What with the gift giving season fast approaching, I thought it prudent to mention this delicious site I just found via my Google Alerts: Dr Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators and Other Marvelous Contraptions! Just what everyone wants I know — a $700 raygun! Wow! (And yes, the category should have scare quotes around “toys.”) From that site, I was then led to a steampunk site: Brass Goggles. What’s my Google Alert alerting me to you ask?
Author Archives: Ling
Reality Gaming
Ah, another reality gaming endeavor! I keep hearing about these over the last five-ten years it seems, but not much after they actually take place. Text messages to your phone for a treasure hunt. I saw an interesting “choose your own adventure” recently (prolly Boing Boing or Gizmodo) that involved small text snippets painted on sidewalks with a male and female storyline that basically winds you both up in a coffee shop to meet. Hmmm, must find that link, that was kinda intersting. Viola!
And then of course there’s the Micheal Douglas movie, The Game. Or sure, The Running Man, The Condemned, or The Truman Show. What fun! These reality games are intriguing in their modern flashmob approach to gaming with some “choose your own adventure” script writing. Wiki of course has a decent entry on the genre.
The iTouch
An early review of the iTouch via BoingBoing. So close to my holy grail of everything box. There’s this cyberpunk concept of the everything box that’s really just a mashup of all the electronics you need soldered, welded, spliced and esp duct-taped together, but it’s everything you need right there. Your rig. Well sure, the iPhone is so much closer to that, but for me … ahhh the iTouch!
Dystopian Lit
Guardian has a list of the Top 10 Dystopia Novels (found via BoingBoing) for teens composed by author Gemma Malley, who has a dystopian novel out. The tie-in for posting here of course: dystopian predictions being a large part of the cyberpunk genre. Her list is commendable if a bit too literary for my tastes, but I was glad to see I had at least read a few of them and was familiar with all of them. Top of the list: 1984. Not something I’ve read but have read enough about it to “get it.” Who hasn’t? The real surprise for me was the listing of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. One of my favorite books I ever had to read for an English class. Dystopian? Well, in the sense that the stranded children must create their own world for a time — and some stive to make it humane and logical but the consensus drives the boys toward a more brutal and everyone-for-themselves existance. Eerie book that I really enjoyed. And looky there, a Clavell I had no clue about! What fun these lists!
The Age of Steampunk
Found via BoingBoing, an article in The Boston Globe with a gallery of steampunk objects. An interesting observation is part of the article wherein it talks about the preservation of objects, taking modern day appliances and rendering them as steampunk items to increase the desire to save them, to make them museum pieces. Interesting. I have often noted to anyone that will listen that nobody will wait hours in a line to see a hundred-year-old Web site (ok ok, who knows, that’ll be in about 85 years?) — but people often wait in long, long lines to view texts like James Joyce’s Ulysses on Bloomsday. I got to see Ben Franklin’s folio of his hand written Autobiography at the Huntington last year….
Top 15 Great Science Fiction Books
And the Shadowrunning tie-in … Neuromancer at No. 10! An interesting site all-in-all, but this specific post was a pretty good one for, as one commentor says, recognizing that scifi started before 1980. No Jules Verne, but some early stuff I hadn’t read. And then the comments are the real fun part! All the pleas for the personal favorties that have absolutely no business contending for spots with the canons present in this list. [Found via SF Signal]
All The World’s Indeed a Stage …
Well, “Spook Country” I hear has a rock star protagonist. Rock stars have appeared in a few cyberpunk stories, one of them actually on my list of “Book I’ve Never Finished.”
But a modern day concert a cyberpunk bloggable event? Oh hell ya! Especially if it’s RUSH.
CONCERT SPOILERS BELOW I should note, just in case, they’re on tour for awhile and don’t read if you don’t want to know.
A Fistful of Steampunk!
Interesting site, A Fistful of Games, has a write-up of playing a steampunk board game, or a modified rule set of another game to encompass steampunk elements. Or something. OK. I didn’t really read it all the way through, but I intend to. So I’m bloggin it here to remind me!
Anywho — we’ve really enjoyed playing the full-fledged WoW boardgame, though I don’t recall ever really finishing a game. We just don’t have the full weekend to play like we did in our youth with D&D. But I like the “quick” start up time of these very advanced and complicated board games and am facinated by them. Not sure my kids are up for playing them, but in a few more years, perhaps, perhaps.
What is Cyberpunk?
Well, far be it from me to offer a definitive definition, but I know it when I read it. It’s usually near-future distopian literature with some cybernetics and some punks (ie hackers). Virtual Reality, the net, feature large in most cyberpunk.
To put it in movie terms, Blade Runner, not Star Wars. Brasil, in which I’d contend DeNiro plays one of the first cool hackers ever featured. Even 5th Element has some cyberpunk elements. Star Trek does not.
The wikipedia article has a lot of great background and author shout-outs, but even though Bruce Sterling is mentioned, one of my perennial favorties is glossed over, Mirrorshades. Everytime I’ve got spare time in a bookstore, I search out a copy of this 1988 classic to remind myself who that first wave of cyberpunks was: Sterling, Gibson, Bear, Cadigan, Rucker, Shiner and others. Then I start tracking down their recent work.
My favorite cyberpunk novel? Oh please, how can I not say Neuromancer. But really I enjoyed Idora and All Tomorrow’s Party just as much. Sterling’s Heavy Weather, Bear’s Slant. I’ll have to sit longer than a few minutes at lunch to post that!
My next potential post: Can Space Opera be Cyberpunk? There’s a lot of distopian sf out there and, to me, cyberpunk is usually more immediate or just-around-the-corner than most space opera is. I agree with Enok’s first post, it’s usually “earthly.” But elements are definitely showing up in the larger scifi genre.
But for now I’ll have to work on beefing up this post!