Ranked #86 in Cyberpunk
Book one of John Shirley's pre-holocaust series, A Song Called Like many works defining the wild cyberpunk fringe in the 1980s, this depiction of a near-future dystopia, here revised and updated since its 1985 debut, seems almost acceptably mainstream today. But Shirley's spiky prose and edgy attitudes, which lately have cultivated a following among horror readers (Wetbones; Really, Really, Really, Really Weird Stories), still hook the reader's attention. Tapping anxieties about rising global nationalism, Shirley presents a Goya-esque vision of war-torn western Europe, bombed out and unstable... more