Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology

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I hesitated over one sketch of a particularly grandiose prop-driven airliner, all wing, like a fat symmetrical boomerang with windows in unlikely places.

G. Ballard—an idolized role model to many cyberpunks—they often use an unblinking, almost clinical objectivity. In the introduction Sterling emphasises the overlapping worlds of high tech and the modern pop underground. I sort of gave up on him after wading through the vastness of Cryptonomicon and being left with the stupid people-getting-shot-with-arrows-in-the-jungle cliffhanger.The French Revolution also occurred, prematurely, but was considerably "less messy": most aristocrats were either made to live normal lives or put to slave labor rather than guillotined, and parts of the monarchy's family were allowed to remain in the Palace of Versailles. Later he realized this was a mistake—he was still taking antinausea pills (USE CAUTION IN OPERATING MACHINERY).

The work of the cyberpunks is paralleled throughout the Eighties pop culture: in rock video; in the hacker underground; in the jarring street tech of hip-hop and scratch music; in the synthesizer rock of London and Tokyo. Former tech sergeant George Jordan—two years’ community college in Oakland, California, followed by enlistment in the Air Force, aircrew training, the EHIT program. George spent most of the time rolling around in his bunk, listening to the wheeze of the air-conditioning and creaks of the rotating station. And I know that none of it will follow me to New York; my vision is narrowing to a single wavelength of probability.No counterculture Earth Mother gave us lysergic acid - it came from a Sandoz lab, and when it escaped it ran through society like wildfire. I shot one in San Jose an hour before the bulldozers arrived and drove right through the structural truth of plaster and lathing and cheap concrete. The free-wheeling zaniness of Norman Spinrad and the rock esthetic of Michael Moorcock; the intellectual daring of Brian Aldiss; and, always, J.

They were independent explorers, whose work reflected something inherent in the decade, in the spirit of the times. While I’m not bad at it, I’m not exactly the best, either, and this poor guy strained my Nikon’s credibility. He brought along a very fashionably dressed young woman named Dialta Downes, who was virtually chinless and evidently a noted pop-art historian. We try to describe the faults of our books meticulously - they often present better than they sound.

Inside the cube was a fluid series of hologrammatic waveforms, fluctuating from nanosecond to nanosecond in a play of knowledge and intention: Aleph. I've avoided stories widely anthologized elsewhere, so even hardened devotees should find new visions here. lnnis gave George a few hours of futile attempts at sleep—enough time for the bright, gliding phosphenes caused by the high g’s of the trip up to disappear from his vision. As 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.