Welcome back! We are so pleased you are joining us for our podcast book group: Reading with Libraries!
In our book group we have fun talking about books, and provide useful information for library people doing Reader’s Advisory work. There are so many books out there that it’s tough to be an expert on all of them. So we pick a new genre each week to chat about and hopefully provide you with some insight into what may be an unfamiliar genre!
Our book group is very inclusive; there are no “right” or “wrong” books here! We just like to read and chat about books, and want you to share what you are reading too! All of us will take away at least a title or two that we want to read at the end of our time together.
Who is joining us this week? We are pleased to welcome back returning Guest Host Kelly Kraemer!
Beverages:
Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages, and we each came prepared with our own drink to enjoy while we talk about our books. You are an important part of this book group, so if you don’t have a beverage go ahead and get one now. Each of our beverages will have a recipe or a link on our episode page, so you can try them yourself!
Alien Brain Hemorrhage
1 oz. (30ml) Peach Schnapps
1/2 oz. (15ml) Irish Cream
Splash Blue Curaçao
Drops Grenadine
1. Pour peach schnapps into shot glass before layering irish cream on top.
2. Drizzle in grenadine before adding a splash of blue curaçao.
Fun video: https://tipsybartender.com/recipe/alien-brain-hemorrhage/
Cyberpunk Beer
Bionic Brew: Electric Craft Beer born in Shenzhen.
- Metropolis IPA made with Citra, Simco, and Nugget hops. Hoppy, bold, and tropical.
- Bionic Ale is an American Pale Ale made with Amarillo, Simco, and Nugget hops. Malty, citrusy, and fruity.
Black Hole Brewery: Mixing the traditional with the innovative. Traditional brewing techniques, with flavour old and new. Born in Burton and (Dis)Organised from Derby
- Cyborg Golden Ale is a combination of goldings and pilgrim hops that provide a citrus aroma, with a bitter taste.a combination of goldings and pilgrim hops that provide a citrus aroma, with a bitter taste.
Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster:
Take a tall glass or pint glass. Use simple syrup on the rim and then coat the rim with Pop Rocks
1/2 oz Vodka
1/2 oz Rum
1/2 oz Tequila
1/2 oz Blue Curacao
1/2 oz Gin
sour mix
Sprite
Bacardi 151 or Everclear
In a shaker with ice add the first 5 ingredients. Add sour mix. Shake, shake, shake, senora, shake that shaker right. Top with sprite and 151, add ice if needed to bring drink to the top of the glass. Garnish with a lemon slice. If you have edible gold flakes sprinkle that on top for giggles.
Genre Discussion:
From Wikipedia: Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a futuristic setting that tends to focus on a “combination of lowlife and high tech“[1] featuring advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.[2]
“Fancy advanced technology plus dystopian elements equals cyberpunk.”
Cyberpunk and Literature
From Merriam Webster: In science fiction circles, “cyberpunk” is a genre that often features countercultural antiheroes trapped in a dehumanizing high-tech future. Its roots extend back to the technical fiction of the 1940s and ’50s, but it was years before it matured. The word cyberpunk was coined by Minnesota writer Bruce Bethke, who wrote a story with that title in 1980. He created the term by combining “cybernetics,” the science of replacing human functions with computerized ones, and “punk,” the raucous music and nihilistic sensibility that became a youth culture in the 1970s and ’80s. Not until the 1984 publication of William Gibson’s novel, Neuromancer, however, did “cyberpunk” really take off as a term or a genre.
In some cyberpunk writing, much of the action takes place online, in cyberspace, blurring the line between actual and virtual reality.[28] A typical trope in such work is a direct connection between the human brain and computer systems. Cyberpunk settings are dystopias with corruption, computers and internet connectivity. Giant, multinational corporations have for the most part replaced governments as centers of political, economic, and even military power.
Suggested Reading Lists:
- Cyberpunk Books: A Beginner’s Guide to the Genre
- The Essential Cyberpunk Reading List
- 12 Cyberpunk Books for Console Cowboys Everywhere
- 7 Dispatches from the New Wave of Cyberpunk
- Must Read Cyberpunk Books
- Popular Sci-Fi Cyberpunk Dystopia Books
- 10 Best Cyberpunk Books
- Best Cyberpunk Books from Classics to Modern
- Cyberpunk Book Lists from Goodreads
Our Book Discussion
Now we are a little more familiar with this week’s genre, and we have enjoyed some of our special beverages, let’s get to the book discussion!
“With their hard-edged, street-wise prose, they created frighteningly probable futures of high-tech societies and low-life hustlers. Fans and critics call their world cyberpunk. Here is the definitive “cyberpunk” short fiction collection.”
“Case was the sharpest data-thief in the matrix—until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace. Now a mysterious new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run at an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, a mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case is ready for the adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.”
“One of Time’s 100 best English-language novels • A mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous, you’ll recognize it immediately
Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison—a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.
In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse.”
“In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.
Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold.”
” Deep into the twenty-first century, the line between man and machine has been blurred as humans rely on the enhancement of mechanical implants and robots are upgraded with human tissue. In this rapidly converging landscape, cyborg superagent Major Motoko Kusanagi is charged to track down the craftiest and most dangerous terrorists and cybercriminals, including “ghost hackers” who are capable of exploiting the human/machine interface and reprogramming humans to become puppets to carry out the hackers’ criminal ends.”
Other Books from Kelly:
- Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis
- Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K Dick
- Ready Player One, by Ernest Kline
- Sortware (Ware Trilogy), by Rudy Rucker
- Cash Crash Jubilee, by Eli WIlliams
- River of Gods, By Ian McDonald
- Cyberabad Days, by Ian McDonald
- Halting State, by Charles Stross
- Rule 34, by Charles Stross
- The Peripheral, by William Gibson
- The Glas Hammer, by K. W. Jeter
- Feed by M. T. Anderson (YA novel)
- Metrophage, by Richard Kadrey
- KOP, by Warren Hammond
- Nexus, by Ramez Naam
Movies and TV from Kelly:
- Bladerunner
- The Matrix
- Ghost in the Shell
- Altered Carbon (Netflix series)
- Robocop
- Tron
- Johnny Mnemonic
- The Terminator
- Total Recall
- Alita: Battle Angel
Conclusion:
Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion with our Reading with Libraries podcast book group! A special thank you to our Guest Host Kelly!
Join us next Thursday with another genre, more guest hosts for our book group, and more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries – which is always interesting! – subscribe to our podcast Linking Our Libraries.
Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!