Mirrorshades: the Cyberpunk Anthology (1986)
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The classic 1986 cyberpunk anthology 'Mirrorshades' has been made available online for free, sparking nostalgia and discussion among HN users about the genre and its evolution.
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One of the things I remember about the game was that it came with a suggested book and film list. Reading all those books, and tracking down the recommended films was something of a quest for me and my friends. That last part sounds trivial, but if your local video rental store didn't happen to have a copy of 1982's art-house weirdo indie film Liquid Sky, it was a real challenge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UxwohjhHw&list=PL9F0ACA601...
Synth genius. I actually have it on vinyl.
But the system... A Physical Adept rolling like 42 d6's is just redonkulous :D
How is this "free online edition" distinct from piracy, in that case?
Or maybe Rucker and all of the other authors are friends, and keep in touch, and he just literally called all of the up and said "Hey, can I post Mirrorshades online for posterity?" and they all agreed. Who knows?
Some Corpo-type, no doubt. Can't help seeing something good scroll across their feed tube without calling Legal.
He'd worked with a few in the past. Not bad all-in-all, at least they paid on time. That said, he could think of few he'd drink with.
He toyed with the idea of leaving a bitchy comment. Probably get downvoted to oblivion.
The dogs in the yard barked at a passing vehicle.
Irritated by the animal noise and the corpo whining, he thrashed something out. Pulling another cigarette from his pack, he hit "reply".
Please tell me that is a real place! :=)
The opposite. Consider Harlan Ellison's views on piracy: "If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump."
You may prefer the same point expressed in less colorful language by Ursula K. LeGuin, from the same article as Ellison's quote: “I thought, who do these people think they are? Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?” https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/technology/internet/12dig...
Now, as we found out in the meantime from Rudy Rucker's comment, this anthology isn't pirated after all. If you put up your work for free, there's no piracy.
Copyright was chartered to encourage authors to contribute to a large public domain of works. Lobbying (by wealthy corporations) perverted this purpose. Sure it's a nice fringe benefit that some authors were made more comfortable by this. That doesn't stop many authors from taking a "I wrote it, it's mine" attitude as if a monopoly on the use of works you authored is a natural right.
LeGuin has taken a nuanced view on this, with the apparent understanding that copyright is a framework under which she was promised certain things, and the piracy is a violation of that promise.
I think that monopoly (with various caveats, e.g. it can't outlive you much, etc.) is a good thing for authors to have, as it enables them to make a living off of their writing. Authors weren't just "made more comfortable" by this as a fringe benefit, as you say, but really, they were able to make a living from their creative work. Harlan Ellison himself says so in that article, and there are countless instances of up-and-coming writers fighting piracy (one legendary story is how Tolkien fought pirating of LOTR in the U.S. soon after it was printed in the UK).
Also, I don't see how LeGuin's point is substantively different from Ellison's -- they are both saying they'll fight people who distribute their books without paying them, the author.
On that note, this argument:
> You know what also deprives authors of royalties? Borrowing books from public libraries, buying used books, and loaning books to friends. So does playing video games instead of reading a book!
... is partly false -- authors do get payouts from libraries. As for "playing video games instead of reading a book", that's absurd -- the problem with pirating is that you get for free something that the creator has produced. For your argument to be true, we would somehow have to assume that the creator is entitled to us spending time reading their books, which is obviously insane.
As for the other things you mention -- buying used books and loaning them from friends -- they have essentially no overlap with online piracy. Piracy is a problem because you can distribute infinite copies worldwide for free, which doesn't apply to selling or loaning physical books.
By "made more comfortable" I was not referring to the existence of copyright at all, but rather the multiple extensions that were made from 1976 to 1998, where copyright terms went from 56 years to over 95 years[1].
If the Ace paperback edition of LoTR was piracy, then I question the meaning of the term, since the original US publisher imported British editions which lacked the (then required) US copyright notice. Note also that Ace ceased publishing this edition (and paid Tolkein) due to public pressure, not any legal threats.
(Also lest I misrepresent myself, there were many good changes to copyright in 1976, including removing the notice requirement that caused Tolkein so much trouble).
1: Prior to 1976 the lifetime of the author did not involve in the calculation, and literature is one place where works-for-hire are still rare this is more complicated than just 39 years longer; nevertheless 70 years from the (last in the case of multiple) author's death is always more protection than 56 years, and may be considerably more for a young author. This also reinforces my point that media corporations (where work-for-hire is the norm) benefited from this rather more than authors.
The rights copyright gives you, briefly, includes: copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work. What suggests there is piracy is going on?
People are making books freely available all the time, even those they sell on other platforms. Nothing wrong with this.
Rewired: The Post-cyberpunk Anthology
Some great stories in there and no bad ones at all. IMO
Will check this one out too!
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700576/the-big-book...
* No red tape stopping people from opening small businesses
* Cheap medical procedures available on demand
* Lax immigration rules allowing the free flow of the labor market
Idk just sounds like Bangkok to me
A nicely sizes 2 double bed apt is £450 a month all in including utilities - plus a pool and huge roof terrace shared with the other people there - looks great.
If you can get a visa to work there, and have the cash, you can have an amazing life out there for sure.
Thai HN users - what do you all think of this behaviour? What's the price of a nice apartment which doesn't have a pool and huge roof terrace, I wonder?
But yes, Bangkok / Thailand in general has huge wealth disparity. There are a lot of people living on very little money, and some people grossly rich.
IMHO by far the stangest, most mind bending story in it isn't really cybperpunk though but it's still flipping brilliant.
Petra by Greg Bear. It's about what happens when God dies...
https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/HTML/#calibre_link-2...
In a bit of synchronicity, I found my copy of Islands in the Net last week and am re-reading it after 35 years. It's pretty interesting to see which bits Bruce Sterling accurately predicted and which were a bit off the mark.
Great book. I like seeing how expansive the original cyberpunk was. I love William Gibson (and Bladerunner) but modern cyberpunk is but a hollow shell of Gibson's aesthetic.
All of this is to say, these and some of other recommendations in this thread are recommendations I didn't know I needed.
HN isn't perfect, but neither am I. I really appreciate the breadth of topics and interests. Big shoutout to PG for starting it, to Dang and all of the other moderators, and to everyone that contributes. I've learned a lot over the years.
They say to never be the smartest person in the room. I'm not even in the top 100 here and totally fine with it.
what are y'alls recommendations for cyberpunk-y books?
mine are,
• Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
• Daniel Suarez - Daemon
• Daniel Suarez - Delta-V
• Shamus Young - Free Radical
niche tip for german-understanding people is 'Reda El Arbi - [empfindungsfæhig]'.
didn't finish Neuromancer yet, but i gotta start over because it's been too long.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names
But! If you like it, the rest of the sprawl trilogy is just as good, and the bridge trilogy is probably better.
* pat cadigan: synners
* neal stephenson: the diamond age
and two books that bring cyberpunk elements into a larger sphere
* greg egan: zendegi. a dying engineer wants to make an AI version of himself to raise his son
* c s friedman: this alien shore (beautiful meld of far future space based sf and cyberpunk)
Mr. Rucker, if that really is you, I hope you decide to hang around and participate in this little community a bit. It's a cool place (most of the time) and cyberpunk is perpetually a favored topic.
https://gist.github.com/o0101/a40d09dab60f69a5f37cbcb751fdfd...
Question - is Bruce still writing? Or at least theorizing / predicting / critiquing anywhere? If I think about his near term spec fiction from the 90s through 2000s, it was truly excellent. I'd be interested to hear what he's thinking about now.
https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/mirrorshades.epub https://www.rudyrucker.com/mirrorshades/mirrorshades.mobi
Another great one is the Semiotext(e) SF anthology. I can't believe I was such a sucker to think cyberpunk was going somewhere interesting. It peaked 5 minutes in.
edit: in retrospect, I always felt that cyberpunk was just New Worlds going out with a (mostly American) bang.
Not every story is a winner, but enough try to stretch a bit that it's worth the read.
Helps to put your mind in the time, just before the 90s, before The Matrix but after Blade Runner, before "the metaverse" but after "the net" and "going online" were starting to enter conversations.
Love the vague randomly applicable prophetic lines in Gibson's work.
It has some elements in common with Cyberpunk and is just a plain fun read regardless of what genre label you apply.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider