Jason Farlander
May 8 2004, 06:46 PM
http://www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/98-3/issue...ue7/gibson.htmlYeah, I know the article is somewhat old - 1998 - but this was the first time I'd seen or heard of it, so I figured there would probably be some other people out there who hadnt come across it either.
choice section:
QUOTE |
Gibson: To the extent that there was a Cyberpunk movement-and there wasn't, really, but to the extent that there was, the five or six people who I knew in 1981 who were doing this stuff and had a radical aesthetic agenda, at least in terms of that pop-art form of science fiction, [and] one of the things that we were really conscious of was appropriation. Appropriation as a post-modern aesthetic and entrepreneurial strategy. So we were doing it too. We were happily and gloriously lifting all sorts of flavours and colours from all over popular culture and putting it together to our own ends. So when I see things like ShadowRun, the only negative thing I feel about it is that initial extreme revulsion at seeing my literary DNA mixed with elves. Somewhere somebody's sitting and saying 'I've got it! We're gonna do William Gibson and Tolkien!' Over my dead body! But I don't have to bear any aesthetic responsibility for it. I've never earned a nickel, but I wouldn't sue them. It's a fair cop. I'm sure there are people who could sue me, if they were so inclined, for messing with their stuff. So it's just kind of amusing. |
Jason Farlander
May 8 2004, 06:52 PM
Heh... and then theres
this, a more recent (year-old) comment in William Gibson's blog.
Crimsondude 2.0
May 8 2004, 06:59 PM
Yeah, but Gibson's utility has long past, thank you. His opinion of SR means, for me, precisely d*ck.
shadd4d
May 8 2004, 07:07 PM
He's entitled to his opinion. In view of the membership of this forum 1) He did lay a lot of groundwork for cyberpunk, 2) what Crimson Dude said. The fact that he doesn't like it is irrevelant. Somehow, I don't see him getting behind Deadlands either; it just seems like he's too much of a "genre purist" to get behind genre milkshakes like Shadowrun or Deadlands.
Don
Kagetenshi
May 8 2004, 07:18 PM
At least his computer system, while nonsensical, suspended disbelief vaguely.
Stephenson has yet to provide a reason why his computer systems were immersive. They shouldn't have been by the description in Snow Crash.
~J
Caine Hazen
May 8 2004, 07:21 PM
This is what it would sound like if Anne Rice bitched about White Wolf's Vampire...
Erebus
May 8 2004, 07:48 PM
I can completely see, and understand his perspective.
Post Modern writers have generally worked hard to escape the fantasy/sci-fi "joke" of a genre, and try to push their writings into something more mainstream. And in general have succeeded to some degree.
Shadowrun to them, is a throwback, its a reminder of what they are trying to escape. Cyperpunk is a hard, gritty, neo-modern setting, and upon first appearences throwing magic and 'elves' into the mix tends to give the impression that you've completely deviated from the intent of the cyberpunk genre and regressed back into pulp-fantasy.
Now as with all things, how you mesh them together, and especially in a role-playing game, how you portray that can certainly vary the outcome. This kind of follows along with the discussion in the other thread where folks were discussing "old school" Shadowrun vs. "new school" Shadowrun... the gritty/realistic vs. the cartoon/comic book sides of Shadowrun. Each is trying to recreate a particular genre's intent, but both use the same medium to get there.
And as far as I see it, Shadowrun took the best of two worlds, and combined them to create something completely new. It's parents were cyberpunk & fantasy, and it is a close relative of Steampunk (which for some reason I really don't care for, probably because I like cyberpunk more than fantasy).
Now I'm wishing I had of asked Gibson his views of Shadowrun back when he spoke at my college in 92...
Oh well, another missed opportunity for mass-hysteria...
TinkerGnome
May 8 2004, 09:48 PM
Heh, I used to have pretty much the same opinion of Shadowrun back in the early 90's when I loved Cyberpunk 2020. However, my tastes have changed and the magic, to a large extent, simply enhances the themes already present in the cyberpunk genre. It's not the same genre at that point, exactly, though they are similar.
The old CP dice mechanic (while interesitng in its own way) is out dated, too, which is another reason why my tastes have progressed
A Clockwork Lime
May 9 2004, 12:55 AM
Eh.
I find the return of magic to the world far more believable than a lot of the crap Gibson writes about. You know, like hacking dolphins and, apparently, a need for a data courier who stores the information in their head at the cost of removing their long-term memories. Because, for the love of God, man, there can't be any other secure way to transfer data (and I'm still trying to figure out what was more secure about that beyond the encryption method, which could have been done in any medium). Not even with super-intelligent dolphin hackers living in the remnants of the Brooklyn Bridge.
TinkerGnome
May 9 2004, 01:10 AM
The short story was actually pretty good. The bit with the sawed-off shotgun in the gym bag, for instance. The movie... there are things best not talked about, and it is one.
Herald of Verjigorm
May 9 2004, 01:13 AM
QUOTE (A Clockwork Lime) |
You know, like hacking dolphins |
Just to hurt your soul: Dunky did donate a nice chunk of cash to whatever group can get a datajack work on a dolphin (and/or any of a list of other non-human creatures).
Ancient History
May 9 2004, 02:42 AM
Never, ever judge William Gibson by his movies. Awful stuff. Jonny Mneumonic was a particularly bad example (I mention this only because it is more well-known than New Rose Hotel).
A Clockwork Lime
May 9 2004, 02:53 AM
QUOTE |
Just to hurt your soul: Dunky did donate a nice chunk of cash to whatever group can get a datajack work on a dolphin (and/or any of a list of other non-human creatures). |
Don't gimme started.
Anyway, if it's any consolation, I hate cyberpunk as a genre anyway. Most of the inspiration found in cyberpunk works (the Crash of '29, VITAS, Deus, the Matrix, etc.) are the parts of Shadowrun I dislike the most, too. Coincidence? I think not.
I prefer to look at movies like Snatch, Boondock Saints, Pulp Fiction, and the Fifth Element as inspiration for Shadowrun than most of Gibson's crap. Just because it has cyberware and involves megacorporations, that doesn't make it cyberpunk anymore than having elves and dwarfs makes it anything like Middle Earth. Shadowrun rarely even refers to itself that way to begin with. Hell, I think it's only mentioned once in 3rd Edition, but I could easily be wrong there.
So boo-hoo. Some hack doesn't like Shadowrun and, despite having stolen concepts and bastardizing ideas left and right himself (just like every other author), feels that his work was stolen from him... well, just cry me a river.
Zazen
May 9 2004, 02:56 AM
QUOTE |
Never, ever judge William Gibson by his movies. Awful stuff. Jonny Mneumonic was a particularly bad example (I mention this only because it is more well-known than New Rose Hotel). |
I don't think it's an unfair comparison. I happen to think Johnny Mneumonic was a crappy story.
I picked up a paperback of his stuff in the used pile at the Library for a quarter a while ago. I still feel like his big bad reputation cheated me out of 25 cents.
Herald of Verjigorm
May 9 2004, 03:01 AM
QUOTE (A Clockwork Lime) |
Don't gimme started. |
But think of the fun you can have when the group decker discovers that his in-Matrix nemesis is Squarky down at the zoo.
This assumes the GM doesn't go crazy with datajacking dolphins. Although a new policlub to get dolphins the rights metahumanity has would add something to the game (something stupid, but still something) and nothing says "What the drek is going on?" like a dolphin rigger cruising downtown in a mobile aquarium.
Ancient History
May 9 2004, 03:02 AM
I've said this before, I will repeat it here: you either love Gibson, or hate him. Same goes for Tolkein.
Both were influential in Shadowrun, neither is required reading for Shadowrun. Gibson's said his piece and let it lie, I suggest the same to y'all.
Snow_Fox
May 9 2004, 03:04 AM
QUOTE (Erebus) |
I can completely see, and understand his perspective...Shadowrun to them, is a throwback,... Cyperpunk is a hard, gritty, neo-modern setting, |
I would add to the second part there "to them."Just because gibson is among the first doesn't make it exclusive. Remember Columbus came to the america's 4 times, but never really understood what he'd touched.
Being a pioneer in the genre doesn't make it exclusively his, and he really doesn't like that. Other people following his vision, fine, but someone who sees it differnetly, his vision, his baby. No matter hwat he claims he's obviously po'ed by it or he wouldn't have bothered to write this stuff. The success of the SR system shows that enough people like this particular development to make it successful. How many of us have looked at the world a little differently because of SR ?(OK I think my boss really is a troll but that's neither here nor there.)
Zazen
May 9 2004, 03:24 AM
QUOTE (Ancient History) |
I've said this before, I will repeat it here: you either love Gibson, or hate him. Same goes for Tolkein. |
Same goes for Hitler
Ancient History
May 9 2004, 03:37 AM
Without the intendent racism.
Zazen
May 9 2004, 03:47 AM
Wait, are you talking about Tolkein or Hitler?
Shanshu Freeman
May 9 2004, 04:45 AM
QUOTE (Zazen @ May 9 2004, 03:47 AM) |
Wait, are you talking about Tolkein or Hitler? |
lol
edit: el oh el
CircuitBoyBlue
May 9 2004, 05:21 AM
Hey, at least the Nazis had that song "8 Days a Week." That was a catchy tune.
I think Gibson's contention that SR is a "throwback" because it makes it harder to get out of the sci-fi/fantasy rut is a little lame. Cyberpunk's been dead for a decade, and the sword and sorcery stories that are griped about so much in the introductions to his works are really successful these days (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings). If anything, I bet SR is helping to keep cyberpunk in the mainstream, because people can picture their elf street sam as Orlando Bloom.
toturi
May 9 2004, 06:28 AM
I keep having this vision of their elf sam falling out of a chopper... and I keep thinking Troy is Medieval: Blackhawk Down.
Fygg Nuuton
May 9 2004, 06:42 AM
i try not to make shadowrun too cartoon-like. elves that think theyre the elves of lore are dicks, but the rest are just people that look different. i dont use laserpistols, but i do use magic. i like magic and i play magicians.
they rock
also i never read anything of gibsons, he can suck my ares predator with enhanced aim centered on it. booya
snowRaven
May 9 2004, 10:49 AM
I neither love nor hate Gibson - alot of what he has written I consider to be mediocre work, especially when read today, but a fair amount of it is pretty good - he did have alot of fresh ideas in the beginning.
In his defence he does say in the above link that he knows he stole from alot of people too, and he does say that while he personally is revolted (my words) by the mixing of elves with 'his DNA' (his words - I'll get to that) he largely ignores it.
While using the words 'my DNA' seems abit megalomaniac at first, it really isn't - he seems himself simply as a link in a chain - he mixed from several influences to produce his work, and he has passed on that work as influence to others. The analogy of DNA is quite relevant, since the ideas are passed on from generation to generation of writers; mutated and mixed with others.
Aesir
May 9 2004, 11:14 AM
Shadowrun is a concept that is very hard for people to like at first glance. It seems kitchy and illconcieved to most casual observers. You have to get into it a bit before the intellect of this particular merge of genres is evident. I don't think Gibson got into it. He's opinion reminds of several of my friend's first reactions, all of witch love Shadowrun today.
Nikoli
May 9 2004, 01:58 PM
That's a good point Aesir. A buddy of mine had tried SR, at my insistence I admit, and didn't much care for the mixing of fantasy with cyber-punk.
Admitedly, I didn't give hima compelling story, I didn't give him a god immersion, I was just running something on the fly.
Fast forward a year and a half, I have a good story, using the legal party concepts as opposed to criminal, and he's liking the game, looking forward to each session
Blaze
May 9 2004, 03:02 PM
Nitpicking slightly, I think the biggest mistake in linking Gibson and Shadowrun is in using his earlier books (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive and the Burning Chrome collection). I tend to feel the Bridge Trilogy is much closer to the same feel as SR, or at least the SR I tend towards. Gibson's earlier works were still a little too close to pure sci-fi for my tastes.
As to combining the gritty near-future dystopia of cyberpunk with the magic of fantasy, I don't have a problem at all. For me, that's what defines Shadowrun against other 'cyberpunk' games- remove the magic and I tend to find the whole genre sliding more into anime- and for that I have Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles.
-JH.
Kagetenshi
May 9 2004, 03:10 PM
Dogfight was an amazing story.
Then again, it was co-written with Michael Swanwick, so of course it was. I hereby command you all to read The Iron Dragon's Daughter, if you haven't already. Heck, even if you have.
~J
John Campbell
May 9 2004, 05:09 PM
Thing about Shadowrun is that it all depends on how you spin it. Gibson sees it as diluting cyberpunk with fantasy elves and wizards. Given that he's looking at it from the perspective of one of the pioneering cyberpunk authors, I can see how that'd be his viewpoint. And the metaplot drek trying to turn it into a big high-fantasy epic doesn't help.
But I don't play it that way. I run it with the elves and magic ground down and strung out by the dystopian cyberpunk future. Tolkien would hate it just as much... my elves'd have him spinning in his grave. They're a whole lot more like Gibson's characters than like Tolkien's, with the added spice of violation of expectations.
Genre fusion. It's a wonderful thing. Gets all the purists' panties in a wad.
Oh, and Mr. Voodoo Spirits In The 'Net doesn't have much room to talk, anyway.
Slamm-O
May 9 2004, 06:00 PM
for the record, they were only pretending to be voodoo spirits.
lodestar
May 9 2004, 06:42 PM
QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
Dogfight was an amazing story.
Then again, it was co-written with Michael Swanwick, so of course it was. I hereby command you all to read The Iron Dragon's Daughter, if you haven't already. Heck, even if you have.
~J |
You mean someone else read that book too? It was particaularly bizarre - I liked that part about the Gargoyles' mating habits. The part about the children in the factory and their troll foreman made me laugh - it had some strong images of distaste for work.
Personally I love Gibson's stuff. Burning Chrome I particularly liked, and Molly Millions kicks ass. The part of Gibsons work I like the most is his meathods of descriptions of tech - he gives it a realistic feel likke its something you might buy at futureshop or something, or the latest offering from Honda or something. I want to see a Neuromancer movie with Carrie-Anne Moss as Molly.
...Which brings me to who says Cyberpunk is dead in the last ten years? Did you not see the Matrix movies? What about the plethora of anime that's become somewhat mainstream that regularly plunders the subject. Have you not read the latest Shirow installments of Man and Machine Interface?
hobgoblin
May 9 2004, 07:52 PM
cyberpunk as a freestanding genre have gone missing, now you find traces of it all over the place where you find sci-fi with a negative angle and people living in legal grayzones (the renegade humans of matrix, the streetpunks of akira?).
as for shadowrun turning anime, well i guess people have seen akira and gits one to many times. i dont find sr as presented by the sourcebooks have changed mutch (sure if you toss in stuff like surge it can become silly fast but thats up to the reactions of the gm and players, not the rules themself). i think its more to do with the playing styles of newcomers that have theyre heads filled with stuff from other sources and then apply that to the sr framework and thereby giving the whole game a new color (kinda like looking at the real world with colored glasses or something like that).
KillaJ
May 9 2004, 08:25 PM
QUOTE |
kinda like looking at the real world with colored glasses or something like that |
You mean SR isnt the real world...?
Kagetenshi
May 9 2004, 08:32 PM
Don't bother them. They're deluded by the megacorporate lies.
~J
Phaeton
May 9 2004, 10:18 PM
[propaganda]
Please ignore the insidious Red Faction lies! Chancellor Sopot is NOT dead! He is merely in another castle! Thank you! Remain at your desk!
[/propaganda]
...God, I love that game...
I Eat Time
May 9 2004, 11:22 PM
As has been said before, Gibson and the rest of the Cyberpunk progenitors are purists. They had a take on sci-fi that was gritty and serious, and experienced frustration when it was passed off as "Cheap, Pulpy Sci-Fi" when they were really going for the realism angle on the future. The chilling thing about a lot of Gibson's work is how close it feels, how easily you could see people with these drugs and driving those cars, and hacking those computers. It was a distinguishing moment in Sci-Fi.
So when his and others' cyberpunk baby starts getting mixed in with high fantasy (which NO one literarily EVER takes seriously) you can bet he'll be upset. From an outsider's perspective, "Gimli with robotic arms" sounds silly as hell. So I think he's justified to have his opinion on that.
But Shadowrun can do exactly what Gibson did and turn a silly genre, a mixed genre at that, into something knee-deep, gritty, and serious. Shadowrun's vehicle is politics and the nature of humanity, in the same way Cyberpunk's vehicle was realism and the nature of inhumanity. So, Gibson, I feel ya, but you're being a little shortsighted.
A Clockwork Lime
May 9 2004, 11:30 PM
QUOTE |
The chilling thing about a lot of Gibson's work is how close it feels, how easily you could see people with these drugs and driving those cars, and hacking those computers. |
Wow. I always just saw most cyberpunk writing as little more than the paranoid delusions of well-spoken crackpots from the 80's. "Ooooh, the Japanese are buy up everything and taking over the world!" "Ooooh, AIDS is scary!" "Oooooh, computers are evil!" "Ooooh, the government is experiment with dolphin bomb-delivery systems, so let's make one a supersmart hacker!" (Sorry, I just can't get over the lameness of that one.) That's pretty much how I've always seen the genre.
The one thing I've never been able to associate with cyberpunk is realism, let alone believability.
Ancient History
May 9 2004, 11:33 PM
The dolphin was never a supersmart hacker. It was a crack-addicted mine sweeper.
Kagetenshi
May 9 2004, 11:36 PM
Smack-addicted, not crack.
~J
A Clockwork Lime
May 9 2004, 11:37 PM
Oh, I'm sorry. That's makes the fact that it lived with a gang in the remnants of the Brooklyn Bridge alllll okay.
Nath
May 9 2004, 11:46 PM
QUOTE (A Clockwork Lime @ May 10 2004, 01:37 AM) |
Oh, I'm sorry. That's makes the fact that it lived with a gang in the remnants of the Brooklyn Bridge alllll okay. |
He lived in a theme park, or something similar, in the original Johnny Mnemmonic short story. The Brocklyn Bridge thing is only in the movie. You can still blame it on Gibson, but then he's not the first nor the last to turn his work into crap for the lights of Hollywood.
Phaeton
May 10 2004, 12:21 AM
QUOTE (A Clockwork Lime) |
QUOTE | The chilling thing about a lot of Gibson's work is how close it feels, how easily you could see people with these drugs and driving those cars, and hacking those computers. |
Wow. I always just saw most cyberpunk writing as little more than the paranoid delusions of well-spoken crackpots from the 80's. "Ooooh, the Japanese are buy up everything and taking over the world!" "Ooooh, AIDS is scary!" "Oooooh, computers are evil!" "Ooooh, the government is experiment with dolphin bomb-delivery systems, so let's make one a supersmart hacker!" (Sorry, I just can't get over the lameness of that one.) That's pretty much how I've always seen the genre.
The one thing I've never been able to associate with cyberpunk is realism, let alone believability.
|
Same here, sorta. Ghost in the Shell seems believable, though, if you consider it cyberpunk. It's like Rainbow Six with cyberware and full 'borgs. Akira, on the other hand, is ridiculously pessimistic. Neuromancer was just gritty, and I don't know enough about other cyberpunk to comment, other than Snow Crash was IMO a psychotically insane book (nuke for a motorcycle sidecar, anyone?), whereas Diamond Age was more normal and a good tad more believable.
Just my 0.02
.
Kagetenshi
May 10 2004, 12:34 AM
Akira's perfectly believable once you take the premise of World War III doing some good levelling beforehand.
~J
Phaeton
May 10 2004, 01:47 AM
QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
Akira's perfectly believable once you take the premise of World War III doing some good levelling beforehand.
~J |
WWIII was yet another product-idea of the '80s, if you ask me.
Not that it's impossible...But the general war-to-end-all-wars concept...Eh...Bleh. You get the idea. Hopefully. *shrugs*
Kagetenshi
May 10 2004, 02:33 AM
Well, we had it twice already…
~J
Erebus
May 10 2004, 03:58 AM
QUOTE (Phaeton) |
WWIII was yet another product-idea of the '80s, if you ask me.
Not that it's impossible...But the general war-to-end-all-wars concept...Eh...Bleh. You get the idea. Hopefully. *shrugs* |
It was alot easier to believe when the Berlin Wall hadn't fallen yet, and NATO and the Warsaw Pact were still aiming large arsenels of nuclear weapons at each other...
I Eat Time
May 10 2004, 04:13 AM
QUOTE (A Clockwork Lime) |
Wow. I always just saw most cyberpunk writing as little more than the paranoid delusions of well-spoken crackpots from the 80's. "Ooooh, the Japanese are buy up everything and taking over the world!" "Ooooh, AIDS is scary!" "Oooooh, computers are evil!" "Ooooh, the government is experiment with dolphin bomb-delivery systems, so let's make one a supersmart hacker!" (Sorry, I just can't get over the lameness of that one.) That's pretty much how I've always seen the genre.
The one thing I've never been able to associate with cyberpunk is realism, let alone believability. |
Realism as a style of literature doesn't necessarily apply to the believability of history. It's a way of writing, down-to-earth and up-close, providing much more "livingbreathing" character images than pulp styles.
And as far as the histories portrayed in a lot of the Bridge Series and others, back in the 80's and early 90's, it LOOKED like Japan was on a frightening upswing, and that it was only a natural disaster or war (for the rest of us) away from stepping up to the US's table economically. It was a fear a lot of people had. And, for the record, AIDS still is scary. And not just in a cutesy "Ooooooh!" kinda way.
The "computers are evil" comment is a broad generalization of a genre-spanning concept of the dehumanization of machines, which from a postmodernist perspective is pretty dead on. It's a much more complex metaphor than you're making it out to be. It'd be like looking at LotR and saying, "ooooh, loooook, evil is baaad, friendship is keeeen" or Kurt Vonnegut's books and saying, "Oooh, humanity's stupid but gooooood!" IOW, you can make any intelligent metaphor and complex literary style seem stupid, so congratulate yourself on an easy job well done.
Userlimit
May 10 2004, 06:08 AM
Phaeton
May 10 2004, 10:38 AM
QUOTE (Erebus) |
QUOTE (Phaeton @ May 9 2004, 08:47 PM) | WWIII was yet another product-idea of the '80s, if you ask me.
Not that it's impossible...But the general war-to-end-all-wars concept...Eh...Bleh. You get the idea. Hopefully. *shrugs* |
It was alot easier to believe when the Berlin Wall hadn't fallen yet, and NATO and the Warsaw Pact were still aiming large arsenels of nuclear weapons at each other...
|
Ahhhhhhhhh! Yes, true, true...Been so long since the Cold War that I nearly forgot about it. Or maybe I'm just tired.