by William Gibson

isbn: 0441089348
subject: SF, Fiction and Literature, Short Stories
finished: 1/7/2001

Cyberpunk fiction is based on a certain kind of extrapolation: it magnifies the negative effects of technology, the influence of the media and multinational corporations, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots. As a result, these stories are usually bleak: neither governmental stability nor individual financial security can be counted upon, and technology takes the form of some sort of mutating microbe -- it sprouts up everywhere in a dazzling variety of forms, most of them gaudy or dangerous. Gibson's early stories, collected in this thin book, epitomize (and helped define) the genre. Some of them (The Winter Market, The Hinterlands, the title story, and Red Star, Winter Orbit) are quite good, while others (especially The Belonging Kind) are weaker.

I like this book, and Gibson's vivid, imaginative descriptions are fun (despite the fact that they sometimes read like bad poetry). This would make a good first Gibson book, as would Neuromancer.