Agitprop: Interzone 6 (warning: LONG! [389 lines] article)

Nov 23 20:47 UTC 1992

Bruce Sterling
4525 Speedway
Austin, Texas 78751
(512) 323-5176

Sixth INTERZONE column

"Cyberpunk in the Nineties"

        This is my sixth and last column for Interzone, as I 
promised a year ago when I began this series. I've enjoyed 
doing these pieces, and would like to thank the energetic 
editor and indulgent readership of Interzone. A special thanks 
to those who contributed terms and comments for "The SF 
Workshop Lexicon," which remains an ongoing project, and will 
show up again someday, probably in embarrassing company. Those 
readers who had enough smarts and gumption to buy the Signal 
catalog (see column one in issue 37) have been well rewarded, 
I trust.

        In this final column, I would like to talk frankly about 
"cyberpunk" -- not cyberpunk the synonym for computer 
criminal, but Cyberpunk the literary movement. 

        Years ago, in the chilly winter of 1985 -- (we used to 
have chilly winters then, back before the ozone gave out)-- an 
article appeared in Interzone #14, called "The New Science 
Fiction." "The New Science Fiction" was the first manifesto of 
"the cyberpunk movement." The article was an analysis of the 
SF genre's history and principles; the word "cyberpunk" did 
not appear in it at all. "The New SF" appeared pseudonymously 
in a British SF quarterly whose tiny circulation did not 
restrain its vaulting ambitions. To the joy of dozens, it had 
recently graduated to full-colour covers. A lovely spot for a 
manifesto. 

        Let's compare this humble advent to a recent article, 
"Confessions of an Ex-Cyberpunk," by my friend and colleague 
Mr. Lewis Shiner. This piece is yet another honest attempt by 
Someone Who Was There to declare cyberpunk dead. Shiner's 
article appeared on Jan 7, 1991, in the editorial page of The 
New York Times.

        Again an apt venue, one supposes, but illustrative of the 
paradoxical hazards of "movements." An avalanche, started with 
a shout and a shove somewhere up at the timberline, cannot be 
stopped again with one's hands, even with an audience of 
millions of mundanes. 

        "Cyberpunk," before it acquired its handy label and its 
sinister rep, was a generous, open-handed effort, very street- 
level and anarchic, with a do-it-yourself attitude, an ethos 
it shared with garage-band 70s punk music. Cyberpunk's one-
page propaganda organ, "CHEAP TRUTH," was given away free to 
anyone who asked for it. CHEAP TRUTH was never copyrighted; 
photocopy "piracy" was actively encouraged.

        CHEAP TRUTH's contributors were always pseudonymous, an 
earnest egalitarian attempt to avoid any personality-cultism 
or cliquishness. CHEAP TRUTH deliberately mocked established 
"genre gurus" and urged every soul within earshot to boot up a 
word-processor and join the cause. CT's ingenuous standards 
for SF were simply that SF should be "good" and "alive" and 
"readable." But when put in practice, these supposed qualities 
were something else again. The fog of battle obscured a great 
deal at the time.

        CHEAP TRUTH had rather mixed success. We had a laudable 
grasp of the basics: for instance, that SF writers ought to 
work a lot harder and knock it off with the worn-out bullshit 
if they expected to earn any real respect. Most folks agreed 
that this was a fine prescription -- for somebody else. In SF 
it has always been fatally easy to shrug off such truisms to 
dwell on the trivialities of SF as a career: the daily grind 
in the Old Baloney Factory. Snappy cyberpunk slogans like 
"imaginative concentration" and "technological literacy" were 
met with much the same indifference. Alas, if preaching gospel 
was enough to reform the genre, the earth would surely have 
quaked when Aldiss and Knight espoused much the same ideals in 
1956.

        SF's struggle for quality was indeed old news, except to 
CHEAP TRUTH, whose writers were simply too young and parochial 
to have caught on. But the cultural terrain had changed, and 
that made a lot of difference. Honest "technological literacy" 
in the 50s was exhilirating but disquieting -- but in the 
high- tech 80s, "technological literacy" meant outright 
ecstasy and dread. Cyberpunk was weird, which obscured the 
basic simplicity of its theory-and-practice.

        When "cyberpunk writers" began to attract real notoriety, 
the idea of cyberpunk principles, open and available to 
anyone, was lost in the murk. Cyberpunk was an instant cult, 
probably the very definition of a cult in modern SF. Even 
generational contemporaries, who sympathized with much CHEAP 
TRUTH rhetoric, came to distrust the cult itself -- simply 
because the Cyberpunks had become "genre gurus" themselves.

        It takes shockingly little, really, to become a genre 
guru. Basically, it's as easy as turning over in bed. It's 
questionable whether one gains much by the effort. Preach your 
fool head off, but who trusts gurus, anyway? CHEAP TRUTH never 
did! All in all, it took about three years to thoroughly hoist 
the Movement on its own petard. CHEAP TRUTH was killed off in 
1986.

        I would like to think that this should be a lesson to 
somebody out there. I very much doubt it, though.

        Rucker, Shiner, Sterling, Shirley and Gibson -- the 
Movement's most fearsome "gurus," ear-tagged yet again in 
Shiner's worthy article, in front of the N. Y. Times'' bemused 
millions -- are "cyberpunks" for good and all. Other 
cyberpunks, such as the six other worthy contributors to 
MIRRORSHADES the Cyberpunk Anthology, may be able to come to 
their own terms with the beast, more or less. But the dreaded 
C- Word will surely be chiselled into our five tombstones. 
Public disavowals are useless, very likely worse than useless. 
Even the most sweeping changes in our philosophy of writing, 
perhaps weird mid-life-crisis conversions to Islam or 
Santeria, could not erase the tattoo.

        Seen from this perspective, "cyberpunk" simply means 
"anything cyberpunks write." And that covers a lot of ground. 
I've always had a weakness for historical fantasies, myself, 
and Shiner writes mainstream novels and mysteries. Shirley 
writes horror. Rucker was last seen somewhere inside the 
Hollow Earth. William Gibson, shockingly, has been known to 
write funny short stories. All this means nothing. "Cyberpunk" 
will not be conclusively "dead" until the last of us is 
shovelled under. Demographics suggest that this is likely to 
take some time.

        CHEAP TRUTH's promulgation of open principles was of 
dubious use -- even when backed by the might of Interzone. 
Perhaps "principles" were simply too foggy and abstract, too 
arcane and unapproachable, as opposed to .easy C-word 
recognition symbols, like cranial jacks, black leather jeans 
and amphetamine addiction. But even now, it may not be too 
late to offer a concrete example of the genuine cyberpunk 
weltanschauung at work.

        Consider Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, a wellspring of 
science fiction as a genre. In a cyberpunk analysis, 
Frankenstein is "Humanist" SF. Frankenstein promotes the 
romantic dictum that there are Some Things Man Was Not Meant 
to Know. There are no mere physical mechanisms for this higher 
moral law -- its workings transcend mortal understanding, it 
is something akin to divine will. Hubris must meet nemesis; 
this is simply the nature of our universe. Dr. Frankenstein 
commits a spine-chilling transgression, an affront against the 
human soul, and with memorable poetic justice, he is direly 
punished by his own creation, the Monster.

        Now imagine a cyberpunk version of Frankenstein. In this 
imaginary work, the Monster would likely be the well-funded 
R&D team-project of some global corporation. The Monster might 
well wreak bloody havoc, most likely on random passers-by. But 
having done so, he would never have been allowed to wander to 
the North Pole, uttering Byronic profundities. The Monsters of 
cyberpunk never vanish so conveniently. They are already loose 
on the streets. They are next to us. Quite likely WE are them. 
The Monster would have been copyrighted through the new 
genetics laws, and manufactured worldwide in many thousands. 
Soon the Monsters would all have lousy night jobs mopping up 
at fast-food restaurants. 
        In the moral universe of cyberpunk, we already know 
Things We Were Not Meant To Know. Our grandparents knew these 
things; Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos became the Destroyer 
of Worlds long before we arrived on the scene. In cyberpunk, 
the idea that there are sacred limits to human action is 
simply a delusion. There are no sacred boundaries to protect 
us from ourselves.

        Our place in the universe is basically accidental. We are 
weak and mortal, but it's not the holy will of the gods; it's 
just the way things happen to be at the moment. And this is 
radically unsatisfactory; not because we direly miss the 
shelter of the Deity, but because, looked at objectively, the 
vale of human suffering is basically a dump. The human 
condition can be changed, and it will be changed, and is 
changing; the only real questions are how, and to what end.

        This "anti-humanist" conviction in cyberpunk is not 
simply some literary stunt to outrage the bourgeoisie; this is 
an objective fact about culture in the late twentieth century. 
Cyberpunk didn't invent this situation; it just reflects it.

        Today it is quite common to see tenured scientists 
espousing horrifically radical ideas: nanotechnology, 
artificial intelligence, cryonic suspension of the dead, 
downloading the contents of the brain... Hubristic mania is 
loose in the halls of academe, where everybody and his sister 
seems to have a plan to set the cosmos on its ear. Stern moral 
indignation at the prospect is the weakest of reeds; if there 
were a devilish drug around that could extend our sacred God-
given lifespans by a hundred years, the Pope would be the 
first in line.

        We already live, every day, through the means of 
outrageous actions with unforeseeable consequences to the 
whole world The world population has doubled since 1970; the 
natural world, which used to surround humankind with its vast 
Gothic silences, is now something that has to be catalogued 
and cherished.

        We're just not much good any more at refusing things 
because they don't seem proper. As a society, we can't even 
manage to turn our backs on abysmal threats like heroin and 
the hydrogen bomb. As a culture, we love to play with fire, 
just for the sake of its allure; and if there happens to be 
money in it, there are no holds barred. Jumpstarting Mary 
Shelley's corpses is the least of our problems; something much 
along that line happens in intensive-care wards every day.
        Human thought itself, in its unprecedented guise as 
computer software, is becoming something to be crystallized, 
replicated, made a commodity. Even the insides of our brains 
aren't sacred; on the contrary, the human brain is a primary 
target of increasingly successful research, ontological and 
spiritual questions be damned. The idea that, under these 
circumstances, Human Nature is somehow destined to prevail 
against the Great Machine, is simply silly; it seems weirdly 
beside the point. It's as if a rodent philosopher in a lab-
cage, about to have his brain bored and wired for the 
edification of Big Science, were to piously declare that in 
the end Rodent Nature must triumph.

        Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human 
being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard 
thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away 
because we cover our eyes.

        This is cyberpunk.

        This explains, I hope, why standard sci-fi adventure 
yarns tarted up in black leather fail to qualify. Lewis Shiner 
has simply lost patience with writers who offer dopey shoot-
em-up rack-fodder in sci-fiberpunk drag. "Other writers had 
turned the form into formula," he complains in The New York 
Times, "the same dead-end thrills we get from video games and 
blockbuster movies." Shiner's early convictions have scarcely 
budged so much as a micron -- but the stuff most folks call 
"cyberpunk" no longer reflects his ideals.

        In my opinion the derivative piffle is a minor issue. So 
is the word "cyberpunk." I'm pleased to see that it's 
increasingly difficult to write a dirt-stupid book, put the 
word "cyberpunk" on it, and expect it to sell. With the c-word 
discredited through half-witted overkill, anyone called a 
"cyberpunk" will have to pull their own weight now. But for 
those willing to pull weight, it's no big deal. Labels cannot 
defend their own integrity; but writers can, and good ones do.

        There is another general point to make, which I believe 
is important to any real understanding of the Movement. 
Cyberpunk, like New Wave before it, was a voice of Bohemia. It 
came from the underground, from the outside, from the young 
and energetic and disenfranchised. It came from people who 
didn't know their own limits, and refused the limits offered 
them by mere custom and habit.

        Not much SF is really Bohemian, and most of Bohemia has 
little to do with SF, but there was, and is, much to be gained 
from the meeting of the two. SF as a genre, even at its most 
"conventional," is very much a cultural underground. SF's 
influence on the greater society outside, like the dubious 
influence of beatniks, hippies, and punks, is carefully 
limited. Science fiction, like Bohemia, is a useful place to 
put a wide variety of people, where their ideas and actions 
can be examined, without the risk of putting those ideas and 
actions directly into wider practice. Bohemia has served this 
function since its start in the early Industrial Revolution, 
and the wisdom of this scheme should be admitted. Most weird 
ideas are simply weird ideas, and Bohemia in power has rarely 
been a pretty sight. Jules Verne as a writer of adventure 
novels is one thing; President Verne, General Verne, or Pope 
Jules is a much dicier proposition.

        Cyberpunk was a voice of Bohemia -- Bohemia in the 1980s. 
The technosocial changes loose in contemporary society were 
bound to affect its counterculture. Cyberpunk was the literary 
incarnation of this phenomenon. And the phenomenon is still 
growing. Communication technologies in particular are becoming 
much less respectable, much more volatile, and increasingly in 
the hands of people you might not introduce to your grandma.

        But today, it must be admitted that the cyberpunks -- SF 
veterans in or near their forties, patiently refining their 
craft and cashing their royalty checks -- are no longer a 
Bohemian underground. This too is an old story in Bohemia; it 
is the standard punishment for success. An underground in the 
light of day is a contradiction in terms. Respectability does 
not merely beckon; it actively envelops. And in this sense, 
"cyberpunk" is even deader than Shiner admits.

        Time and chance have been kind to the cyberpunks, but 
they themselves have changed with the years. A core doctrine 
in Movement theory was "visionary intensity." But it has been 
some time since any cyberpunk wrote a truly mind-blowing 
story, something that writhed, heaved, howled, hallucinated 
and shattered the furniture. In the latest work of these 
veterans, we see tighter plotting, better characters, finer 
prose, much "serious and insightful futurism." But we also see 
much less in the way of spontaneous back-flips and crazed 
dancing on tables. The settings come closer and closer to the 
present day, losing the baroque curlicues of unleashed 
fantasy: the issues at stake become something horribly akin to 
the standard concerns of middle-aged responsibility. And this 
may be splendid, but it is not war. This vital aspect of 
science fiction has been abdicated, and is open for the 
taking. Cyberpunk is simply not there any more.

        But science fiction is still alive, still open and 
developing. And Bohemia will not go away. Bohemia, like SF, is 
not a passing fad, although it breeds fads; like SF, Bohemia 
is old; as old as industrial society, of which both SF and 
Bohemia are integral parts. Cybernetic Bohemia is not some 
bizarre advent; when cybernetic Bohemians proclaim that what 
they are doing is completely new, they innocently delude 
themselves, merely because they are young.

        Cyberpunks write about the ecstasy and hazard of flying 
cyberspace and Verne wrote about the ecstasy and hazard of 
Five Weeks in a Balloon, but if you take even half a step 
outside the mire of historical circumstance, you can see that 
these both serve the same basic social function.

        Of course, Verne, a great master, is still in print, 
while the verdict is out on cyberpunk. And, of course, Verne 
got the future all wrong, except for a few lucky guesses; but 
so will cyberpunk. Jules Verne ended up as some kind of 
beloved rich crank celebrity in the city government of Amiens. 
Worse things have happened, I suppose.

        As cyberpunk's practitioners bask in unsought legitimacy, 
it becomes harder to pretend that cyberpunk was something 
freakish or aberrant; it's easier today to see where it came 
from, and how it got where it is. Still, it might be thought 
that allegiance to Jules Verne is a bizarre declaration for a 
cyberpunk. It might, for instance, be argued that Jules Verne 
was a nice guy who loved his Mom, while the brutish antihuman 
cyberpunks advocate drugs, anarchy, brain-plugs and the 
destruction of everything sacred.

        This objection is bogus. Captain Nemo was a technical 
anarcho-terrorist. Jules Verne passed out radical pamphlets in 
1848 when the streets of Paris were strewn with dead. And yet 
Jules Verne is considered a Victorian optimist (those who have 
read him must doubt this) while the cyberpunks are often 
declared nihilists (by those who pick and choose in the 
canon). Why? It is the tenor of the times, I think.

        There is much bleakness in cyberpunk, but it is an honest 
bleakness. There is ecstasy, but there is also dread. As I sit 
here, one ear tuned to TV news, I hear the US Senate debating 
war. And behind those words are cities aflame and crowds 
lacerated with airborne shrapnel, soldiers convulsed with 
mustard-gas and Sarin.

        This generation will have to watch a century of manic 
waste and carelessness hit home, and we know it. We will be 
lucky not to suffer greatly from ecological blunders already 
committed; we will be extremely lucky not to see tens of 
millions of fellow human beings dying horribly on television 
as we Westerners sit in our living rooms munching our 
cheeseburgers. And this is not some wacky Bohemian jeremiad; 
this is an objective statement about the condition of the 
world, easily confirmed by anyone with the courage to look at 
the facts.

        These prospects must and should effect our thoughts and 
expressions and, yes, our actions; and if writers close their 
eyes to this, they may be entertainers, but they are not fit 
to call themselves science fiction writers. And cyberpunks are 
science fiction writers -- not a "subgenre" or a "cult," but 
the thing itself. We deserve this title and we should not be 
deprived of it.

        But the Nineties will not belong to the cyberpunks. We 
will be there working, but we are not the Movement, we are not 
even "us" any more. The Nineties will belong to the coming 
generation, those who grew up in the Eighties. All power, and 
the best of luck to the Nineties underground. I don't know 
you, but I do know you're out there. Get on your feet, seize 
the day. Dance on tables. Make it happen, it can be done. I 
know. I've been there.

Sterling --
bruces@well.sf.ca.us