One also shouldn’t overlook Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett’s gritty noir crime novels. Sam Spade and Phillip Marlow aren’t cyberpunk at all — having been written long before the invention of both punk and computers — but they were undoubtedly influential on William Gibson and most assuredly influences on Blade Runner.
John le Carré‘s espionage novels, such as The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, Tom Clancy’s and Michael Critchon’s modern day techno-thrillers, and the original Ian Fleming novels about a certain dashing British secret agent, are also pretty good inspirational material for Shadowrun. Again, none of them are directly cyberpunk (although Jurassic Park comes kinda close to biopunk), but they all share tonal and thematic elements.
“Heist pictures” are also a great source of inspiration: Heat basically is a Shadowrun campaign set in the Fifth World. The Thomas Crown Affair, Ocean’s Eleven, Catch Me If You Can, and The Sting should be required viewing for any SR GM considering running a campaign that plans to make extensive use of the ‘Cutting Aces’ supplement.
Oh, and of course, we’d be silly not to mention the story of what happens when a retired Prime Runner gets his car stolen and his dog killed: John Wick.
