Bruce Sterling vs. Gibson in Shadowrun., Which has the dominant idea? Options

[emo samurai]

Maybe I should read more before I go resurrecting this thread 6 months down the road.

[ChuckRozool]

[Fire Hawk]

Hey emo, What have you read from Sterling and Gibson so far?

I've only read Gibson and Stephenson, and I've got a hardback copy of Greg Bears' Blood Music sitting next to me.

[emo samurai]

For Sterling, I've read Zeitgeist, Mozart in Mirrorshades, and Maneki Neko.

For Stephenson, I've read Spew and Snow Crash.

[Glyph]

[Fire Hawk]

Snow Crash just rocked. I read a great deal of The Diamond Age but lost the copy I was reading.

I've read just about everything Gibson's written, save Idoru and one other book, iirc.

Neuromancer is quintessential. I would definitely recommend Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive and All Tomorrows' Parties.

[emo samurai]

I've read the entire sprawl trilogy. And tell me what you think of Spew; I think it r0xx0rz.

[Muzzaro]

There's another author who's worth a read... Steve Aylett.

The cyberpunk/Shadowrun-y ones that i've seen so far are:

The Crime Studio
Bigot Hall
Slaughtermatic
The Inflatable Volunteer
Toxicology
Atom
Shamanspace

He's very surreal, and some of his humour is very british too. It took two reads of Slaughtermatic to get the whole plot, it jumped around like a cat thrown onto a BBQ!

[emo samurai]

"Shamanspace?" Now THAT sounds SR.

[hobgoblin]

[nezumi]

Globalhead is a collection of Sterling stories. Well worth the read.

[Shrike30]

[Willowhugger]

The point of order in Shadowrun is clearly Gibson. The main problem is that technology expands the choices of what humans are able to use and get, while people don't realize the potential of it or use it for the same old garbage.

Let's stick with Neuromancer in the fact that only Wintermute is interested in the fact there's another planet with technology out there. Case doesn't care, he only likes the net. Molly on the other hand is still a prostitute in a time when the technology could have by all rights eliminated all need for anyone to work for a living.

The two characters don't even sustain their connection.

[emo samurai]

I thought Molly kept on being a razorgirl...

[Willowhugger]

[emo samurai]

Her life sucks throughout, really. In Mona Lisa Overdrive, even after she makes it, she says that her job as an "independent businesswoman" is to invest in other independents. Kumiko observes that most of her jobs are completely meaningless and bureaucratic.

[mfb]

yeah. it's a trademark of Gibson-style cyberpunk that moving up in the world is a process by which you discover new and different ways your life can suck. the general level of suck is basically constant and inescapable.

[Willowhugger]

True, part of the major problem I had conveying to my players isn't that "Society is not going to keep you down necessarily" but also the request "Your characters are also screwed up on some level." This I think is more Gibson rather than just the world is horrible.

Molly's problem is she's a killer at heart and can't really escape that anymore.

Case's problems could fill a textbook.

A perfect example of what I think people might also get is Bruce Wayne as a Shadowrunner. Even if your characters hit EVERYTHING, there's no way Bruce is ever going to be happy.

[mfb]

yeah, that can work--give the character a goal that is basically unachievable, and have them work towards it over their entire career.

[Willowhugger]

I just finished our first game tonight and it actually reflected a Gibsonian view.

The players were sent by their employers to protect a shooter of a Warrior's style Gang Lord (okay, the entire adventure was the Warriors). The shooter had been promised he could retire in a palatial settlement and was willing to kill, sell himself, or anything to get that "dream" for what amounted to a glorified rent controlled apartment.

The end had it revealed that the people who promised it had no authority there whatsoever.

[mfb]

i like the Sterling-style wonkassedness. i think Sterling does a better job with future shock than Gibson, and it seems to me that most of the SR world is in a permanent state of future shock. the rate at which technology outpaces humans' ability to understand it is an important aspect of cyberpunk, i think--it makes for a dystopia that is more depressing because you don't understand it. best example i can think of is a line in Heavy Weather that went something like "the life's work of tens of thousands of clever, talented people had disappeared into a box that you bought at a flea market and will throw away when it stops working."

[hobgoblin]

hmm, makes me think of cellphones today...

[emo samurai]

Or, you know, computers.

And it's not like you can ever blame it all on one person, either. Even in the corp world, there are plenty of examples of good people. It's just that, as the same exec in Mona Lisa Overdrive says, corporations and society as a whole function independently of the people inside them.