Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology by James Patrick Kelly

Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology Reviews

• 
  Brainycat

  This anthology is put together by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. Sadly, I cannot recall reading any of their work but I shall endeavor to remedy that situation shortly.
  
  The introduction is very well done, in that "let's spend a lot of time trying to define common definitions so we can disagree about nuance" sort of way. I got a feeling they were desperately casting around for a singularity (a recurrent theme in the collection) to define a point in SF history where cyberpunk (CP) gave up the mantle of SF's brave new savior and passed it on to post-cyberpunk (PCP). The introduction, I felt, was ultimately inconclusive and I read the stories with a sense that PCP, according to the editors, is a more mature and less overtly angsty cyberpunk with a broader perspective.
  
  Which suits me fine, I include myself among the number of young computer geeks hanging out on BBS's before the world standardized on TCP/IP, DNS and SMTP. I'm not as overtly angsty as I was in my youth, and the way I view the world has changed dramatically since the days I donned mirrorshades and black leather in a vain attempt to drape myself in "cool". After finishing this sixteen story long "manifesto" about the evolution of cyberpunk, I really don't think it matters if a story gets labeled CP or PCP. Science Fiction, like the street, "finds it's own uses for technology (William Gibson)", and if a writer is discussing the relationship of technology to the individual's concept of self, place and worth - then it's probably CP, and let the publishers and book-jacket designers haggle over the details.
  
  Interspersed between the stories are excerpts from a years-long ongoing debate between Bruce Sterling and John Kessel. Clearly, they used passages from the long string of letters (the debate started before email had '@' signs) and email to introduce stories that tried to prove one point or another. I have two problems with this. First, each quote is taken out of context so I don't know if the words I'm seeing have the author's intent and secondly, anecdotes do not prove a point. Just because someone found a story that agrees with their point does not mean their point is valid, it means someone wrote something that could be interpreted to validate whatever abstract idea they're trying to convey.
  
  That said, this is an excellent collection of stories, and I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys scifi and/or fictionalized social critique. Surprising to me, the two weakest stories were by Pat Cadigan and William Gibson. I've been a longtime dedicated fan of both of these authors, and my reaction to these stories genuinely shocked me. The problems with Cadigan's "The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry, with a Completely Remastered Soundtrack and the Original Audience" start with the title. This story didn't need nearly as many words as Cadigan used to write it. As I was reading the story I pictured myself with a red pencil, slashing paragraphs and sentences willy-nilly. Typically Cadigan, the story revolves around rock'n'roll, memory and customized reality. I wish she'd spent more time chewing on the crux of the story - the relationship between art and insanity - rather than meticulously detailing how the memory technology works. Gibson's contribution "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City" showcases Gibson's singular ability to drip rich texture and detail with an unparalled economy of words, but doesn't do anything. I don't know what the point of the "story" is. It's a very abstract piece; there are no protagonists or antagonists or conflicts or timelines. It's extraordinarily beautiful writing, but reading it feels like going over the notes from a series of writing excercises - "Draw as detailed a picture as possible in less than 500 words, repeat thirteen times". It's like shuffling through a stack of polaroids, without any context whatsoever.
  
  Two of the stories I've read before. "Daddy's World" by Walter Jon Williams explores the ethics of containing a sentience within a simulated world, and "When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth" by Cory Doctorow asks what happens to cyberspace when global meatspace falls apart. WJW's story doesn't ask any questions or come to any conclusions that haven't been covered elsewhere, but it may be the most cogent exploration of the problems of computing power, linear time sequence and what happens when a mind is left in a finite space too long. Doctorow's story is an ode to the transnational comraderie that internet engineers have grown accustomed to, and while it shows off Doctorow's net cred and makes sysadmins the world over feel all warm and fuzzy, it never really addresses the main question it raises - what is the greater value of global communication when your city is burning to the ground after a successful bioterror attack?
  
  Several of the stories deal with family, and I believe they were selected specifically to break the CP taboo against protagonists having roots, connections and motivations besides survival and greed. Bruce Sterling's "Bicycle Repairman" is solidly in this camp, and is a fun read. David Marusek's "The Wedding Album" asks a lot of the same questions and WJW's contribution, but takes the effort to dive deeply into the space between sentience, free will and the ability of various states of mind to learn and adapt. Elizabeth Bear's "Two Dreams on Trains" writes a story from the usually neglected cast of CP, the nameless laborers who keep the machines running, and visualizes their aspirations for themselves and their children. Mary Rosenblum's "Search Engine" twists family and friendship around the usual "I'm only in it for the money", and kept surprising me up until the very end. Greg Egan's "Yeyuka" sees the protagonist learn altruism, and involve himself in shady dealings against corrupt multinationals as an act of selflessness.
  
  Three of the stories really stood out for me. People who've known me for a while won't be surprised that Michael Swanwick wrote one of my favorites, "The Dog Said Bow-Wow". If I were writing the dustjacket, I'd call this a steampunk story. It's a con/heist story, which I'm always a sucker for, and I can't say I found any deeper understanding of the human condition, but I enjoyed every word of this story and I hope MS continues with these character's adventures.
  
  The next real standout is Charles Stross' "Lobsters", which I
  reviewed independently on GoodReads.com. In the interest of brevity, let me quote Hunter S. Thompson: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." The third story that will sit with me for a long time is "The Calorie Man" by Paolo Bacigalupi. Growing up in the midwest with a keen appreciation for biology and ecology, I absorbed a deep sense of mistrust and vitriol for monoculture and the agricorps that foist it upon farmers around the world. This story picks up where agribusiness has won, turning the world into a police state designed to guard the genetic diversity of staple crops from those who need it the most. A exceptionally well written story, it makes it's point with a velvet covered hammer and deep, conflicted characters.
  
  Please don't think that because I'm a lazy reviewer the stories I didn't mention are worthwhile. With the surprising exception of Cadigan and Gibson, every story in this collection is well written, intriguing and a thrill to read. I hope I have piqued your interest in the anthology, and I will leave the rest of the stories to be discovered by my fellow readers without any bias from myself.
• 
  Alan

  I am impatient with movements and manifestoes, even when they seem to make sense. So ignore the bombastic subtitle of this anthology; ignore the assertions about cyberpunk and about its anointed successor, as laid out here... and just look at the list of authors included. Every single one is a powerhouse of recent SF. Every single story in this book is powerful, both as extrapolation (even when fanciful or inaccurate) and as literature. Some, like
  Bruce Sterling's "Bicycle Repairman,"
  Charles Stross' "Lobsters" and
  Cory Doctorow's "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth," have already been multiply-anthologized. Others, such as
  William Gibson's enigmatic 1997 story, "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City" or
  Elizabeth Bear's "Two Dreams on Trains," have made rather less of a splash, caused fewer ripples in the cybernetic sea. But everything here is worth (re)reading, and it's all in one high-intensity package.
  
  If you want to see where sf is going, this is a very good place to start.
• 
  Zuzana Schedová

  Kyberpunk je subžánr sci-fi, který ze všech baví asi nejvíc. Kyberpunkové příběhy, obrazy změneného světa, nové technologie nebo staré přetvořené do něčeho jiného a lidstvo, které kolikrát hraje jenom druhé housle. To mě nikdy nepřestane fascinovat. A proto jsem po postkyberpunkové antologii Singularity sáhla s chutí a nadšením. Sbírka slibovala 16 kyberpunkových povídek a to pro mě znělo neskutečně lákavě. Na povídkových sbírkách je skvělé, že si je můžete dávkovat postupně, jeden příběh na cestě v tramvaji, další jeden nebo dva před spaním, nemusíte to přečíst všechno najednou, klidně to můžete proložit i něčím jiným a zase se k povídkám vrátit. Singularity byla moje první sci-fi povídková sbírka, doted jsem dávala přednost delším a rozpracovanějším příběhům ve formě románů, ale řekla jsem si, že mám chut zkusit i povídky. A byla jsem nadšená. I když nemám možnost porovnat to s jinou kyberpunkovou sbírkou povídek, můžu vám říct, že celkový dojem jsem měla skvělý. Jednotlivé povídky mě bavily, našla jsem v ní tematicky různou škálu povídek od povídek o umělých inteligencií, virtuální reality nebo jenom příběhů s nádechem technického krimi. Tak jako u všech se tady najdou silnější i slabší povídky, ale ty slabší byly asi tři, co je z celkového počtu 16 velmi dobré číslo. Některé mě tak vtáhly, že bych si je klidně dokázala představit zpracované do něčeho delšího nebo třeba sfilmované, našla jsem tam několik excelentních příběhů třeba příběh dítěte uvězněného rodiči ve virtuální realitě nebo příběh opraváře kol žijícího ve squatech mezi spodinou, který dostane podezřelý balíčkek nebo příběh podivného svatebního albumu - a to je jenom zlomek toho, co tam najdete. Když patříte mezi fanoušky sci-fi a mezi vaše oblíbence patří třeba seriál Black Mirror, věřte mi, že povídky ze SIngularit vás budou bavit tak, jak bavily mě.
• 
  Alex Rogers

  Very poor anthology, with much jerkery and pontification in between a very uneven set of stories. I'd have given it 1 star, but there are some gems amongst the dross and drivel.
• 
  Peter

  Cyberpunk was a subgenre of science fiction that hit big in the 80s and faded out, not to nothingness, but becoming rarer as some of the ideas became more used in the mainstream, were you often had to deliberately set out to echo most of the cliches of cyberpunk if you wanted to write a story that could be described as such. This is an anthology of stories that are 'postcyberpunk', a subgenre that's a lot harder to define. Especially around the borders, a lot of postcyberpunk stories resemble cyberpunk stories an awful lot, just lacking some of those cliches. Others resemble them hardly at all. So, making a collection of it seems like a difficult undertaking.
  
  Luckily, this collection is mostly filled with entertaining stories, with enough of a thread between them that, yes, you can often see that at least most of them might be part of the same (much broader) subgenre.
  
  One of the more interesting parts of the anthology is the parts between the stories, in which they have reprinted letters between Bruce Sterling and John Kessel about what cyberpunk meant to say, what defined it, and where they thought it was going... in 1988. Quite a fascinating look back and a peek into some creative minds (even if they seem a little full of themselves).
  
  As for the stories themselves, as I said, on the whole, I liked them a fair bit, although like any anthology, some worked better than others. The only outright stinker of the bunch (for my own tastes) was William Gibson's "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City," of which the only reason I can think it to be included is to say, "Look, even some of the pioneers of cyberpunk went on to write the same kind of pretentious twaddle they were supposedly rebelling against!"
  
  My favorites were probably "The Wedding Album" by David Marusek (which deals with personality 'snapshots' that are used to revisit happy memories... and yet it still seems an awful lot like enslaving intelligent lives), and "Daddy's World" by Walter Jon Williams (which deals with a young boy in a virtual world), but there were plenty of other ones that I enjoyed (and only a couple I'd read before) or exposed me to some cool ideas.
  
  On the whole, I'd recommend the anthology more than most, if you like cyberpunk, and maybe even if you don't (though having some grounding in SF in general might be recommended).
• 
  Tapani Aulu

  Todella kova kokoelma. Cyberpunkia pitäisi ottaa enemmänkin listalle, varsinkn novelleina.
• 
  Tarfein

  Jak ohodnotit celkově povídkovou sbírku? Jedině snad povídku po povídce.
  
  Z celého sborníku se mi nejvíc líbil "Opravář kol" a "Haf haf, řekl pes", možná pro jejich humor, a "Jejuka" a "Kalorik", možná pro svůj alespoň trochu optimistický konec. Nejsem přesvědčený, že by kyberpunk musel nezbytně končit vždy negativně, přesto jsme v Singularitě svědky především toho. Zejména "Svatební album", jakkoliv může pro protagonisty končit příznivě, na mě zanechalo hlubokou stopu. Hodně dalších povídek je spíše (pro mě) průměrných, u pár z nich jsem si musel zpětně rozpomínat, o čem vlastně byly, jak moc mi zapadly v paměti po dvou dnech ("Třináct pohledů na kartonovou kolonii", "Co se šustí, Tygří Lilinko" a "Dva sny o vlacích"). Kyberpunk asi nebude pro mě.
• 
  Alethea

  As with most anthologies, this is a mix of stories I rather enjoyed (Daddy's World), so-so stories (The Dog Said Bow-Wow) stories I'd read before and didn't like any better this time around (The Wedding Album), and the obligatory WTF/ugh (amusingly, this time by William Gibson, progenitor of Cyberpunk.)
• 
  Autumn

  "The Dog Said Bow Wow" was awesome.
• 
  Eamonn Murphy

  The anthology opens with ‘Bicycle Repairman by Bruce Sterling. It’s the tale of Lyle, an
  anarchist living in a squat who repairs bicycles. Sometimes an old mate sends him packages for safekeeping and one day he receives from this source a telly which shows only one channel, a political show but with sarcastic and subversive subtitles. He is then visited by a slinky lady with a bike to repair who later tries to burgle him. The story is pretty good and the life of a street anarchist is, as portrayed here, sort of fun. (I suspect it is not in reality). There is a lot of interesting technology in the story, mostly gadgets. Our hero takes a delibidinising drug that saves him wasting time with women. There is no romance.
  
  ‘Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City’ by William Gibson ’the quintessential cyberpunk’ is hard to read. It's very postmodern with its cinematic descriptions of bleak urban scenes and I suppose there are literati who will love it but to me, it hardly seems like a story at all.
  
  ‘The Wedding Album’ by David Marusek features Sims, holograms of real people made at a certain point in time with memories and feelings so they think, for a time, they are real. The revelation that they are Sims is a surprise, but not a complete shock because as the ‘original’ they were made from knows about Sims they do too. They can be activated for a few hours every few years but the original grows and changes and can even resent the happy youth represented by the Sim. This is the story of a wedding album Sim and it's great.
  
  ‘Daddy’s World’ by Walter Jon Williams might be even better. Jamie is a happy kid who lives in a wonderful world where he has whirligigs to play with and a kite shaped Mister Jeepers greets him cheerfully when he comes home. Mom and Dad and sister Becky all love him and play with him. As time passes sister Becky grows up, while Jamie does not. It's another story of the problems of a virtual person and it is brilliant.
  
  ‘The Dog Said Bow-Wow by Michael Swanwick has a dog called Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux stealing royal jewels at Buckingham Palace. It was very entertaining.
  
  ‘Lobsters’ by Charles Stross has uploaded sentient lobsters, a reckless genius who gives away all his ideas to make other people rich and a sexy tax inspector. It's all written in dazzling language and is wonderful.
  
  Amongst all the bright urban futures there is a tale of hunger and Agri-business malignity, ‘Calorie Man’ by Paulo Bacigalupi. Set in a future when energy comes from genetically manipulated animals on treadmills, with a Hindu hero, this future looks disturbingly likely to me. Greg Egan’s ‘Yeyuka’ is another story of corporate skulduggery that should raise awareness of these issues. Some of those fat cats our leaders kow-tow to have only their own best interests at heart, in the real world as well as in fiction.
  
  The book ends on a high note with ‘When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth’ by Cory Doctorow which is an apocalyptic story but with a positive, hopeful note. Disaster strikes but the good people keep striving, as in ‘Farnham’s Freehold’ and ‘The Stand’. System Administrators will love it.
  
  This really is an excellent collection and a reminder that the short story is often the best venue for new ideas in the field. It’s also a good way to make the acquaintance of new writers whose other works you might find interesting. There’s a few here I’ll be keeping an eye out for.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Fraser Simons

  This collection of short fiction curated for post-cyberpunk fiction is very well curated. Though some of the stories weren't my jam, I could tell why they were there because with each selection of short fiction there is a correspondence between two people talking about the genre. Interspersed throughout are quotes from some cyberpunk heavy hitters we know today. Just so, lots off the short fiction are from the same people. Gibson, Sterling, Stross, Bacigalupi, Doctorow, loads of people on most people's radar.
  
  Usually post-cyberpunk stuff focuses on the human condition and some of these stories do that, others not. They're just there to put a stark contrast between cyberpunk fiction that was well known and how that focus was shifting before anyone started throwing a different label on them. Overall it's a very good anthology and I think I only skipped one story, which was not to my taste...I'm pretty sure it was Gibson's actually..
  
  "Bicycle Repairman" by Bruce Sterling
  "Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland" by Gwyneth Jones
  "How We Got in Town and Out Again" by Jonathan Lethem
  "Yeyuka" by Greg Egan
  "The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry With a Completely Remastered Soundtrack and the Original Audience" by Pat Cadigan
  "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City" by William Gibson
  "The Wedding Album" by David Marusek
  "Daddy’s World" by Walter Jon Williams
  "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" by Michael Swanwick
  "Lobsters " by Charles Stross
  "What’s Up, Tiger Lily" by Paul Di Filippo
  "The Voluntary State” by Christopher Rowe
  "Two Dreams on a Train” by Elizabeth Bear
  "The Calorie Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi
  "Search Engine” by Mary Rosenblum
  "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” by Cory Doctorow
  
  I really enjoyed The Bicycle Repairman, which highlighted some really cool aspects of communal living and just what kind of ingenuity technology could give us and subverted the version of what a "bad guy" in cyberpunk traditionally looked like. Was overall really engaging and good.
  
  I also loved The Calorie Man, by Bacigalupi because I JUST finished reading The Windup Girl and it was super interesting to dive back into that world from another perspective. This story coupled with the other anthology I've read with him in it makes it pretty clear he's interested in going straight into some dark places, which I so far have dug very much.
  
  While I think all of them were good, Padigan and Gibson's one's were the weakest in my eyes. I think both stories aren't very good reflections of their work and were there to instead highlight an overall concept that were pitted against cyberpunk defaultism. So their purpose is good, but I just weren't into them very much.
  
  Otherwise, I'd have given it 5 stars --give it a shot if you're interested in seeing the rise of post-cyberpunk and what was cast aside from "traditional" cyberpunk. It's really interesting and even more compelling with the correspondence between writers introducing and discussing interesting subject matter.
• 
  Gene

  Honestly, I didn't enjoy this as much as I wanted to. I don't know if the editor was going for a literary analysis or something, but the reprinted letters got tedious and unread almost immediately.
  
  Bruce Sterling - Bicycle Repairman - 4 Stars
  Gwyneth Jones - Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland - 2
  Jonathan Lethem - How We Got in Town and out Again - 5
  Greg Egan - Yeyuka - 5
  Pat Cadigan - The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry with a Completely Remastered Soundtrack and the Original Audience - 1
  William Gibson - Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City - 1
  David Marusek - The Wedding Album - 5
  Walter Jon Williams - Daddy’s World - 5
  Michael Swanwick - The Dog Said Bow-Wow - 4
  Charles Stross - Lobsters - 1
  Paul Di Filippo - What’s Up, Tiger Lily? - 5
  Christopher Rowe - The Voluntary State - 5
  Elizabeth Bear - Two Dreams on Trains - 4
  Paolo Bacigalupi - The Calorie Man - 3
  Mary Rosenblum - Search Engine - 3
  Cory Doctorow - When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - 4
  
  Average: 3.5. Weighted: 3.8, rounded up to 4 stars
• 
  Andy Smith

  My experience with most anthologies is that they're pretty hit and miss, and for me this was no exception, but there was enough hit here to make the overall experience good and introduce me to some new authors.
  
  Stories I particularly enjoyed:
  
  “Bicycle Repairman” by Bruce Sterling
  “Lobsters” by Charles Stross (but had already read it elsewhere)
  “Yeyuka” by Greg Egan
  “Search Engine” by Mary Rosenblum
  “The Calorie Man” By Paolo Bagciaglupi (but had already read it elsewhere)
  “The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry With a Completely Remastered ‘Soundtrack’” by Pat Cadigan
  “Daddy’s World” by Walter Jon Williams
• 
  Russell

  Nifty collection of later Cyberpunk from the mid-nineties to the mid- double aughts. Most of the usual suspects are in the collection. Of interest, is that two of the stories are set in New Orleans, and two others are set in Tennessee. It is easy to see the Big Easy as a dystopian playground.
• 
  Marc

  I love the idea of post-cyberpunk and thoroughly enjoyed the introduction and editorial commentary throughout. This is one of the most even short story anthologies I’ve ever read. Not a dud in the bunch!
• 
  John Lawson

  Rarely have I read a collection of short stories where the quality varied so widely. Some were incredible (the first entry comes to mind). At least one was so bad, I didn't finish it.
• 
  Fresno Bob

  oh soooooo serious
• 
  Ryan

  Pretty solid collection. Favorites:
  
  Bicycle Repairman
  Yeyuka
  The Wedding Album
  Lobsters
• 
  David Brawley

  3.75 stars
  
  A solid collection of stories, though the "cyberpunk" theme felt kinda loose, in spite of the editors obvious efforts.
• 
  Patrick DiJusto

  A typical collection of typical stories that have somehow been categorized as post cyberpunk
• 
  Remi

  3.5 average, fairly good stories, while some being a tad underwhelming or flat-out dull. Greg Egan's "Yeyuka" is the personal highlight.
• 
  Matteo Fulghèri

  Sooo boring, with very rare exceptions. I love Steampunk, but Cyberpunk really isn't for me...
• 
  Planet of the Books www.planetofthebooks.com

  What is cyberpunk? Is it a pseudo-movement populated solely by the work of William Gibson? Or perhaps it is the broad shift in sci-fi consciousness that ultimately gave birth to everything from Blade Runner and the Matrix to Akira and Ghost in the Shell? Irregardless of the academic debate over the role and reality of the cyberpunk movement, cyberpunk is established in the popular mind as the change in science fiction to a darker, more uncertain future populated by social outcasts living in gritty decaying cities.
  
  Science fiction has always been a genre of transgression, a place for us to step outside of the morals and norms of our society. Breaking the rules of gender or blazing into an uncertain and often incomprehensible world cyberpunk committed perhaps the ultimate challenge to American culture by suggesting morally ambiguous futures without happy endings.
  
  In Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, James Kelly & John Kessel choose not to muse long on the history of the cyberpunk movement, but rather to look at where the movement is in the early 21st century. Rather than dazzling us with an endless, inaccessible academic analysis, Kelly & Kessel allow the writers to speak for themselves, through their work. The collection of short stories is unified in Kelly & Kessel’s words not by rules, but by obsessions. These obsessions include, “Engaging with developments in infotech and biotech, especially those invasive technologies that will transform the human body and psyche,” as well as subversion of traditional values, a global perspective on the future, and a playful style of prose.
  
  William Gibson delivers good on these obsessions with a film-like narrative style that is abrupt, cutting and satisfyingly visual. Gwyneth Jones delivers an exploration of sexuality and the consequences of desire in virtual reality through Red Sonja’s discussions with her therapist. David Marusek show us a world where Benjamin and Anne’s sims are conscious and experience a disoriented and emotional reality in very human ways. You’ll squirm in your chair as you consider the invasive, naked violence that your virtual reality game interfaces have made all too commonplace. In addition to these stories the anthology brings together the work of Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling, Jonathan Lethem, Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Walter Jon Williams, Pat Cadigan, Greg Egan, Paolo Bacigalupi, Paul Di Filippo, Elizabeth Bear, Christopher Rowe, and Mary Rosenblum.
  
  As a whole the stories collected here ask us to consider life from other angles often revealing deeply troubling and uncomfortable aspects of our own banal behavior. Anyone looking for the true antagonist of each story may only have to rise from their chairs and look deeply into the mirror. Rewird: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, Edited by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel is brought to you by Tachyon Publications of San Francisco. It is currently on sale for $14.95 at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s Books.
  
  read other reviews and interviews at
  www.planetofthebooks.com
  
  Ben
  Planet of the Books
  
  http://planetofthebooks.com
• 
  Roman

  Some good stories in this collection, a few really good ones and no spectacular flops. I was particularly surprised by Cory Doctorow's contribution 'When Sysadmins Ruled The World', the last story in the book, which packed an emotional punch I wasn't expecting as I had pretty much written Doctorow off as a fiction writer. If he can write other stuff of a similarly high caliber I may have to update that opinion. This volume of stories is an excellent introduction to post-cyberpunk writing and even people who don't consider themselves SF fans may get something out of it.
  
  
  A word about science fiction vs "real" literature:
  
  I was a relative late convert to SF and it now pains me how otherwise reasonable people balk at the label without giving it a chance or even really understanding what it encompasses. So-called "respectable" writers like Doris Lessing have dismissed the entire genre as basically comprising of the Star Wars and Alien franchises in novel form, while Margaret Atwood insisted that her SF novels are NOT in fact SF. Why? Simply because they have bought into a stereotype that reduces SF to robots and spaceships and denigrates "genre" fiction as being subpar to "real" literature. In other words they, and the other authors and readers who share their ignorance, come across as narrow-minded and elitist literary snobs. Well, I was one of them and learned, thanks to a persistent friend, that there is much, much more to science fiction than the spaceships and robots stereotype. None of the stories in this book, for example, are about either.
  
  There is a sub-section of SF called space opera that involves inter-galactic world building and imagines how civilizations that inhabit these worlds function and interact. This is what the uninitiated often think of as "science fiction" but there is much SF that is rooted firmly on Earth and deals with very contemporary issues. And besides, given that space travel and robots (especially the latter) are part of human culture, it's not s stretch to consider that maybe some of the authors writing about these subjects actually have some interesting things to say about them.
  
  I think it is practically impossible for a person who enjoys reading fiction generally to dislike every story that has been labelled SF. Like Margaret Atwood who has written SF but is loathe to admit it, the problem is with distorted perception, not with the label itself.
  
  /rant
• 
  Tomislav

  Cyberpunk was first a 1990s movement within the science fiction genre that emphasized information technology in the hands of the marginal segments of society. It spread rapidly throughout the genre, competing with the "humanist" school, and eventually became a stylistic trend in society at large, influencing music, movies, and the early internet. This anthology does not capture any such thing as a Post-Cyberpunk movement, but just the more simple meaning of the words - writing that came after Cyberpunk. Some of it is by the original cyberpunk writers, and some of it shows the influence of that movement on others.
  
  The editors dress it up with an introductory essay, and a prolonged capture of some email exchanges between a few writers concerned with cyberpunk in its early days. Honestly, I've been reading cyberpunk since it started, and I don't think there is all that much to its definition (which has drifted a little over time), so the essay seemed overblown. And on the very first story, an introductory paragraph divulged spoilers to the story itself, and so I quickly learned to skip over all that, and just read the stories. There are some very good stories in this anthology, some of them cyberpunk.
  
  "Bicycle Repairman", by Bruce Sterling *****
  "Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland", by Gwyneth Jones ****
  "How We Got in Town and out Again", by Jonathan Lethem ***
  "Yeyuka", by Greg Egan *****
  "The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry with a Completely Remastered Soundtrack and the Original Audience", by Pat Cadigan ***
  "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City", by William Gibson *
  "The Wedding Album", by David Marusek ****
  "Daddy's World", by Walter Jon Williams ***
  "The Dog Said Bow-Wow", by Michael Swanwick **
  "Lobsters", by Charles Stross **
  "What's Up, Tiger Lilly?", by Paul Di Filippo **
  "The Voluntary State", by Christopher Rowe ***
  "Two Dreams on Trains", by Elizabeth Bear ****
  "The Calorie Man", by Paolo Bacigalupi *****
  "Search Engine", by Mary Rosenblum *****
  "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth", by Cory Doctorow ****
• 
  Stoyan

  The definitive cyberpunk collection if you want to follow the evolution of the sub genre or a comprehensive almanach if you just want to get acquainted with it.
• 
  David

  I'm giving this book four stars just because of some true gems contained within it, even though I was thinking of giving it just three stars. I just decided to focus on the positive and what I liked about it.
  
  First of all, I have to say that the book really started for me in the sixth tale, "Thirteen Views Of a Cardboard City" by William Gibson, something really unique, like clinical descriptions of post-modern still life cityscapes, without characters, just objects -- it's something you need to read to understand, but it really made me sit straight on my chair. Then came the shifting "The Wedding Album" by Dave Marusek, a tale of simulated life gone wrong with a happy beginning and a harrowing ending, which, by the way, is pretty much the case, although within a vastly different setting in the following tale, "Daddy's World" (Walter Jon Williams). Charles Stross' "Lobsters" is the first truly geek tale of the anthology, with detailed depictions of near-future internet life and entrepreneurism although with a weird twist, a total delight for me. "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" by Paul Di Filippo also has this geek component, in a world some 20 or 30 years in the future where there's a post-internet of sorts and a breakthrough technology gone wrong for his creator. The next story I fully enjoyed was Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Calorie Man", a tale of an Earth deprived of fossil fuels, gone back to mechanically-generated energy and where calories are saved and invested like today's money and where GMO companies take the place of today's major oil companies -- a bleak future indeed. And finally, Cory Doctorow's "When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth" was another delight of geekiness meets apocalypse: survivor sysadmins struggling to keep the internet alive after a world debacle caught them performing system maintenance.
  
  This is post-cyberpunk for ya.
• 
  Dana

  Having now read both the steampunk and post-cyberpunk anthologies by this publisher, I have to say that I am definitely more of a PCP fan. Aside from enjoying the stories in this anthology more, I also really liked the excerpts of the Sterling-Kessel "state of cyberpunk" letter series that were incorporated throughout. I very much admit to being a nerd, but I liked those explanatory aspects by the editors of both anthologies that tried to give the reader some understanding of the development of the sub-genre within the larger picture.
  
  Most of the stuff in this anthology was new to me, largely by virtue of the fact that I don't read a lot of short fiction (and I am beginning to think I need to reconsider some lit mag subscriptions,) but I did find it amusing that the one piece by Bruce Sterling, chosen to kick off the anthology, is the only thing of his that I have ever read previously. As it turns out, this is okay by me, because I liked the story the first time I read it, too.
  
  More general impressions: There's a point in the middle where there are 2-3 stories all addressing the ethics of VR that was only just saved from becoming tedious because the stories are all very good (duh, one assumes this is why they were chosen) and turn out to be pretty unique. But if you don't want to feel like you're reading something for a class on the analysis of sci-fi visions of the future of ethics, you might want to break it up a bit more than I did. Also, William Gibson's ubiquitous story is very weird, and almost seemed like it was included only for his name and not for its content, so make of that what you will. Very, um, experimental? But as the Sterling letters indicate, that was at least part of the point.