Kids, ask your parents.
A few years ago, Anne and I drove out to Arizona for a weekend. On the way, we stopped in Blythe to put gas in the car. I made a wrong turn trying to get back onto the freeway, and it lead us to this mural, painted in an underpass.
(For those of you who have no idea what it is, or why it’s significant to Generation X.)
This is so great, I’m stealing it from Warren to make it rebloggable
printedvelvet asks:
“Aside from stuff Phillip K. Dick and Neal Stephenson, what’s on your must-read cyberpunk novels and comics list?”
Okay. Deep breath.
Cyberpunk, also known as Radical Hard SF or The Movement, was born around 1980 and didn’t survive that decade. (Some people map the end to 1992, with Neal Stephenson’s SNOW CRASH.) Philip K Dick had no affiliation with the movement, and was dead by 1982, two years before William Gibson published NEUROMANCER. People tend to associate Dick with cyberpunk because of BLADE RUNNER, particularly its visuals, which had nothing to do with the novel, but were so strikingly of the speculative zeitgeist that in 1982 William Gibson had to get out of his cinema seat and leave the screening because it looked too much like what was in his head.
Phil Dick was pre-cyberpunk. He, JG Ballard and Alfred Bester were major touchstones for the movement. Ballard’s CRASH and Bester’s STARS MY DESTINATION and THE DEMOLISHED MAN are essential. Also John Brunner’s STAND ON ZANZIBAR, THE SHEEP LOOK UP, and, most importantly for cyberpunk’s ancestry, THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER.
Of the cyberpunk period itself, you will need William Gibson’s first trilogy, NEUROMANCER, COUNT ZERO and MONA LISA OVERDRIVE. Also, Bruce Sterling’s THE ARTIFICIAL KID and ISLANDS IN THE NET. Richard Kadrey’s METROPHAGE. Rudy Rucker’s SOFTWARE and WETWARE. Pat Cadigan’s TEA FROM AN EMPTY CUP. That should keep you going for a bit.
FWIW, I agree with all of what Warren says, and please consider this another vote for METROPHAGE, which is amazing.
emhc:
And that’s the story of the first halloween, no wait shit I mean the other thing
I MADE A HISTORY COMIC AM I KATE BEATON YET?
you’ll have to click through to read cause i made it too big, oops i accidentally computer
President Obama Becomes the First American President to Back Same-Sex Marriage
“I’ve just concluded, for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News.
Obama, who had previously backed strong protections for gay and lesbian couples, said his position had evolved partly after talking to his two daughters Malia and Sasha who had some friends who had same-sex parents.
“It wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective,” Obama said in the interview.
