Glitch: Early 1990s cyberpunk fiction

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The second selection in the Glitch Cyberpunk Yarn & Book Club is Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel, Snow Crash.

A film adaptation has been in the works - but in the meantime if you haven't read this one, it's full of oddities and predicts a lot of concepts (metaverse, anyone?)

While Snow Crash borders in some ways on a parody of the cyberpunk genre as it existed by 1992, other notable titles established the genre from in the 1990s.

In the late 80s and early 90s a number of authors were actively publishing cyberpunk titles:

A Song Called Youth (1985-1990) by John Shirley - praised by both William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, this prophetic trilogy imagines a postnuclear world with creeping totalitarianism and gritty resistance fighters.

When Gravity Fails (1987) by George Alec Effinger - in the 22nd Century, Effinger envisions a world where the Middle East prospers and western cultures decline, and biological modifications have become a norm.

Pad Cadigan, notably Synners (1991) which blurs all boundaries between technology and humanity in a very glitchy reality.

Melissa Scott - try Trouble and Her Friends (1994) or Night Sky Mine (1997). (I really wanted to include Trouble and Her Friends in Glitch, but it's hard to track down a copy!)

Bruce Sterling: Heavy Weather (1996) for early climate disaster fiction; Islands in the Net for more technology prophect and hacker drama 

Our next book & yarn club selection for May & June is Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. This one really takes a look at bio elements of cyberpunk, with humans being able to take their mind with them to new bodies. (and as usual: the book is better ;)