Chasm City
BSFA Award winner; a standalone noir that many readers rate the most purely enjoyable Revelation Space novel, and proof the universe could carry any genre dropped into it.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is Burning Chrome about?
The collected early stories in which cyberpunk assembled itself: 'Johnny Mnemonic' (data courier with a stolen corner of his own skull), 'The Gernsback Continuum' (a photographer haunted by the raygun-gothic future that never happened — the movement's manifesto disguised as a ghost story), 'Dogfight', 'Hinterlands', and the title story, where the word 'cyberspace' first appeared in print while two hustlers burn a money-laundering legend named Chrome. Three collaborations (with Sterling, Shirley and Michael Swanwick) map the scene's borders. The styles are already complete: chrome, rain, loss.
Why it matters
The seedbed of cyberpunk — 'Burning Chrome' coined cyberspace, 'Johnny Mnemonic' got the film, and 'The Gernsback Continuum' remains the sharpest single critique of SF's own nostalgia.
Get a copy
Prefer Amazon? Buying through these links may earn SFcrowsnest a small commission, at no extra cost to you.
Buy on Amazon UK → Buy on Amazon US →As an Amazon Associate, SFcrowsnest earns from qualifying purchases.
Read next
City of Golden Shadow
The genre's great pre-broadband metaverse epic — VR worldbuilding at a scale not attempted again until the streaming era, and a visible influence on everything from the Matrix sequels' discourse to Ready Player One's premise (done with far more ambition here).
The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
Hugo winner (1996); the Primer became a real-world fixation of educational technologists — the genre's most direct blueprint for AI tutoring, decades early.