Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology

by James Patrick Kelly (Editor)

Following the rapid evolution of cyberpunk from Bruce Sterling and William Gibson into the current millennium, this vivid anthology welcomes a new generation of exciting writers to take the genre in new and unexpected directions. Cyberpunk freewheels with punk rock energy, careening between the internet, bioengineering, and international politics, its influence saturating entertainment and the mass media. Drawing on the traditions of the pioneering cyberpunk manifesto, Mirrorshades, each story delves into the gritty world of technological change. Legendary Mirrorshades editor and contributor Bruce Sterling is back, alongside such cutting-edge writers as Cory Doctorow, Jonathan Lethem, Gwyneth Jones, Hal Duncan, Charles Stross, and Pat Cadigan. With a daring introduction from James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, editors of the controversial Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, this collection is an exhilarating snapshot of a vibrant literary movement.

Genres: Cyberpunk, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction

445 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

James Patrick Kelly (please, call him Jim) has had an eclectic writing career. He has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays and planetarium shows. His short novel Burn won the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Award in 2007. He has won the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award twice: in 1996, for his novelette “Think Like A Dinosaur” and in 2000, for his novelette, “Ten to the Sixteenth to One.” His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. He produces two podcasts: James Patrick Kelly's StoryPod on Audible and the Free Reads Podcast (Yes, it’s free). His most recent publishing venture is the ezine James Patrick Kelly’s Strangeways. His website is www.jimkelly.net.

Reviews

[Brainycat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology is put together by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. Sadly, I cannot recall reading any of their work but I shall endeavor to remedy that situation shortly.

The introduction is very well done, in that "let's spend a lot of time trying to define common definitions so we can disagree about nuance" sort of way. I got a feeling they were desperately casting around for a singularity (a recurrent theme in the collection) to define a point in SF history where cyberpunk (CP) gave up the mantle of SF's brave new savior and passed it on to post-cyberpunk (PCP). The introduction, I felt, was ultimately inconclusive and I read the stories with a sense that PCP, according to the editors, is a more mature and less overtly angsty cyberpunk with a broader perspective.

Which suits me fine, I include myself among the number of young computer geeks hanging out on BBS's before the world standardized on TCP/IP, DNS and SMTP. I'm not as overtly angsty as I was in my youth, and the way I view the world has changed dramatically since the days I donned mirrorshades and black leather in a vain attempt to drape myself in "cool". After finishing this sixteen story long "manifesto" about the evolution of cyberpunk, I really don't think it matters if a story gets labeled CP or PCP. Science Fiction, like the street, "finds it's own uses for technology (William Gibson)", and if a writer is discussing the relationship of technology to the individual's concept of self, place and worth - then it's probably CP, and let the publishers and book-jacket designers haggle over the details.

Interspersed between the stories are excerpts from a years-long ongoing debate between Bruce Sterling and John Kessel. Clearly, they used passages from the long string of letters (the debate started before email had '@' signs) and email to introduce stories that tried to prove one point or another. I have two problems with this. First, each quote is taken out of context so I don't know if the words I'm seeing have the author's intent and secondly, anecdotes do not prove a point. Just because someone found a story that agrees with their point does not mean their point is valid, it means someone wrote something that could be interpreted to validate whatever abstract idea they're trying to convey.

That said, this is an excellent collection of stories, and I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys scifi and/or fictionalized social critique. Surprising to me, the two weakest stories were by Pat Cadigan and William Gibson. I've been a longtime dedicated fan of both of these authors, and my reaction to these stories genuinely shocked me. The problems with Cadigan's "The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry, with a Completely Remastered Soundtrack and the Original Audience" start with the title. This story didn't need nearly as many words as Cadigan used to write it. As I was reading the story I pictured myself with a red pencil, slashing paragraphs and sentences willy-nilly. Typically Cadigan, the story revolves around rock'n'roll, memory and customized reality. I wish she'd spent more time chewing on the crux of the story - the relationship between art and insanity - rather than meticulously detailing how the memory technology works. Gibson's contribution "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City" showcases Gibson's singular ability to drip rich texture and detail with an unparalled economy of words, but doesn't do anything. I don't know what the point of the "story" is. It's a very abstract piece; there are no protagonists or antagonists or conflicts or timelines. It's extraordinarily beautiful writing, but reading it feels like going over the notes from a series of writing excercises - "Draw as detailed a picture as possible in less than 500 words, repeat thirteen times". It's like shuffling through a stack of polaroids, without any context whatsoever.

Two of the stories I've read before. "Daddy's World" by Walter Jon Williams explores the ethics of containing a sentience within a simulated world, and "When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth" by Cory Doctorow asks what happens to cyberspace when global meatspace falls apart. WJW's story doesn't ask any questions or come to any conclusions that haven't been covered elsewhere, but it may be the most cogent exploration of the problems of computing power, linear time sequence and what happens when a mind is left in a finite space too long. Doctorow's story is an ode to the transnational comraderie that internet engineers have grown accustomed to, and while it shows off Doctorow's net cred and makes sysadmins the world over feel all warm and fuzzy, it never really addresses the main question it raises - what is the greater value of global communication when your city is burning to the ground after a successful bioterror attack?

Several of the stories deal with family, and I believe they were selected specifically to break the CP taboo against protagonists having roots, connections and motivations besides survival and greed. Bruce Sterling's "Bicycle Repairman" is solidly in this camp, and is a fun read. David Marusek's "The Wedding Album" asks a lot of the same questions and WJW's contribution, but takes the effort to dive deeply into the space between sentience, free will and the ability of various states of mind to learn and adapt. Elizabeth Bear's "Two Dreams on Trains" writes a story from the usually neglected cast of CP, the nameless laborers who keep the machines running, and visualizes their aspirations for themselves and their children. Mary Rosenblum's "Search Engine" twists family and friendship around the usual "I'm only in it for the money", and kept surprising me up until the very end. Greg Egan's "Yeyuka" sees the protagonist learn altruism, and involve himself in shady dealings against corrupt multinationals as an act of selflessness.

Three of the stories really stood out for me. People who've known me for a while won't be surprised that Michael Swanwick wrote one of my favorites, "The Dog Said Bow-Wow". If I were writing the dustjacket, I'd call this a steampunk story. It's a con/heist story, which I'm always a sucker for, and I can't say I found any deeper understanding of the human condition, but I enjoyed every word of this story and I hope MS continues with these character's adventures.

The next real standout is Charles Stross' "Lobsters", which I reviewed independently on GoodReads.com. In the interest of brevity, let me quote Hunter S. Thompson: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." The third story that will sit with me for a long time is "The Calorie Man" by Paolo Bacigalupi. Growing up in the midwest with a keen appreciation for biology and ecology, I absorbed a deep sense of mistrust and vitriol for monoculture and the agricorps that foist it upon farmers around the world. This story picks up where agribusiness has won, turning the world into a police state designed to guard the genetic diversity of staple crops from those who need it the most. A exceptionally well written story, it makes it's point with a velvet covered hammer and deep, conflicted characters.

Please don't think that because I'm a lazy reviewer the stories I didn't mention are worthwhile. With the surprising exception of Cadigan and Gibson, every story in this collection is well written, intriguing and a thrill to read. I hope I have piqued your interest in the anthology, and I will leave the rest of the stories to be discovered by my fellow readers without any bias from myself.

[Pearl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Post-cyberpunk work is strange to read in 2023. I used to wish for these worlds as a pimply fourteen-year old guided by Firefly, dot.Hack manga and the general early 2000s tech vibe. I wished for animated advertisements, instant ramen for every meal, and a capitalist police state to move around undetected in (on rollerblades, with sick punk hair). It’s horrible to feel that misguided wish coming closer to the truth every year.

OG Cyberpunk and me do not get on well. The weedy male protagonists, the noir femme fatale love interest, and the stupidity of the corporations plotting? Ugh. But then I read The Diamond Age (or more accurately, I listened to it on one of the most boring jobs of my film career, making endless copies of 17th century plaster gilding books on an office printer that kept jamming) and saw the genre twist, in a way I had only dimly dared to hope for. I did not understand how important the ‘post’ prefix was for me. I immediately read Gibson, Sterling and more of Stephenson, never quite experiencing the same neon decoded thrill as in DA. Forgetting, almost, how interesting that first read was. Also forgetting that I was reading work about the ‘future’ from the 80s and 90s in 2016, to be completely fair to these authors.

But here it is again! Just when I stopped really looking, after a decade of vague disappointment!

I think the short story form serves post-cyberpunk well. It’s like the flashing signs coded into the genre: even as you start to understand the world, the story is nearly over. There’s a few duds in here (looking straight at you Gibson, I get what you were trying to do but wow it was boring) but for the most part, the stories are wildly fun, jumping from a punk anarchist zone, to a genetically enhanced British court, to a nerd-run apocalypse. Each story is book-ended with correspondence between Sterling and another writer. It made me nostalgic (in a book about the far ahead future!) for the past, specifically for the past of detailed letters like this, even if they were emails.

The surprising thing for me in this collection was how much it comforted me. The futures described are usually mildly terrible, and the biodiversity of the earth has suffered. But life continues. It reminds me, once again, that my ‘normal’ world is just a passing state in a fluctuating cosmos. Makes me a little less scared about how cyberpunk our 20’s are getting.

Anyway gonna copy Tomislav (hi friend :)) whose favourites I found this book on, and give specific star reviews for each story:

“Bicycle Repairman", by Bruce Sterling *****
"Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland", by Gwyneth Jones **
"How We Got in Town and out Again", by Jonathan Lethem ***
"Yeyuka", by Greg Egan * * *
"The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry with a Completely Remastered Soundtrack and the Original Audience", by Pat Cadigan **
"Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City", by William Gibson *
"The Wedding Album", by David Marusek ***
"Daddy's World", by Walter Jon Williams ****
"The Dog Said Bow-Wow", by Michael Swanwick **
"Lobsters", by Charles Stross **
"What's Up, Tiger Lilly?", by Paul Di Filippo **
"The Voluntary State", by Christopher Rowe ****
"Two Dreams on Trains", by Elizabeth Bear ****
"The Calorie Man", by Paolo Bacigalupi *****
"Search Engine", by Mary Rosenblum *****
"When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth", by Cory Doctorow ****

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am impatient with movements and manifestoes, even when they seem to make sense. So ignore the bombastic subtitle of this anthology; ignore the assertions about cyberpunk and about its anointed successor, as laid out here... and just look at the list of authors included. Every single one is a powerhouse of recent SF. Every single story in this book is powerful, both as extrapolation (even when fanciful or inaccurate) and as literature. Some, like Bruce Sterling's "Bicycle Repairman," Charles Stross' "Lobsters" and Cory Doctorow's "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth," have already been multiply-anthologized. Others, such as William Gibson's enigmatic 1997 story, "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City" or Elizabeth Bear's "Two Dreams on Trains," have made rather less of a splash, caused fewer ripples in the cybernetic sea. But everything here is worth (re)reading, and it's all in one high-intensity package.

If you want to see where sf is going, this is a very good place to start.

[Zuzana Schedová · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kyberpunk je subžánr sci-fi, který ze všech baví asi nejvíc. Kyberpunkové příběhy, obrazy změneného světa, nové technologie nebo staré přetvořené do něčeho jiného a lidstvo, které kolikrát hraje jenom druhé housle. To mě nikdy nepřestane fascinovat. A proto jsem po postkyberpunkové antologii Singularity sáhla s chutí a nadšením. Sbírka slibovala 16 kyberpunkových povídek a to pro mě znělo neskutečně lákavě. Na povídkových sbírkách je skvělé, že si je můžete dávkovat postupně, jeden příběh na cestě v tramvaji, další jeden nebo dva před spaním, nemusíte to přečíst všechno najednou, klidně to můžete proložit i něčím jiným a zase se k povídkám vrátit. Singularity byla moje první sci-fi povídková sbírka, doted jsem dávala přednost delším a rozpracovanějším příběhům ve formě románů, ale řekla jsem si, že mám chut zkusit i povídky. A byla jsem nadšená. I když nemám možnost porovnat to s jinou kyberpunkovou sbírkou povídek, můžu vám říct, že celkový dojem jsem měla skvělý. Jednotlivé povídky mě bavily, našla jsem v ní tematicky různou škálu povídek od povídek o umělých inteligencií, virtuální reality nebo jenom příběhů s nádechem technického krimi. Tak jako u všech se tady najdou silnější i slabší povídky, ale ty slabší byly asi tři, co je z celkového počtu 16 velmi dobré číslo. Některé mě tak vtáhly, že bych si je klidně dokázala představit zpracované do něčeho delšího nebo třeba sfilmované, našla jsem tam několik excelentních příběhů třeba příběh dítěte uvězněného rodiči ve virtuální realitě nebo příběh opraváře kol žijícího ve squatech mezi spodinou, který dostane podezřelý balíčkek nebo příběh podivného svatebního albumu - a to je jenom zlomek toho, co tam najdete. Když patříte mezi fanoušky sci-fi a mezi vaše oblíbence patří třeba seriál Black Mirror, věřte mi, že povídky ze SIngularit vás budou bavit tak, jak bavily mě.

[ECS · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection has some good stories in it and some stories that are quite bad. There are a few that will give you something to reflect on and a few that shouldn't have escaped whatever grade school creative writing class they crawled out of. Most annoying were the interjections from the editors that were full of pretentiousness, word salad, and intellectual masturbation. Their entire conception of 'post-cyberpunk' mostly turns out to be just contemporary science fiction. So, think of this book as an average collection of science fiction from the late 90s/early 00s and you won't be disappointed. Maybe a more apt title would have been "Wired the same way as everything else : the regular sci-fi anthology."

[Alex Rogers · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very poor anthology, with much jerkery and pontification in between a very uneven set of stories. I'd have given it 1 star, but there are some gems amongst the dross and drivel.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cyberpunk was a subgenre of science fiction that hit big in the 80s and faded out, not to nothingness, but becoming rarer as some of the ideas became more used in the mainstream, were you often had to deliberately set out to echo most of the cliches of cyberpunk if you wanted to write a story that could be described as such. This is an anthology of stories that are 'postcyberpunk', a subgenre that's a lot harder to define. Especially around the borders, a lot of postcyberpunk stories resemble cyberpunk stories an awful lot, just lacking some of those cliches. Others resemble them hardly at all. So, making a collection of it seems like a difficult undertaking.

Luckily, this collection is mostly filled with entertaining stories, with enough of a thread between them that, yes, you can often see that at least most of them might be part of the same (much broader) subgenre.

One of the more interesting parts of the anthology is the parts between the stories, in which they have reprinted letters between Bruce Sterling and John Kessel about what cyberpunk meant to say, what defined it, and where they thought it was going... in 1988. Quite a fascinating look back and a peek into some creative minds (even if they seem a little full of themselves).

As for the stories themselves, as I said, on the whole, I liked them a fair bit, although like any anthology, some worked better than others. The only outright stinker of the bunch (for my own tastes) was William Gibson's "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City," of which the only reason I can think it to be included is to say, "Look, even some of the pioneers of cyberpunk went on to write the same kind of pretentious twaddle they were supposedly rebelling against!"

My favorites were probably "The Wedding Album" by David Marusek (which deals with personality 'snapshots' that are used to revisit happy memories... and yet it still seems an awful lot like enslaving intelligent lives), and "Daddy's World" by Walter Jon Williams (which deals with a young boy in a virtual world), but there were plenty of other ones that I enjoyed (and only a couple I'd read before) or exposed me to some cool ideas.

On the whole, I'd recommend the anthology more than most, if you like cyberpunk, and maybe even if you don't (though having some grounding in SF in general might be recommended).

[Tapani Aulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Todella kova kokoelma. Cyberpunkia pitäisi ottaa enemmänkin listalle, varsinkn novelleina.

[Tarfein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jak ohodnotit celkově povídkovou sbírku? Jedině snad povídku po povídce.

Z celého sborníku se mi nejvíc líbil "Opravář kol" a "Haf haf, řekl pes", možná pro jejich humor, a "Jejuka" a "Kalorik", možná pro svůj alespoň trochu optimistický konec. Nejsem přesvědčený, že by kyberpunk musel nezbytně končit vždy negativně, přesto jsme v Singularitě svědky především toho. Zejména "Svatební album", jakkoliv může pro protagonisty končit příznivě, na mě zanechalo hlubokou stopu. Hodně dalších povídek je spíše (pro mě) průměrných, u pár z nich jsem si musel zpětně rozpomínat, o čem vlastně byly, jak moc mi zapadly v paměti po dvou dnech ("Třináct pohledů na kartonovou kolonii", "Co se šustí, Tygří Lilinko" a "Dva sny o vlacích"). Kyberpunk asi nebude pro mě.

[Alethea · Rating 2 out of 5]

As with most anthologies, this is a mix of stories I rather enjoyed (Daddy's World), so-so stories (The Dog Said Bow-Wow) stories I'd read before and didn't like any better this time around (The Wedding Album), and the obligatory WTF/ugh (amusingly, this time by William Gibson, progenitor of Cyberpunk.)

[Autumn · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Dog Said Bow Wow" was awesome.

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The anthology opens with ‘Bicycle Repairman by Bruce Sterling. It’s the tale of Lyle, an
anarchist living in a squat who repairs bicycles. Sometimes an old mate sends him packages for safekeeping and one day he receives from this source a telly which shows only one channel, a political show but with sarcastic and subversive subtitles. He is then visited by a slinky lady with a bike to repair who later tries to burgle him. The story is pretty good and the life of a street anarchist is, as portrayed here, sort of fun. (I suspect it is not in reality). There is a lot of interesting technology in the story, mostly gadgets. Our hero takes a delibidinising drug that saves him wasting time with women. There is no romance.

‘Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City’ by William Gibson ’the quintessential cyberpunk’ is hard to read. It's very postmodern with its cinematic descriptions of bleak urban scenes and I suppose there are literati who will love it but to me, it hardly seems like a story at all.

‘The Wedding Album’ by David Marusek features Sims, holograms of real people made at a certain point in time with memories and feelings so they think, for a time, they are real. The revelation that they are Sims is a surprise, but not a complete shock because as the ‘original’ they were made from knows about Sims they do too. They can be activated for a few hours every few years but the original grows and changes and can even resent the happy youth represented by the Sim. This is the story of a wedding album Sim and it's great.

‘Daddy’s World’ by Walter Jon Williams might be even better. Jamie is a happy kid who lives in a wonderful world where he has whirligigs to play with and a kite shaped Mister Jeepers greets him cheerfully when he comes home. Mom and Dad and sister Becky all love him and play with him. As time passes sister Becky grows up, while Jamie does not. It's another story of the problems of a virtual person and it is brilliant.

‘The Dog Said Bow-Wow by Michael Swanwick has a dog called Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux stealing royal jewels at Buckingham Palace. It was very entertaining.

‘Lobsters’ by Charles Stross has uploaded sentient lobsters, a reckless genius who gives away all his ideas to make other people rich and a sexy tax inspector. It's all written in dazzling language and is wonderful.

Amongst all the bright urban futures there is a tale of hunger and Agri-business malignity, ‘Calorie Man’ by Paulo Bacigalupi. Set in a future when energy comes from genetically manipulated animals on treadmills, with a Hindu hero, this future looks disturbingly likely to me. Greg Egan’s ‘Yeyuka’ is another story of corporate skulduggery that should raise awareness of these issues. Some of those fat cats our leaders kow-tow to have only their own best interests at heart, in the real world as well as in fiction.

The book ends on a high note with ‘When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth’ by Cory Doctorow which is an apocalyptic story but with a positive, hopeful note. Disaster strikes but the good people keep striving, as in ‘Farnham’s Freehold’ and ‘The Stand’. System Administrators will love it.

This really is an excellent collection and a reminder that the short story is often the best venue for new ideas in the field. It’s also a good way to make the acquaintance of new writers whose other works you might find interesting. There’s a few here I’ll be keeping an eye out for.

[Fraser Simons · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short fiction curated for post-cyberpunk fiction is very well curated. Though some of the stories weren't my jam, I could tell why they were there because with each selection of short fiction there is a correspondence between two people talking about the genre. Interspersed throughout are quotes from some cyberpunk heavy hitters we know today. Just so, lots off the short fiction are from the same people. Gibson, Sterling, Stross, Bacigalupi, Doctorow, loads of people on most people's radar.

Usually post-cyberpunk stuff focuses on the human condition and some of these stories do that, others not. They're just there to put a stark contrast between cyberpunk fiction that was well known and how that focus was shifting before anyone started throwing a different label on them. Overall it's a very good anthology and I think I only skipped one story, which was not to my taste...I'm pretty sure it was Gibson's actually..

"Bicycle Repairman" by Bruce Sterling
"Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland" by Gwyneth Jones
"How We Got in Town and Out Again" by Jonathan Lethem
"Yeyuka" by Greg Egan
"The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry With a Completely Remastered Soundtrack and the Original Audience" by Pat Cadigan
"Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City" by William Gibson
"The Wedding Album" by David Marusek
"Daddy’s World" by Walter Jon Williams
"The Dog Said Bow-Wow" by Michael Swanwick
"Lobsters " by Charles Stross
"What’s Up, Tiger Lily" by Paul Di Filippo
"The Voluntary State” by Christopher Rowe
"Two Dreams on a Train” by Elizabeth Bear
"The Calorie Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi
"Search Engine” by Mary Rosenblum
"When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” by Cory Doctorow

I really enjoyed The Bicycle Repairman, which highlighted some really cool aspects of communal living and just what kind of ingenuity technology could give us and subverted the version of what a "bad guy" in cyberpunk traditionally looked like. Was overall really engaging and good.

I also loved The Calorie Man, by Bacigalupi because I JUST finished reading The Windup Girl and it was super interesting to dive back into that world from another perspective. This story coupled with the other anthology I've read with him in it makes it pretty clear he's interested in going straight into some dark places, which I so far have dug very much.

While I think all of them were good, Padigan and Gibson's one's were the weakest in my eyes. I think both stories aren't very good reflections of their work and were there to instead highlight an overall concept that were pitted against cyberpunk defaultism. So their purpose is good, but I just weren't into them very much.

Otherwise, I'd have given it 5 stars --give it a shot if you're interested in seeing the rise of post-cyberpunk and what was cast aside from "traditional" cyberpunk. It's really interesting and even more compelling with the correspondence between writers introducing and discussing interesting subject matter.

[Gene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I didn't enjoy this as much as I wanted to. I don't know if the editor was going for a literary analysis or something, but the reprinted letters got tedious and unread almost immediately.

Bruce Sterling - Bicycle Repairman - 4 Stars
Gwyneth Jones - Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland - 2
Jonathan Lethem - How We Got in Town and out Again - 5
Greg Egan - Yeyuka - 5
Pat Cadigan - The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry with a Completely Remastered Soundtrack and the Original Audience - 1
William Gibson - Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City - 1
David Marusek - The Wedding Album - 5
Walter Jon Williams - Daddy’s World - 5
Michael Swanwick - The Dog Said Bow-Wow - 4
Charles Stross - Lobsters - 1
Paul Di Filippo - What’s Up, Tiger Lily? - 5
Christopher Rowe - The Voluntary State - 5
Elizabeth Bear - Two Dreams on Trains - 4
Paolo Bacigalupi - The Calorie Man - 3
Mary Rosenblum - Search Engine - 3
Cory Doctorow - When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - 4

Average: 3.5. Weighted: 3.8, rounded up to 4 stars

[Andy Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

My experience with most anthologies is that they're pretty hit and miss, and for me this was no exception, but there was enough hit here to make the overall experience good and introduce me to some new authors.

Stories I particularly enjoyed:

“Bicycle Repairman” by Bruce Sterling
“Lobsters” by Charles Stross (but had already read it elsewhere)
“Yeyuka” by Greg Egan
“Search Engine” by Mary Rosenblum
“The Calorie Man” By Paolo Bagciaglupi (but had already read it elsewhere)
“The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry With a Completely Remastered ‘Soundtrack’” by Pat Cadigan
“Daddy’s World” by Walter Jon Williams

[Maryja Šupa · Rating 5 out of 5]

though most reviewers gave this collection less than 5 stars, i do.

stories are unevenly ranged, from abstract to meticulous. it's a great way to be challenged by authors that wouldn't be my usual comfort read.

the quotes from correspondence have the feeling of randomness reminiscent of early internet. of course they are out of context, that is the point.

significantly, it is an invitation to reflect what became of cp. how to live out the mainstreaming of a sub? counter? culture that once seemed a cozy underground refuge for those who somehow caught crumbs of the unevenly distributed future?

[Yasser Ahmed · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF'd about 2/3s in. Some of the stories were enjoyable but overall their vision of cyberpunk was just very outdated e.g. basing a premise around the 'advanced' tech of a modem, gigabytes of data taking days to upload. Can't be helped but technology has evolved so rapidly since the 90s it's hard for these stories to not seem almost naive.

Also I was very unimpressed with the inclusion of Gibson as a contributor when his 'story' was just a series of descriptions of unrelated stills. Feels like the editors just wanted his prestige on the author list.

[Dominic Marsala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of the 16 short stories in this book, here are my reviews:

5* – 2 stories
4* – 4 stories
3* – 3 stories
2* – 4 stories
1* – 3 stories

Overall, I’d give this book a 5/10.

William Gibson – the “godfather of post-cyberpunk" – his ‘story’ was the worst by far. It wasn’t even a story – just a meaningless description of a future urban world.

My favourite story was the last one – "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" by Cory Doctorow.

[Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nifty collection of later Cyberpunk from the mid-nineties to the mid- double aughts. Most of the usual suspects are in the collection. Of interest, is that two of the stories are set in New Orleans, and two others are set in Tennessee. It is easy to see the Big Easy as a dystopian playground.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the idea of post-cyberpunk and thoroughly enjoyed the introduction and editorial commentary throughout. This is one of the most even short story anthologies I’ve ever read. Not a dud in the bunch!

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cyberpunk is one of those subgenres that feels more and more accurate these days. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Depends on my mood towards the world at the time. But this is a good collection. My favorites were “The Dog Said Bow Wow” and “The Voluntary State.” YMMV.

[Andrew Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many, if not most of the best of CP and PCP! The correspondence between a couple of the major movement authors was a little too fraught with paranoia and literary meanings for my taste, but doubtless many fans of the genre would disagree. Oh, well, I have my meds now and I'm sticking with them!☺

[John Lawson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rarely have I read a collection of short stories where the quality varied so widely. Some were incredible (the first entry comes to mind). At least one was so bad, I didn't finish it.

[Fresno Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

oh soooooo serious

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty solid collection. Favorites:

Bicycle Repairman
Yeyuka
The Wedding Album
Lobsters

[David Brawley · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

A solid collection of stories, though the "cyberpunk" theme felt kinda loose, in spite of the editors obvious efforts.

[Patrick DiJusto · Rating 3 out of 5]

A typical collection of typical stories that have somehow been categorized as post cyberpunk

[Remi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 average, fairly good stories, while some being a tad underwhelming or flat-out dull. Greg Egan's "Yeyuka" is the personal highlight.

[Matteo Fulgheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sooo boring, with very rare exceptions. I love Steampunk, but Cyberpunk really isn't for me...

[Mark Catalfano · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked "The Wedding Album" by David Marusek and "Daddy’s World" by Walter Jon Williams