CHIMERA.
New York: Ballantine Books, [1993]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#146612)
More Details about CHIMERA
Introduction by Boyd White
With the publication of William Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic” in the May 1981 issue of Omni, the burgeoning science fiction subgenre of cyberpunk arrived on the scene almost fully formed. Gibson’s tale of a data trafficker who becomes a target of the Yakuza is an inspired mash-up of science fiction and hardboiled fiction set in a near future dystopia characterized by low-life anti-heroes, nihilistic femme fatales, corrupt mega-corporations, sprawling cities, and cybernetically enhanced humans. That same year, the anonymously edited Dell paperback anthology Binary Star No. 5 featured Vernor Vinge’s novella “True Names” in which hackers wage war in both virtual reality and the real world against a sophisticated AI known as a personality simulator. Vinge’s novella is the first work of science fiction to conceptualize “cyberspace,” a term Gibson would later coin in his 1982 short story “Burning Chrome.” Gibson honed cyberpunk to perfection with the publication of the Hugo- and Nebula-Award winning novel Neuromancer in 1984. The story of Henry Case, a former drug addict and burnt-out hacker who infiltrates a private corporate enclave with the assistance of a “Razergirl” named Molly, Neuromancer reads like Dashiell Hammett hopped up on science fiction steroids with the mean streets of cyberspace replacing the mean streets of San Francisco.
An equally defining moment for cyberpunk came with the 1982 release of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, which Gibson saw when he was two-thirds of the way through writing Neuromancer and from which he feared readers would think he had cribbed heavily. An adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), itself a huge influence on cyberpunk, Blade Runner cemented the relationship between cyberpunk and film noir in terms of thematic concerns and style. Set in Los Angeles in 2019, Scott’s film follows Richard Deckard, an ex-cop who hunts down genetically engineered workers known as “replicants.” Deckard’s investigations immerse him in a web of deceit and paranoia as he discovers the Tyrell Corporation has developed a new breed of replicants with false memories that lead them to think they are actually human. Although Scott filmed Blade Runner in color, he lifted his visual palette entirely from classic film noir from the 1940s and 1950s. His futuristic Los Angeles is a rain-drenched world of street hustlers, prostitutes, and corrupt police, the perfect setting for exploring social decay, economic exploitation, the effect of technology on human nature, and the blurring of subjective and objective realities.
Critics and scholars have long pointed to Blade Runner as the work that gave rise to the term “cybernoir,” a hybrid genre that blends elements of science fiction and film noir. In fact, “cybernoir” is a much more apt description of many foundational novels and short stories often characterized simply as “cyberpunk.” While everyone readily acknowledges the classic works of science fiction to which this subgenre owes it origin, we often overlook cyberpunk’s equally vast debt to hardboiled fiction. Cybernoir touchstones such as Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy, Nicola Griffith’s Slow River (1995), and Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon (2002,) draw as much upon Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest (1929), Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister (1949), and Ross Macdonald’s The Chill (1959) as they do Alfred Bester’s Tiger! Tiger! (1956), Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (1967), and James Tiptree, Jr.’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973). The same forces that disrupt Chandler’s Los Angeles or Macdonald’s San Francisco—patriarchal industrialists, corrupt corporations, and a wealthy, insular elite—are still front and center in cybernoir, only now with increased technology, such as cybernetic enhancements and virtual reality, at their ready disposal.
Lloyd Currey’s Dark Futures: Cybernoir gathers influential and interesting works in this important subgenre of science fiction, all of which deal with a dark vision of the future in which humanity is enslaved by or in conflict with machines and technology. In addition to seminal books like Bruce Sterling’s Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986), Mary Rosenblum’s Chimera (1993), and Peter Watts’ Starfish (1999), Lloyd includes some early forays into the subgenre. In Algis Budrys’ Who? (1958), we encounter an American physicist no longer sure of his identity because his entire head, arm, and internal organs have been replaced by highly advanced artificial prosthetics. John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider (1975), often considered the first true cyberpunk novel, follows Nick Haflinger, a fugitive hacker, who uses his computer skills to avoid capture in a fragmented 21st-century America in which vast computer networks and sophisticated quantitative analysis have become the cornerstones of international competition.
A good many of the entries in Dark Futures: Cybernoir feature scenarios and characters that emphasize the influence of film noir and hardboiled fiction on the subgenre. George Alec Effinger’s Hugo-nominated When Gravity Fails (1987) introduces us to Marid Audran, a small-time hustler in Buyadeen, the criminal quarter of an unnamed Middle-Eastern city, who reluctantly undergoes a series of experimental cybernetic modifications in order to pursue a serial killer who is not only murdering witnesses but also Marid’s friends. Melissa Scott’s Trouble and Her Friends (1994) focuses on Cerise and Trouble, young lesbian hackers who steal industrial secrets and later try to go straight only to learn someone is impersonating Trouble on the web and committing industrial espionage. Tricia Sullivan’s Someone to Watch Over Me (1997) follows the complex love affair between Adrien Reyes and Sabina Lazarich, lovers who work as surrogate bodies via The Deep, a network of brain-wave surfers who “watch” their hosts’ minds and experiences, a situation that puts Sabina at risk when Adrien’s “Watcher” takes an unexpected interest in her. What situation could be more typically noirish than Michael Marshall Smith’s One of Us (1998) in which Hap Thompson, a petty criminal who works as memory receiver temporarily storing other people’s unwanted memories, must clear himself of murder by finding the woman who gave him her memory of actually committing the crime?
Like the great authors of 19th-century scientific romances, such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, cyberpunks do not predict the future but instead extrapolate from their given circumstances to imagine what the world could become. Virtual sex, identity theft, data security, extreme body modification, surveillance and drone warfare, the dangers of being constantly “plugged in”—spend some time surfing Lloyd Currey’s Dark Futures: Cybernoir and see how reality has finally caught up with these innovative authors.
New York: Ballantine Books, [1993]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#146612)
More Details about CHIMERA
New York: Avon Books, [1997]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#129213)
More Details about FREEWARE
[New York]: Eos An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2000]. Octavo, purple wrappers printed in black. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. (#157460)
More Details about REALWARE
New York: Ace Books, [1981]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#146372)
More Details about SPACETIME DONUTS
Englewood, Colorado: WCS Books, 1991. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#146796)
More Details about TRANSREAL!
New York: Avon, [1988]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#146470)
More Details about WETWARE
[New York]: HarperPrism, [1995]. Small octavo, pictoral wrappers. Later printing with number line ending with "3." (#157300)
More Details about THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT
New York: Ace Books, [2009]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. edition. (#146757)
More Details about WWW: WAKE
New York: Ace Books, [2011]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#157494)
More Details about WWW: WONDER
New York: Tor, [1996]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#146331)
More Details about NIGHT SKY MINE
New York: Tor, [1994]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#76157)
More Details about TROUBLE AND HER FRIENDS
New York: Tor, [2000]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#146638)
More Details about CHIMERA
[New York]: A Bluejay International Edition, [1985]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. (#9004)
More Details about ECLIPSE
[New York]: A Bluejay International Edition, [1985]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#147054)
More Details about ECLIPSE
[New York]: A Bluejay International Edition, [1985]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#147628)
More Details about ECLIPSE
Los Angeles: Scream Press, 1989. Octavo, blue cloth with black imitation leather shelf back. First edition. (#91540)
More Details about HEATSEEKER
[London]: HarperCollinsPublishers, [1998]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#146782)
More Details about ONE OF US
New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1997]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First U.S. edition. (#69231)
More Details about SPARES
Toronto, New York, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1987]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#4812)
More Details about LITTLE HEROES
Toronto, New York, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1987]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#106403)
More Details about LITTLE HEROES
New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1994]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#146654)
More Details about INTERFACE
New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1994]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#146803)
More Details about INTERFACE
New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1994]. Octavo, gray printed wrappers. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. (#151244)
More Details about INTERFACE
New York, Cambridge, Hagerstown, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Sydney: Harper & Row, Publishers, [1980]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#89569)
More Details about THE ARTIFICIAL KID
New York, Cambridge, Hagerstown, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Sydney: Harper & Row, Publishers, [1980]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#106184)
More Details about THE ARTIFICIAL KID
[Sauk City, Wisconsin]: Arkham House Publishers, Inc., [1989]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#4860)
More Details about CRYSTAL EXPRESS
[Sauk City, Wisconsin]: Arkham House Publishers, Inc., [1989]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#126309)
More Details about CRYSTAL EXPRESS
[Sauk City, Wisconsin]: Arkham House Publishers, Inc., [1989]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#140192)
More Details about CRYSTAL EXPRESS
[London: Millennium, 1999]. Octavo, boards. First British edition. (#71443)
More Details about DISTRACTION
Shingletown, CA: Mark V. Ziesing, 1992. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#91406)
More Details about GLOBALHEAD: STORIES
Shingletown, CA: Mark V. Ziesing, 1992. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#157841)
More Details about GLOBALHEAD: STORIES
New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1994]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#68555)
More Details about HEAVY WEATHER
New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1994]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#91407)
More Details about HEAVY WEATHER
New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1994]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#103382)
More Details about HEAVY WEATHER
New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1994]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#155484)
More Details about HEAVY WEATHER
New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1996]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. edition. (#67329)
More Details about HOLY FIRE
New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Bantam Books, [1996]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. edition. (#106268)
More Details about HOLY FIRE
London: Millennium An Orion Book, [1996]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#91409)
More Details about HOLY FIRE
New York: Arbor House / William Morrow, [1988]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#4861)
More Details about ISLANDS IN THE NET
New York: Arbor House / William Morrow, [1988]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#91410)
More Details about ISLANDS IN THE NET
New York: Arbor House / William Morrow, [1988]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#114656)
More Details about ISLANDS IN THE NET
New York: Arbor House / William Morrow, [1988]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#155487)
More Details about ISLANDS IN THE NET
New York: Arbor House, [1985]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#106152)
More Details about SCHISMATRIX
New York: Ballantine Books, [2004]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#103294)
More Details about THE ZENITH ANGLE
New York: Ballantine Books, [2004]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#146191)
More Details about THE ZENITH ANGLE
New York: Ace Books, [2006]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#146613)
More Details about GLASSHOUSE
New York: Ace Books, [2006]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#155456)
More Details about GLASSHOUSE
London: Millennium, [1998]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#151243)
More Details about DREAMING IN SMOKE
[London]: Millennium An Orion Book, [1997]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#92031)
More Details about SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME
New York: Arbor House, [1987]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#4944)
More Details about VACUUM FLOWERS
New York: Arbor House, [1987]. Octavo, printed blue-gray wrappers. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. (#50316)
More Details about VACUUM FLOWERS
New York: Arbor House, [1987]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#72452)
More Details about VACUUM FLOWERS
New York: Arbor House, [1987]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#106375)
More Details about VACUUM FLOWERS
Niles, Illinois: Dark Harvest, 1986. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#141499)
More Details about BLUE CHAMPAGNE
[New York]: Warner Books, [1988]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#72491)
More Details about CATSPAW
[New York]: Warner Books, [1988]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#105547)
More Details about CATSPAW
[New York]: Warner Books, [1996]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#72676)
More Details about DREAMFALL
[New York]: Warner Books, [1996]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#92045)
More Details about DREAMFALL
New York: Delacorte Press, [1982]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#60249)
More Details about PSION
Edmonton, [Alberta, Canada]: Tesseract Books an imprint of The Books Collective, 1995. Octavo, cloth. First edition in English. (#118841)
More Details about RELUCTANT VOYAGERS
New York: Tor, [1999]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#146632)
More Details about STARFISH
Eugene, OR: Axolotl Press Pulphouse Publishing, [1989]. Octavo, full black leather, lettered in gold. First edition. (#146397)
More Details about SOLIP:SYSTEM
[New York]: Tor, [1987]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#105605)
More Details about VOICE OF THE WHIRLWIND
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, [1987]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#5524)
More Details about AMBIENT
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, [1987]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#5525)
More Details about AMBIENT
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, [1987]. Octavo, printed wrappers. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. (#60297)
More Details about AMBIENT
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, [1987]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#93949)
More Details about AMBIENT
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, [1987]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#104424)
More Details about AMBIENT
New York: A Wallaby Book Published by Simon & Schuster, [1982]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#105939)
More Details about COILS
New York: A Wallaby Book Published by Simon & Schuster, [1982]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#137138)
More Details about COILS