Greatest cyberpunk novel?

Neuromancer in my opinion.

discuss.

It started the whole thing, can't be topped!

Snow Crash in my opinion.
Neuromancer may have stated cyberpunk, but Snow Crash perfected it and took it to its limits.

Neuromancer had good ideas, but the writing was pretty bad.

THE DA VINCI CODE LOLOLOL SAGE!

>>3
fucking yes. nothing has come close to the particular brand of irreverence that snow crash had.

I liked Idoru, but it's the only cyberpunk novel I've ever read.

I don't know many. Gibbons and the Shadowrun franchise are my favorites <3

Snow Crash sounded cool till I read this:

"The story centers around Hiro Protagonist, an out-of-work hacker and swordsman, and a streetwise young girl nicknamed Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), who works as a skateboard Kourier for a company called RadiKS. The pair meet when Hiro loses his job as a pizza delivery driver for the Mafia, and decide to become partners in the intelligence business."

That sounds like the most hilarious mockery of 80s cyberpunk/youth appeal I've ever heard in my life. I know that summaries can be greatly misleading, but absolutely none of those basic facts are forgivable and can be taken seriously.

Why should anyone take a science fiction book seriously in the first place? Step off your high horse and rent it from the local library, it is a quick read and has some pretty cool parts in it.
My vote goes to Dimond Age.

I also think Snow Crash was overrated. Lots of good ideas, but poor execution.

>>9
It's kind of hard to blurb adequately, but trust me, it works.

>>10 rent lol

>>10
yeah seriously science fiction is not literature and should not try to be

>>14
Literature is everything which is printed on paper.
But following your argumentation:
What about 1984? What about nearly every Lem-book, like Solaris?
There's at least one sf-book by Kenzaburo Oe (I know only the german title - Therapiestation).
How bout Fahrenheit 451? How bout Brave New World? How bout Slaughterhouse Five?

>>15
fine, touche'. but nobody expects sci-fi to be intellectual as a norm

>>16
I expect sci-fi to be intellectual in all cases. I thought you were being witty with >14.

What other purpose does sci-fi have but to offer insight into the future and the present and force us to recognize what will come and what we are? It's the newest form of history, and I think it's vital to a healthy civilization.

Sci-fi really came about when Earth developed advanced technology, a defining moment for our species. Sci-fi is man's desire for progress, it's his eye on tomorrow. There is no such thing as sci-fi without intellect. Sci-fi without intellect isn't sci-fi, it's just bullshit.

It isn't called SCIENCE fiction for nothing. Unscientific pulp need not apply.

What other purpose does sci-fi have

Just a guess: entertainment?

Some people like their pulp with lasers and rocketships.

>>18
Again, pulp isn't sci-fi. Science fiction without the science is simply, as I said, bullshit no different from Lord of the Rings. Also: since when are lasers and rocketships fiction?

I don't know how many proofs I need. Take a look at any decent list of greatest science fiction authors. They're either scientists or involved with scientific development. If you don't understand science, you cannot be a science fiction author.

>>19
Sorry man, but your entirely arbitrary definitions do not count for shit. Science Fiction includes pulp, despite plaintive calls to the contrary, just like historical fiction does.

Grow up. Or become a political spinmeister.

>>17
what the hell? clearly this post is a parody of the sci-fi nerd zealot. it has to be. i just can't take it seriously.
sci-fi can be intellectual, but it sure as hell doesn't need to be. and pulp sci-fi novels are still legitimate sci-fi novels. anyway my original point was that we should not expect all sci-fi to be literary and thought provoking, even if there are examples of smart sci-fi novels..

Take a look at any decent list of greatest science fiction authors. They're either scientists or involved with scientific development.

Hay guyz, people like H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Philip K. Dick, Ursula le Guin, and Robert A. Heinlein didn't write science fiction.

None of them were scientists, so they weren't elegible to write True Sci-Fi (TM).

>>20
Historical fiction requires its research, in the same way science fiction does.

I noted scientific authors as an example of where I'm coming from. You simply cannot write science fiction without knowing about science. Ask any self-respecting non-scifi author why they don't write scifi and that's the answer they'll give.

This is like saying "film isn't art, just look at movie X." Not all movies are 'films,' and not all futuristic fiction is 'science-fiction.'

You simply cannot write science fiction without knowing about science.

o rly? You do realise that in order for a lot of scifi to be possible, we'd have to violate any number of current theories?

Ask any self-respecting non-scifi author why they don't write scifi and that's the answer they'll give.

No, they probably want nothing to do with it because most authors regard scifi as clichéd one-dimension tripe; something that's little more than a flight of juvenile fantasy. I say they're largely right.

Good sci-fi is determined by the story, not the science, as authors like Ursula Le Guin have demonstrated time and time again. If you want real science, read a journal.

s/fantasy/fancy/

>>24
The story is meaningless without the science, in the same way a military novel is meaningless without the technical military knowledge.

"Sam Fisher walked into the room AND STARTED FIRING HIS MACHINE GUN AND BULLETS ABOUT THE SIZE OF MY FINGER FELL TO THE FLOOR AT THE TERRORISTS WHO WANTED TO DO SOMETHING BAD TO THE WORLD????"

Believe it or not, true scifi is actually about science. It's not just about going to space or being attacked by aliens. This is why it's called science fiction. Ruining a genre's name doesn't change the novel.

>>26 According to you most of the published "scifi" literature must not be "true" then.

Science fiction does need to have some plots related to scientific matters but it doesnt really need that much research unless the author is using a certain scientific theory or law as a central point of his work.  These books are written as fiction and it means that the author has some freedom on the level of fiction he or she can put on scifi.  It means that the author is free to  make his or her own interpretation on things even ruled out from current scientific theories. [Hard scifi vs speculative scifi]  Scifi doesnt necessarily have to be focused on the science at all since stories are usually centered on fictional/real chars and events and not the science itself. 

Also, a genre is defined by a criteria unique to that form.  If a book no matter how deep or how shallow it is, has scifi themes, then its scifi.

>>26
Sorry, man, but you're an pedantic faggot. The vast majority of scifi isn't possible with current physics. Read that again. Since you're a blind fool, read it a third time.

According to your bullshit definition, which nobody except you believes, the vast majority of sci-fi, including most the classics, are not sci-fi.

Go back to /pol/, you faggot. Your redefinitions are worthy of a political campaign.

>>29
That's irrelevant. Being able to describe the physics of tomorrow can't be done by a fucking moron English major, and guess what you retarded faggot?: physics don't change. Only real scientists can realistically and believeably foretell what the science of the future will be, because guess what? THEY KNOW THE SCIENCE OF TODAY.

ADUR. This is like asking kindergarteners to plan the next spaceship model, because hey, THEIR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS ANY RIGHT.

Just because someone took an English major doesn't mean he/she is completely ignorant of basic laws of physics; in some cases, the futuristic setting is used merely to distance the happenings of the story itself from our present day context, and by making it 'abstract' in that sense, making it accessible to people who might not be so empathetic with a story set in a specific time and place in the current day and age.

"Physics don't change": I'm sure pre-Copernican astronomers felt the same way about their 'science'.

Science fiction as a genre is not characterised solely by the accuracy of its science but the use to which its context is put. A book that is written with exacting care to be true to scientific theory that is devoid of literary merit isn't science fiction; it's a dissertation. And one could arguably say that a fucking moron physicist (no dig at actual science-inclined people here, this is hypothetical) is much better suited to churning out equations and getting his nads irradiated than balancing the delicate processes which go into the creation of a good novel.

What someone who isn't a physicist needs to know about science can easily be had by a couple of days with the relevant texts and/or Wikipedia. I honestly doub tthe same thing can be said for someone who's much more familiar with writing formulae than writing complete sentences.

The most important aspect of science fiction isn't the science; it's the story. Is it moving? Engrossing? Is there drama, suspense, character development? Is it well-written?

As others have pointed out, the examples of Le Guin and her contemporaries demonstrate that good science fiction can be written even with minimal attention being paid to the science and much more focus being given to the quality of the fiction.

After all, who the hell wants to read six pages of arduous, dry explication of exactly how this Superdimensional Starship Enterprise Galactica achieves FTL flight? The most important things are: what's the crew doing, why are they doing it, and how they feel about that.

To address your point about kindergarteners: children probably believed in the potential existence of robots, aliens, and computers to a much greater degree than most of the adult population, fancy-pants science experts included. Before space travel was an actuality, it was a dream. Sure, utilising a gigantic cannon to fire a manned shell at the moon mayn't have been great science, but it made one hell of a good story.

Also, you are a borderline literate imbecile, since it wouldn't be 4chan without completely baseless insults.

You still seem to be missing the point.

No matter how good an author is, if they attempt to write science fiction and do not know how to write science fiction they will write shit.

What our disagreement is over is what science fiction is. You believe that science fiction authors are people that have like to make shit up about the future. I feel that science fiction is a lot more than saying "the year was 2044." You're simply a less intelligent being than I, so you have a lower standard for what you read. This Le Guin you worship so much writes fantasy books which have space ships in them. Nothing more than that. She does not write science fiction, because she is a woman who grew up in an age where women played with dirt under trees and washed dishes.

She doesn't know anything about science: she cannot write about science, fictionally or otherwise.

>>You're simply a less intelligent being than I, so you have a lower standard for what you read.

Because that's obviously an argument someone intelligent would use.

Jesus. Can you come across as any more retarded?

>>33 is right.

Seems like neither of you can change the opinion of the other so why not let it be?
Geez. It seems I got more than I bargained for when creating this thread.

>>I honestly doub tthe same thing can be said for someone who's much more familiar with writing formulae than writing complete sentences.

There are no such people. With the immense intellectual effort that it takes to grasp today's cutting-edge physics it is implicit that one masters mundanities like writting.

The existence of savants who at excel mathematics or physics but can hardly pull their pants up is a popular myth, but a myth nonetheless. There are autists who can do amazingly quick calculations, but I assure you, none of them know category theory or QFT.

So why isn't there more sci-fi written by scientists? Because it's a waste of their time.

>>So why isn't there more sci-fi written by scientists? Because they don't know which end of a semi-colon is up.

Fixed.

>>36

1.  Learn spelling and grammar (see: 'writting' and 'who at excel')
2.  Scientists are intensely boring individuals who probably wouldn't recognize a good story, much less have the ability to convey it in an interesting fashion to others.

>>38
Yeah, the people able to find new things out about a world on which we've lived for half a million years have much less imagination than an adult baby that can think up random, fictional crap about the "future science," like FAST SPACESHIPS AND LIGHT TRAVEL DURRRRRRRRRR

>>32

LeGuin is an awesome author. The Left Hand of Darkness really impressed me, the writing is very solid and the story was quite effecting to me.