The Cyberpunk Fakebook - St. Jude and R. U. Sirius (best novels ever .TXT) 📗

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I like this book so much that I'm thinking of changing my name to St.Erling. You couldn't ask for better guides to faking cyberpunk than these two utterly accomplished Bay Area fraudsters. These two characters are such consummate boho hustlers that they make Aleister Crowley look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I don't believe in smart drugs, and I've never believed in smart drugs, but I do believe the following. It's genuinely useful to society to have some small, contained fraction of reckless fools who are willing to consume untested and unknown devices and substances. Sure, most of them will have their hearts explode or break out into great purple bleeding thalidomide warts. But who knows, maybe someday one of these jaspers will be eating handfuls of psychoactive crap out of some hippie pharmacy and he or she will suddenly learn to read Japanese in the original in six days. That's not at all likely, but it could happen-- grant me the possibility. The only drawback to this decentralized, libertarian, free-market regime of biomedical research is that you have to be ruthlessly prepared to sacrifice certain people-- just write 'em off, basically, like a cageful of control hamsters down at the NIMH. And if I ever met a man uniquely suited to this particular cutting-edge role in life, it is R.U. Sirius. R. U. Sirius basically resembles Gomez Addams in a purple fedora with an Andy Warhol badge pinned to the brim. The moment I met R.U., I felt a strong need to pith him and examine his viscera. I'm sure there are many other freelance biomedical researchers who will feel the same intellectual impulse. Read this book and you'll see what I mean. Then there's this saint person. Never draw to an inside straight. Never eat at a place called Mom's. And never eat a bag of ephedrine and a pumpkin pie ("the whip of vegetables!") from a California blonde who doesn't even have a real name. This female personage is so appallingly cagey that even her main squeeze delights in cryptographically baffling the NSA. If Pat Buchanan ever gets his not-so- secret wish and sets up a domestic American gulag for counterculture thought-criminals, the Judester's gonna be way, way up on the list-- maybe even number two, right after Bob Dobbs. Her trial's likely to prove rather interesting, however, as she only commits "crimes" in areas of social activity that haven't even been defined yet, much less successfully criminalized. A serious legal study of this woman's spectrum of activities would be like a CAT-scan of the American unconscious.

There's also Bart Nagel, who is too nice a guy to be in the company of these people. Almost everything in this swell book is completely true. Except for everything about me. And my closest co- conspirators. We actual cyberpunks-- by this I mean science fiction writers, dammit, the people for whom the c-word was invented, the people who were professionally ahead of our time and were cyberpunks twelve years ago-- we never sneer and we never dress like, God forbid, Tom Wolfe. We just laugh at inappropriate times (like when testifying in Congress) and we dress and act just like industrial design professors. I hope this brief intro clears up any confusion. If you have any trouble at all with this book, take full advantage of your online d00dship and send email. Don't be afraid to ask "stupid" questions-- that's what the Internet is for! Ask nice, big, broad, open-ended questions. Stuff like "I'm doing a term paper so please tell me everything you know about cyberspace" or "I'm cyberpunk fan from Bulgaria and Enlgish not too good, but please say more what is about Virtual Reality?" Just don't send the email to me, of course. Send email to them. After this book, they deserve it! I feel sure that you'll get prompt answers that will surprise you.

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| | | The | | Authors | | Explain: | | | | A Technical Guide To This Technical Guide | | |

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WORDS IN BOLDFACE (enclosed in double <> for the ASCII version)

These are terms that are defined in Building Your Cyber Word Power. Check there for anything that baffles you.

Sometimes there's a double-anglebrace-enclosed term in the text that refers to a chapter subheading, and then you must practice your <> in order to find it. If all else fails, you could ask Bruce Sterling at his secret email address-- bruces@well.com. He will know.

THE SHURIKEN AWARDS

We may sometimes succumb to the temptation to rate things the way snotty critics do, by awarding stars. However, we will award them as shuriken, a cyber kinda star:

^ ^ ^ < X > < X > < X > v v v

A shuriken is a throwing star-- a shiny-steel, sharp-edged, sharp-pointed weapon from Japan (which is cyberpunk's original home in certain misty urban legends). The shuriken itself as an assault weapon would rate one-half shuriken on a scale of four. A hydrogen bomb would rate five shuriken. You get the idea.

Occasionally we may add Propeller Beanies to the Shuriken:

<<<o>>> <<<o>>> <<<o>>> __|__ __|__ __|__ /_____ /_____ /_____

This indicates nerdly interest over and above a cyberpunk rating. Propeller head is an ancient term for <>. The real name for that key on the Macintosh is not COMMAND, but PROPELLER, and this is why.

_________________ /| | | | || | | _/_ O || | | ( C O/ O || | | __/ O || | /_________________/| /____________________/ ========================================================= ======================================================= =====================================================

CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS

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SECTION I: CYBERPUNK... WHY?? OKAY-- HOW???

Chapter 1/ CYBERPUNK: A CHALLENGING POSTMODERN LIFESTYLE! /Why Bother? Big Wins! (and Unexpected Smallstuff)/

Chapter 2/ ACHIEVING CYBERPUNK /Being It or Faking It/

Chapter 3/ A STYLE GUIDE TO THE CYBERTYPES /Recognizing Them and Fitting In/

* SECTION II: CYBERPUNK... KNOWING ABOUT IT! ***

Chapter 4/ BUILDING YOUR CYBER WORD POWER

A Dictionary of Terminally Hip Jargon and Useful Expressions

A Cyberpunk Phrasebook, with Hip Conversational Ploys for Winning Without a Clue

Chapter 5/ CHEATCARDS FOR BOOKS YOU SHOULD HAVE READ /But Didn't/

Chapter 6/ CHEATCARDS FOR MOVIES/TV YOU DIDN'T SEE /But Should Know About/

Chapter 7/ ONLINE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT /Even if You Never Go Online/

* SECTION III: CYBERPUNK... DOING IT! ***

Chapter 8/