A Clockwork Orange.

A dystopian novella written by Anthony Burgess back in 1962 that would become internationally known thanks to the film by the same title directed by Stanley Kubrick. Written in an invented language called Nadsat (derived from Russian), a young fellow narrates his adventures in a dystopian near-future society where decent folks work exhausting monotonous jobs, live in large spiritless apartment complexes and watch TV all day while their kids join street gangs and terrorize their innocent victims for fun. Full of slang and violence (or, as the author calls it, "ultraviolence"), but certainly entertaining and even thought-provoking.

Technical description:
Title: A Clockwork Orange.
Author: Anthony Burgess.
Edition: ebook file in EPUB format

Software.

First volume of Rudy Rucker's Ware Tetralogy, and considered one of the original examples of cyberpunk literature, Software narrates the story of Cobb Anderson, a retired computer scientist who figured out a way to give robots artificial intelligence akin to that of a human and free will, thus creating the race of the boppers. By the year 2020, these boppers have created a highly complex and developed society on the Moon and send a duplicate of Anderson to his retirement home in Florida to offer him the gift of immortality. But the "immortality" given to Anderson turns out to be having his mind transferred into software via a brain-destroying tecnique.


Technical description:
Title: Software.
Author: Rudy Rucker.
Publisher: Avon Eos.
Edition: first Avon printed edition, New York (USA), October 1987 (1982).
Pages: 167 pages.
ISBN: 0-380-70177-4

Burning Chrome.

Burning Chrome is a collection of short stories written by William Gibson, one of the founding fathers of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction. A good amount of the stories happen in the Sprawl fictional location, invented by Gibson and center of his popular Sprawl Trilogy. Originally published in 1986, this book includes some of the best known stories of the cyberpunk subgenre: Johnny Mnemonic (which would also become a movie of the same title, directed by Robert Longo and starring Keanu Reeves, who would later become popular thanks to the Matrix Trilogy), Fragments of a Hologram Rose (Gibson's first published work, originally published in 1977), New Rose Hotel and The Gernsback Continuum. While most of the stories are penned by William Gibson alone, some others are written together with somebody else.

Technical description:
Title: Burning Chrome.
Author: William Gibson.
Publisher: Harper Collins.
Edition: reprint, paperback edition, London (UK), 1995 (1986).
Pages: 220 pages.
ISBN: 0-00-648043-8

Vurt

A science fiction novel written by British author Jeff Noon that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1994. The book tells the story of Scribble and his gang, the Stash Riders, as they search for his missing sister (and lover), Desdemona. Set in an imaginary version of Manchester, in a society that revolves around Vurt, a hallucinogenic shared reality that can be accessed by sucking on color-coded feathers.

It has been somehow compared to William Gibson's famous Neuromancer novel, which popularized the science fiction genre known as cyberpunk. Nevertheless, other reviews chose to emphasize its implausible science and "wild and kaleidoscopic" yet unsatisfying plot.

Technical description:
Title: Vurt.
Author: Jeff Noon.
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin.
Edition: New York (USA), 1993.
Pages: 342 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-312-14144-8

A futuristic but familiar world.

Gibson portrays a futuristic world that, nevertheless, feels quite familiar and plausible:

A soapbox evangelist spread his arms high, a pale fuzzy Jesus copying the gesture in the air above him. The projection rig was in the box he stood on, but he wore a battered nylon pack with two speakers sticking over each shoulder like blank chrome heads. The evangelist frowned up at Jesus and adjusted something on the belt at his waist. Jesus strobed, turned green, and vanished. Mona laughed. The man's eyes flashed God's wrath, a muscle working in his seamed cheek.

(Gibson: p. 67)

It's one of the things that makes Gibson's type of science-fiction attractive: it feels close enough, realistic, something waiting for us just around the corner. The characters are as flawed as we all are, and for the most part are driven by the same motives (greed, ambition...). They just live and act in a different context.

Mona Lisa Overdrive.

The final part of William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy, following Neuromancer and Count Zero. Clear example of cyberpunk literature. As it happened with the previous novels, this story is also formed from several interconnected plot threads involving a few characters that also appeared in previous books: Mona, a young prostitute who looks like Angie Mitchell, a famour superstar, and who is hired by a few individuals who intend to kidnap the star; Kumiko, a Japanese girl, daughter of a Yakuza boss sent to London from a gang war involving a few Yakuza leaders; and Slick Henry, a convicted car thief who lives in a vast wasteland, and who is hired to take care of Bobby Newmark, also known as Count Zero.

Technical description:
Title: Mona Lisa Overdrive.
Author: William Gibson.
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers.
Edition: Paperback edition, reprinted ten times, London (UK), 1995 (1988).
Pages: 316 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-00-648044-0

Cryptonomicon.

A 1999 novel by Neal Stephenson, one of the best examples of postcyberpunk literature, a mixture of science fiction and historical fiction with plenty of references to science, philosophy, history, religion and many other topics. In Cryptonomicon, Stephenson explores the exploits of the cryptographers who worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, linking it to the story of their descendants, who are trying to set up a data haven in the Pacific at the end of the 20th century. Nominated for the Hugo Award in 2000, it quickly became a cult among hackers and cypherpunks.

Technical description:
Title: Cryptonomicon.
Author: Neal Stephenson.
Publisher: Arrow Books.
Edition: First edition, reimpressed, London (UK), 2007 (1999).
Pages: 918 pages.
ISBN: 0-09-941067-2

Find it on Amazon (USA, UK).