Chapter 1/ CYBERPUNK: A CHALLENGING POSTMODERN LIFESTYLE!_The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook

The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook, by St. Jude, R.U. Sirius

This file contains the first three and half chapters.

From Michael

>>I changed a few spaces here and there to make it look better onscreen,

>>let me know if you have any suggestions, corrections, additions, etc.

From Jude

orright, michael: i played with the formatting. it's HELL to make things look

good in ASCII, but it looks bettah.

***

okay, michael, stand back... here it comes....

i'm sending cybpunk fakebook as a MIME-encoded attachment

AND a paste-in...

look out.... it's terribly silly....

***

Dear Michael Hart and Project Gutenberg:

This text comes over a little odd in ASCII. Like MONDO2000--

the zine we made infamous-- this book relies on its wacked

layout and bizarre illustrations for much of its meaning, not

to say charm.

And it was difficult to figure what should be considered the

first chapter, for obvious reasons. I think the first

chapter really includes Section II,

but never mind. Here it is, the beginning of...

******************************************************

*****

***** THE

*****

***** REAL

*****

***** CYBERPUNK

*****

***** FAKEBOOK

*****

***** By St. Jude, R.U.Sirius, and Bart Nagel

*****

******************************************************

Dedication:

For all our parents and lovers and housemates and

children and friends, for the Cypherpunks, for

Kevin Crow, Nesta Stubbs, The Omega, Phiber,

and hackers everywhere.

========================================================

| |

| INTRODUCTION to The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook |

| by Bruce Sterling, |

| A Renowned Cyberpunk Writer |

| |

========================================================

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.

.............................................................

========================================================

| |

| The |

| Authors |

| Explain: |

| |

| A Technical Guide To This Technical Guide |

| |

========================================================

WORDS IN BOLDFACE

(enclosed in double <<angle braces>> 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 <<haqr smarts>> 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 <<nerd>>.

The real name for that key on the Macintosh is not COMMAND,

but PROPELLER, and this is why.

_________________

/| |\

| | ||

| | _/_ O ||

| | ( C O/ \O ||

| | \__/ O ||

| /\_________________/\|

\/____________________\/

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CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS

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

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Chapter 1/ CYBERPUNK: A CHALLENGING POSTMODERN LIFESTYLE!

/Why Bother? Big Wins! (and Unexpected Smallstuff)/