I recommend historical fiction -- all the pleasure of fiction, much of the "sense of wonder" from F/SF... plus a firm grounding in the real world.
Try the novels of Mary Renault --- "The Mask of Apollo" (set in the time of Plato) is outstanding. "The King Must Die" (based on Theseus) is also first-rate.
What I want is a low-profile radio telescope for my car, so I can search for signs of intelligent life while commuting to work. (God knows it's tough to find intelligent life on the freeway....)
Sure, we could pull Saddam out of Iraq with a gravity generator... pull out the Tigris and Euphrates, while we're at it -- the whole damned Cradle of Civilization.
A player piano could be converted to a true computer by selectively punching/blocking holes in the storage medium. Perhaps one could combine the piano with a sewing machine?
Excellent observation about Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination -- remarkably cyber... a very punk story about amazing future technologies. Not so saturated in technical details, but a rich work of literature, both serious and comic, by a damned good writer.
He was diverse: among other things, Bester wrote the Green Lantern oath, in use to this day:
"In brightest day, in blackest night,
no evil shall escape my sight!
Let those who worship evil's might,
beware my power.. Green Lantern's light!"
(Qualifier: there were various oaths over time. Bester's oath is the classic among them.)
John Varley's early short stories are collected in Picnic on Nearside (previously published as The Barbie Murders). Several of the stories anticipate The Ophiuchi Hotline and other novels Varley would later write (much in the same way Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic served as a sketch for Neuromancer.
Which reminds me, any Neuromancer fans who haven't read Gibson's early short stories... go get 'em! Lots of good stuff -- including Red Star, Winter Orbit one of the best short SF stories ever written.
I already argued here that Brunner's style doesn't give me that cyberpunk feeling. But now that you mention Jagged Orbit, I have to stop and agree: the subject matter fits, and so does the mood... it's got a certain comic-grim that susses out like cyberpunk.
On the other hand, The Sheep Look Up isn't cyber, it's scarcely science fiction -- but it's plenty punk -- in my opinion Sheep is simply the finest dystopia by anyone, anywhere, ever.
As for Shockwave Rider, it's certainly the one I revisit the most. (If you don't count Zanziber, which I once read backwards.) But although Rider is plenty cyber, I somehow can't bring myself to think of it as punk.
The Shockwave Rider is one of John Brunner's best works.
Written thirty years ago, it still holds up today as a first-rate prognostication about our near future. (It's set in some unspecified year between 2005 and 2010.)
But I don't think of Brunner as a cyberpunk, even though he covers much of the same subject matter. It's a question of style: he's too... dry and wordy, much of the time.
To be sure, sometimes he's poetic in the extreme: Stand On Zanzibar is an ode to diversity of styles. And Shockwave Rider has a wide range of styles, indeed a plethora of inventive literary devices. (I've read SR, oh, nine or ten times, now, I suppose -- and every time I glean some nuggest of meaning.)
But overall, Brunner's strength is narrative, not style: first and foremost, he's a storyteller, not a stylist. (He said that about himself in an interview... some fanzine back in the eighties, if memory serves.)
I like Gibson's work as much as the next reader, but for my money the grandfather of all cyberpunk writers is John Varley.
Varley's first novel, The Ophiuchi Hotline, has everything you could possibly want from a cyberpunk novel -- high tech, low tech, smartass computers, do-it-yourself cloning, alien invaders, polymorphous sex, plentiful drugs, multiple viewpoints, stylistic panache up the yingyang -- and was published way back in the dark ages of 1977, before anyone had heard the word cyberpunk.
In Gutenberg's day, there was only one Church -- The Church -- and it had a monopoly on the Bible, because the Bible was written in Latin, and only Churchmen understood Latin.
Today, the Bible exists in just about every language known to man (including Ebonic), and each of us is as free as everyone else to make our own interpretation.
Of course there are dogmatists who insist that their version is the One True Version... but true or not, there are a great many versions, and no one Church has any kind of monopoly on the Bible.
By contrast, the Koran, according to Islamic canon law, cannot be "translated" into any other language: the Koran was delivered to Mohammed in Arabic, and exists as such only in Arabic. (Classical Arabic, if memory serves me; not its modern derivative.) If "translated" into another language, it is no longer the Koran.
Always read the label on your prescription. Know what you're taking!
I once picked up a prescription. Took a pill without reading the label. Got minor but annoying side effects. Next morning, I read the label -- not my prescription!
The pharmacist (actually a student intern) had called my last name and handed me the prescription -- unfortunately there were two orders for different patients the same last name, I happened to get the other guy's pills.
The project design consortium is headed by Bechtel. We should perhaps be concerned:
"Although Bechtel did not build the ill-fated Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant, as co-manager of the cleanup operation at TMI it did help make a bad situation worse. The NRC's Office of Investigations found that Bechtel schemed to avoid making the necessary repairs and that the company "improperly classified" modifications to the plant as "not important to safety" in order to avoid safety controls. When workers such as Senior Safety Start-up Engineer Richard Parks complained that Bechtel and TMI's owner were deliberately circumventing safety procedures, they were harassed and intimidated. In 1985, the NRC fined the two companies for this abuse. Bechtel also disregarded the health and safety of the cleanup crew at TMI. A 1985 series in the Philadelphia Inquirer revealed the details of the neglect: workers were sent into radioactive sections of the plant without adequate protective clothing or respirators; workers were routinely given clothing that was already contaminated; and equipment intended to detect radiation hazards often malfunctioned. Contamination incidents have been routine since the accident, averaging two a week.
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I recommend historical fiction -- all the pleasure of fiction, much of the "sense of wonder" from F/SF ... plus a firm grounding in the real world.
Try the novels of Mary Renault --- "The Mask of Apollo" (set in the time of Plato) is outstanding. "The King Must Die" (based on Theseus) is also first-rate.
What I want is a low-profile radio telescope for my car, so I can search for signs of intelligent life while commuting to work. (God knows it's tough to find intelligent life on the freeway ....)
"we all laughed at AOL too."
And we will again! and again!
The business section of my local (Minneapolis/St. Paul) phone book begins with a series of entries named "A", each with its own phone number.
Curious what business goes on at "A", my friend and I called one of the numbers.
We asked, "What do you do?"
The man at "A" replied: "I can't tell you that."
And I still don't know what they do at "A".
Ahh right, anvils from Acme Anvil Company ... like in the Roadrunner cartoons.
If we're going to generate a "gravity boom", I think we should start with a very small mass.
Ripping a nation out of the ground is one thing, splitting the whole planetary pumpkin is a more serious matter.
Sure, we could pull Saddam out of Iraq with a gravity generator ... pull out the Tigris and Euphrates, while we're at it -- the whole damned Cradle of Civilization.
Sure, this experiment will "help constrain the number of possible dimensions in the Universe" ... but will it lead to new weapons?
We need a new unit of "really big" ... the "mega-really" ... or better yet, the "way really".
... more like it's littered with stars.
... the universe is "really, really big."
A player piano could be converted to a true computer by selectively punching/blocking holes in the storage medium. Perhaps one could combine the piano with a sewing machine?
I'd like to collect Stonehenge, but where would I keep it?
It's spelled "IE" ... but it's pronounced "aiyee!" (the sound one makes upon seeing a nightmarish monster).
Good point: Orwell's work does have that punk tone, doesn't it?
He was diverse: among other things, Bester wrote the Green Lantern oath, in use to this day: (Qualifier: there were various oaths over time. Bester's oath is the classic among them.)
Here's a nice little poem and bio page about Bester.
John Varley's early short stories are collected in Picnic on Nearside (previously published as The Barbie Murders). Several of the stories anticipate The Ophiuchi Hotline and other novels Varley would later write (much in the same way Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic served as a sketch for Neuromancer.
... go get 'em! Lots of good stuff -- including Red Star, Winter Orbit one of the best short SF stories ever written.
Which reminds me, any Neuromancer fans who haven't read Gibson's early short stories
I already argued here that Brunner's style doesn't give me that cyberpunk feeling. But now that you mention Jagged Orbit, I have to stop and agree: the subject matter fits, and so does the mood ... it's got a certain comic-grim that susses out like cyberpunk.
On the other hand, The Sheep Look Up isn't cyber, it's scarcely science fiction -- but it's plenty punk -- in my opinion Sheep is simply the finest dystopia by anyone, anywhere, ever.
As for Shockwave Rider, it's certainly the one I revisit the most. (If you don't count Zanziber, which I once read backwards.) But although Rider is plenty cyber, I somehow can't bring myself to think of it as punk.
The Shockwave Rider is one of John Brunner's best works.
... dry and wordy, much of the time.
... some fanzine back in the eighties, if memory serves.)
Written thirty years ago, it still holds up today as a first-rate prognostication about our near future. (It's set in some unspecified year between 2005 and 2010.)
But I don't think of Brunner as a cyberpunk, even though he covers much of the same subject matter. It's a question of style: he's too
To be sure, sometimes he's poetic in the extreme: Stand On Zanzibar is an ode to diversity of styles. And Shockwave Rider has a wide range of styles, indeed a plethora of inventive literary devices. (I've read SR, oh, nine or ten times, now, I suppose -- and every time I glean some nuggest of meaning.)
But overall, Brunner's strength is narrative, not style: first and foremost, he's a storyteller, not a stylist. (He said that about himself in an interview
BTW: has anyone played his game of Fencing?
I'm a big fan of Phil Dick's work, too. You're quite right, he wrote with a cyberpunk twist, long before Varley, Gibson, etc.
Gibson said something somewhere (interview? essay? I forget where) about "the night we took the PKD".
I like Gibson's work as much as the next reader, but for my money the grandfather of all cyberpunk writers is John Varley.
Varley's first novel, The Ophiuchi Hotline, has everything you could possibly want from a cyberpunk novel -- high tech, low tech, smartass computers, do-it-yourself cloning, alien invaders, polymorphous sex, plentiful drugs, multiple viewpoints, stylistic panache up the yingyang -- and was published way back in the dark ages of 1977, before anyone had heard the word cyberpunk.
In Gutenberg's day, there was only one Church -- The Church -- and it had a monopoly on the Bible, because the Bible was written in Latin, and only Churchmen understood Latin.
... but true or not, there are a great many versions, and no one Church has any kind of monopoly on the Bible.
Today, the Bible exists in just about every language known to man (including Ebonic), and each of us is as free as everyone else to make our own interpretation.
Of course there are dogmatists who insist that their version is the One True Version
By contrast, the Koran, according to Islamic canon law, cannot be "translated" into any other language: the Koran was delivered to Mohammed in Arabic, and exists as such only in Arabic. (Classical Arabic, if memory serves me; not its modern derivative.) If "translated" into another language, it is no longer the Koran.
Always read the label on your prescription. Know what you're taking!
I once picked up a prescription. Took a pill without reading the label. Got minor but annoying side effects. Next morning, I read the label -- not my prescription!
The pharmacist (actually a student intern) had called my last name and handed me the prescription -- unfortunately there were two orders for different patients the same last name, I happened to get the other guy's pills.
The project design consortium is headed by Bechtel. We should perhaps be concerned:
/ 10/mm1089_08.html
"Although Bechtel did not build the ill-fated Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant, as co-manager of the cleanup operation at TMI it did help make a bad situation worse. The NRC's Office of Investigations found that Bechtel schemed to avoid making the necessary repairs and that the company "improperly classified" modifications to the plant as "not important to safety" in order to avoid safety controls. When workers such as Senior Safety Start-up Engineer Richard Parks complained that Bechtel and TMI's owner were deliberately circumventing safety procedures, they were harassed and intimidated. In 1985, the NRC fined the two companies for this abuse. Bechtel also disregarded the health and safety of the cleanup crew at TMI. A 1985 series in the Philadelphia Inquirer revealed the details of the neglect: workers were sent into radioactive sections of the plant without adequate protective clothing or respirators; workers were routinely given clothing that was already contaminated; and equipment intended to detect radiation hazards often malfunctioned. Contamination incidents have been routine since the accident, averaging two a week.
Source: http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1989