Metrophage

By Richard Kadrey

Book Overview

New York Times bestselling author Richard Kadrey's first novel--the cult classic dystopian cyberpunk tale--now back in print after twenty years in a special signed, collectible edition. Welcome to the near future: Los Angeles in the late 21st century--a segregated city of haves and have nots, where morality is dead and technology rules. Here, a small group of wealthy seclude themselves in gilded cages. Beyond their high security compounds, far from their pretty comforts, lies a lawless wasteland where the angry masses battle hunger, rampant disease, and their own despair to survive. Jonny was born into this Hobbesian paradise. A street-wise hustler who deals drugs on the black market--narcotics that heal the body and cool the mind--he looks out for nobody but himself. Until a terrifying plague sweeps through L.A., wreaking death and panic. And no one, not even a clever operator like Jonny, is safe. His own life hanging in the balance, Jonny must risk everything to find the cure--if there is one. The book will include a Q & A with Cory Doctorow.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0062334484
• ISBN13: 9780062334480
• Release Date: November 2014
• Publisher: Harper Voyager
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Free SF Reader

If you like old school cyberpunk, you should feel right at home with Metrophage. Although Jonny Qabbala is a dodgy low-rent drug dealer as opposed to a dodgy netjockey type it most definitely has a similar feel. Crazed rich criminals doing bizarre things to people with drugs, people want Jonny for various reasons. He gets into trouble with body modded gangs, all that sort of noir-punk good stuff is to be found here. 3.5 out of 5

classic cyberpunk

Reading Metrophage was like re-discovering cyberpunk fiction all over again. He channels noir writers just like Gibson does in Neuromancer, but also drops in some sweet art history and quite respectable tech-extrapolations just like Sterling circa Holy Fire and street pomo theory, a la Zeitgeist.