Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986)
22 comments
·August 20, 2025celticninja
If you are looking for a recent anthology of cyberpunk you could do worse than rewired
Rewired: The Post-cyberpunk Anthology
Some great stories in there and no bad ones at all. IMO
hungryhobbit
Absolutely brilliant collection of stories from some really great authors!
mwexler
This one wasn't the one that converted me (Gibson ftw) but Mirrorshades expanded what I thought the genre could be.
Not every story is a winner, but enough try to stretch a bit that it's worth the read.
Helps to put your mind in the time, just before the 90s, before The Matrix but after Blade Runner, before "the metaverse" but after "the net" and "going online" were starting to enter conversations.
Michelangelo11
> Each story is Copyright (C) 2022 to its original authors, and all rights are reserved. The book is not public domain, nor is it Creative Commons.
How is this "free online edition" distinct from piracy, in that case?
michaelbuckbee
It's hosted on one of the author's sites. The collection itself is (as far as I can tell) out of print. It's falling through the cracks of "too complicated for a publisher to figure the rights out of" and "not lucrative enough for anyone to care".
Filligree
But it’s a published work. I wouldn’t expect the author to have rights to post it.
mindcrime
Not by default, no. But it seems entirely reasonable that he may have approached the original publisher, requested permission to post this, and received said permission. Considering that the print book has been out of print for some time, and given that the linked page does emphasize the copyright status of the works, this feels like the most likely scenario to me.
wat10000
It’s possible that it’s being distributed with permission of the copyright holders. Given the number of different people involved that seems kind of unlikely, but “free” doesn’t have to imply a permissive license.
mindcrime
I think it's normal for the publisher to hold those rights (perhaps shared with the original authors, depending on the details of their agreements), so possibly all that would have been required here would be for the publisher to approve doing this.
Or maybe Rucker and all of the other authors are friends, and keep in touch, and he just literally called all of the up and said "Hey, can I post Mirrorshades online for posterity?" and they all agreed. Who knows?
specproc
He drew hard on his cigarette. Annoyance flickered across his face, like an artefact in the poorly-compressed bootleg movies he sold to his fellow low-lifes at The Pig and Drum.
Some Corpo-type, no doubt. Can't help seeing something good scroll across their feed tube without calling Legal.
He'd worked with a few in the past. Not bad all-in-all, at least they paid on time. That said, he could think of few he'd drink with.
He toyed with the idea of leaving a bitchy comment. Probably get downvoted to oblivion.
The dogs in the yard barked at a passing vehicle.
Irritated by the animal noise and the corpo whining, he thrashed something out. Pulling another cigarette from his pack, he hit "reply".
charlieglass
I gigglesnorted.
dfxm12
Consider the popular cliche, "free as in beer vs free as in speech".
The rights copyright gives you, briefly, includes: copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work. What suggests there is piracy is going on?
benji-york
The Information Society song "Mirrorshades" would pair well with this.
girvo
As would the Clipping song by the same name on their latest album that is heavily inspired by these stories as well!
aphrax
Rudy Rucker - that's a name I've not heard in a while. I still have a copy of White Light kicking about, not sure I understood it mind you...
pavlov
Now I remember really liking his novel "Software" as a kid. I had completely forgotten the name of the author.
theshrike79
This book and the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG ignited my love for Cyberpunk in general when I was a kid and it hasn't waned since :)
loudmax
I must be a few years older than you are. It was the original Cyberpunk (set in 2013, published in 1988) that did it for me.
One of the things I remember about the game was that it came with a suggested book and film list. Reading all those books, and tracking down the recommended films was something of a quest for me and my friends. That last part sounds trivial, but if your local video rental store didn't happen to have a copy of 1982's art-house weirdo indie film Liquid Sky, it was a real challenge.
programd
Liquid Sky soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UxwohjhHw&list=PL9F0ACA601...
Synth genius. I actually have it on vinyl.
Unfortunately for all of us, it turns out that cyberpunk dystopias are a lot more fun to read about than to live in.