it is all a very real illusion we bicycle thru...(wo!)man machine interface..."daisy daisy"...all our sensory input generates the "virtual" singularity that the self is..."you can kill my body but you cant kill me"...cyberspace is real...here and now for there is no such place or time as the future...science fiction has always been about here and now...Gibson will not get his head chopped off for the criticism he makes of the sys(civilization)tem we are stuck in...he describes perfectly the canabalism that civilization is...

"I feel(1) sci-fi is really about accurately designing the future(2) so that other people can realize it in actuality. We(3) only went to the moon because authors wrote about going to the moon(4). It’s not that I feel(1) there is no room for fun. But let’s call fun for what it is and true futurism(5) for what it is."
1.gnos...know it!
2.sci fi is about the now it is written in.
3.we? we who?
4.people wanted to get to the moon long before literacy.
5. futurism was a movement in italy which was so desperate for change that it advocated war as a solution...most of the futurists died of futurism.
Gibson is not a futurist for he describes the canabalistic process of civilization...he is more illustrator than futurist

"gnos" is a biblical reference. Are you a christian? Jesus was a cyberpunk ya'kno. He didn't ascend, he was assimilated back into the matrix. They didn't have telephones back then though, so you would just hold a seashell to your ear and sssssssssshdjksjdh;aljshf you were gone. Jesus is Keanu Reeves, Keanu Reeves is Jesus!

I'm not sure if the medication needs to be increased or decreased. Just to be safe, NO MORE DRUGS FOR THOSE TWO!

Because we have Ping. To argue with Ping is mute. Or moot. Pointless.

But something bugs me, which I believe has been confirmed on another thread. There is a very shadow of turning in Ping. When we first started this, he said the first half of the book was perfect. Now he says he likes the second half better, that he needs or likes the randomness--oh hell, I feel like I'm talking behind your back, Ping. So Ping, do you not like PR because it is too tight or because it is too loose or because it has the audacity to be both? Or maybe just because? You do know from chaos and all that, right?

Now I know you like keeping things not real, but maybe we should start fighting about something else. The thrill is gone, baby.

Sentinel 400,

It won't let me in. I am a member and I can posst but when ever I try to edit or delete I reach the ONLY MEMBERS ALLOWED HERE scary message and I am ashamed. Truly. They say I am not confirmed. But I am, really. Me and the Webmaster are trying to work it out. In the meantime, mea culpa.

See, I tried to fix it and I was spanked. I try to post. Post.

I would agree, the thrill is gone.

But I really don't try hard to be confusing for the record. I like the first half because it is tight, I like the second half because it is loose. I keep finding reasons to quote from this anthology I'm reading, 'Live without a net'. Pat Cadigan did the Afterword. To quote her: "Listen, I'm not confused or disorganized - I'm holistic".

I don't feel I will be doing this bit part much longer. Looking for the natural wrap.

Reason to live in Hawaii

So who is the audience of cyberpunk SF? Is it technical enthusiasts or mainstream users?

I put the question that way, because in the software business it matters. They are different markets and the have different interface requirements. One wants feature bloat. One wants to focus on getting their work done. For the latter, the controls have to be sublimated. They have to be transparent.

This has implications for characterizations, because only a few characters are going to be technical enthusiasts. The rest of the characters are going to be ordinary folks who will never deal with technology with the same fluency as technical enthusiasts, nor should they have to.

When a someone uses a GUI-based software application with fluency, they may enter flow. Likewise, when a reader is engrossed in a book, they are in the book, in flow, and they are no longer in the room or whatever physical space they happen to occupy. Flow is a direct result of the fluency. Flow takes us from the interface--"on", and puts us in a performance environment--"in". That in is a consentual halucination. If the application is collaborative, and if the parties entier into flow and participate in the same process you have a mutual consentual halucination. It is not technology that making us enter flow. It is our minds.

Novels are going to be about people. When I look at "Twilight Zone" it was always about people. The very first Star Treck episode did not explain transporters. You got on one and somewhere else you went. The transporter tech never got to talk. The infrastructure of the story is tech, but tech is not the story.

If you took Chekov's story about the old lady that died and whose existence was evenutally eroded, and changed the details about how the records were kept and that she lived to be 135 via dehumanizing medical technology, you would have an SF story. You wouldn't have to talk about how the stuff worked, because the important thing was the person, her story, not the tech. It would be about never having existed.

David

Dog Soldier, it is true that techs don't read the manuals, not the user manuals at least. I would like to know how you can avoid reading the reference manuals and the certification manuals.

David

David

quote
I like the first half because it is tight, I like the second half because it is loose.
(ping)
/quote

so why do you complain?

Because he can't not complain. It is the nature of the Ping. I have accepted it and have moved on with my life. Some day are better than others, I won't lie. And now even WG has left us...

I think, Ping, this thing has naturally wrapped. Buy all.

I'm a professional novelist. I have some 50-odd books published. I discovered Gibson some 20 or so years ago and I was stunned by the brilliance of his writing and I still am. I write SF and mystery and sometimes both, as he does. Until you've done it for a living, you can't understand how hard writing is. The most hazardous of all forms of fiction is near-future sf. History catches up with you. My early stuff contains some real howlers. But the great stuff abides. 1984 has come and gone, but "1984" is as timely a cautionary novel about totalitarianism today as it was when it was written. I can appreciate "Neuromancer" today despite the occasional mention of East Germany and the Soviet Union. You can always try to write something better yourself.

in the abscence of a true look at what pr is compared to his other novels. in previous post we miss the fact that PR is written about the after affects of 9/11. it's his understanding of a horrible day in fiction. the fiction also deals with pop culture and the attack on pop culture by advertisers. his previous works have all been about the future. a possible future more than most realize with the very close invention of bio-computers.
on the fact that his work is pulp, perhaps a better term would be (at least for PR), pop culture noir. PR has more things going on in it than people realize, in regards to cayce and her function in the book. it is said to read between the lines of good sci-fi you'll find a good barometer of what's happening today, around you. Pop culture is everywhere and if people don't learn to read it than it will be mishandled and that is the warning in PR. What's she looking for what does everyone in the book want to find. pop culture.

Hi there, Q - welcome to the board!

thank you I hope it was at least insightful

For all intents and purposes it would appear you LOVE lending to the confusion. At any rate, you do good work. It makes me think.

dethbird

"It wears me out." radiohead

I've found more and more that from a metalevel perspective, human activity is defined best not by the individuals themselves, but by the relationship between those individuals.

These relationships exist, and I would be interested to here a good argument that they do not.

Cyberspace, or what have you, is real in the sense that any metaphsyical object exists - it is outside of the normal human facilities to quantify things.

The World Wide Web, internet, information superhighway, whatever, is not a bunch of comouters chatting. it is the conversations they have. it is their relationships.

WG's discussions in his books about the Shape of things are not talking (as I see it) about these specific computers, but the combined total of all the activity of all the computers.

Much of his work seems to talk about Systems Theory and emergent properties, rather than the nuts and bolts of programming and information theory.

Ping, I'm not absolutely sure, but I've this feeling WG, himself, would agree with your assessment of cyberspace. In Neuromancer, I kind of got the idea it was simply a metaphor for a gestalt-like "uberconscious", a sort of collective mind for the world at large. (Does that make any sense at all?) Ok, the lead character was sort of plugging in, surfing around pyramids of light, yakking it up with godlike cyber-entities, but I doubt that means the author seriously considers there's any "there" there.

Your assesment of what SCE FI SHOULD BE pretty much sets you up for disappointment, I think. Using the bulk of what's published as evidence, it seems to me most authors seek to create fantastic situations and then see how characters with realistic, recognizable personalities deal with it. Good luck finding any fiction that accurately predicts the future.

AMEN.