Really, Really, Really, Really Weird Stories

John Patrick Shirley (born 1953) is an American science fiction and horror writer of novels, short stories, and television and film scripts.

John Shirley's most significant cyberpunk novels are City Come A-Walkin and the Eclipse (A Song Called Youth) trilogy. Avant-slipstream critic Larry McCaffrey called him "the post-modern Poe". Bruce Sterling has cited Shirley's early story collection Heatseeker as being a seminal cyberpunk work in itself. Indeed, several stories in Heatseeker were particularly seminal, including Sleepwalkers, which, in just one example, probably provided the inspiration for William Gibson's "meat puppets" in Neuromancer. Gibson acknowledged Shirley's influence and borrowing ideas from Shirley in his introduction to Shirley's City Come A-Walkin.

William Gibson, the author of Neuromancer, collaborated with John Shirley on short stories – as did fellow cyberpunks Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker. Shirley's lyricism, wealth of ideas and imagination, crossover pioneering, and street-level honesty have been praised by other writers including Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Roger Zelazny, Marc Laidlaw, and A. A. Attanasio.

John Shirley's work ranges in tone from the surreal to the grittily naturalistic to the nightmarish. He is also a songwriter and singer, having fronted numerous punk bands, including the New York band Obsession, who were recorded by Celluloid Records. He has written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult, such as several songs on the album Heaven Forbid.

John Shirley has also written some books as [author_link_2502].