The Cyberpunk Fak | Page 3

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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-sosecret?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 coconspirators.?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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