A Random Thread About Cyberpunk Literature.

[Black Jeebus]

Do you like Cyberpunk?

If so what novels from this near futuristic genre have you read?

And as a substance question: do you think Gibson's lack of real understanding of computer/information systems was bad for the genre or did it allow for the genre to grow in ways it never could have if he had based his novels upon real systems?

[ThatReallyHurt]

Well, it used to be that art imitated life... but now, we're getting to where life is attempting to imitate art. If someone describes something in a book or on TV that people think is cool and want, they'll eventually get it, regardless of how fantastic or futuristic it was at the time.

Me, I'm still waiting for my zero-point energy superweapon and particle teleporters, but I'm confident they'll be here soon.

Oh, and yes, I like Cyberpunk, and I've read a few, Snow Crash had a good premise and was written well enough that you could almost believe that it had happened/was happening/was going to happen (although I wasn't too fussy about some of the stuff in it).

[Black Jeebus]

Neal Stephenson definitely has a pretty good grasp of the tech he's writing about, and most of his super-tech is a logical extension of what he knows. However Gibson didn't really know too much about the tech he was using so his tech tends to be more fantastical than say Stephenson.

Truthfully I think Gibson's stories could be just as good without the tech, since they tend to center around the characters rather then the tech. He takes his characters and gives them the tech he thinks they should have. Whereas Stephenson seems to come up with some nifty tech premise the Snowcrash virus for ex. and puts in the characters he thinks should be there.

Another of Stephenson's books Interface, which I am currently reading, seems to have been constructed around the main piece of super-tech in the book.

Just in case anyone is wondering about good Cyberpunk novels to read: the two ones I would suggest reading first are Neuromancer, and Snowcrash. A lot of Cyberpunk fans claim that Neuromancer was the first in the genre and that Snowcrash was the last great one (I disagree with the Snowcrash statement since I don't think the genre is dead).

[Elemental]

I've read Neuromancer and it's sequels: Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. His best cyberpunk stories were in Burning Chrome; "Johnny Neumonic," "New Rose Hotel," and "Burning Chrome."

I never read Snow Crash but it's on my list of books to read.

I think an issue with cyberpunk is that for every writer that puts forth an intellegent and plausible vision of future tech, there is some schmuck who thinks it all works like in "Hackers."

[cfaustus]

In addition to the already mentioned works, one I really liked is The DIfference Engine... it is now classified as SteamPunk because it deals with past tech rather than future tech, but it has much the same edge that CyberPunk has. In all a good Scifi read.

As to Gibson's take on tech: SciFi is about having characters in a scientifically/technologically advanced culture and then dealing with issues taht arrise due to the tech. The interesting thing is the effect the tech has on the culture, not how the tech actually works. Also, teh way he descibes interaction with computers in terms of virtual environments makes it easy for the non-tech savy. By Objectizing data, it is easier to descibe the essence of what is going on rather than describing what an entire web page/site looks like. However, interestingly enough, many of Gibson's visions have seemed to inspire tech advances. There are information systems which model their data as three dimentional objects (I have designed a couple and am going to design another). His description of personalized tech (Hardware that looks less like hardware and more 'organic') can bee seen in everything from skins to cell phone covers to the crazy shapes that MP3 players are made in. Even his concept of AI Agents is a reality today. There is an entire API that you can get for programming in Java, just to produce these... pretty impressive.

Finally, however, remember that Gibson was not trying to produce self actualizing prophecy. If anything, his work is meant as a warning. Like many of the other classic dark sci fi tales. (Brave New World anyone?)