But even that isn't enough, you know.... There's talk nowadaysin publishing circles about a new device for books, called aReadMan. Like a Walkman only you carry it in your hands likethis.... Has a very nice little graphics screen, theoretically,a high-definition thing, very legible.... And you play yourbooks on it.... You buy the book as a floppy and you stick itin... And just think, wow you can even have graphics with yourbook... you can have music, you can have a soundtrack....Narration.... Animated illustrations... Multimedia... it caneven be interactive.... It's the New Hollywood for Publisher'sRow, and at last books can aspire to the exalted condition ofmovies and cartoons and TV and computer games.... And just thinkwhen the ReadMan goes obsolete, all the product that was writtenfor it will be blessedly gone forever!!! Erased from the memoryof mankind!

Now I'm the farthest thing from a Luddite ladies and gentlemen,but when I contemplate this particular technical marvel myauthor's blood runs cold... It's really hard for books tocompete with other multisensory media, with modern electronicmedia, and this is supposed to be the panacea for witheringliterature, but from the marrow of my bones I say get thatfucking little sarcophagus away from me. For God's sake don'tput my books into the Thomas Edison kinetoscope. Don't put meinto the stereograph, don't write me on the wax cylinder, don'ttie my words and my thoughts to the fate of a piece of hardware,because hardware is even more mortal than I am, and I'm a hellof a lot more mortal than I care to be. Mortality is one goodreason why I'm writing books in the first place. For God's sakedon't make me keep pace with the hardware, because I'm notreally in the business of keeping pace, I'm really in thebusiness of marking place.

Okay.... Now I've sometimes heard it asked why computer gamedesigners are deprived of the full artistic respect theydeserve. God knows they work hard enough. They're reallytalented too, and by any objective measure of intelligence theyrank in the top percentiles... I've heard it said that maybethis problem has something to do with the size of the author'sname on the front of the game-box. Or it's lone wolves versusteams, and somehow the proper allotment of fame gets lost in themuddle. One factor I don't see mentioned much is the sheer lackof stability in your medium. A modern movie-maker could probablymake a pretty good film with DW Griffith's equipment, but youfolks are dwelling in the very maelstrom of PermanentTechnological Revolution. And that's a really cool place, butman, it's just not a good place to build monuments.

Okay. Now I live in the same world you live in, I hope I'vedemonstrated that I face a lot of the same problems you face...Believe me there are few things deader or more obsolescent thana science fiction novel that predicts the future when the futurehas passed it by. Science fiction is a pop medium and a veryobsolescent medium. The fact that written science fiction is aprose medium gives us some advantages, but even science fictionhas a hard time wrapping itself in the traditional mantle ofliterary excellence... we try to do this sometimes, butgenerally we have to be really drunk first. Still, if you wantyour work to survive (and some science fiction *does* survive,very successfully) then your work has to capture some qualitythat lasts. You have to capture something that people willsearch out over time, even though they have to fight their wayupstream against the whole rushing current of obsolescence andinnovation.

And I've come up with a strategy for attempting this. Maybeit'll work -- probably it won't -- but I wouldn't be complainingso loudly if I didn't have some kind of strategy, right? And Ithink that my strategy may have some relevance to game designersso I presume to offer it tonight.

This is the point at which your normal J. Random Author trotsout the doctrine of the Wonderful Power of Storytelling. Yes,storytelling, the old myth around the campfire, blind Homer,universal Shakespeare, this is the art ladies and gentlemen thatstrikes to the eternal core of the human condition... This ishigh art and if you don't have it you are dust in the wind.... Ican't tell you how many times I have heard this bullshit... Thisis known in my field as the "Me and My Pal Bill Shakespeare"argument. Since 1982 I have been at open war with people whopromulgate this doctrine in science fiction and this is theprimary reason why my colleagues in SF speak of me in fear andtrembling as a big bad cyberpunk... This is the classic doctrineof Humanist SF.

This is what it sounds like when it's translated into yourjargon. Listen closely:

"Movies and plays get much of their power from the resonancesbetween the structural layers. The congruence between the theme,plot, setting and character layouts generates emotional power.Computer games will never have a significant theme level becausethe outcome is variable. The lack of theme alone will limit thestorytelling power of computer games."

Hard to refute. Impossible to refute. Ladies and gentlemen tohell with the marvellous power of storytelling. If the audiencefor science fiction wanted *storytelling*, they wouldn't readgoddamned *science fiction,* they'd read Harpers and Redbook andArgosy. The pulp magazine (which is our genre's primary exampleof a dead platform) used to carry all kinds of storytelling.Western stories. Sailor stories. Prizefighting stories. G-8 andhis battle aces. Spicy Garage Tales. Aryan Atrocity Adventures.These things are dead. Stories didn't save them. Stories won'tsave us. Stories won't save *you.*

This is not the route to follow. We're not into science fictionbecause it's *good literature,* we're into it because it's*weird*. Follow your weird, ladies and gentlemen. Forget tryingto pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace your nerditude.In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredibleobscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years,"woo the muse of the odd." A good science fiction story is not a"good story" with a polite whiff of rocket fuel in it. A goodscience fiction story is something that knows it is sciencefiction and plunges through that and comes roaring out of theother side. Computer entertainment should not be more likemovies, it shouldn't be more like books, it should be more likecomputer entertainment, SO MUCH MORE LIKE COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENTTHAT IT RIPS THROUGH THE LIMITS AND IS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE TOIGNORE!

I don't think you can last by meeting the contemporary publictaste, the taste from the last quarterly report. I don't thinkyou can last by following demographics and carefully meetingexpectations. I don't know many works of art that last that arecondescending. I don't know many works of art that last that aredeliberately stupid. You may be a geek, you may have geekwritten all over you; you should aim to be one geek they'llnever forget. Don't aim to be civilized. Don't hope thatstraight people will keep you on as some kind of pet. To hellwith them; they put you here. You should fully realize whatsociety has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get weird.Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly,thoroughly weird and don't do it halfway, put every ounce ofhorsepower you have behind it. Have the artistic *courage* torecognize your own significance in culture!

Okay. Those of you into SF may recognize the classic rhetoric ofcyberpunk here. Alienated punks, picking up computers, menacingsociety.... That's the cliched press story, but they miss thebest half. Punk into cyber is interesting, but cyber into punkis way dread. I'm into technical people who attack pop culture.I'm into techies gone dingo, techies gone rogue -- not streetpunks picking up any glittery junk that happens to be withintheir reach -- but disciplined people, intelligent people,people with some technical skills and some rational thought, whocan break out of the arid prison that this society sets for itsengineers. People who are, and I quote, "dismayed by nearlyevery aspect of the world situation and aware on some nightmarelevel that the solutions to our problems will not come from thebreed of dimwitted ad-men that we know as politicians." Thanks,Brenda!