Re: RARA-AVIS: Cyberpunk Recomendation?

From: jjnevins@ix.netcom.com
Date: 05 Oct 2005


Original Message:
----------------- From: Tribe tribexx@gmail.com

> No, not at all. I find very little of relationship between so-called
cyberpunk and/or noir and/or hard boiled (aside from the fact that they're books). I mentioned Jeter's Noir in that vein because a hard-boiled style is self-consciously and purposefully used as pastiche, as a prop for the the story.

> Any claims to cyberpunk having hard-boiled underpinnings can be blamed on
the Bladerunner film.

Well, certainly Blade Runner was enormously influential on first-generation cyberpunk and was in turn influenced by hardboiled novels, but the influence of hardboiled detective fiction goes beyond the film. Where do you think the persona of the first-generation (which is quite different from second-generation cyberpunk, to which my generalizations no longer apply) protagonist comes from? The non-cyberspace milieu of first-generation cyberpunk is almost always urban, and the protagonist is often a hardbitten, cynical loner with a romantic streak and a firm code of ethics. Hell, even the early cyberpunk novelist--Gibson's earliest, and his immediate imitators--were aping Chandler's style.

I'm not saying that cyberpunk sprang directly from hardboiled detective fiction. Cyberpunk grew from numerous sources, as I mentioned previously. But to claim that cyberpunk doesn't have hardboiled underpinnings is wrong.

jess

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