NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/cyberpun/6893

Text File | 1992-12-30 | 3.7 KB | 77 lines

Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Path: sparky!uunet!mnemosyne.cs.du.edu!nyx!ahawks
From: [e-mail] (obi-wan kenobi)
Subject: Slipstream PoMo and Second Generation Cyberpunk
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Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 18:47:38 GMT
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Last nite on MindVox I saw a great series of posts by Bruce Sterling,
one of which included a cp "must-have" bibliography, in which he
labelled Neal Stephonson's Snow Crash as "second-generation"
cyberpunk.

People have been saying for some time now that "cyberpunk is dead",
while others are too wireheaded in cp simstim too realize it, and
still others have argued that cyberpunk is just morphing.

I myself belong in that third category, following Gibson's conjencture
that "the world doesn't need [Cyberspace XVIIIL] and it would get
really stale really quickly....The next novel I do [Virtual Light] is
going to be something different."

It seems that cyberpunk and the whole edge culture is continously
morphing to a nexus gridpoint that brings together classic cyberpunk,
slipstream, postmodernism, and industrial.

I'm not saying that recently there's been any sort of noticeable
breakaway or reference point, and most of us have been saying for
years that "the [dark, cyberpunk BR/Chiba/MaxHead] future is now", but
now the time has come for life to imitate art.  Witness the synergy of
postmodernism and cyberpunk in Storming the Reality Studio.  Witness
that cyberpunk authors continue to set their works in an increasingly
close future, sometimes to the point of "the future is passed".
Witness the increasing prominence of hackers in our society (damn kids
just won't go away!).  Witness Patrick Kroupa's appropriation of
Gibson's Agrippa through Agr1ppa - not just the fact that he ackerred
[that word is (c) copyleft] Gibson, but that he did it so ruthlessly,
so quickly, so virtually, so "cyberpunk"...Witness the increasing
subliminal popularity of William S Burroughs as modern icon in
mainstream culture (Naked Lunch, of course, but also Drugstore
Cowboys, Ministry video, U2, Mtv's Buzz).  Witness the fact that
William Gibson is replacing Jean Baudrillard as the ObNamedrop
(the future cultural-eL1Te in Newsweek, monthly Plato in a recent
Details, Mtv's Decade: The 80's).

It would seem to me that this cultural evolution is bringing about a
new age of philosophers that will not only include with prominence the
likes of the postmodernists (Baudrillard, et al), but also Gibson,
also McLuhan, also Timothy Leary, also William Burroughs.  This is
one byproduct of the synergy I think is beginning to happen.  As we
enter a new hyperreality, where technology and understanding at least
*seems* to increase exponentially, we constantly construct and
deconstruct and reconstruct not only new ideas, but new art (witness
the popularity of appropriaion and "ackerring" =), and of course new
mediums to relay the new messages.  So, history will probably look
kindly to those here-and-now thinkers and artists like I've mentioned
who not only realize these fundamental changes, but explore like Lewis
and Clark the new hyperspaces and interzones.

Summary:  Caller ID is wank.  Let's change the prevailing gestalt of
conversation to a more subjective philosophical examination of the new
hyperreal.

Rave on and rant off.

--

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