>Your newspaper actually lists episode titles?! Where can I get a
subscription? I have never seen an episode title listed in either a
newspaper or TV Guide.
Ed McKnight ([log in to unmask])
Hmmm. Well, it's the Gannett FLORIDA TODAY, local version of the USA TODAY.
There's a Sunday booklet with an arcane chart detailing various network and
cable stations and where one might be likely to find them with one's TV tuner.
Then daily there's an abreviated version in the "People" section. Both of these
list episode titles for the dramas, but not the sitcoms, and synopses of soaps,
movies and selected dramas. For a while they ran radio stations, too, but guess
they decided it wasn't worth the effort. Am I spoiled? <g> You could always
send crank e-mails demanding better service.
>
> Well, everybody is going to have a personal view. Here's mine: Cyberpunk is
a
> fusion of punk with computer nerd. (Someone more in touch with social trends
> help me out. Is punk as a subculture still viable? Or is it completely
> replaced by Goth/ic?)
>The punk culture is alive and well, even more so now than in the early
nineties. But I think the term "cyberpunk" is more general than "a punk
crossed with a computer nerd". Many of the characters in cyberpunk
stories (such as "Neuromancer" and "snowcrash") are representations of
the dystopian view of future youth, especially in American society.
You're right that this is a gross oversimplification of the subgenre, but that's
as basic as I can distill it. Punk in the name implies punk in the writing, and
sometimes you'd have to make fine distinctions as to whether something qualifies
as punk or not. It's true that a great deal of cyberpunk includes a dystopian
view of society, but not all of it does. Some only featured values of the
eighties.
Isn't the dystopian trend fin de ciecle? Certainly there's less optimism now in
fiction generally than there was in say, the fifties. It's a reflection of
larger society's views on how the world is progressing.
> People still write cyberpunk (and fans read it), but it's
> now considered passe in the larger market. It's been displaced by a more
> sophisticated adult extrapolation, i.e. nanotech. Nanotech doesn't carry the
> same connotation of rebellious youth, so I'll predict that kids will continue
to
> prefer the punk version.
>I don't understand what you are saying here. The new wave of nanotech
stories (e.g. "The Diamond Age") simply employ a more sophisticated
technology than, say, the tech in "Neuromancer". And I think you
strongly underestimate the "rebellious youth" who populate many
cyberpunk novels. They are not "rebellious" kids who get mohawks, listen
to nihilistic music, and get multiple piercings. The characters in these
novels witness first hand the collapse of society, and they either adapt
to it, or die.
>JeffR
See above. Clearly you and I have fastened onto different characteristics of
the cyperpunk trend in our definitions.
The tech and writing of nanotech works I've read are both more sopisticated than
cyberpunk stories (which seem now relegated to the small press), and so I've
figured nanotech as a maturation of cyberpunk ideas. I seem to recall there was
an element of crime to cyberpunk, more so than dystopia.
Lela Buis
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