From: kcalder@blueyonder.co.uk   
      
   RE: All the talk of dead cyberpunks and real cyberpunk.   
      
   As far as I can tell cp is:   
      
   2 Parts "Britney Spears Nude"   
   2 Parts "Christina Aguilera Nude"   
   4 Parts "Make thousands now, earn tons of cash today!!!"   
   1 Parts "Ex girlfriend masturbating"   
   1 Parts "Pre teen sister peeing"   
      
   Otherwise...   
      
   I wouldn't worry if the definition of cyberpunk is messy and imperfect.   
   If everyone agreed with your definition of cyberpunk then its likely not   
   to be much of a definition and more of a generalisation.  People are   
   always going to quibble about how such and such book is CP and how such   
   and such isn't.  The only fool proof definition of lit. cp is as   
   follows:  All cp lit. is all lit.   
      
   Not very useful is it?   
      
   Personally my position on what's cp and what's not is pretty   
   conservative and gravitates very strongly toward Gibson.  Part of the   
   reason for this is because my revised notion of cp sci fi, as   
   distinguished from regular sci fi, involves comming at cp via Chandler   
   et. al. and the also the Beats & the velvet underground.  I'm just not   
   that interested in the technological insights of the authors concerned.   
   I'm not to worried about the rocketships etc\infotech etc division   
   either; it all seems a little arbitrary to me.  Also I don't think cp is   
   really that "hard", in fact, compared to something like a Greg Egan   
   novel, I think cp is particularly like soft french cheese, i.e. soft and   
   cheesy.  I need graph theory and post-human applications of tech for me   
   to feel its edge these days.   
      
   That said, if asked to mark up different novels, in terms of how cp   
   other people would think they are I'd need to know *who* we are talking   
   about. I think I could probably spot a novel that people would think was   
   cp so long as I knew whether we were talking about the readers of alt.cp   
   and not say, the general public.   
      
   So, what I am saying I use lots of different definitions of cp, and they   
   are all comfortably imperfect, but seem pretty functional.   
      
   I don't think we need or really want an ultimate definition of cp.   
      
   IMHO e.t.c. e.t.c.   
      
   ta,   
   --   
   Kevin Calder   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)