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Authors: Rudy Rucker
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science fiction writers donât know much about science. But SF writers have an ability to pick out some odd new notion and set up a thought experiment. As Robert Sheckley remarked to me when he wasliving in a camper in my driveway, âAt the heart of it all is a rage to extrapolate. Excuse me, shall I extrapolate that for you? Wonât take a jiffy.â
The most entertaining fantasy and SF writers have a rage to extrapolate; a zest for seeking the gnarl.
SOCIAL COMMENTARY AND SATIRE
Iâm always uncomfortable when Iâm described as a science-fiction humorist. Iâm not trying to be funny in my work. Itâs just that things often happen to come out as amusing when I tell them the way I see them.
Wit involves describing the world as it actually is. And you experience a release of tension when the elephant in the living room is finally named. Wit is a critical-satirical process that can be more serious than the âhumorousâ label suggests.
The least-aware kinds of literature take society entirely at face value, numbly acquiescing in the myths and mores laid down by the powerful. These forms are dead, too cold.
At the other extreme, we have the chaotic forms of social commentary where everything under the sun becomes questionable and a subject for mockery. If everythingâs a joke, then nothing matters. This said, laughing like a crazy hyena can be fun.
In the gnarly zone, we have fiction that extrapolates social conventions to the point where the inherent contradictions become overt enough to provoke the shock of recognition and the concomitant release of laughter. At the low end of this gnarly zone we have observational commentary on the order of stand-up comedy. And at the higher end we get inspired satire.
In this vein, Sheckley wrote the following in his âAmsterdam Diaryâ in
Semiotext[e] SF
(Autonomedia, 1997):
Good fiction is never preachy. It tells its truth only by inference and analogy. It uses the specific detail as its building block rather than the vague generalization. In my case itâs usually humorousâno mistaking my stufF for the Platform Talk of the 6th Patriarch. But I do not try to be funny, I merely write as I writeâ¦. In the meantime I trust the voice I can never loseâmy own ⦠enjoying writing my story rather than looking forward to its completion.
SCIENCE FICTION AGAINST THE EMPIRE
I have a genetic predisposition for dialectic thinking. We can parse cyberpunk as a synthesizing form.
Cyber.
Discuss the ongoing global merger between humans and machines.
Punk.
Have the people be fully nonrobotic; have them be interested in sex, drugs, and rock ânâ roll. While youâre at it, make the robots funky as well! Get in there and spray graffiti all over the corporate future.
As well as amping up the gnarliness, cyberpunk is concerned with the maintaining a high level of information in a storyâwhere Iâm using âinformationâ in the technical computer-science sense of measuring how concise and nonredundant a message might be.
By way of having a high level of information, itâs typical for cyberpunk novels to be written in a somewhatminimalist style, spewing out a rapid stream of characterization, ornamentation, plot twists, tech notions, and laconic dialog. The tendency is perhaps a bit similar to the way that punk rock arose as a reaction to arena rock, preferring a stripped-down style that was, in some ways, closer to the genreâs roots.
When I moved to California in 1986, I fell in with the editors of the high-tech psychedelic magazine
Mondo 2000,
and they began referring to themselves as cyberpunks as well. They liked my notion of creating cultural artifacts with high levels of information, and their official T-shirt bore my slogan, âHow fast are you? How dense?â
One of the less purely stylistic aspects of cyberpunk SF is that itâs meant to be about the contemporary world. In this role,
The most entertaining fantasy and SF writers have a rage to extrapolate; a zest for seeking the gnarl.
SOCIAL COMMENTARY AND SATIRE
Iâm always uncomfortable when Iâm described as a science-fiction humorist. Iâm not trying to be funny in my work. Itâs just that things often happen to come out as amusing when I tell them the way I see them.
Wit involves describing the world as it actually is. And you experience a release of tension when the elephant in the living room is finally named. Wit is a critical-satirical process that can be more serious than the âhumorousâ label suggests.
The least-aware kinds of literature take society entirely at face value, numbly acquiescing in the myths and mores laid down by the powerful. These forms are dead, too cold.
At the other extreme, we have the chaotic forms of social commentary where everything under the sun becomes questionable and a subject for mockery. If everythingâs a joke, then nothing matters. This said, laughing like a crazy hyena can be fun.
In the gnarly zone, we have fiction that extrapolates social conventions to the point where the inherent contradictions become overt enough to provoke the shock of recognition and the concomitant release of laughter. At the low end of this gnarly zone we have observational commentary on the order of stand-up comedy. And at the higher end we get inspired satire.
In this vein, Sheckley wrote the following in his âAmsterdam Diaryâ in
Semiotext[e] SF
(Autonomedia, 1997):
Good fiction is never preachy. It tells its truth only by inference and analogy. It uses the specific detail as its building block rather than the vague generalization. In my case itâs usually humorousâno mistaking my stufF for the Platform Talk of the 6th Patriarch. But I do not try to be funny, I merely write as I writeâ¦. In the meantime I trust the voice I can never loseâmy own ⦠enjoying writing my story rather than looking forward to its completion.
SCIENCE FICTION AGAINST THE EMPIRE
I have a genetic predisposition for dialectic thinking. We can parse cyberpunk as a synthesizing form.
Cyber.
Discuss the ongoing global merger between humans and machines.
Punk.
Have the people be fully nonrobotic; have them be interested in sex, drugs, and rock ânâ roll. While youâre at it, make the robots funky as well! Get in there and spray graffiti all over the corporate future.
As well as amping up the gnarliness, cyberpunk is concerned with the maintaining a high level of information in a storyâwhere Iâm using âinformationâ in the technical computer-science sense of measuring how concise and nonredundant a message might be.
By way of having a high level of information, itâs typical for cyberpunk novels to be written in a somewhatminimalist style, spewing out a rapid stream of characterization, ornamentation, plot twists, tech notions, and laconic dialog. The tendency is perhaps a bit similar to the way that punk rock arose as a reaction to arena rock, preferring a stripped-down style that was, in some ways, closer to the genreâs roots.
When I moved to California in 1986, I fell in with the editors of the high-tech psychedelic magazine
Mondo 2000,
and they began referring to themselves as cyberpunks as well. They liked my notion of creating cultural artifacts with high levels of information, and their official T-shirt bore my slogan, âHow fast are you? How dense?â
One of the less purely stylistic aspects of cyberpunk SF is that itâs meant to be about the contemporary world. In this role,
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