The Future Is Dead - and so is Cyberpunk, and Sci-Fi

Sep 02, 2010 09:28

not really - but it looks cool as a title ( Read more... )

cyberpunk, writing, rants

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gorzilla September 2 2010, 21:43:01 UTC
Gibson also thinks people missed that Sci-Fi Books are never about the future, and specifically wrote these last 3 books to be in the present to prove a point. My most favorite quote by Mr. G is "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed."

As for the Chatsubo Story: way back in 2001 when I wrote the original Trace story Mr. Black was the one after the disk she stole (and by proxy, after Trace).

What I've touched on a little bit is that from the current characters points of view, Trace and Mr. Black and their contemporaries are a lot like we view Gunslingers of the Wild West - a bit of truth (they were real people) with a lot of hype and folklore mashed onto them. Of course - I killed Mr. Black in part 2 (which was written around 2002 or so..) So - you know, he's a dead guy stealing things.

I actually have a plan for this. . . Part 6 is being retooled, there's a switch in narrative style I have to perform.

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theheretic September 2 2010, 22:33:52 UTC
Point taken ( ... )

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gorzilla September 2 2010, 22:57:20 UTC
If you want to get hyper-techincal: MLO is set exactly 7 years after CZ. CZ takes place 7-8 years after N. So there's a 15 year span across the 3 and I found no references to a 2174 in my copies of MLO.

Personally, I'm pretty sure he originally wrote Neuromancer without a date - or even set of dates - in mind, because as he said it was about the 1980s to begin with.

I did forget about the Chatsubo community here. I'll go find it now. I have some ideas on possible Cyberpunk themes for the now. . .

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theheretic September 3 2010, 08:20:40 UTC
I know he tried to make sure there were no dates, but he did leave a date in a paper referenced in what I thought was MLO but might have been CZ. Anyway, its there, and the date for NM is 2174. And that's important because it makes sense of the architectural decay of the story and I like that far better than the near future 2030 ideal most people think it refers to. The idea that stuff was built and failed economically and was retasked and sort of did okay for a while then failed and then was retasked again and did okay and maybe got successful and then fell apart and got reworked again... neighborhoods are like that. Oakland is all on the 2nd story because the first floor kept flooding and ended up the basement. Same with Old Town Sacramento. Places adapt to situations, and Venice remains occupied despite the flooding. Think of a place in terms of Venice and its less hard to comprehend.

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gorzilla September 3 2010, 13:05:00 UTC
the date is also missing the point completely.

(and there's no date reference anywhere in CZ either. FWIW the computer game states 2058.)

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