Recently in cyberpunk Category

Inspired by my friend Larry Nolen, I decided to make a list of authors that I read for the first time in 2008 that I found to have written good works. Following his example, I'll highlight those who moved me the most (Larry highlight the writers whose debut efforts came out in the U.S. this year, but since I live in Brazil, I thought I should do things a little bit differently):

Ekaterina Sedia

Jeff VanderMeer

Jacques Barcia (Brazilian author, not available in English translation)

Adam Roberts

Jeffrey Thomas

Ken McLeod

John Scalzi

Chris Roberson

Joe Abercrombie

Brandon Sanderson

David Louis Edelman

Forrest Aguirre

Jeff Carlson

Maurice Dantec

Christie Lasaitis (Brazilian author, not available in English translation)

Tobias Buckell

Robert T. Jeschonek

Jay Lake

Hal Duncan

Rhys Hughes

Ted Chiang

Stepan Chapman

Thomas Ligotti

Jeffrey Ford

Leena Krohn

Hannu Rajaniemi

Steph Swainston

Daniel Abraham

Eric Brown

Antônio Xerxenesky (Brazilian author, not available in English translation)

Otis Adelbert Kline

Naomi Novik

Joe Hill

Tibor Moricz (Brazilian author, not available in English translation)

Elizabeth Bear

Mark Newton

Sarah Monette

Sergei Lukyanenko

David Thorpe

M. J. Rose

Roberto Bolaño

Kelly Barnhill

Conrad Williams

Katherine Sparrow

Ludimila Hashimoto (Brazilian author, not available in English translation)

Kelly Link

Tony Ballantyne

Neal Asher

Karl Schroeder

Alan Pauls

Felix Gilman

Matthew Pearl

Patrick Ness

As commented in Larry´s blog a while back, I offered to host the next session of reviews for the Blogger Book Club. We exchanged some e-mails and, by the suggested rules, we decided there would be no vote at this time (that does not preclude future hosts to hold polls, however), both for technical reasons in PWT and because I was pretty sure of what book I wanted to review.

Thus, the next book in the Blogger Book Club will be Schismatrix Plus, by Bruce Sterling.

Schismatrix Plus (the original Sterling novel plus all the short stories in the Shaper/Mechanist universe) fulfills all the conditions proposed by Larry, and I suggested it because it would be a welcome change. Larry agreed; I will ask his permission to quote him in one of his e-mails to me:

Only fitting that we go from New Wave to Cyberpunk (maybe later to Steampunk, if others are agreeable to continue this for months on end?), no? :D The descriptions of Sterling's book sound quite promising.

Sterling´s book is indeed very promising - I just re-read it, and I will do it again for the third time because I found out that it resisted so well to the test of time. And I think that the Cyberpunks were always a bit underrated - maybe it´s time to rehabilitate them after all (or not. ;-)

The time period for the reviews will be the week of December 8 - 12, so all of us will have plenty of time to buy or borrow the book and read it with no hurry. But we´re still here, discussing Disch, don´t forget it! Anybody who wants to join us in this review-a-thon of Camp Concentration is still more than welcome!!

I´ve got yesterday on my e-mail box the Tor.com newsletter announcing a new free story on its site: Jack and the Aktuals, or, Physical Applications of Transfinite Set Theory, by Rudy Rucker.

I´ve always liked Rucker, as much for his writings (I´m also a sucker for his non-fiction work, which is great) as for his sense of humor. The thing is, I had no idea he is, as Tor.com says, "the great-great-great grandson of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel". This came as a total surprise for me, and a good one, since Hegel is one of my favorite philosophers. An apple never falls far from the tree, after all.

Oh, and the story is very good too. :-)

Nuff said.

(Via Bowing to the Future)

I just got David Louis Edelman´s new book, MultiReal, the sequel to Infoquake. Reviews (and an interview with Mr. Edelman) soon. Thanks to Lou Anders and Jill Maxick for sending the copy.