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Io9 published (about a month ago, what can I say, I’m working on a backlog), an article on the novels that originated their own science fiction sub genres.  A few are obvious ones (Neuromancer and Cyberpunk, Frankenstein and Gothic Science Fiction.)   Others are a bit more obscure, at least as far as my experience.

As expected the comments are filled with suggestions on alternate books to fill the various categories.  Interesting stuff!

Worth reading is the link to the ‘cranky essay’ looking further in cyberpunk.  (Relinked here.)

Count Zero

I finished Count Zero as part of my read-a-thon.  It’s loosely the sequel to Neuromancer, which I read a few months ago and loved.  This ’sequel’ is set in the same world and a few years later, but has none of the same characters, although they are obliquely mentioned.  It’d be easy to argue that it’s not a true sequel at all, but it continued one important plot thread was left behind at the end of Neuromancer.  (No I’m not going to give that away.  Everyone should read Neuromancer, not pick it up through a review.)

Count Zero has the same rock solid prose, as fast paced as an old detective novel, but with post-modern (literally) color.  The world is the same paranoid, hyper-technological wasteland as the first.  The characters were not as good as Neuromancer.  They were interesting and had their quirks, but none of them changed all that much.  Even the character that was literally dragged into a new world didn’t experience all that much of an epiphany at his new surroundings and the female lead that was similarly introduced to world very much beyond her seemed to pick up it in her very first chapter.  Still, it was excellent and not just from the writing or the world (which I’m fond of.)  The story kept along the thread that I mentioned before and read in that context you can see a certain devious subtlety that hints at more to come.

If anything, the story just suffered from having a bigger world to work with.  Neuromancer only had the necessity of describing the protagonists’ immediate world.  A sequel, nearly by definition, has to expand the circle, but that means incorporating far more than the story itself requires.  In the cases where it over-reached, the plot came across as too weak.  Where it failed to expand, there was confusion.  It tried hard to fill the void, but sadly, it wasn’t as much of a thrill to follow as in Neuromancer, but well, that was a tough act to follow.

Currently I’m reading Mona Lisa Overdrive.  That’s the third story in the general arc.  I’m hoping it has the same prose, but with a defter touch.  Cheers!

A world where sword-wielding hackers deliver pizza for the mob, vengeful inuit throw glass-tipped harpoons and drive motorcycles with hydrogen bomb sidecars, extraterritorial franchises have their own consolates scattered across the country, or what remains of it. It’s safe to say life in Snow Crash is usually pretty interesting.

I heard about Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, back in college. Amongst an innumerable number of computer types: programmers, admins, hackers, web designers etc, the hyper-stylzed life of a computer nerd-ninja had a wide-ranging appeal. I’m still not sure how I managed to avoid reading the book that so thoroughly defined my culture. Still, it remained on my list as a book I wanted to at least peek into.

And I happened to do just that last week. If I had to give a one-liner review it’d be, Neuromancer with healthy side of irreverance. It has all the dismal imagery of a cyberpunk novel: dystopian america, oligarchic tyranny, technology with a slavish tyranny over mankind, but it escapes the gloom with an endless cycle of just-on-the-edge of plausible absurdities. Couriers, called Kouriers, riding computerized skateboards pulled by tow cables, a main character named Hiro Protagonist, robotic dog guards, it hits them all and then some.

It’s a brilliant book and if I didn’t think so I wouldn’t waste my time here. For any science fiction junkies out there it’s definitely worth picking up. Snow Crash is the sort of novel that can’t help but inspire even more stories and makes for a hell of a read from beginning to end.