In the last mail liz said:
>
> In message <[log in to unmask]>, Arthur
> Hlavaty <[log in to unmask]> writes
> >On Wed, 15 May 1996, Nir Yaniv wrote:
> >
> >> Liz Holliday wrote:
> >>
> >> I actually discussed that with Brian Aldiss today (he's visiting
> >> Israel, we're trying to establish an Israeli SF&F Society here, just
> >> had our first conference and he was the guest of honor). He agreed
> >> with me that all those authors we mentioned did the thing before
> >> Gibson (he actually had to remind me of Bester, for which I'm
> >> eternally ashamed), but claimed that still Gibson put all these
> >> ingredients together in a rather original and unique way. I thought
> >> otherwise and gleefully argued until it was time to say goodbye...
> >> I'd call it a draw. What do you (people) out there think?
> >>
> >
> >I'm with Aldiss on this one. There's no such thing as a really original
> >work, and Gibson put the old ingredients together in a particularly
> >interesting new way. Whether it was worth building a whole movement on is
> >another question....
>
> I've no doubt Gibson _crystalised_ something, I just hate it when people
> forget that there were also forerunners - he didn't _just_ pull it out
> of thin air; and even if he wasn't aware of all these other people,
> we're in danger of losing some great work if we ignore these other folk
> because 'Gibson invented cyberpunk'.
>
That's absolutely correct. Gibson breathed life into a tradition in danger
of becoming moribund, which is not the same thing as inventing a new tradition:
despite the sentence I read (in an interview with Jeff Noon) which tried
to suggest that cyberpunk was something radically different from science
fiction.
--
Andy Sawyer,
Librarian/Administrator: Science Fiction Foundation Collection
Sydney Jones Library, The University of Liverpool
PO Box 147, Liverpool L69 3DA, UK
0151-794-2733/2696
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http://www.liv.ac.uk/~asawyer/sffchome.html
"Science fiction is what we point to when we say it." (Damon Knight)
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