How About Some Examples?

Here are some books and series that fit the genre really well, even if they weren’t all written with “dreampunk” in mind. I’ve tried to select works that deal in some way with the internal/illusory/mystical world of dreams and are punk/transgressive/subversive in some way, or at least sympathetic to outsiders and underdogs.

White Light (1980) by Rudy Rucker

Credit: Rudy Rucker

The Dark Tower series (1982–2004) by Stephen King

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985) by Haruki Murakami

The Sandman series (1989–1996) by Neil Gaiman

Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson

The Vurt series (1993–1997) by Jeff Noon

The Newford series (1993–2004) by Charles de Lint

Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk

Neverwhere (1996) by Neil Gaiman

Perdido Street Station (2000) by China Miéville

The Scott Pilgrim series (2004–2010) by Bryan Lee O'Malley

A Monster Calls (2011) by Patrick Ness

The Darkening of the Light (2012) by Tessa B. Dick

Secret Cages (2012) by Barry Hale

Wolf in White Van (2014) by John Darnielle

Letters to the Black Underground (2016) by Yelena Calavera

Storm Dreams (2016) by Jeb R. Sherrill

Hoodoo (2016) by Ronald L. Smith

Jerusalem (2016) by Alan Moore

The Roam series (2016–2017) by Dez Schwartz

Mis(h)adra (2017) by Iasmin Omar Ata

The Strange the Dreamer series (2017–2018) by Laini Taylor

The Soul Sleep Cycle (2017–2019) by David Michael Williams

Credit: Mary Christopherson

Exit (2018) by Crispian Thurlborn

The Dreamscapers Trilogy (2018–) by Kurt Wagner

Urban Gothic (2019) by Stephen Coghlan

The Gay Wizard series (2019–) by V. S. Santoni

The Mirrors series (2019–) by Sonya Deulina Williams

The Dream Phaze series (2019–) by Matt Watters

The Dream Chasers series (2019–) by Martin Matthews

Steggie Belle and the Dream Warriors (2020) by Elias Pell

Mirrormaze: A Dreampunk Anthology (2020) edited by Cliff Jones Jr.

Legend of the Mind (2021) by Jeffrey Hopp

Next: Dreampunk in Film