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SF-LIT  March 1997

SF-LIT March 1997

Subject:

Re: Cadigan's _Fools_

From:

andy sawyer <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Science Fiction and Fantasy Listserv <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Tue, 4 Mar 1997 11:41:36 GMT

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (60 lines)

On Mon, 3 Mar 1997 17:13:00 +0100 Stefanie Jenssen wrote:

.  Is
> >cyberpunk so well-defined that we can even say "post-cyberpunk"?  I'll
> >take this up at the end...
 Cadigan gives the reader no clear picture of her
> technology, it seems "simulated" and ambiguous, not "represented" and
> explained, as e.g. in Neuromancer. Apart from my personal view on the term
> post-cyberpunk, the term is being used by cyberpunk-writers and critics
> themselves, in an attempt, imho, to signal that the eighties are definitely
> over and noone can write cyberpunk anymore. Am I wrong?

[cut]

>. Reading
> Bruce Sterling's "Mirrorshades" anthology, I more or less lost track of any
> definite description of cyberpunk as a genre which focuses on technological
> themes, e.g. cyber-something. What I am interested in, is reading the
> relevance of sf for other genres, especially postmodern fiction, e.g. the
> socialcritical and literary-theoretical dynamite that lies in a story like
> "Fools." A lot has been done in that field, especially by Brian McHale, but
> it seems to me that sf is still underrated in many English Departments  -
> outside the States and the UK.

Cyberpunk is a handful of stories published by Gibson and Sterling and their associates -
anything else is post-cyberpunk or wannabe-cyberpunk.  As time goes by since Neuromancer we
see it as much more closely part of what you might call mainstream science fiction than many
people at the time thought it to be. The argument over whether something is cyberpunk or not is
uncannily reminiscent of whether something was "New Wave". There's only a certain number of
variants you can play on the "cyberspace/console jockey" riff. As the Internet becomes more
available, it becomes less sexy. We lust over what we can't have, but now William Gibson is part
of the territory.

I'm not sure whetherGibson's technology is any more definitely "located" than is Cadigan's. He's
admitted several times to being the kind of writer who "doesn't know what's going on outside the
room" and does not seem very interested in the technology. Cadigan has done a lot of research
with her technology - probably more than Gibson did - but it seems to me that neither writer is
interested in explaining to the reader how things work. This is probably the major divide between
many sf writers today and their "Golden Age" predecessors: science and technology are very
much part of the territory but as image and icon and something which affects life and lifestyle.

Cadigan was very much part of the nexus which became cyberpunk but the only use of the term
on her novels now is as a marketing indicator. The analogy I use is that "Merseybeat" was the
musical wave on which the Beatles surfed to success but while they were central to it other
bands were essential to its formation and while they remained four Liverpool musicians in a band
together it would be misleading to call the Beatles after the mid-60s Merseybeat. I could make this
analogy very tortuous (If Gibson was the Beatles and Sterling was the Stones which
post-cyberpunk writer was the Dave Clark Five . . . ?
------------
Andy Sawyer
Science Fiction Foundation Collection
Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool
PO Box 123, LIVERPOOL L69 3DA, UK.

Phone 0151 794 2696
email [log in to unmask]
http://www.liv.ac.uk/~asawyer/sffchome.html

Reviews Editor, Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction

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