portyázás a digitális határvidéken
Volt a magyar digitális sajtónak pár olyan éve, amikor igazi cyberpunk/cypherpunk lendülettel születtek cikkek. Ezek nagy részét Razzia követte el, de ezt most ne forszírozzuk. Itt vannak azok, amiket megleltünk.
Linkek az ugrás után, amit kihagytam azzal dobáljatok meg levélben.
Has it really been ten years since cyberpunk SF (to use the instantly recognizable term) began sending its first ripples through the SF field? Well, more or less. It’s ten-ish, at least, so what the hell, let’s call it a decade. And during that entire time, I’ve refrained from writing manifestos, articles, position papers, or even letters to the editor - any editor — for whatever reason. One more voice in the controversy was only going to turn up the noise level, I reasoned, and besides, I was writing and I had a baby to take care of. When you’re trying to meet a deadline and you have to get up for a two A.M. feeding, your response to somebody’s diatribe is less along the lines of My esteemed colleague is stuffed full of wild blueberry muffins and more like For chrissakes, doesn’t this bozo have a life?
The name of Vincent Omniaveritas, editor of the lively US broadsheet Cheap Truth, was mentioned in our recent interview with William Gibson (IZ 13). We think Interzone readers may be interested to hear more from this outspoken observer of the science fiction field. The following article originally appeared in a recent issue of the Puerto Rican fanzine Warhoon (edited by Richard Bergeron). It is reproduced here verbatim.
Hugo Gernsback was an entrepreneur, not overly troubled by consistency or scruples. First he designed batteries. Later he marketed a home radio set. In 1908, he published his first radio magazine, Modern Electrics.
Soon, however, it was clear that all was not well in the Gernsback attic. Something akin to fiction kept creeping in. In 1911 Modern Electrics began running a serial, or, rather, a technical forecasting polemic. This became Ralph 124C41+, a spavined „novel” whose naked technical obsession was barely veiled by threadbare literary technique.
An air of rank hybridization hung over Gernsback’s early efforts. Chunks of inferior literary DNA were clumsily spliced into a Petri dish of technical speculation, resulting in a chimeric blastoma he called „scientifiction.” Somehow the monster grew, and in April 1926 it clambered wetly onto the newstands as Amazing Stories, the first true sf magazine in English.
Such were the unholy beginnings of the pop industry that is modern American sf. These were the ethnic roots of true „ghetto sf,” a popular art form with a fanatic but strictly limited audience. Literateurs covered their eyes and fled; scientists sneered at its harebrained inaccuracy.
