somehow no one ever told me about Kowloon Walled City in my life until this thread. Last night I spent a couple of hours reading about it. Holy crap. It's quite a bit like this recurring dream of mine, actually. I can't believe it was real.

ghost in the shell 2: innocence is probably the best film adaptation of neuromancer we'll see in our lifetimes.

"Read Only Memories is a new cyberpunk adventure that takes place in Neo-SF, 2064. Based on 90’s point & click adventure games..."

http://midboss.com/rom/

Can anyone recommend any decent cyberpunk comics/graphic novels from the 80s or 90s? I just finished 100% which everyone on the internet seems to think is cyberpunk, but it really wasn't.

you've read transmet?

nope! I have read little to nothing so far.

that's obv the one to check out then. it's fantastic.

I wish the Ghost in the Shell manga wasn't such a convoluted, sexually creepy slog.... Paul Pope's Heavy Liquid is fun, although its art is more memorable than its writing. Moebius's sf work from the 70s on is essential. If you're open to anime, too, be sure to watch Serial Experiments Lain.

Will I like Heavy Liquid if I thought 100% was kinda boring and hated the drawing style?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Visions

heck yeah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mek_(comics)

just hit me up and I will tell you all the comics

you can probably ignore me if I start talking about Ghost Rider 2099 again, though

Will I like Heavy Liquid if I thought 100% was kinda boring and hated the drawing style?

xp - almost certainly not. your post has left me sad & confused.

I can completely understand not getting into Paul Pope, although I definitely enjoy his work

actually, as far as comics go, you could just read all the collected 2000AD stuff, including most Judge Dredd

Transmetropolitan was completely unreadable to me. Less cyberpunk than shock jock Hunter S Thompson.

Will I like Heavy Liquid if I thought 100% was kinda boring and hated the drawing style?

Honestly, probably not

Oh, and Carla Speed McNeil's Finder series is difficult to categorize, but its "Dream Sequence" arc plays with cyberpunk tropes in a pretty distinctive way.

look I thought 100% would be some Johnny Mnemonic-esque techno-cyber thriller about a night club in the future when it was actually just kind of a few corny romance narratives that just so happened to take place in (but had very little to do with) a night club in the future. Also everything he draws is really cramped and smushed and it's hard to make out details.

like I want computers and action and conflict and cool tech stuff, i'm not tryna read some cliche lovey bullshit

2020 Visions has a little bit of that but it also has lots of future stds and people going splat on the sidewalk

shirow is a reasonable suggestion if you haven't already tried that, ghost in the shell obv but i thought appleseed was very good. convoluted and creepy per post above is accurate but i didn't personally find any of it a slog. eden is another good series, not quite to description but in the ballpark i think.

Moebius is very great, obv, but wouldn't classify his work as being 'cyberpunk' at all - cyberhippy, maybe.

Best SF comic series I've seen recently - Aama by Frederik Peeters, translated in four volumes from SelfMadeHero:

http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2013/review-aama/

I've only read the first volume so far, but Aama really is great so far.

Moebius is very great, obv, but wouldn't classify his work as being 'cyberpunk' at all - cyberhippy, maybe.

Eh, his 1978 collaboration with Dan O'Bannon, "The Long Tomorrow" anticipates enough cyberpunk tropes that it seemed pertinent.

http://bronzeageofblogs.blogspot.com/2009/05/moebius-long-tomorrow.html

Yes, you're right, 'Long Tomorrow' definitely feels cyberpunky, but it's a bit of an exception in terms of Moebius' SF stuff (I guess the early pages of The Incal, also not written by Moebius, might quality too).

I've only read the first volume so far, but Aama really is great so far.

been looking forward to this for a while, but haven't started yet.

That other app has its moments

https://bsky.app/profile/greatdismal.bsky.social/post/3mcv5upv4p226

“I think we’ve got better and more culturally-varied street food than I could have imagined, cool jackets galore, and drugs that make us think we’re really fast and strong before they kill us.”

Replying to

“we're getting all the downsides of cyberpunk (social alienation, ruthless hyper capitalism, digital mass surveillance state) but none of the promised upsides (cheap street food, cool jackets, super drugs that make you really fast and strong before they kill you)”