1.
Genre
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Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed upon conventions developed over time. Genres form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented, often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, some genres may be rigid with strictly adhered to guidelines while others may be very flexible. Genre began as a classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose, and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, in later periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about. Genre suffers from the ills of any classification system. Genre is to be reassessed and scrutinized and to works on their unique merit. While the genre of storytelling has been relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of the conventions, proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of the codes. The term genre is used in the history and criticism of visual art. These are distinguished from staffage, incidental figures in what is primarily a landscape or architectural painting, Genre painting may also be used as a wider term covering genre painting proper, and other specialized types of paintings such as still-life, landscapes, marine paintings and animal paintings. The concept of the hierarchy of genres was a one in artistic theory. It was strongest in France, where it was associated with the Académie française which held a role in academic art. Genres may be determined by technique, tone, content. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as adult, young adult. They also must not be confused with format, such as novel or picture book
2.
Cyberpunk
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The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to feature extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its original inventors. Much of the genres atmosphere echoes film noir, and written works in the often use techniques from detective fiction. Primary exponents of the field include William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Bruce Bethke, Pat Cadigan, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley. Blade Runner can be seen as a example of the cyberpunk style. Video games, board games, and tabletop role-playing games, such as Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun, often feature storylines that are influenced by cyberpunk writing. Beginning in the early 1990s, some trends in fashion and music were also labeled as cyberpunk, Cyberpunk writers tend to use elements from hardboiled detective fiction, film noir, and postmodernist prose to describe an often nihilistic underground side of an electronic society. The genres vision of a future is often called the antithesis of the generally utopian visions of the future popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Gibson defined cyberpunks antipathy towards utopian SF in his 1981 short story The Gernsback Continuum, in some cyberpunk writing, much of the action takes place online, in cyberspace, blurring the line between actual and virtual reality. A typical trope in such work is a connection between the human brain and computer systems. Cyberpunk settings are dystopias with corruption, computers and internet connectivity, giant, multinational corporations have for the most part replaced governments as centers of political, economic, and even military power. The economic and technological state of Japan, in the 80s influenced Cyberpunk literature at the time, of Japans influence on the genre, William Gibson said, Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is often set in urbanized, artificial landscapes, and city lights, receding was used by Gibson as one of the genres first metaphors for cyberspace and virtual reality. The cityscapes of Hong Kong and Shanghai have had influences in the urban backgrounds, ambiance and settings in many cyberpunk works such as Blade Runner. Ridley Scott envisioned the landscape of cyberpunk Los Angeles in Blade Runner to be Hong Kong on a bad day. The streetscapes of Ghost in the Shell were based on Hong Kong, mamoru Oshii felt that Hong Kongs strange and chaotic streets where old and new exist in confusing relationships, fit the theme of the film well. Hong Kongs Kowloon Walled City is particularly notable for its disorganized hyper-urbanization, one of the cyberpunk genres prototype characters is Case, from Gibsons Neuromancer. Case is a cowboy, a brilliant hacker who has betrayed his organized criminal partners. These anti-heroes—criminals, outcasts, visionaries, dissenters and misfits—call to mind the private eye of detective fiction and this emphasis on the misfits and the malcontents is the punk component of cyberpunk
3.
Worldbuilding
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Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world, sometimes associated with a whole fictional universe. The term world-building was first used in the Edinburgh Review in December 1820, eddingtons Space Time and Gravitation, An Outline of the General Relativity Theory to describe the thinking out of hypothetical worlds with different physical laws. The term has been used in fiction and fantasy criticism since appearing in R. A. Lupoff’s Edgar Rice Burroughs, Master of Adventure, the resulting world may be called a constructed world. Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, Worldbuilding often involves the creation of maps, a backstory, and people for the world. Constructed worlds can enrich the backstory and history of fictional works, constructed worlds can be created for personal amusement and mental exercise, or for specific creative endeavors such as novels, video games, or role-playing games. The creation of literary fictional worlds was first examined by authors such as George MacDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers. Constructed worlds shift away from storytelling, narrative, characters and figures, later analysis of fantasy worlds in the 1960s contextualized them in the medium or the narrative of the works, offering an analysis of the stories in the world, but not the world itself. In the 2000s, world-building in film has increased in popularity, when before, writers sought to create a character that could sustain multiple stories, now they create a world that can sustain multiple characters and stories. Worldbuilding can be designed from the top down or the bottom up, the official world-building guidelines for Dungeons and Dragons refer to these terms as outside-in and inside-out, respectively. From there, he or she develops the rest of the world in increasing detail and this approach might involve creation of the worlds basics, followed by levels such as continents, civilizations, nations, cities, and towns. A world constructed from the top tends to be well-integrated. It can, however, require considerable work before enough detail is completed for the setting to be useful, with the bottom-up approach, the designer focuses on a small part of the world needed for his or her purposes. This location is given considerable detail, such as geography, culture, social structure, government, politics, commerce. Prominent local individuals may be described, including their relationships to each other, the surrounding areas are then described in a lower level of detail, with description growing more general with increasing distance from the initial location. The designer can subsequently enhance the description of other areas in the world and this approach provides for almost immediate applicability of the setting, with details pertinent to a certain story or situation. The approach can yield a world plagued with inconsistencies, however, by combining the top-down and bottom-up approaches, a designer can enjoy the benefits of both. This is very hard to accomplish, however, because the need to start both sides creates twice as much work, which may delay the desired product
4.
Retrofuturism
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Retrofuturism is a trend in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced in an earlier era. If futurism is sometimes called a bent on anticipating what will come. Primarily reflected in artistic creations and modified technologies that realize the imagined artifacts of its parallel reality, but it has also manifested in the worlds of fashion, architecture, design, music, literature, film, and video games. The word retrofuturism, combines more recent ideas of nostalgia and retro with older traditions of futurism, an early use of the term was in the title of T. R. Hinchcliffes Pelican book Retro-futurism - Penguin,1967. A recent neologism, the actual term retrofuturism was used by American Lloyd Dunn in 1983, according to fringe art magazine Retrofuturism, Retrofuturism builds on ideas of futurism, but the latter term functions differently in several different contexts. In avant-garde artistic, literary and design circles, Futurism is a long-standing, in his 1967 book T. R. Retrofuturism is first and foremost based on modern but changing notions of the future. It took its current shape in the 1970s, a time when technology was rapidly changing, from the advent of the personal computer to the birth of the first test tube baby, this period was characterized by intense and rapid technological change. But many in the public began to question whether applied science would achieve its earlier promise—that life would inevitably improve through technological progress. In the wake of the Vietnam War, environmental depredations, but they also wondered, sometimes in awe, sometimes in confusion, at the scientific positivism evinced by earlier generations. Retrofuturism seeped into academic and popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s, inflecting George Lucas’ Star Wars and the paintings of pop artist Kenny Scharf alike. Surveying the optimistic futurism of the twentieth century, the historians Joe Corn and Brian Horrigan remind us that retrofuturism is a history of an idea. The future, or course, does not exist except as an act of belief or imagination, Retrofuturism incorporates two overlapping trends which may be summarized as the future as seen from the past and the past as seen from the future. Such futuristic visions are refurbished and updated for the present, and offer a nostalgic, counterfactual image of what the future might have been, the second trend is the inverse of the first, futuristic retro. It starts with the appeal of old styles of art, clothing, mores, and then grafts modern or futuristic technologies onto it, creating a mélange of past, present. In the movie Space Station 76, mankind has reached the stars, in practice, the two trends cannot be sharply distinguished, as they mutually contribute to similar visions. In the same way, futuristic retro owes much of its flavor to early science fiction, both retrofuturistic trends in themselves refer to no specific time. Examples include the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, set in an imaginary 1939, adam Reeds animated comedy series Archer is also set in a retrofuture aesthetic world. The import of retrofuturism has, in recent years, come under considerable discussion, some, like the German architecture critic Niklas Maak, see retrofuturism as nothing more than an aesthetic feedback loop recalling a lost belief in progress, the old images of the once radically new
5.
Steampunk
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Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Therefore, steampunk may be described as neo-Victorian, Steampunk may also incorporate additional elements from the genres of fantasy, horror, historical fiction, alternate history, or other branches of speculative fiction, making it often a hybrid genre. The first known appearance of the term steampunk was in 1987, Steampunk is influenced by and often adopts the style of the 19th-century scientific romances of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Mary Shelley. Several more modern works of art and fiction significant to the development of the genre were produced before the genre had a name, the film Brazil was an important early cinematic influence that helped codify the aesthetics of the genre. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright was a comic version of the Moorcock-style mover between timestreams. In fine art, Remedios Varos paintings combine elements of Victorian dress, fantasy, in television, one of the earliest manifestations of the steampunk ethos in the mainstream media was the CBS television series The Wild Wild West, which inspired the subsequent film. Although many works now considered seminal to the genre were published in the 1960s and 1970s and it was coined by science fiction author K. W. G. Wells The Time Machine. Though of course, I did find her review in the March Locus to be quite flattering, personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the technology of the era, like steam-punks. They were far from the first modern science fiction writers to speculate on the development of steam-based technology or alternative histories, keith Laumers Worlds of the Imperium and Ronald W. Clarks Queen Victorias Bomb apply modern speculation to past-age technology and society. Michael Moorcocks Warlord of the Air is another early example, harry Harrisons novel A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah. Portrays a British Empire of an alternative year 1973, full of atomic locomotives, coal-powered flying boats, ornate submarines, the Adventures of Luther Arkwright was the first steampunk comic. In February 1980, Richard A. Lupoff and Steve Stiles published the first chapter of their 10-part comic strip The Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle and His Incredible Aether Flyer. Indeed, both sensibilities recall the older but still modern eras in which technological change seemed to anticipate a better world, one of steampunk’s most significant contributions is the way in which it mixes digital media with traditional handmade art forms. As scholars Rachel Bowser and Brian Croxall put it, the tinkering and tinker-able technologies within steampunk invite us to roll up our sleeves, in this respect, steampunk bears more in common with DIY craft and making. This theme is carried over to Disneys theme parks, in the designs of The Mysterious Island section of Tokyo DisneySea theme park. Aspects of steampunk design emphasise a balance between form and function, in this it is like the Arts and Crafts Movement. But John Ruskin, William Morris, and the reformers in the late nineteenth century rejected machines
6.
Fantasy
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Fantasy is a fiction genre set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Most fantasy uses magic or other elements as a main plot element, theme. Magic and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds, in popular culture, the fantasy genre is predominantly of the medievalist form. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy works by many writers, artists, filmmakers. Fantasy is studied in a number of disciplines including English and other studies, cultural studies, comparative literature, history. The identifying trait of fantasy is the reliance on imagination to create narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent. This differs from realistic fiction in that whereas realistic fiction has to attend to the history and natural laws of reality, an author applies his or her imagination to come up with characters, plots, and settings that are impossible in reality. Fantasy has often compared with science fiction and horror because they are the major categories of speculative fiction. Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction by the plausibility of the narrative elements, a science fiction narrative is unlikely, though seeming possible through logical scientific and/or technological extrapolation, whereas fantasy narratives do not need to be scientifically possible. The imagined elements of fantasy do not need an explanation to be narratively functional. Authors have to rely on the suspension of disbelief, an acceptance of the unbelievable or impossible for the sake of enjoyment. Despite both genres heavy reliance on the supernatural, fantasy and horror are distinguishable, horror primarily evokes fear through the protagonists weaknesses or inability to deal with the antagonists. Beginning perhaps with the earliest written documents, mythic and other elements that would come to define fantasy. MacDonald was an influence on both J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The other major fantasy author of this era was William Morris, lord Dunsany established the genres popularity in both the novel and the short story form. Many popular mainstream authors also began to write fantasy at this time, including H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Indeed, juvenile fantasy was considered more acceptable than fantasy intended for adults, nathaniel Hawthorne wrote fantasy in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, intended for children, though works for adults only verged on fantasy. Political and social trends can affect a societys reception towards fantasy, in the early 20th century, the New Culture Movements enthusiasm for Westernization and science in China compelled them to condemn the fantastical shenmo genre of traditional Chinese literature
7.
Science fantasy
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Science fantasy is a mixed genre within the umbrella of speculative fiction which simultaneously draws upon and/or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. It also sometimes incorporates elements of horror fiction, distinguishing between science fiction and fantasy, Rod Serling claimed that the former was the improbable made possible while the latter was the impossible made probable. As a combination of the two, science fantasy gives a scientific veneer of realism to things that simply could not happen in the world under any circumstances. Where science fiction does not permit the existence of fantasy or supernatural elements, all were relatively rationalistic stories published in John W. Campbell, Jr. s Unknown magazine. These were an attempt to apply the techniques and attitudes of science fiction to traditional fantasy subjects. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction published, among other things, all but the last of the Operation series, henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore published novels in Startling Stories, alone and together, which were far more romantic. These were closely related to the work that they and others were doing for outlets like Weird Tales, ace Books published a number of books as science fantasy during the 1950s and 1960s. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction points out that as a genre, science fantasy has never clearly defined. The Star Trek franchise created by Gene Roddenberry is considered an example of science fantasy, writer James F. Broderick describes Star Trek as science fantasy because it includes semi-futuristic as well as supernatural/fantasy elements such as The Q. According to the science fiction author Arthur C, clarke, many purists argue that Star Trek is science fantasy rather than science fiction because of its scientifically improbable elements, which he partially agrees with. Jack Vances Dying Earth stories are sometimes classed as science fantasy because the cosmology used is not compatible with that accepted by science fiction. Other stories in the Dying Earth subgenre such as M. John Harrisons Viriconium novels or Gene Wolfes Book of the New Sun are usually classed as science fantasy. Terry Brooks Shannara books represent a world as the far future of Earth after supernatural events cause the downfall of civilization. The last two films in George Millers post-apocalyptic Mad Max franchise, while science fiction films, contain fantastical elements to their depiction of a devastated world. The works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and E. R. Eddison are probably the earliest examples of this genre, C. S. Lewis Out of the Silent Planet is an example of the same type of story, though in its case the preoccupations are theological. In both cases the elements are barely rationalized, and in Lewis case stand in stark contrast to the pseudo-scientific machinery that frames the story. In Andre Nortons Witch World series, the world is excused as a parallel universe. There are a few fictional elements in the earlier stories of this series
8.
Historical fantasy
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Historical fantasy is a category of fantasy and genre of historical fiction that incorporates fantastic elements into the narrative. There is much crossover with other subgenres of fantasy, those classes as Arthurian, Celtic, stories fitting this classification generally take place prior to the 20th century. In this, it has a similarity to contemporary fantasy. This commonly overlaps with the secret history trope, alternatively, the authors narrative shows or implies that by the present day, magic will have retreated from the world so as to allow history to revert to the familiar version we know. It also can include a history where the past or present has been significantly changed when an actual historical event turned out differently. However, many if not most, works by fantasy authors derive ideas and inspiration from real events, Historical Fantasy may also be set in a fictional world which resembles a period from history but is not that actual history. All four approaches have overlapped with the subgenre of steampunk commonly associated with science fiction literature, however, not all steampunk fantasy belongs to the historical fantasy subgenre. After Antoine Gallands translation of One Thousand and One Nights became enormously popular in Europe, many writers wrote fantasy based on Gallands romantic image of the Middle East, early examples included the satirical tales of Anthony Hamilton, and Zadig by Voltaire. Marion Crawford, and James Elroy Fleckers Hassan, in the late 1970s, interest in the subgenre revived with Hasan by Piers Anthony. Baghdad by Ian Dennis Nights of the Crusades by MJ Alishah Celtic fantasy has links to historical fantasy, Celtic historical fantasy includes such works as Katharine Kerrs Deverry series, or Teresa Edgertons Green Lion trilogy. These works are based on Ancient Celtic cultures, the Welsh tradition has been particularly influential, which has its connection to King Arthur and its collection in a single work, the epic Mabinogion. One influential retelling of this was the work of Evangeline Walton, The Island of the Mighty, The Children of Llyr, The Song of Rhiannon. Fantasy based on the Breton folklore branch of Celtic mythology does not often appear in the English language, however, several noted writers have utilized such material, Robert W. Chambers The Demoiselle dYs and A. Both drew on the Breton legend of the lost city of Ys, while The Lay of Aotrou, wǔxiá figures prominently in the popular culture of Chinese-speaking areas, and the most important writers have devoted followings. The wǔxiá genre is a blend of the philosophy of xiá, a martial artist who follows the code of xiá is called a swordsman, or xiákè. Japans samurai bushidō traditions, Englands knight chivalry traditions, and Americas gunslinger Western traditions all share some aspects with Chinas swordsman xiá traditions, the swordsman, however, need not serve a lord or hold any military power and they are not required to be from an aristocratic class. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee Classical Fantasy is a fantasy based on the Greek. Symbolism from classical mythology is enormously influential on Western culture, richard Garnett and John Kendrick Bangs used the Greek myths for satirical purposes
9.
Postmodern literature
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Postmodern works are seen as a response against dogmatic following of Enlightenment thinking and Modernist approaches to literature. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, tends to resist definition or classification as a movement, Postmodern works also tend to celebrate chance over craft, and further employ metafiction to undermine the texts authority or authenticity. In the 1910s, artists associated with Dadaism celebrated chance, parody, playfulness, tristan Tzara claimed in How to Make a Dadaist Poem that to create a Dadaist poem one had only to put random words in a hat and pull them out one by one. Another way Dadaism influenced postmodern literature was in the development of collage, artists associated with Surrealism, which developed from Dadaism, continued experimentations with chance and parody while celebrating the flow of the subconscious mind. André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, suggested that automatism and he used automatism to create his novel Nadja and used photographs to replace description as a parody of the overly-descriptive novelists he often criticized. Surrealist René Magrittes experiments with signification are used as examples by Jacques Derrida, Foucault also uses examples from Jorge Luis Borges, an important direct influence on many postmodernist fiction writers. He is occasionally listed as a postmodernist, although he started writing in the 1920s, the influence of his experiments with metafiction and magic realism was not fully realized in the Anglo-American world until the postmodern period. Ultimately, this is seen as the highest stratification of criticism among scholars, other early 20th-century novels such as Raymond Roussels Impressions dAfrique and Locus Solus, and Giorgio de Chiricos Hebdomeros have also been identified as important postmodern precursor. Both modern and postmodern literature represent a break from 19th century realism, in addition, both modern and postmodern literature explore fragmentariness in narrative- and character-construction. The Waste Land is often cited as a means of distinguishing modern and postmodern literature, the poem is fragmentary and employs pastiche like much postmodern literature, but the speaker in The Waste Land says, these fragments I have shored against my ruins. Postmodernists, however, often demonstrate that this chaos is insurmountable, the artist is impotent, gertrude Steins playful experiment with metafiction and genre in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas has been interpreted as postmodern, as with all stylistic eras, no definite dates exist for the rise and fall of postmodernisms popularity. 1941, the year in which Irish novelist James Joyce and English novelist Virginia Woolf both died, is used as a rough boundary for postmodernisms start. Irish novelist Flann OBrien completed The Third Policeman in 1939 and it was rejected for publication and remained supposedly lost until published posthumously in 1967. A revised version called The Dalkey Archive was published before the original in 1964, notwithstanding its dilatory appearance, the literary theorist Keith Hopper regards The Third Policeman as one of the first of that genre they call the postmodern novel. The prefix post, however, does not necessarily imply a new era, rather, it could also indicate a reaction against modernism in the wake of the Second World War. It could also imply a reaction to significant post-war events, the beginning of the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, postcolonialism, some further argue that the beginning of postmodern literature could be marked by significant publications or literary events. For others the beginning is marked by moments in critical theory, Jacques Derridas Structure, Sign, though postmodernist literature does not include everything written in the postmodern period, several post-war developments in literature have significant similarities
10.
Postcolonialism
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Postcolonialism or postcolonial studies is an academic discipline that analyzes, explains, and responds to the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism. Postcolonialism speaks about the consequences of external control and economic exploitation of native people. As a genre of history, postcolonialism questions and reinvents the manner in which a culture is being viewed. Anthropologically, it records human nations between the colonists and the peoples under colonial rule, seeking to build an understanding of the nature and practice of colonial rule. It also examines the effects of rule on the cultural aspects of the colony and its treatment of women, language, literature. Postcolonialism is aimed at destabilizing these theories by means of which colonialists perceive, understand, Colonialism was presented as the extension of civilization, which ideologically justified the self-ascribed racial and cultural superiority of the Western world over the non-Western world. Especially in the colonisation of the Far East and in the late-nineteenth century Scramble for Africa, hence, Belgium and Britain, and France and Germany proffered theories of national superiority that justified colonialism as delivering the light of civilisation to unenlightened peoples. A decolonised people develops a postcolonial identity that is based on interactions between different identities which are assigned varying degrees of social power by the colonial society. e. Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania, in The Wretched of the Earth, the psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon analysed and medically described the nature of colonialism as essentially destructive. Its societal effects—the imposition of a subjugating colonial identity—are harmful to the health of the native peoples who were subjugated into colonies. Fanon wrote the ideological essence of colonialism is the denial of all attributes of humanity of the colonised people. Such dehumanization is achieved with physical and mental violence, by which the colonist means to inculcate a servile mentality upon the natives, for Fanon the natives must violently resist colonial subjugation. Hence, Fanon describes violent resistance to colonialism as a mentally cathartic practice, which purges colonial servility from the native psyche, thus he supported the Front de Libération Nationale in the Algerian War for independence from France. Michel Foucault argues that colonial discourses are where power and knowledge become intertwined and his work implies that power does not exist for punitive measures but rather, power provides a consistent gratification during its perpetual expression. Orientalism thus conflated and reduced the world into the homogeneous cultural entity known as the East. In Edward Said, The Exile as Interpreter, about Saïds Orientalism and that the applied power of such cultural knowledge allowed Europeans to rename, re-define, and thereby control Oriental peoples, places, and things, into imperial colonies. The power–knowledge binary relation is conceptually essential to identify and understand colonialism in general, with this described binary logic, the West generally constructs the Orient subconsciously as its alter ego. Therefore, descriptions of the Orient by the Occident lack material attributes and this inventive, or imaginative interpretation subscribes female characteristics to the Orient and plays into fantasies that are inherent within the Wests alter ego
11.
Bruce Bethke
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Bruce Bethke is an American author, best known for his 1983 short story Cyberpunk which led to the widespread use of the term. His novel, Headcrash won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1995 for SF original paperback published in the US, Bethkes collected thoughts on the cyberpunk subculture are collected on his website, in an essay entitled The Etymology of Cyberpunk. Bethke served as a judge on the Philip K. Dick Award in 2013, Bethke lives in Minnesota where he works as a developer of supercomputer software. Novels Maverick Written from an outline by Isaac Asimov in 1990, Headcrash Bethkes first published novel, published in 1995. Headcrash is the story of Jack Burroughs, a nerd in his mid twenties, who lives with his overbearing mother. Jack lives a far more interesting life in the metaverse. Along with his friend Gunnar, Jack is hired to hack into a system to retrieve files proving that the company was stolen from the rightful heir of its founder. This novel was awarded the Philip K. Dick Award and this work is sometimes credited with the first use of the word Spam as a term for junk e-mail. Bethke replies that while he appreciates the thought, the term was in use on usenet long before he used it in Headcrash. Rebel Moon A collaboration with Vox Day, Rebel Moon was the novelization of the prequel of the game Rebel Moon Rising, Wild Wild West The novelization of the critically panned steampunk film Wild Wild West. Bethke summarily dismisses the novel on his website, stating it was how he paid for a new roof for his house. Initially written as a series of stories in 1980, the culminated novel was purchased by a publisher via an exclusive contract which forbade Bethke to sell the novel to any other publisher. The publisher decided not to release the novel, causing years of legal battles over the rights to the book. Bethke has a version of the novel available for five dollars on his website. When asked, during a 2005 interview, Why was your book Cyberpunk never published when you sold it to a publisher in 1989, Bruce replied, Ah, well, hindsight is 20/20. The book was never released because the publisher hated the ending, so I refused to write it. Perhaps the book would have sold well with a blood-soaked adolescent revenge fantasy ending, Bruce Bethke won the Philip K. Dick Award for SF original paperback published in the US. 1995, Headcrash - Winner Bethke is currently creator and Editor in Chief of the anthology series Stupefying Stories which he began publishing in 2012
12.
Punk subculture
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The punk subculture, which centres on punk rock music, includes a diverse array of ideologies, fashions and forms of expression, including visual art, dance, literature and film. The subculture is largely characterized by anti-establishment views and the promotion of individual freedom, the punk subculture is centered on a loud, aggressive genre of rock music called punk rock. It is usually played by small bands consisting of a vocalist, Punk politics cover the entire political spectrum. Punk-related ideologies are mostly concerned with freedom and anti-establishment views. Common punk viewpoints include anti-authoritarianism, a DIY ethic, non-conformity, direct action, there is a wide range of punk fashion, in terms of clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics, tattoos, jewelery and body modification. Early punk fashion adapted everyday objects for aesthetic effect, such as T-shirts, leather jackets, hardcore punk fans adopted a dressed-down style of T-shirts, jeans, combat boots or sneakers and crewcut-style haircuts. Women in the hardcore scene typically wore masculine clothing, one part of punk was creating explicitly outward identities of sexuality. Everything that was supposed to be hidden was brought to the front. Punk aesthetics determine the type of art punks enjoy, usually underground, minimalistic, iconoclastic. Punk artwork graces album covers, flyers for concerts, and punk zines, Punk has generated a considerable amount of poetry and prose. Punk has its own press in the form of punk zines, which feature news, gossip, cultural criticism. Some zines take the form of perzines, important punk zines include Maximum RocknRoll, Punk Planet, No Cure, Cometbus, Flipside, and Search & Destroy. Many punk-themed films have made, as have punk rock music videos. Some punk films intercut stock footage with news clips and amateur videos of concerts, Punks can come from any and all walks of life and economic classes, and punk culture has aspects of gender equalist ideology. The punk subculture emerged in the United Kingdom, Australia, exactly which region originated punk has long been a major controversy within the movement. Various musical, philosophical, political, literary and artistic movements influenced the subculture. In the late 1970s, the subculture began to diversify, which led to the proliferation of such as new wave, post-punk,2 Tone, pop punk, hardcore punk, no wave, street punk. Hardcore punk, street punk and Oi. sought to do away with the frivolities introduced in the years of the original punk movement
13.
Information Age
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The onset of the Information Age is associated with the Digital Revolution, just as the Industrial Revolution marked the onset of the Industrial Age. The Information Age formed by capitalizing on computer microminiaturization advances, library expansion was calculated in 1945 by Fremont Rider to double in capacity every 16 years, if sufficient space were made available. He advocated replacing bulky, decaying printed works with miniaturized microform analog photographs and he did not foresee the digital technology that would follow decades later to replace analog microform with digital imaging, storage, and transmission media. Automated, potentially lossless digital technologies allowed vast increases in the rapidity of information growth, moores law, which was formulated around 1965, calculated that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. Connectivity between computers within companies led to the ability of workers at different levels to access greater amounts of information. The worlds technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 exabytes in 1986 to 15.8 in 1993, over 54.5 in 2000 and it is estimated that the worlds capacity to store information has reached 5 zettabytes in 2014. This is the equivalent of 4,500 stacks of printed books from the earth to the sun. In the 1990s, the spread of the Internet caused a sudden leap in access to, technology was developing so quickly that a computer costing $3000 in 1997 would cost $2000 two years later and $1000 the following year. In terms of capacity, there are two measures of importance, the number of operations a system can perform and the amount of information that can be stored, the number of synaptic operations per second in a human brain has been estimated to lie between 10^15 and 10^17. While this number is impressive, even in 2007 humanitys general-purpose computers were capable of performing well over 10^18 instructions per second, estimates suggest that the storage capacity of an individual human brain is about 10^12 bytes. On a per capita basis, this is matched by current digital storage, eventually, Information and Communication Technology—computers, computerized machinery, fiber optics, communication satellites, Internet, and other ICT tools—became a significant part of the economy. Microcomputers were developed and many businesses and industries were changed by ICT. Nicholas Negroponte captured the essence of these changes in his 1995 book and his book discusses similarities and differences between products made of atoms and products made of bits. In essence, a copy of a made of bits can be made cheaply and quickly. The Information Age has affected the workforce in several ways and it has created a situation in which workers who perform easily automated tasks are forced to find work that is not easily automated. Workers are also being forced to compete in a job market. Lastly, workers are being replaced by computers that can do their jobs faster and this poses problems for workers in industrial societies, which are still to be solved. However, solutions that involve lowering the time are usually highly resisted
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William Gibson
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William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Gibson notably coined the term cyberspace in his short story Burning Chrome and these early works have been credited with renovating science fiction literature after it had fallen largely into insignificance in the 1970s. In the 1990s, Gibson composed the Bridge trilogy of novels, which explored the sociological developments of urban environments, postindustrial society. These works saw his name reach mainstream bestseller lists for the first time and his more recent novel, The Peripheral, returned to a more overt engagement with technology and recognizable science fiction concerns. In 1999, The Guardian described Gibson as probably the most important novelist of the past two decades, while the Sydney Morning Herald called him the prophet of cyberpunk. His work has been cited as an influence across a variety of disciplines spanning academia, design, film, literature, music, cyberculture and his family moved frequently during Gibsons youth owing to his fathers position as manager of a large construction company. In Norfolk, Virginia, Gibson attended Pines Elementary School, where the lack of encouragement for him to read was a cause of dismay for his parents. While Gibson was still a child, a little over a year into his stay at Pines Elementary. His mother, unable to tell William the bad news, had someone else inform him of the death, tom Maddox has commented that Gibson grew up in an America as disturbing and surreal as anything J. G. Ballard ever dreamed. A few days after the death, Gibsons mother returned them from their home in Norfolk to Wytheville, at the age of 12, Gibson wanted nothing more than to be a science fiction writer. He spent a few years at basketball-obsessed George Wythe High School. Becoming frustrated with his academic performance, Gibsons mother threatened to send him to a boarding school, to her surprise. He resented the structure of the boarding school but was in retrospect grateful for its forcing him to engage socially. On the SAT exams, he scored 148 out of 150 in the section but 5 out of 150 in mathematics. In 1967, he elected to move to Canada in order to avoid the Vietnam war draft, at his draft hearing, he honestly informed interviewers that his intention in life was to sample every mind-altering substance in existence. Gibson has observed that he did not literally evade the draft, as they never bothered drafting me, after the hearing he went home and purchased a bus ticket to Toronto, and left a week or two later. He elaborated on the topic in a 2008 interview, After weeks of nominal homelessness, Gibson was hired as the manager of Torontos first head shop, a retailer of drug paraphernalia. He found the citys community of American draft dodgers unbearable owing to the prevalence of clinical depression, suicide
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Bruce Sterling
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Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author known for his novels and work on the Mirrorshades anthology. This work helped to define the cyberpunk genre, Sterling, along with William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Lewis Shiner, and Pat Cadigan, is one of the founders of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction. In addition, he is one of the chief ideological promulgators. This has earned him the nickname Chairman Bruce and he was also one of the first organizers of the Turkey City Writers Workshop, and is a frequent attendee at the Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop. He won Hugo Awards for his novelettes Bicycle Repairman and Taklamakan and his first novel, Involution Ocean, published in 1977, features the world Nullaqua where all the atmosphere is contained in a single, miles-deep crater. The story concerns a ship sailing on the ocean of dust at the bottom and it is partially a science-fictional pastiche of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. From the late 1970s onwards, Sterling wrote a series of set in the Shaper/Mechanist universe. The Mechanists use a great deal of computer-based mechanical technologies, the Shapers do genetic engineering on a massive scale, alastair Reynolds identified Schismatrix and the other Shaper/Mechanist stories as one of the greatest influences on his own work. In the 1980s, Sterling edited the science fiction critical fanzine Cheap Truth under the alias of Vincent Omniaveritas and he wrote a column called Catscan for the now-defunct science fiction critical magazine SF Eye. He contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound, Sampling Digital Music and he also contributed, along with Lewis Shiner, to the short story Mozart in Mirrorshades. From April 2009 through May 2009, he was an editor at Cool Tools, since October 2003 Sterling has blogged at Beyond the Beyond, which is hosted by Wired. His most recent novel is Love Is Strange, a Paranormal Romance, the Viridian Design home page, including Sterlings Viridian Manifesto and all of his Viridian Notes, is managed by Jon Lebkowsky at http, //www. viridiandesign. org. The Viridian Movement helped to spawn the popular bright green environmental weblog Worldchanging, worldChanging contributors include many of the original members of the Viridian curia. Sterling has a habit of coining neologisms to describe things that he believes will be common in the future, in the December 2005 issue of Wired magazine, Sterling coined the term buckyjunk. Buckyjunk refers to future, difficult-to-recycle consumer waste made of carbon nanotubes, in his 2005 book Shaping Things he coined the term design fiction which refers to a type of speculative design which focuses on world building. In July 1989, in SF Eye #5, he was the first to use the slipstream to refer to a type of speculative fiction between traditional science fiction and fantasy and mainstream literature. In December 1999 he coined the term Wexelblat disaster, for a disaster caused when a natural disaster triggers a secondary, in his book Zeitgeist, he introduced the term Major consensus narrative as an explanatory synonym for truth. In August 2004 he suggested a type of device that, through pervasive RFID and GPS tracking, can track its history of use
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John Shirley
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John Shirley is an American writer, primarily of fantasy and science fiction and songwriting. He has also written one novel, a western, about Wyatt Earp, Wyatt in Wichita. Shirley has written novels, short stories, TV scripts and screenplays, as a musician, Shirley has fronted his own bands and written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult and others. An extensive compilation of songs by John Shirley, Broken Mirror Glass was released by Black October Records, John Shirley was born in Houston, Texas and grew up largely in the vicinity of Portland, Oregon. His earliest novels were Transmaniacon and Dracula In Love for Zebra Books, and City Come A-Walkin and he also wrote the A Song Called Youth cyberpunk trilogy for Warner Books, re-released as an omnibus in 2012 by Prime Books. 2012 saw his novel of apocalypse, Everything Is Broken released by Prime Books. In 2013 PM Press released Shirleys New Taboos, Shirley has also written 18 song lyrics recorded by Blue Öyster Cult. His one nonfiction book is Gurdjieff, An Introduction to His Life and he currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife, Micky Shirley. John Shirley has three sons, twins Byron and Perry and their younger brother Julian. Byron is a captain and yacht broker, Perry is a journalist, teacher. Julian is a Bay Area-based underground rapper and producer of hip-hop, trap, chiptune and he is sometimes called as Juji or Young Bios. The A Song Called Youth cyberpunk trilogy, Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra and his tie-in novels include the best-seller Bioshock, Rapture. His best known work is the film The Crow, for which he was the initial writer. He also wrote scripts for Deep Space Nine and Poltergeist, The Legacy and he was nominated for an Emmy in the Prime Time Animation category for an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Shirley’s great subject is the ease with which we modern Americans have learned to look away from pain. The opening line of his novel “Demons” states the theme succinctly, it’s a horror story, I guess, but it’s also funny, weirdly erotic and, in a way that horror almost never is, tragic. Shirleys cyberpunk novels are City Come A-Walkin and the A Song Called Youth trilogy, avant-slipstream critic Larry McCaffery called him a postmodern Edgar Allan Poe. Bruce Sterling has cited Shirleys early story collection Heatseeker as being a seminal work in itself
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Rudy Rucker
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Rudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy. Until its closure in 2014 he edited the science fiction webzine Flurb, Rucker was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the great-great-great-grandson of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, Rucker attended St. Xavier High School before earning a B. A. in mathematics from Swarthmore College in 1967 and M. S. and PhD degrees in mathematics from Rutgers University. Rucker taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo from 1972 to 1978, thanks to a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Rucker taught math at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg from 1978 to 1980. He then taught at Randolph-Macon Womens College in Lynchburg, Virginia from 1980 to 1982, inspired by an interview with Stephen Wolfram, Rucker became a computer science professor at San José State University in 1986, from which he retired in 2004. A mathematician with philosophical interests, he has written The Fourth Dimension, Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension, and Infinity and the Mind. Princeton University Press published new editions of Infinity and the Mind in 1995 and in 2005, as his own alternative to cyberpunk, Rucker developed a writing style he terms transrealism. Many of Ruckers novels and short stories apply these ideas, one example of Ruckers transrealist works is Saucer Wisdom, a novel in which the main character is abducted by aliens. Rucker and his publisher marketed the book, tongue in cheek and his earliest Transrealist novel, White Light, was written during his time at Heidelberg. This Transrealist novel is based on his experiences at SUNY Geneseo and his novels also put forward a mystical philosophy that Rucker has summarized in an essay titled, with only a bit of irony, The Central Teachings of Mysticism. Rucker attended Swarthmore College, where he was roommates with Kenneth Turan his freshman year, in 1967, Rucker married Sylvia Rucker. On July 1,2008, Rucker suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, thinking he may not be around much longer, this prompted him to write the book Nested Scrolls, his autobiography
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Michael Swanwick
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Michael Swanwick is an American science fiction author. Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he began publishing in the early 1980s, Michael Swanwicks fiction writing began with short stories, starting in 1980 when he published Ginungagap in TriQuarterly and The Feast of St. Janis in New Dimensions 11. Both stories were nominees for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1981 and his published novels are In the Drift, a look at the results of a more catastrophic Three Mile Island incident, which expands on his earlier short story Mummers Kiss. His short fiction has been collected in Gravitys Angels, Moon Dogs, Tales of Old Earth, Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures, The Dog Said Bow-Wow, a novella, Griffins Egg, was published in book form in 1991 and is also collected in Moon Dogs. He has collaborated with authors on several short works, including Gardner Dozois. Swanwick has written about the field as well, both essays were collected together in The Postmodern Archipelago 1997. A book-length interview with Gardner Dozois, Being Gardner Dozois, was published in 2001 and he is a prolific contributor to the New York Review of Science Fiction. Swanwick wrote a monograph on James Branch Cabell, What Can Be Saved From the Wreckage, which was published in 2007, and a short literary biography of Hope Mirrlees, Hope-in-the-Mist, which was published in 2009
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Pat Cadigan
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Pat Cadigan is an American science fiction author, whose work is most often identified with the cyberpunk movement. Her novels and short stories all share a theme of exploring the relationship between the human mind and technology. Cadigan was born in Schenectady, New York, and grew up in Fitchburg, Cadigan met her first husband Rufus Cadigan while in college, they divorced shortly after she graduated from KU in 1975. Heinlein, while working for fantasy writer Tom Reamy at his Nickelodeon Graphics typesetting. Following Reamys death in 1977, Cadigan went to work as a writer for Kansas Citys Hallmark Cards, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she also edited the small press fantasy and science fiction magazines Chacal and later Shayol with her second husband, Arnie Fenner. Cadigan sold her first professional science fiction story in 1980, her success as an author encouraged her to become a writer in 1987. She emigrated to London in the UK with her son Rob Fenner in 1996 and she became a UK citizen in late 2014. Her second novel, Synners, expands upon the same theme, Cadigan has won a number of awards. Clarke Award both in 1992 and 1995 for her novels Synners and Fools, robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Cadigan after becoming her friend, following her being the guest liaison to him for the 34th Worldcon in Kansas City. In the 1960s Cadigan and a childhood girlfriend invented a secret life in which we were twins from the planet Venus. The Beatles came to us for advice about their songs and how to deal with fame and other important matters, Cadigan says. On occasion, they would ask us to use our highly developed shape-shifting ability to become them, the Venusian twins had other superpowers, that they would sometimes use to help out Superman, Wonder Woman and other heroes, she said. Mike Resnick, Tor 1992 Home by the Sea, A Whisper of Blood, ed. me Driving through a Cloud with Pat Cadigan at Clarkesworld Magazine, January 2014
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Science fiction
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Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a literature of ideas. Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a range of subgenres and themes. Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying science fiction is what we point to when we say it, a definition echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography, you do not know what it is, in 1970 or 1971William Atheling Jr. According to science fiction writer Robert A, rod Serlings definition is fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures. Science fiction elements include, A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, a spatial setting or scenes in outer space, on other worlds, or on subterranean earth. Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots, futuristic or plausible technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers. Scientific principles that are new or that contradict accepted physical laws, for time travel, wormholes. New and different political or social systems, e. g. utopian, dystopian, post-scarcity, paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis Other universes or dimensions and travel between them. A product of the budding Age of Reason and the development of science itself. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Keplers work the first science fiction story and it depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earths motion is seen from there. Later, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a flight to the moon, more examples appeared throughout the 19th century. Wells The War of the Worlds describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry and it is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. In the late 19th century, the scientific romance was used in Britain to describe much of this fiction. This produced additional offshoots, such as the 1884 novella Flatland, the term would continue to be used into the early 20th century for writers such as Olaf Stapledon. In the early 20th century, pulp magazines helped develop a new generation of mainly American SF writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine. In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, the first of his series of Barsoom novels, situated on Mars
