NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/cyberpun/7207

Text File | 1993-01-26 | 1.9 KB | 36 lines

Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!tbredeho
From: [e-mail] (Thomas A Bredehoft)
Subject: cyberpunk sixties
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Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 13:39:42 GMT
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Just finished Norman Spinrad's _Little Heroes_.  I am again struck by just how
deeply the sixties belong in the world of cyberpunk literature.  In _LH_ we
have a "Crazy Old Lady of Rock and Roll" as one of the main characters, a rock
singer straight from the sixties, straight from Altamonte.  The electronic drug
which changes this future world is explicitly related to a new and improved
LSD.  The rock music involved is sixties, and there are more or less constant
quotations from "classic rock" songs.

The significance?  It seems sometimes that the cyberpunk credo of sex, drugs,
and rock & roll is often coded as a return to the sixties, in some fashion.
Here it is explicit, in other places (Cadigan's _Synners_) it is more subtle.
Yet such a move (rhetorically at least) is suspect, as it grounds the new
revolution in the old.  I think this is why Spinrad's book ultimately fails.
Although in the end, we still believe Glorianna knows "why they're the pinheads
upstairs," the book hints that she'll take her place upstairs herself, along
with the other characters in the book, who finally find places to fit within
the existing power structure--despite the fact that they've just tried to
deflate "Official Reality."  Spinrad fails to quote the Who, although he
should.  Despite the apparent victory and success of the revolution, the
message of the last few pages seems to be, "Meet the new boss; same as the old
boss."

Thomas A. Bredehoft