The princes of hackerdom skate the phone-lines, and computernetworks, as a lifestyle. They hang out in loose,modem-connected gangs like the "Legion of Doom" and the "Mastersof Destruction." The craft of hacking is taught through"bulletin board systems," personal computers that carryelectronic mail and can be accessed by phone. Hacker bulletinboards generally sport grim, scary, sci-fi heavy metal nameslike BLACK ICE -- PRIVATE or SPEED DEMON ELITE. Hackersthemselves often adopt romantic and highly suspicious tough-guymonickers like "Necron 99," "Prime Suspect," "Erik Bloodaxe,""Malefactor" and "Phase Jitter." This can be seen as a kind ofcyberpunk folk-poetry -- after all, baseball players also havecolorful nicknames. But so do the Mafia and the MedellinCartel.

PLAYER FOUR: The Simulation Gamers.

Wargames and role-playing adventures are an old and honoredpastime, much favored by professional military strategists andH.G. Wells, and now played by hundreds of thousands ofenthusiasts throughout North America, Europe and Japan. Intoday's market, many simulation games are computerized, makingsimulation gaming a favorite pastime of hackers, who dote onarcane intellectual challenges and the thrill of doing simulatedmischief.

Modern simulation games frequently have a heavilyscience-fictional cast. Over the past decade or so, fueled byvery respectable royalties, the world of simulation gaming hasincreasingly permeated the world of science-fiction publishing.TSR, Inc., proprietors of the best-known role-playing game,"Dungeons and Dragons," own the venerable science-fictionmagazine "Amazing." Gaming-books, once restricted to hobbyoutlets, now commonly appear in chain-stores like B. Dalton'sand Waldenbooks, and sell vigorously.

Steve Jackson Games, Inc., of Austin, Texas, is a games companyof the middle rank. In early 1990, it employed fifteen people.In 1989, SJG grossed about half a million dollars. SJG's Austinheadquarters is a modest two-story brick office-suite, clutteredwith phones, photocopiers, fax machines and computers. Apublisher's digs, it bustles with semi-organized activity and islittered with glossy promotional brochures and dog-eared SFnovels. Attached to the offices is a large tin-roofed warehousepiled twenty feet high with cardboard boxes of games and books.This building was the site of the "Cyberpunk Bust."

A look at the company's wares, neatly stacked on endless rows ofcheap shelving, quickly shows SJG's long involvement with theScience Fiction community. SJG's main product, the GenericUniversal Role-Playing System or G.U.R.P.S., features licensedand adapted works from many genre writers. There is GURPS WitchWorld, GURPS Conan, GURPS Riverworld, GURPS Horseclans, manynames eminently familiar to SF fans. (GURPS Difference Engineis currently in the works.) GURPS Cyberpunk, however, was tobe another story entirely.

PLAYER FIVE: The Science Fiction Writers.

The "cyberpunk" SF writers are a small group of mostlycollege-educated white litterateurs, without conspicuouscriminal records, scattered through the US and Canada. Onlyone, Rudy Rucker, a professor of computer science in SiliconValley, would rank with even the humblest computer hacker.However, these writers all own computers and take an intense,public, and somewhat morbid interest in the social ramificationsof the information industry. Despite their small numbers, theyall know one another, and are linked by antique print-mediumpublications with unlikely names like SCIENCE FICTION EYE, ISAACASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE, OMNI and INTERZONE.

PLAYER SIX: The Civil Libertarians.

This small but rapidly growing group consists of heavilypoliticized computer enthusiasts and heavily cyberneticizedpolitical activists: a mix of wealthy high-tech entrepreneurs,veteran West Coast troublemaking hippies, touchy journalists,and toney East Coast civil rights lawyers. They are all gettingto know one another.

We now return to our story. By 1988, law enforcementofficials, led by contrite teenage informants, had thoroughlypermeated the world of underground bulletin boards, and werealertly prowling the nets compiling dossiers on wrongdoers.While most bulletin board systems are utterly harmless, some fewhad matured into alarming reservoirs of forbidden knowledge.One such was BLACK ICE -- PRIVATE, located "somewhere in the 607area code," frequented by members of the "Legion of Doom" andnotorious even among hackers for the violence of its rhetoric,which discussed sabotage of phone-lines, drug-manufacturingtechniques, and the assembly of home-made bombs, as well as aplethora of rules-of-thumb for penetrating computer security.

Of course, the mere discussion of these notions is not illegal-- many cyberpunk SF stories positively dote on such ideas, asdo hundreds of spy epics, techno-thrillers and adventure novels.It was no coincidence that "ICE," or "Intrusion CountermeasuresElectronics," was a term invented by cyberpunk writer TomMaddox, and "BLACK ICE," or a computer-defense that fries thebrain of the unwary trespasser, was a coinage of William Gibson.

A reference manual from the US National Institute of Justice,"Dedicated Computer Crime Units" by J. Thomas McEwen, suggeststhat federal attitudes toward bulletin-board systems areambivalent at best:

"There are several examples of how bulletin boards have beenused in support of criminal activities.... (B)ulletin boardswere used to relay illegally obtained access codes into computerservice companies. Pedophiles have been known to leavesuggestive messages on bulletin boards, and other sexuallyoriented messages have been found on bulletin boards. Membersof cults and sects have also communicated through bulletinboards. While the storing of information on bulletin boards maynot be illegal, the use of bulletin boards has certainlyadvanced many illegal activities."

Here is a troubling concept indeed: invisible electronicpornography, to be printed out at home and read by sects andcults. It makes a mockery of the traditional law-enforcementtechniques concerning the publication and prosecution of smut.In fact, the prospect of large numbers of antisocialconspirators, congregating in the limbo of cyberspace withoutofficial oversight of any kind, is enough to trouble the sleepof anyone charged with maintaining public order.

Even the sternest free-speech advocate will likely do someheadscratching at the prospect of digitized "anarchy files"teaching lock-picking, pipe-bombing, martial arts techniques,and highly unorthodox uses for shotgun shells, especially whenthese neat-o temptations are distributed freely to any teen (orpre-teen) with a modem.

These may be largely conjectural problems at present, but theuse of bulletin boards to foment hacker mischief is real. Worseyet, the bulletin boards themselves are linked, sharing theiraudience and spreading the wicked knowledge of security flaws inthe phone network, and in a wide variety of academic, corporateand governmental computer systems.

This strength of the hackers is also a weakness, however. Ifthe boards are monitored by alert informants and/or officers,the whole wicked tangle can be seized all along its extendedelectronic vine, rather like harvesting pumpkins.

The war against hackers, including the "Cyberpunk Bust," wasprimarily a war against hacker bulletin boards. It was, firstand foremost, an attack against the enemy's means ofinformation.

This basic strategic insight supplied the tactics for thecrackdown of 1990. The variant groups in the nationalsubculture of cyber-law would be kept apprised, persuaded toaction, and diplomatically martialled into effective strikeposition. Then, in a burst of energy and a glorious blaze ofpublicity, the whole nest of scofflaws would be wrenched up rootand branch. Hopefully, the damage would be permanent; if not,the swarming wretches would at least keep their heads down.