From the New Wave: the streetwise edginess of Harlan Ellison. The visionary shimmer of Samuel Delany. The free-wheeling zaniness of Norman Spinrad and the rock esthetic of Michael Moorcock; the intellectual daring of Brian Aldiss; and, always, J. G. Ballard.

The traditional power structure, the traditional institutions, have lost control of the pace of change.

The counterculture of the 1960s was rural, romanticized, anti-science, anti-tech. But there was always a lurking contradiction at its heart, symbolized by the electric guitar. Rock technology was the thin edge of the wedge.

Alvin Toffler pointed out in The Third Wave—a bible to many cyberpunks—the technical revolution reshaping our society is based not in hierarchy but in decentralization, not in rigidity but in fluidity

The careless technophilia of those days belongs to a vanished, sluggish era, when authority still had a comfortable margin of control.

Certain central themes spring up repeatedly in cyberpunk. The theme of body invasion: prosthetic limbs, implanted circuitry, cosmetic surgery, genetic alteration. The even more powerful theme of mind invasion: brain-computer interfaces, artificial intelligence, neurochemistry—techniques radically redefining - the nature of humanity, the nature of the self.

The Eighties are an era of reassessment, of integration, of hybridized influences, of old notions shaken loose and reinterpreted with a new sophistication, a broader perspective. The cyberpunks aim for a wide-ranging, global point of view.

Global awareness is more than an article of faith with cyberpunks; it is a deliberate pursuit.

objectivity. It is a coldly objective analysis, a technique borrowed from science, then put to literary use for classically punk shock value.

There’s a British obsession with the more baroque elements of American pop culture, something like the weird cowboys-and-Indians fetish of the West Germans or the aberrant French hunger for old Jerry Lewis

M.D. clone. He

want to work for a multicomp

cranes on the wall flew to their mysterious destination

There was no answer from Aleph—as it it had never been there.

Jesus, he thought, I have taken myself hostage. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” he said. George turned oft his suit radio and felt the rage building

Once the snake understands that you will die rather than let it control you. you have mastered

For the first three hours after you get up, people can tell whether you’ve got a broken heart or not. The solution is, either you get up real early so your camouflage is in place by the time everybody else is out, or don’t go to bed.

Start me up … if you start me up, I’ll never stop …

Are you experienced?

Their techies were gentle with me, taking the plugs from my head, my poor old throbbing abused broken-hearted sinning head, and covered up the sockets.

holotube

chrome

truism in SF—that where critics divide and analyze, writers will unite and synthesize

Money is only a problem if you think too much about it, man.” “Tony, would

Western Amusement

He took his degree in the middle of the brief, inglorious rule of the America First Party, a pack of libertarian fanatics bent on dismantling the government of the United States. Sunsetting the Food and Drug Administration sparked the revolution in recreational drug use

There were about two hundred plastic sleep tubes stacked in what had once been a warehouse. Each was three meters long; the singles were a meter and a half in diameter, the doubles two. Each was furnished with a locker beneath a gel mattress, a telelink terminal, and a water bubbler passing for a sink. There was always a line for the showers. The toilets smelled.

Electric guitars screamed

sarsen

definite gestation period has been established, for at that time the great stone wheel had not been set twisting back and forth to count the hours. Nor had anyone been given the chair of Kronos to watch over the wheel and provide a baseline for everyday activities. But flesh did not reject stone, and there came into being the

Legend has it that it was the archexistentialist Jansard crucifier of the beloved St. Argentine—who, realizing and repenting his error, discovered that mind and thought could calm the foaming sea of reality.

before the forest had replaced the city.

Castrations and executions were among the few joys

Cathedral is a constant surprise

jade

My beak dropped open

opprobrium

elected Kronos

following Shiner story, from 1984, combines mythic images and technosocial politics in a classic cyberpunk mix.

stigmata

bright red of a Coke can winked at him from a coral head. He crushed it and stuck it in his belt

Stone Lives

manifold

during the boom period following the Second Constitutional Convention. Stone boosts the

scrim

occult

complaisant

Citrine is 159 years old. When she was born, America was still com prised of states, rather than FEZ and ARCadias. Man had barely begun to fly. When she was in her sixties, she headed a firm called Citrine Biotics. This was the time of the Trade Wars, wars as deadly and decisive as military ones, yet fought with tarriffs and five-year plans, automated assembly lines and fifth-generation decisionmaking constructs. This was also the time of the Second Constitutional Convention, that revamping of America for the state of war. During the years when the country was being divided into Free Enterprise Zones—urban, hi-tek, autonomous regions, where the only laws were those imposed by corporations and the only goal was profits and dominance—and Areas of Restrictive Control—rural, mainly agricultural enclaves, where older values were strictly enforced—Citrine

sempiternal

Red Star, Winter Orbit

sachertorte