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From: [email protected] (Kevin O' Gorman)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: From Sourcerer In His Convalescence
Date: 29 Aug 1995 11:04:59 +0100
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Lines: 102
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: salmon.maths.tcd.ie

I have returned! The cider was expensive, and the bands were good, so I
am a happy bunny. On with the reply.

Sourcerer writes:

>Case, is a fine role-model, I think, it's important not to
>retrogressively get a loving death-grip of the romanticism of the
>street and revolution like the old 70's punks you note above.

Well, if they had such a "loving death grip", they must be bloody lucky
to have survived this long.

>Personally, I'd rather loll about in byzantine luxury than live in a
>dumpster...

And if you didn't have a choice...

>>while portrayed as so hip'n'streetwise. On an important level, therefore, they
>>were faceless, caricatures. New stereotypes built to old specifications.

>And I immediately recognized everybody...but then, like Gibson, I'm an
>old hippie...

Oh dear God(dess), what does that make me?

>Did you know that Chandler was from Santa Rosa (via the UK)? I find
>Chandler rather gothic.

Oh, go on, throw me a bone. You're still a hippy.
{Please Sourcerer, it was a joke! Come in off the ledge...}

>I think Hammett, though, is more obviously
>present in Gibson's style. The Chandleresque voiceover in BR muffles
>what cp sensibility there is in that film...why the director's cut seems
>more gibsonesquely cyberpunk, too.

Yes, that was an interesting point, one of the few on alt.cp (for me, anyway)
lately, about the ol' writer as godlike narrator thing stifled cyberpunk
agendas. T'was yourself that made it, indeed.
{Now, slide back to the window...don't look down!}


{About Virtual Light}

>I'm hoping that the cyberfolk have gotten used to it by now and we can
>finally have a good discussion of it without the bitching about no Molly
>and no Sprawl.

What, did they expect Wm. G. to build in a time-travelling Molly?
"What was it like travelling through time, Molly?"
-"I found myself in a grey void without past present or future. Naturally
at first I thought I was in Barrytown..."

>Youth, y'know has a much harder time with change than someone my age --
>they've seen so little of it, and when it happens it's like the world has
>ended or something.

Excellent reversal! But I think the "dystopics" aren't merely your
average disaffected youth. They might very well be a symptom of a
greater social malady, and it bears consideration.

>years). I got tired of every year being Year One long ago, for me, that
>is; but I don't disrespect youth's need and urge to do it for themselves,
>and I have little, if any, advice for them.

Yessss...well, respect for age came from their use as libraries, so tell us
the deal or we won't feed you.
{Joke!}
But seriously, even thirty years in adulthood doesn't totally disconnect you
from the world. It might make it difficult for you to recognise real change,
having lived through so many petty-in-hindsight upheavals. No-one now is
singing "The times they are a-changing", as the future isn't something
to sing about - unless you count songs like "Everything's Cool", by PWEI,
or various hardcorer efforts on the same theme. So, in addition to the
clouded vision of your advanced years, it may be that's what's now
happening is happening to a great extent without warning or fanfare.

>>There isn't an apocalypse coming, it just feels like there is. It will feel
>>like that forever, or until you grow up, and try to submerge the passions of
>>your youth.

>Words of wisdom, spidey. I don't recommend trying to submerge your
>youthful passions, but to recognize your new passions, which are morph's
>and mutations of those youthful ones, as you run the inevitable losing
>race with the arrow of time...

They are? And there's always the option to ignore the race.

Let me expand the seemingly anti-apocalyptic statement I made. What's coming
isn't an apocalypse, but it feels like it should be.

>And what's wrong with masochism?


Recreationally, it's alright, but is it a way of life?

K.
-
--
"Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and
myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you
will become one of the prophets of your age." - Bertrand Russell

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