The True Cyberpunks

I'm finishing Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon, its sort of fun, a through back to the days when the likes of Neal Stephenson, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling were writing something like straight science fiction. Gibson reports, I think on behalf of that cohort of writers, that the cyber-punk movement had to end because the future had arrived and it was much stranger than he had imaginged. Morgan doesn't feed any obligation to make his world any stranger or more inventive than the real world. He doesn't even hold up a mirror to the way the world. The Takeshi Kovacs books give voice to violent fantasies without having to really consider the consequences of that violence.

One of Moran's important characters is a "data rat", a skill hacker, part merc, part detective. Similar characters existed in the classic cyber punk works. These skilled professional were at the center of the action. Its not too much of a stretch to suppose that they were the characters with whom the reader was supposed to be able to best identify. Their abilities analyzing data gave them both power and freedom. The emerging culture surrounded the internet, at least in the early days of the boom, were energized with this sort of promise. And, to a surprising extent, the technology paid off on this promise. At least to the extent that it's inspired the above writers to move into contemporary and/or historical fiction.

But what about the promise of the data-runner. I remember the thrill that I got when I first developed some skills in teasing out hidden facts and discovering unseen patterns in the vast web of electronic data. There was a definite rush. I was working as a part-time proof reader/ copy editor. I bet fact checkers get the same rush. I bet mercs and detectives have more important things to do with their time. This sort of character has elevated the lowest position in the traditional publishing hierarchy to that of super-powered noire anti-hero.

I suppose it shouldn't be suprising that people in this position should find themselves elevated in genre fiction. What else is a struggling novelist going to do to buy food before selling that first novel?