Cyberpunk Ebooks


S

starpause

Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2005
Messages
407
Age
43
Location
minneapolis
Website
mp3death.us
starpause posted on Jul 15 2005 at 12:45 AM said:
Accelerando by Charles Stross

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Doctorow

i am a big fan of william gibson, and haven't done any reading on my gp32 ...

so after reading the news of these authors releasing their novels for free as etexts, i had to check them out! i'm !reader-ing accelerando now ... i'm sure i'll get around to the doctorow ... anyway, how cyberpunk to read on a gp32, right? :p
​
Click to expand...

Nice find. BTW I always mention this in any ebook threads but it's such a cool find. Use this excellent tool to format any text you find difficult to get into a handheld readable form. Interparse


PS This made me chuckle on the second link.

PSP/JPEGs -- Text converted to a collection of numbered JPEGs to load onto your Sony PSP. 21MB ZIP archive (Thanks to Sean Bell for preparing this file!)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
thanks for InterParse ... tho the only texts i've found so far (gutenberg and the above) are already released in a good varitey of formats. i prefer plain text so far.

AXNJAXN, have you read all the Doctorow??? Do you suggest reading them in chronological order?
 
I have, indeed, read all the Doctorow.

You can read them in any order, since they are all standalone novels, but if you look carefully at Eastern Standard Tribe, the second book, you can see developments in technology that are commonplace by the far-future in the first. I read them as they came out:
Down and Out, Eastern Standard Tribe, Someone Comes to Town

But if you want to read them according to any kind of timeline:
Someone Comes to Town, Eastern Standard Tribe, Down and Out

Also, in terms of sheer weirdness (from less bizarre to greater), it would be something like:
Eastern Standard Tribe, Down and Out, Someone Comes to Town.

Now here's the short answer: They're all good, but I suggest starting from the beginning.

As you go along, it's kind of like drinking blacker and blacker coffee. Everyone would enjoy Down and Out, but less people would finish Eastern Standard, and even fewer would get past the reeeeeeeeeally bizarre stuff in the new one. Worth reading though. A note of caution, however: they do get racier and tend to contain sexual content. Just in case that matters.
 
thanks again AXNJAXN, i dove right into Someone Comes to Town after Accelerando ... after reading stuff like gaiman and douglas adams the "wierdness" in Someone Comes to Town didn't put me off at all. so i guess i'm attacking doctorow from a chronological standing ;)

Accelerando has some racey stuff as well, i had to think twice about recomending it to my dad (who got me into cyberpunk/scifi shit) ... the main character does some cross dressing and there's descriptions of fetish play, haha!

oh no where has this thread going!? :p :ph34r:

lets save it ... can you recomend any other free eBooks?
 
starpause posted on Jul 28 2005 at 03:58 PM said:
lets save it ... can you recomend any other free eBooks?
Click to expand...

I hope it's permitted to mention my own free SF/cyberpunk ebook :)

I'm sharing the novel under a creative commons license in several formats. The first couple of chapters are also up as web pages, to help people decide if they're interested in grabbing the whole thing. Assuming you can get text or html into your device, it should be readable for you.

HLT
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Of course it's permitted :)

I've read the first chapter and found it intriguing enough to download the complete Novel for future consumption.

Thanks

BaDToaD
 
hlt posted on Aug 11 2005 at 05:18 AM said:
starpause posted on Jul 28 2005 at 03:58 PM said:
lets save it ... can you recomend any other free eBooks?
Click to expand...

I hope it's permitted to mention my own free SF/cyberpunk ebook :)

The first couple of chapters are also up as web pages, to help people decide if they're interested in grabbing the whole thing.
HLT
​
Click to expand...

thanks for sharing, HLT. the more the merrier! i read the first chapter before taking off for work this morning and i'll have to grab the whole thing later. i'm a sucker for even bad cyberpunk :rolleyes: :lol:

i don't know if you're looking for feedback, and i'm no critic--just an avid reader spoiled by tearing through the four original novels in this thread!

anyway, my first impression: zendyne mostly reads more like a masamune shirow (ghost in the shell) or gibson (i really hope a courier shows up, we've got a security guard already :lol: ) fan-fiction, with heavy handed descriptions and cliches (... how he plays the cards ... or something like that, still painfully burning in my head). on the other hand--the characters grabbed my attention and i'm interested to see how things play out. and i hope there's some cool ideas/rants on technology woven in :blink: B)

of doctorow's books i liked Eastern Standard Tribe the best ... maybe only because i'm an IRC addict and i can't look at it the same again! but his other two full lengths are very good as well, plenty of barely-futuristic ideas ... my only complaing ... maybe the endings are all a bit preditcable. oh--another really cool thing about EST--the chonology of the story unfolding. not cookie-cutter time-rearangement ... doctorow walks us through two time frames with all the same characters simutanously, the story unfolds very naturally this way and it adds much spice. yum!

Accelerando was dope--dunno what to say exactly here (i read it too long ago to remember the deatails ... poor brain). the most futuristic of them all. by the end it was getting a little repetative (i won't spoil it) but a compelling read through and through.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
awsome, i'll give em a whirl after ive finished reading neuromancer for the 101 time
 
starpause posted on Aug 11 2005 at 04:11 PM said:
thanks for sharing, HLT. the more the merrier! i read the first chapter before taking off for work this morning and i'll have to grab the whole thing later. i'm a sucker for even bad cyberpunk :rolleyes: :lol:

i don't know if you're looking for feedback, and i'm no critic--just an avid reader spoiled by tearing through the four original novels in this thread!

anyway, my first impression: zendyne mostly reads more like a masamune shirow (ghost in the shell) or gibson (i really hope a courier shows up, we've got a security guard already :lol: )
[snip]
Click to expand...

Yeah, Gibson's Bridge Trilogy is definitely an influence on Zendyne, as is Snow Crash I'd say. The security guard is only a bit-player -- as you will find out if you make it through chapter 2 :) I'm more interested in character and storytelling in a near-future environment than in hard-core tech stuff, but I'll leave it up to you whether the rants are cool ;)

I haven't read EST yet but I liked Down and Out... a lot so will have to get around to reading that one too.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The thing about Doctorow is that the novels always contain, to some degree, the technologies that are either:

a.) controversial - in a legal gray area

or

b.) a direct descendant of a current, popular technology that is not being used to its fullest.

What this means, by the time Someone Comes to Town comes around is that the science fiction elements (which are bizarre to begin with) take on an air of surrealism because the character appears to lead a normal, albeit futuristic, life working with tech that bears relevance to the electronic world that we're familiar with.

So you have this marriage of the rational - the electronic - the machines, and the irrational - the biological curiosities - the spiritual questions that surround him.

So his sci-fi is sci-fi in the sense that the characters are dominated by two forces: science and fiction.

And there you have it: a mini-essay on why I like Cory Doctorow's books so much.
 
anyone knows a link with legal german ebooks? im too lazy to read english books...
 
he, anyone know of an open-source text to speach generator that can be ported to the GP32? :D

*metallic hollow diembodies robot voice*
The shaarp me-tallic tang of heemo-globbin hiit Leee as ^soon^ as he open-ed the bedroooom door.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

T
Good Free Ebooks
2
Replies
21
Views
3K
BaDToaD
BaDToaD
BaDToaD
Text Formatting For Ebooks
Replies
2
Views
2K
BaDToaD
BaDToaD
K
Http://www.online - literature.com/ And Lazyreader
2
Replies
21
Views
8K
Wildheart Baby
W
S
Questions About The Gp2x
Replies
1
Views
1K
Alpha2
Alpha2
I
Wanna Buy A Cheap Gp2x?
Replies
2
Views
2K
triksR4rabits
triksR4rabits
Back
Top