While I am talking about books that I am currently reading...
A few months back, I picked up a copy of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I got the book at one the area's (I don't remember if it was Trumansburg's or the county's) Friends of the Library book sale and all I could surmise from reading the back cover was that the book was cyberpunk.
I am not a huge fan of cyberpunk. The whole-grungy hacker culture thing just never did it for me. In theory, I could train really hard and become something like Paul Atreides from Dune or even Spiderman. But the whole hacking thing just felt so dense and foreign. Reading something like Neuromancer, or any other cyberpunk, I felt like I was the idiot being hacked and not the guy being saved. Call me a sucker, but I want to like my heroes. Even my anti-heroes need to have a sense of picaresque nobility. Like Huck Finn. Or Captain Malcolm Reynolds!
However, I am pleasantly surprised by Snow Crash. I like the cyberpunk concept (Hell, actually reality) that corporations will control everything. However, I don't think these concepts would do it in the Shinra or Umbrella way. They would be Walmart.
I like how Snowcrash also creates political/municipal divisions. Everything is deregulated and privatized. Cities are actually little city-states composed of self-enclosed suburbs called burbclaves. Each has there own police and laws. I like that Snowcrash has female characters that aren't ninja sexpots. I even dig the hero a bit, who has the clever name of Hiro Protagonist. He seems like what a real hacker would be like, some guy with mad skills that can never use them. Instead he delivers pizza.
Of course, he does have samurai swords, because it wouldn't be cyberpunk if you didn't give the guys some swords. And inexplicable training as to how to use them.
I might be the only nerd out there saying this, but I don't like swords. There used to be a time when I reached for this low-hanging nerd fruit and slapped swords on folks. Ever read that story I have on her called Temperature. I once submitted it for a class project and even admitted to the professor that I only stuck the sword in there because I had just finished reading the original Dune books and were pretty crysknife'd out!
If you are writing some Arthurian legend then go crazy with the swords. Hell, I'll help. The pointy end goes in the other guy. But, unless it's that, you go to try really hard to get those swords in there. Star Wars did it. So did Dune. Cyberpunk, well, I guess not so much, but I ain't no cyberpunk scholar.
Peace!
A few months back, I picked up a copy of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I got the book at one the area's (I don't remember if it was Trumansburg's or the county's) Friends of the Library book sale and all I could surmise from reading the back cover was that the book was cyberpunk.
I am not a huge fan of cyberpunk. The whole-grungy hacker culture thing just never did it for me. In theory, I could train really hard and become something like Paul Atreides from Dune or even Spiderman. But the whole hacking thing just felt so dense and foreign. Reading something like Neuromancer, or any other cyberpunk, I felt like I was the idiot being hacked and not the guy being saved. Call me a sucker, but I want to like my heroes. Even my anti-heroes need to have a sense of picaresque nobility. Like Huck Finn. Or Captain Malcolm Reynolds!
However, I am pleasantly surprised by Snow Crash. I like the cyberpunk concept (Hell, actually reality) that corporations will control everything. However, I don't think these concepts would do it in the Shinra or Umbrella way. They would be Walmart.
I like how Snowcrash also creates political/municipal divisions. Everything is deregulated and privatized. Cities are actually little city-states composed of self-enclosed suburbs called burbclaves. Each has there own police and laws. I like that Snowcrash has female characters that aren't ninja sexpots. I even dig the hero a bit, who has the clever name of Hiro Protagonist. He seems like what a real hacker would be like, some guy with mad skills that can never use them. Instead he delivers pizza.
Of course, he does have samurai swords, because it wouldn't be cyberpunk if you didn't give the guys some swords. And inexplicable training as to how to use them.
I might be the only nerd out there saying this, but I don't like swords. There used to be a time when I reached for this low-hanging nerd fruit and slapped swords on folks. Ever read that story I have on her called Temperature. I once submitted it for a class project and even admitted to the professor that I only stuck the sword in there because I had just finished reading the original Dune books and were pretty crysknife'd out!
If you are writing some Arthurian legend then go crazy with the swords. Hell, I'll help. The pointy end goes in the other guy. But, unless it's that, you go to try really hard to get those swords in there. Star Wars did it. So did Dune. Cyberpunk, well, I guess not so much, but I ain't no cyberpunk scholar.
Peace!
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