Read the seminal cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades for free online

This is a pretty cool thing that popped up online recently: author Rudy Rucker has posted the entirety of the seminal cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades to his website to read for free. On Twitter, Rucker noted that the anthology wasn't (ironically) available as an eBook and decided to remedy the situation. He's since added up downloadable versions to read on your device.

Bruce Sterling edited and released the anthology in 1986, rounding up a number of recently-published stories from the likes of William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Rucker, Greg Bear, John Shirley, and others. In his preface, Sterling noted that the collection was a showcase of writers "who have come to prominence within this decade," defined by their examination of the decade's culture, and labeling them as the forerunners of a new movement in the genre. "This movement was quickly recognized and given many labels: Radical Hard SF, the Outlaw Technologists, the Eighties Wave, the Neuromantics, the Mirrorshades Group," he wrote. "But of all the labels pasted on and peeled throughout the early Eighties, one has stuck: cyberpunk."

He explained that the book was designed to "give readers new to Movement writing a broad introduction to cyberpunk's tenets themes, and topics," and that this subgenre was defined by the changing attitudes towards technology in the 1980s. The roots to cyberpunk, he explained, run deep into the genre's history, drawing on strands of the New Wave movement through authors like J.G. Ballard, Harlan Ellison and Samuel Delany, the harder stories from Larry Niven or H. G. Wells. He asserted that "the cyberpunks are perhaps the first SF generation to grow up not only within the literary tradition of science fiction but in a truly science-fictional world" – one where technology and computers were beginning to play a role in all parts of society.

The SF Encyclopedia echoes this by pointing out that a central tenet of cyberpunk is the winnowing distance between technology and the human body: "a future in which machine augmentations of the human body are commonplace, as are mind and body changes brought about by Drugs and biological engineering," coupled with the globalization of power facilitated by information technology systems where corporations grow to rival the nation-state.

The encyclopedia notes that Sterling's preface is akin to a manifesto, arguing that the world has experienced a major change and that the authors and stories included in the book were prime examples of the movement that would continue to grow.

There's a lot in there that I feel is still pretty relevant today: not just in that the stylings of cyberpunk are still going strong, but in that the influences that shaped the genre persist to this day. It's a good opportunity to re-read these foundational stories.