Cyberpunk Sources
rating: 0+x

Basic Information

This bibliography page lists sources that might be useful in running a Cyberpunk game.

Sources

Books

  • William Gibson:
    • Neuromancer (1984)
    • Burning Chrome (1986) - collection of early short stories including the title story in which he coined the term "cyberspace"
  • Misha Glenny:
    • McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld - a study of the changes of global organized crime since the fall of the Soviet Union. No matter on which continent your game takes place, this book has something relevant about the local organized crime syndicates.
  • Bruce Sterling:
    • The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier — Chronicles events in the hacker subculture in the early 1990s including Operation Sundevil, the massive government sting operation on computer hackers, and the Secret Service's raid on Steve Jackson Books. Available for free download at the link.
    • Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (ed.) A collection of seminal cyberpunk works, including Gibson's "The Gernsbeck Continuum" and Sterling's own "Mozart in Mirrorshades".
  • Clifford Stoll:
    • The Cuckoo's Egg - 1989; a first-person account of a computer geek who set about trying to uncover a $0.75 discrepancy and wound up uncovering a hacker who was selling military secrets to the Soviets. If you're looking for a realistic version of computer hacking, this is how it's done and how it's uncovered.
  • Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh:
    • Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor - examines how the "street economy" really functions in a poor Chicago neighborhood. Extremely useful for any "street-level" cyberpunk game.

Movies

TV Series

  • Max Headroom (1987)

Anime

  • Ghost in the Shell

Comics

Games

  • Cyberpunk 2020 — R. Talsorian Games — A classic Cyberpunk setting
  • GURPS Cyberpunk — Steve Jackson Games — This is the famous supplement that was confiscated by the Secret Service who apparently believed it was some kind of textbook for computer crime. It wasn't and it isn't. Like many GURPS supplements, athough written for GURPS 3rd edition, it's information can be ported to the 4th ed. and other systems.
  • Shadowrun — FASA Corporation; currently published by Catalyst Games — For those who like their Cyberpunk with a twist of elf; this system combines noir hackers with urban fantasy, positing that in the near future, elves and other magical creatures come back.

Game and Story Use

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License