In the moral universe of cyberpunk, we *already* know ThingsWe Were Not Meant To Know. Our *grandparents* knew these things;Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos became the Destroyer of Worldslong before we arrived on the scene. In cyberpunk, the idea that thereare sacred limits to human action is simply a delusion. There are nosacred boundaries to protect us from ourselves.

Our place in the universe is basically accidental. We are weakand mortal, but it's not the holy will of the gods; it's just the waythings happen to be at the moment. And this is radicallyunsatisfactory; not because we direly miss the shelter of the Deity, butbecause, looked at objectively, the vale of human suffering is basicallya dump. The human condition can be changed, and it will be changed,and is changing; the only real questions are how, and to what end.

This "anti-humanist" conviction in cyberpunk is not simplysome literary stunt to outrage the bourgeoisie; this is an objective factabout culture in the late twentieth century. Cyberpunk didn't inventthis situation; it just reflects it.

Today it is quite common to see tenured scientists espousinghorrifically radical ideas: nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, cryonicsuspension of the dead, downloading the contents of the brain...Hubristic mania is loose in the halls of academe, where everybody andhis sister seems to have a plan to set the cosmos on its ear. Sternmoral indignation at the prospect is the weakest of reeds; if there werea devilish drug around that could extend our sacred God-givenlifespans by a hundred years, the Pope would be the first in line.

We already live, every day, through the means of outrageousactions with unforeseeable consequences to the whole world. Theworld population has doubled since 1970; the natural world, whichused to surround humankind with its vast Gothic silences, is nowsomething that has to be catalogued and cherished.

We're just not much good any more at refusing things becausethey don't seem proper. As a society, we can't even manage to turnour backs on abysmal threats like heroin and the hydrogen bomb. Asa culture, we love to play with fire, just for the sake of its allure; and ifthere happens to be money in it, there are no holds barred.Jumpstarting Mary Shelley's corpses is the least of our problems;something much along that line happens in intensive-care wards everyday.

Human thought itself, in its unprecedented guise as computersoftware, is becoming something to be crystallized, replicated, made acommodity. Even the insides of our brains aren't sacred; on thecontrary, the human brain is a primary target of increasinglysuccessful research, ontological and spiritual questions be damned.The idea that, under these circumstances, Human Nature is somehowdestined to prevail against the Great Machine, is simply silly; it seemsweirdly beside the point. It's as if a rodent philosopher in a lab-cage,about to have his brain bored and wired for the edification of BigScience, were to piously declare that in the end Rodent Nature musttriumph.

Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a humanbeing. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing tothink about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover oureyes.

*This* is cyberpunk.

This explains, I hope, why standard sci-fi adventure yarnstarted up in black leather fail to qualify. Lewis Shiner has simply lostpatience with writers who offer dopey shoot-em-up rack-fodder in sci-fiberpunk drag. "Other writers had turned the form into formula," hecomplains in THE NEW YORK TIMES, "the same dead-end thrills we getfrom video games and blockbuster movies." Shiner's early convictionshave scarcely budged so much as a micron -- but the stuff most folkscall "cyberpunk" no longer reflects his ideals.

In my opinion the derivative piffle is a minor issue. So is theword "cyberpunk." I'm pleased to see that it's increasingly difficult towrite a dirt-stupid book, put the word "cyberpunk" on it, and expect itto sell. With the c-word discredited through half-witted overkill,anyone called a "cyberpunk" will have to pull their own weight now.But for those willing to pull weight, it's no big deal. Labels cannotdefend their own integrity; but writers can, and good ones do.

There is another general point to make, which I believe isimportant to any real understanding of the Movement. Cyberpunk,like New Wave before it, was a voice of Bohemia. It came from theunderground, from the outside, from the young and energetic anddisenfranchised. It came from people who didn't know their ownlimits, and refused the limits offered them by mere custom and habit.

Not much SF is really Bohemian, and most of Bohemia has littleto do with SF, but there was, and is, much to be gained from themeeting of the two. SF as a genre, even at its most "conventional," isvery much a cultural underground. SF's influence on the greatersociety outside, like the dubious influence of beatniks, hippies, andpunks, is carefully limited. Science fiction, like Bohemia, is a usefulplace to put a wide variety of people, where their ideas and actions canbe examined, without the risk of putting those ideas and actionsdirectly into wider practice. Bohemia has served this function since itsstart in the early Industrial Revolution, and the wisdom of this schemeshould be admitted. Most weird ideas are simply weird ideas, andBohemia in power has rarely been a pretty sight. Jules Verne as awriter of adventure novels is one thing; President Verne, GeneralVerne, or Pope Jules is a much dicier proposition.

Cyberpunk was a voice of Bohemia -- Bohemia in the 1980s.The technosocial changes loose in contemporary society were bound toaffect its counterculture. Cyberpunk was the literary incarnation ofthis phenomenon. And the phenomenon is still growing.Communication technologies in particular are becoming much lessrespectable, much more volatile, and increasingly in the hands ofpeople you might not introduce to your grandma.

But today, it must be admitted that the cyberpunks -- SFveterans in or near their forties, patiently refining their craft andcashing their royalty checks -- are no longer a Bohemian underground.This too is an old story in Bohemia; it is the standard punishment forsuccess. An underground in the light of day is a contradiction in terms.Respectability does not merely beckon; it actively envelops. And inthis sense, "cyberpunk" is even deader than Shiner admits.

Time and chance have been kind to the cyberpunks, but theythemselves have changed with the years. A core doctrine inMovement theory was "visionary intensity." But it has been some timesince any cyberpunk wrote a truly mind-blowing story, something thatwrithed, heaved, howled, hallucinated and shattered the furniture. Inthe latest work of these veterans, we see tighter plotting, bettercharacters, finer prose, much "serious and insightful futurism." But wealso see much less in the way of spontaneous back-flips and crazeddancing on tables. The settings come closer and closer to the presentday, losing the baroque curlicues of unleashed fantasy: the issues atstake become something horribly akin to the standard concerns ofmiddle-aged responsibility. And this may be splendid, but it is notwar. This vital aspect of science fiction has been abdicated, and is openfor the taking. Cyberpunk is simply not there any more.

But science fiction is still alive, still open and developing. AndBohemia will not go away. Bohemia, like SF, is not a passing fad,although it breeds fads; like SF, Bohemia is old; as old as industrialsociety, of which both SF and Bohemia are integral parts. CyberneticBohemia is not some bizarre advent; when cybernetic Bohemiansproclaim that what they are doing is completely new, they innocentlydelude themselves, merely because they are young.