Friday, September 2, 2016

Worldcon Recap- Is Cyberpunk Still a Thing?

Cory Doctorow, Pat Cadigan, Matt Jacobson, James Patrick Kelly, Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
(Highlights from my notes, errors and misattributions possible.)
  • Dangerously close to an all-Pat panel, we note.
  • Doctorow: What is Cyperpunk, and what is a thing?
  • Cadigan: That's Miss Thing to you!
  • Kelly: Things are reasons to have panels.
  • Nielsen Hayden: Cyberpunk as a course correction, SF noticing most SF is slightly in the past. Let's make it now, or slightly in the future.
  • Doctorow asks the relation between cyberpunk authors and actual computer knowledge (famous example of Gibson writing Neuromancer on a manual typewriter). Panelists respond that there was a great variation on how much people knew the tech, including a good deal of disappointment with how 80s computer tech actually looked, felt, sounded.
  • Cadigan: Cyberpunks were the first generation to grow up completely with mass media.