tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post7698059142708027297..comments2024-03-09T14:13:14.671+00:00Comments on News & Press from The Future Fire: C is for CyberpunkDjibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-39283445152983086302011-09-18T18:42:58.696+01:002011-09-18T18:42:58.696+01:00Slightly shamed by all of these fine responses and...Slightly shamed by all of these fine responses and excellent suggestions, I have written a new post (on my own blog: <a href="http://carlisleoccasional.blogspot.com/2011/09/is-cyberpunk-still-punk.html" rel="nofollow">Is Cyberpunk still Punk?</a>) which I hope gives a better summary of what progressive social-political cyberpunk might look like.<br /><br />Thanks for all the feedback. I now have a reading list ahead of me!Johann Carlislehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00317909550071564291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-22965063545139048042011-09-15T23:56:32.311+01:002011-09-15T23:56:32.311+01:00@ceciliatan: yes, a genderqueer author could be a ...@ceciliatan: yes, a genderqueer author could be a step away from the Gibson/Sterling/Stephenson axis. Is there any LGBTQ content in his stories? (Are any of your CP stories available to read anywhere these days?)<br /><br />Other titles that have been recommended elsewhere than these comments now include:<br /><br />Nalo Hopkinson, <i>Midnight Robber</i><br />Tricia Sullivan, <i>Maul</i><br />Laura J. Mixon, <i>Proxies</i><br />M.H. Mead, <i>Fate's Mirror</i><br />Melissa Scott, <i>Trouble and Her Friends</i><br />Nicola Griffith, <i>Slow River</i><br />Pat Cadigan, <i>Dervish is Digital</i>Djibrilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-65946506014018247502011-09-15T22:08:03.284+01:002011-09-15T22:08:03.284+01:00@Djibril -- Kal Cobalt's collection "Robo...@Djibril -- Kal Cobalt's collection "Robotica" is very definitely cyberpunk but I'm trying to figure out if the author being male-identified genderqueer counts as yes or no in what you're looking for...<br /><br />I published my share of cyberpunk short stories in the 1990s (most of them written in the 1980s when I was getting my degree in cognitive science...) but don't have a novel in print I can recommend to you of my own, alas.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-34920028068147799542011-09-15T21:26:58.552+01:002011-09-15T21:26:58.552+01:00I was meaning to raise the question of Cyberpunk b...I was meaning to raise the question of Cyberpunk by non white, male, anglo, punk types, which Johann touches on in his comment above re Jonathan Dotse's work, but it turns out that Kathryn Allan (<a href="http://twitter.com/bleedingchrome" rel="nofollow">@BleedingChrome</a> on Twitter) has beaten me to it with this post about cyberpunk by "<a href="http://www.academiceditingcanada.ca/blog/item/71-cyberpunk-lives" rel="nofollow">women, people of colour, and non-Western world writers</a>". She makes the case that the "cyberpunk is dead" meme effectively wipes out all the exciting work in this genre by these people, the same way that Sterling wiped out a decade of great feminist science fiction by saying that there had been nothing exciting going on in between New Wave and Cyberpunk. Good stuff, worth reading. I want recommendations!Djibrilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-28110770130666592402011-09-04T23:51:40.103+01:002011-09-04T23:51:40.103+01:00The reference to London was just the mindset that ...The reference to London was just the mindset that sparked it, not the actions that transpired. I think people are starting to feel really squashed by the cultural elite (no doubt they've been feeling it for some time, but now it's reached the point where things are happening, people are less content to simply grumble about it), and rebellion is bound to break out. <br /><br />Indeed, the days of "War Games" and 13-yr-olds hacking into mainframes are behind us. The targets of hacking will change, as you said, to be more focused on allowing communication (like when Egypt tried to squash the Blackberry service).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-28185361884147725072011-09-04T22:41:09.038+01:002011-09-04T22:41:09.038+01:00I think the argument of the postcyberpunks is that...I think the argument of the postcyberpunks is that science fiction about computers and hackers and countercultural l33ts and phreaks today would be a very different kind of fiction than it was in the 1980s, because of the cultural environment it came from.<br /><br />By the same token, then, reading Gibson, Sterling, Cadigan et al. now is no longer the same experience as reading it in the decade when computers were just starting to appear in every home, when stories about hackers were appearing in the news, when films about cracker kids almost starting nuclear war were popular. If you were an Internet user in the 1980s, you really were élite: the rest of us were wannabes.<br /><br />I wonder if the future of cyberpunk is not so much on the streets of London (those kids were mostly stealing game consoles, blackberry cellphones and sports shoes, not dreaming of being hackers), but in parts of the world where information technology is still in the process of being a game changer. In these places (I'm thinking of rural India and parts of subsaharan Africa in particular, but it may be more global than that), the game changer is not the Internet, but a peer-to-peer network of cellphones and other devices that enable communication in remote areas without access to a single hub or service provider.<br /><br />That's a real digital frontier, so the stories that take place out there are based on real excitement and rebellion, real punk. I look forward to reading the future of cyberpunk from authors like the Afrocyberpunk <a href="http://www.afrocyberpunk.com/" rel="nofollow">Jonathan Dotse</a>.Johann Carlislehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00317909550071564291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-55195450624047116542011-09-04T16:57:15.923+01:002011-09-04T16:57:15.923+01:00I didn't know about the Rewired or Mirrorshade...I didn't know about the Rewired or Mirrorshades anothologies. I'd be interested in reading cyberpunk that has no computer presence. The definition is a lot broader than I realized. Do you think the Gibson style of cyberpunk was necessarily confined to the 80s? Do you think there could be a resurgence of this sort of attitude, following on the heels of the riots in London this summer? It seems like there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with the status quo that has bubbled over.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com