One of the most canonical books in the cyberpunk cannon is Bruce Sterling’s 1986 Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology. Bruce was known, tongue-in-cheek, at the time as “Chairman Bruce,” thanks in part to his editorship of the pseudo-house organ the Cheap Truth cyberpunk zine and his acting as something of the voice of what had been dubbed “The Movement.”

Mirrorshades was something of a coming out for cyberpunk. It was the first time the term “cyberpunk” had been adopted by those who’d been labeled as such. And it would be the last (at least by choice). Sterling’s introduction to this anthology was seen as something of a manifesto for the genre.

The book also represented an expansion of who got umbrella’d under the cyberpunk label. Up until this book, it was mainly the original fab 4 (Sterling, William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, and John Shirley) who’d borne the label (and Lew Shiner, who never gets enough credit because he was quick to distance himself from the genre).

Besides the above five authors, Mirrorshades also included contributions from Marc Laidlaw, Paul Di Filippo, Pat Cadigan, Tom Maddox, James Patrick Kelly, and Greg Bear.

The term “Mirrorshades Group” was applied to these authors, not only because of this collection’s title, but because mirror shade sunglasses frequently showed up within their stories as a kind of literary gang sign or watermark.

On the YouTube channel Cyberslicy, they’ve been reading all of the stories from Mirrorshades. Here are four of my favorite pieces from the anthology.

https://youtu.be/r78ke6lT3u8

https://youtu.be/LUVMdbPIEEc

https://youtu.be/mdbwB20tJ4E

https://youtu.be/tVWFxLi1SEg