I have just been informed that GUN MACHINE is officially a New York Times Best Seller.
Congratulations, Uncle Warren.
Book trailer 1 for GUN MACHINE.
I did the narration for this, because Warren is my friend and sometimes my mentor. Also, GUN MACHINE is fucking amazing.
“The trick — and it’s imperfect and can take a while, but — is simply to write something else. Don’t let your hands go cold. Don’t let yourself stop thinking. Shift to something different. I think it was Robert Silverberg who used to do his (type)written correspondence on bad days, and then “trick” himself into writing by slipping manuscript paper into the machine once his fingers were flying…”
Click the title for a link to the rest of the piece
I was about to post this myself, when I saw that Kadrey had beaten me to it.
This is so great, I’m stealing it from Warren to make it rebloggable
printedvelvet asks:
“Aside from stuff Phillip K. Dick and Neal Stephenson, what’s on your must-read cyberpunk novels and comics list?”
Okay. Deep breath.
Cyberpunk, also known as Radical Hard SF or The Movement, was born around 1980 and didn’t survive that decade. (Some people map the end to 1992, with Neal Stephenson’s SNOW CRASH.) Philip K Dick had no affiliation with the movement, and was dead by 1982, two years before William Gibson published NEUROMANCER. People tend to associate Dick with cyberpunk because of BLADE RUNNER, particularly its visuals, which had nothing to do with the novel, but were so strikingly of the speculative zeitgeist that in 1982 William Gibson had to get out of his cinema seat and leave the screening because it looked too much like what was in his head.
Phil Dick was pre-cyberpunk. He, JG Ballard and Alfred Bester were major touchstones for the movement. Ballard’s CRASH and Bester’s STARS MY DESTINATION and THE DEMOLISHED MAN are essential. Also John Brunner’s STAND ON ZANZIBAR, THE SHEEP LOOK UP, and, most importantly for cyberpunk’s ancestry, THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER.
Of the cyberpunk period itself, you will need William Gibson’s first trilogy, NEUROMANCER, COUNT ZERO and MONA LISA OVERDRIVE. Also, Bruce Sterling’s THE ARTIFICIAL KID and ISLANDS IN THE NET. Richard Kadrey’s METROPHAGE. Rudy Rucker’s SOFTWARE and WETWARE. Pat Cadigan’s TEA FROM AN EMPTY CUP. That should keep you going for a bit.
FWIW, I agree with all of what Warren says, and please consider this another vote for METROPHAGE, which is amazing.
