In a cyberpunk analysis, Frankenstein is ”Humanist” SF. Frankenstein promotes the romantic dictum that there are Some Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. – – In the moral universe of cyberpunk, we already know Things We Were Not Meant To Know. Our grandparents knew these things; Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos became the Destroyer of Worlds long before we arrived on the scene. In cyberpunk, the idea that there are sacred limits to human action is simply a delusion. There are no sacred boundaries to protect us from ourselves.
Rucker, Shiner, Sterling, Shirley and Gibson – the Movement’s most fearsome ”gurus,” ear-tagged yet again in Shiner’s worthy article, in front of the N. Y. Times’ bemused millions – are ”cyberpunks” for good and all. – – But the dreaded C-Word will surely be chiselled into our five tombstones. Public disavowals are useless, very likely worse than useless. Even the most sweeping changes in our philosophy of writing, perhaps weird mid-life-crisis conversions to Islam or Santeria, could not erase the tattoo. – – Seen from this perspective, ”cyberpunk” simply means ”anything cyberpunks write.” – – ”Cyberpunk” will not be conclusively ”dead” until the last of us is shovelled under. Demographics suggest that this is likely to take some time.
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