gordon@bu-cs.UUCP (10/02/87)
In article <4328@spool.wisc.edu> jojo@speedy.WISC.EDU (Jon Wesener) writes: > One more thing, when I've discussed possible futures going along the > lines projected in Gibson's books, and even "Blade Runner" the people > I speak with inevitably get depressed thinking that it's a dark > inhuman future. I, however, don't feel that way. Me either, the way I like to picture it is this: EVERY society has its good points and bad points, Cyberpunk literature chooses to discuss the dark side of possible future societies. This does not preclude the existence of the bright side, merely ignores it. Consider for a minute the movie, "To Live and Die in L.A.". It is a pretty grim story containing some pretty depressing situations, but that does not mean that everyone in L.A. experiences those sort of escapades. Consider also that the two movies, "Sound of Music" and "Sophie's Choice", both are hypothetical stories set during the same particular era, yet the tone of the first is upbeat family entertainment while the other is "political cyberpunk". It is all a matter of how the story is presented. While thousands partied at Woodstock, soldiers, some as young as 17, sat in the Vietnam jungle and wondered whether they would make it home. As I sit here idly flipping through news, people, many of them innocent bystanders, in Central America, South Africa, etc are living under seige. Hmmm.... Consider for a moment the sort of horrifying NASTINESS that can be occuring somewhere in the world RIGHT NOW. Truth is stranger than Fiction. -- Gordon Lee Distributed Systems Group Boston University
tek@ukma.UUCP (10/06/87)
I don't think these books are necessarily describing a future that is any worse or better than the present, rather in some of them they are merely describing a sub-culture of the larger world where the story takes place. In fact is is possible to choose the kind of environment you want to live in even now and I think that even should the future become a world of plenty and paradise for all that we would eliminate slums. Some people just like to live that way, and if I want to live in a run-down house with six other people that probably won't change if I were to inherit a million. I suppose the cops would be less likely to bother me tho:-) Technology makes an interesting bedfellow. Thomas Kunselman